Some shit-talking, but not the kind you think

Although our afternoon started as a pleasant cruise up the west side, it took just a teensy a bit of traffic to turn our uncharacteristically mellow driver (like, pill-popping mellow) back into his good-ol speeding, horn-honking, brights-flashing, tire-squealing self. We managed to find parking in the bushes at the TRC, but only after Guillaume made some poor soccer mom in an SUV think we were tailing her.

With just three of us (Kenways was decorating his apartment?), the climbing was well planned, with plenty of rest between ascents. Joana worked on her lead game, alternating top-roping a stemmy 10 (blue) and trailing a rope and practicing clipping on 9s. Apparently, something Guillaume said compelled Joana to sheepishly refer to him as "master"; I don't know what that was all about, but whatever it was, her clipping was textbook.

G and I warmed up by leading a new 9 (brown/pink), after which he made another attempt at top-roping the hearts (12) up front. He got pretty close to sticking the crazy right-hand slap for the prow. Wednesday perhaps? He followed the hearts up by leading 12 (green, James), 11 (yellow) and 10b (GJV). Took a nice whipper on the 12 after clearing the three big moves up the arch and clipping the last chain, somehow managing to avoid disaster by pulling his leg clear of the rope at the last second!

I rounded out the day on a pumpy 10- up the right side of the arch (entirely negative), a new 10 (white) up the left side with a funky crux out from under the roof, and another go at leading the crimpy 11 (blue) clean (only one take 2 moves from the end this time). I gambled with my life by letting Joana belay me ;-), and I'm still alive, so I guess she was paying attention to Pierre!

As usual, some stupid car talk on the drive home; serial monogamy, Cheetos, the fact that one of J's ex-boyfriends dressed up dolls and how to make fun of your children (for their own good, of course). I even tried a behavioral economics experiment to determine what one would have to pay people to eat shit. That didn't work like all the economists keep telling me (claims that even 1 million bucks wouldn't do it!?), but for the record, I would like to state that J was the first to bring this up.