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Overlap of commonly varying SNPs ~25% :-)

Bouldering and beyond

From an article titled "Rock Climbing Technique, Performance and Climbing Tips":

Preview and Read the Route. Before you climb, visualize the sequences through the entire route--or as much as you can see from the ground. After you complete the route, look at it again and re-analyze it.

Improve Your Balance. The starting point for developing a good rock climbing technique begins with your sense of balance, and how you control your balance on the wall. A good sense of balance is the key to moving smoothly and making difficult climbing moves appear effortless. To maintain balance while climbing keep moving! Use momentum to reach a move that is further than can be reached using a static movement. The holds you choose should not be out of reach…. Make the series of holds within reach but which also require extending your body position.

Speed of Climbing. Some climbers are slow and deliberate and have a static technique. Some climb fast using a dynamic climbing technique. Both types of climbing can be considered good rock climbing technique. It is more important to adapt your style to make best use of your abilities.

Develop Smooth Movement. The control and fluidity of how you move is one of the primary indicators of good well developed rock climbing technique. Develop smoothness to your climbing by simply making a conscious effort to control unneeded movement. Wiggling and resituating creates “opportunity” to fall, slip off the
hold or lose balance. To correct this, simply become conscious of your movements. Think about the movement that is needed to advance, and do only that.

Find Rest Spots. Regardless of the speed of climbing, climbers who look for and take rests will do better than those who do not. Learning to spot and take advantage of rest spots is a very important technique in rock climbing. The reason climbers peel off high routes within their ability level is they did not manage their rest properly.

Watch and Learn. The best way to learn and improve rock climbing technique is observe the technique used by good climbers, and practice to develop these techniques yourself. Make mental notes as you observe climbers.

Taking a Good Fall. No matter how good you are, you will fall. If you don’t you are not pushing yourself to your limit. Falling is part of climbing and it is a skill to learn just like any other aspect of good climbing technique. There is a basic fear of falling in humans, which is part of the underlying thrill of climbing. This fear may be debilitating to people new to climbing but as you get more experience with falling the more comfortable you will become. Then say to yourself, “that wasn’t so bad”, get back on the wall. Now you have confidence to push yourself to try difficult moves even if it means falling. That is an important aspect of developing and improving your rock climbing technique: You need to be able to push yourself to your maximum ability…which means you will fall. Most falls should be a surprise. Yes, you will feel most of them coming, but the actual moment you pop off the wall should be a surprise.

Une chanson au lieu d'adieu

Les petits bateaux

Rider type: Epicurean Dilettante

Henri Pépin (born France, 18 November 1864, died Bordeaux, 1914) was an affluent French racing cyclist who once hired two riders to escort him leisurely through the Tour de France, in which they ate at good restaurants and spent the night in expensive hotels. When he had had enough, he paid his assistants – the first domestiques in cycle racing – what they would have earned had they won the Tour and went home by train.
The Tour which made Pépin celebrated started at the Porte Bineau in Paris on 8 July 1907. Pépin had hired two riders, Jean Dargassies and Henri Gauban to ride with him. Far from competing with the favourites, Gustave Garrigou, Émile Georget and Lucien Petit-Breton, Pépin planned to treat the race as a pleasure ride, stopping for lunch when they chose and spending the night in the best hotels they could find.
The race left the Porte Bineau at 5.30am but without Pépin, Gauban and Dargassies. Pierre Chany reports that Pépin was in conversation with a lady, occasionally raising his hat to other women and blowing kisses. The bunch had already left for its eight-hour ride to Roubaix, but only when Pepin was ready did he say:
“ Let us depart. But remember – we have all the time in the world.”

The three riders never separated, never hurried. They took 12 hours and 20 minutes longer than Georget on the stage from Roubaix to Metz – they were far from last – and the judges were powerless because the race was decided not on time but points. It mattered less what speed riders competed than the order in which they crossed the line. In an era when riders could be separated by hours, there was no point in hurrying after a rival who could not be caught and passed. The judges had to wait for everyone.
One day the trio came across another rider, not on the road but lying in a ditch.
"My name is Jean-Marie Teychenne," the man said. "Like you, I am a coureur. But I have suffered the most terrible fringale [hunger]. Leave me, I'm done for."
"Nonsense," shouted Pépin, and he told Dargassies and Gauban to pull the man from the gully. "You will join us," he said, slapping him on the back and wiping the mud off his number 76. "We are but three but we live well and we shall finish this race. We may not win, but we shall see France." And they set off, now a foursome, to get Teychenne cleaned and fed at the next inn.
Somewhere between Lyon and Grenoble on stage five – three times the direct distance the way the race went – Pépin pulled out the money he had promised his little team and set off for the train home.
Adapted from the Wikipedia article on Pépin.

My kind of cloud.

Came across this again after a very long time:

" The Dervish sat down under the cypress tree. He pulled his flute out of his sash and began to blow into it. Out of the holes of the flute, trees rushed into the air; it was as if they had been hidden there and were now being pushed from the holes as the Dervish blew. Mountains, streams, and roads rushed into the air one after the other. The trees, the hills, and the streams that came from the holes of the flute descended onto a desert at the other end of the world where there were no mountains, no streams, no roads, and no trees. Hills and trees appeared in the desert; streams began to flow and toads stretched themselves out. And from then on the place was called FLUTELAND..."
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