Two Weeks Without Games & Rocks

I've spent the better part of this week trying to convince Kristin to get some sleep, but to no avail. She came home from school on Saturday with a rather deer-in-the-headlights look on her. When asked what was the matter, she simply told me she had 5 papers to write before we leave for South Korea on Friday morning. In case that wasn't bad enough, one of the professors waited until Wednesday evening to tell the class what the topic was. As of Thursday morning, another professor has yet to reveal his mystery subject. So each night, around 1 in the morning, I began talking her into going to bed. Force was threatened on more than one occasion.

Yesterday I woke up at 4:15 to find the other half of the bed empty. She woke at 4 to get more work done. I can't tell whether I'm more concerned for her health and sanity or because she's starting to make me look bad.

Yeah, I know I know, "what do you mean starting?" Very funny.

As dumb-luck and Murphy's Law would have it: Puzzle Quest: Galactrix finally released yesterday on XBLA for the equivalent of $20. Why do the games I'm always most excited to get release the week I'm about to leave on a trip? It has happened far too many times. From what I can tell, it seems to be a deeply engaging puzzle-RPG hybrid just like the original game in the series, yet this one has a space-theme instead of your standard fantasy realm with knights and elves. I played the first game on the DS and was wondering if I would miss the point-and-tap controls on the XBLA version and the answer is... drumroll, please... sometimes. The shortcomings of the Xbox 360 controller's D-pad have been widely discussed (Cliff's Notes version: it's utter crap), but it wasn't until playing Galactrix that I realized the Control Stick isn't the most accurate tool either.

Maybe it's me (it probably is) but I would recommend to everyone about to play the game on the Xbox 360 that they pause a moment before pressing the A Button to confirm a move. If you're anything like me, the gem you want to swap won't always be the one you select -- even though you clearly believe you pointed right at it.

The new Gears of War 2 maps and title update have succeeded in giving the group I play with incentive to eject their COD4 discs and return to the dark side that is third-person shooting. If only for a night or two, then it was straight back to COD4. As much as I absolutely do enjoy playing Gears 2's multiplayer mode, it's the only game that I've ever experienced any sense of lag in when playing online. And that's not hyperbole, it really is the only game I notice this with. And the 8 or so guys I play with regularly all say the same thing. It's also the only game I know of whose title updates and glitch-fixes get immediately hacked and exploited upon release. I don't know if it has to do with the Unreal Engine or if people just have certain affinity for exploiting Gears 2, or what. But there have been three "title updates" now to fix myriad glitches, hacks, and exploits, yet the jerkoffs among us still find ways to cheat. Name one other game this happens in? Time's up. You couldn't, could you? Me neither.

The latest title update added a rather simplistic XP leveling system. In short, you get experience for kills and downs, lose some for deaths and for quitting and you level up. You don't actually gain anything with reaching a new level, well nothing aside from the sense of pride you feel when you show the world how large your e-penis is. Mine's currently a 16 out of 100. Despite it being said to require 7,000,000 XP to reach level 100, a few of Xbox Live's premier douchebags found a way to hack the system and level up instantly. This is a good time to let you know that it's very difficult to average more than 800 to 1000 points per match. Note that I said average there. As much as I would like to place all of the blame on the jackasses who exploit games and cheat their way to a larger Gamerscore, I can't help but wonder if any of the code for this game is bullet-proof. I've been to Epic multiple times now and I've seen how hard the devs and designers work. That's why I wonder if it's the Unreal engine -- something ain't right for one game to be so heavily glitched & exploited.

The XP needed to level up is only attainable through Public matches which tend to be the most laggy. I wonder how many levels higher than me my friends will be by the time I get back. Right now we're all somewhere between 12 and 25. Again, the number only indicates how little sunlight you see, err, how much time you spend playing Gears 2. There are Achievements at milestones for 5, 15, 25, 50, and 100. I'll never see 100 and probably won't see 50 this year. Then again, the newest map pack -- Snowblind -- is pretty awesome. They remade Fuel Depot, one of our favorites, and finally included the Courtyard map that shipped with the original PC version of the first Gears of War game. There are also two others, Underhill and Grind Yard.

As much as I'm looking forward to going to South Korea tomorrow, I'm going to really miss rock climbing. Kristin and I have been going twice a week now for nearly two months now and though my hands are completely torn up, we're both really enjoying it. Kristin got a little frustrated the other night because I had a minor breakthrough and was able to do a few trickier (albeit, beginner) routes that she couldn't. She admitted later to hoping that bouldering would be something that she would finally excel at over me, but it wasn't too happen. She's doing really good, and gets better each time, but she has a bit more of a fear factor at work against her and my longer arms and height make a lot of the routes easier. Not to mention I just have more upper body strength.

I went to Stone Gardens yesterday alone for the first time after my dentist appointment. I spent an hour or so upstairs in "the cave" and was very happy to finally a ceiling route that Kristin and I have been trying for over a month. It was all in the feet. It's only rated V1 (out of a scale of V0 to V12) because the holds were really big and not too far apart, but I wasn't even close to getting it last week and yesterday I did it on my second try. I also came within one hold from getting a V1+ too.

My brother said a lot of the V0 and V1's that he saw at Stone Gardens would have been V3's at the place he climbs in at Boulder, CO so that makes me feel a little better about struggling with what, mathematically at least, is "the easiest" route in the building. I should add that they do have a number of VB rated routes for total first-timers too. For the past month I would focus mainly on the V0 routes and try one or two V1's per night. Sunday night, I solved four V1 routes (none I had seen before) and then yesterday I almost got that V1+ and was actually able to start a V2 that I tried just before leaving. A lot of times even figuring out how to get on the wall to start a route is really hard.

Anyway, I know I'm going to miss the climbing while we're away, not least because I'm enjoying the increased muscle tone in my shoulders and arms, but also because I don't want my hands to fully heal and get soft again. I'm trying to get them nice and calloused and not climbing for 2 weeks isn't going to help that.

Posts will be few and far between while I'm in South Korea. I'm not bringing any blackberries, laptops, or netbooks. I'm sure we'll pop in at a cyber-cafe every other two or three days to check email and maybe post something short, but those who know me IRL will likely find it easier to get a hold of me through Facebook than on the blog.

Have a good couple of weeks. See you back Stateside on the 21st.

Sausage Fingers

I've learned a slew of new terms over the past ten days. Words like bump, match, stemming, smear, and dyno have somehow worked their way into my vocabulary, even if only while describing what I'm seeing rather than doing. 

Another term that's new to me is sausage fingers: I apparently have them. I also now have an annual membership to Stone Gardens, a rock-climbing gym in Seattle. I expected neither.

Kristin's friend Kari had been trying to talk us into going climbing with her for the better part of two years and although Kristin had gone once and I was sure I'd enjoy it, I held back. I didn't want to risk getting hooked on yet another sport, and I was also spending too much time training for endurance racing. That was then and this is now. We finally agreed to go last Friday with Kari and a large group of her friends and we were hooked at once. We went back the following Wednesday and then again this weekend. There aren't many things that can get me to drive into the city three times in eight days, but apparently this is one of them.

When Kari first told us of all the time she spent bouldering (climbing without ropes at lower heights) I admittedly didn't think it would be much fun, or that difficult. My ignorance knew no bounds and when I saw that Stone Gardens had bouldering routes rated from V-0 to V-12, I assumed that I'd probably be able to quickly move up to at least V-4 or V-5. It didn't occur to me that I was back in grade-school and couldn't just skip from kindergarten to middle-school.

Though our new gaggle of climbing friends occasionally massage our egos by saying what "a really hard V-0 that is", or feigning some momentary difficulty with a tricky V-1, the truth is that this this bouldering thing is far more difficult than I ever could have imagined. All of the thousands of miles I've run and biked over the years matter very little. The beach volleyball, the pick-up games of basketball, and the occasional flag-football games matter even less. Surfing. That might have helped, had my surfing not lessened to a once-every-two-years trip to Costa Rica or Hawaii.

Rock climbing, as I'm quickly learning, is about finger strength, core strength, and flexibility. Mountain bikers who want to believe their sport-of-choice helps foster these traits are kidding themselves. If anything, wrapping my tender fingers around the handlebars on Thursday night -- a day after my second trip to the climbing gym -- only made it tougher. This is a good thing, though. I've always weight-training and plyometrics work and I absolutely loathe working out indoors. This is strength-training at play. Sure, it's indoors, and if all goes well the weight I'll be lifting will actually go down (both due to smarter technique and lower body weight), but I can already feel my upper body taking the first steps towards increased conditioning.

The extreme difficulty of bouldering wasn't the only thing I didn't expect; the brain-twister puzzle-solving element caught me completely by surprise as well. And this is what will ultimately keep me coming back. Each of the routes are color-coded and you're only allowed to put your hands and feet on holds that are taped a certain color. For some reason I thought this would be all very straightforward and we would just climb straight up the wall.  Ha! So many of the routes -- yes, even the lowly V-1 routes -- have a wonderful puzzle element to them that begs contemplation and study. Those routes that simply challenge your strength and flexibility and fear-of-heights are fun, but so many more challenge your mind and I can only look forward to progressing to more difficult puzzles. But even if that should take a while, the gym changes all of the routes every month or so, thus giving everyone a whole new set of routes to solve at whatever level they're stuck at.

And I do mean stuck. I don't foresee Kristin and I progressing past V-0 and V-1 for quite some time. For now, we're both limited by our meager finger and core strength (though her core strength probably far exceeds mine these days). I suppose we each have additional matters we have to work out as well, not least of which is the fear of falling. Or, more specifically, falling awkwardly. The highest handhold on the bouldering walls is probably 20 feet up and though that's not very high at all -- and the combination of the crash mats and cushiony floors all but guarantees you'll land safely -- making a strong, hard move (i.e. a "dyno" move) to the uppermost holds is still scary to us. I suppose it's like surfing and mountain biking though in that I just need to go ahead and have that one scary wipeout happen just to prove to myself that I'll bounce back up. Though it is a bit weird to feel somewhat "safer" riding my bike along the edge of a cliff, as in this photo, than I do lunging for a hold just 18 feet off the ground.

But unlike mountain biking, it's something that Kristin and I can do together and not have to worry about pace or difficulty. It's something that doesn't require a lot of expensive equipment, just shoes and  a chalk bag, and perhaps best of all, it's another reason to go out for beers with friends more often.

And one can never have too many excuses to do that.