The inteview I flew out to Chicago for went awesome - and hot meals, a real bed to sleep on, and showers for three days were pretty great as well - though we are doing A LOT better in those categories than we expected (that will make more sense further down the page).
I flew back to Denver at 10:30pm and finally found Andy who'd been circling the airport loop for 1/2 hour (Denver airport is huge and you have to take a train to get from the plane to the main terminal). I was very pleasantly surprised that we had a place to stay for the night. In the morning I got to meet Josh very briefly (who fully agrees with me that Andy is insane - in a good way) and we got on the road.
The drive from Denver to Salt Lake City was amazingly scenic. We had breakfast while driving through the Rockies - and here is a pic of Andy Eating. You can read the label, but it won't tell you much unless you are polish - let me just say that it's good, especially if you add some hot sauce to it.
The Rockies are great, and we got to drive through some pretty long tunnels:
Did I mention we got to drive through some pretty long tunnels?
Andy may disagree with me, but I thought Utah was the awesomest state we drove through so far. Imagine your typical western movie, take out the cowboys, stick a four lane highway in the middle of the set - and that's Utah. My favorites were the signs on the side of the road warning about dust storms, and the 105 mile stretch of highway right smack through the desert with no service along the way.
After many hours of driving we got to Maple Canyon. At first we planned to get some climbing done that very day (Friday), but we ended up running into this guy - Brent - walking down the dirt road we were cruising to find a camping spot who flagged us down because he was also from Illinois (originally) and two minutes later invited us to camp next to him. That evening we talked with him and Leona, his girlfriend for a couple of hours about - well everything. Andy fell in love with their souped up minivan, and I can see why: this thing had beds, kitchen, a safety box, and a portable shower inside of it. In very short, Brent was a computer scientist in the eighties, he found out about climbing and spent most of the 90's traveling in his pickup truck, seven years ago he ran into Leona at City of Rocks and they've been doing it together since then. Very interesting people, who I think were pleasantly surprised that Christians can be talked to and can be connected with.
Saturday morning Leona showed us a couple of good places to climb. Maple Canyon is all cobblestone - takes getting used to climb on it, but once you do it's really cool, and definately worth checking out if you are driving through Utah.
Here's me rappelling from what I though was a 5.9, and later found out to be a 5.10b
Andy brough along his Solid Rock T-shirt and "The Case For Christ", both of which he just layed down next to his pack as we were climbing. The couple next to us saw the T-shirt, and it turned out they are also members of solid rock, and have been for many years. They were pleased to find out that Solid Rock is "back in business" and growing bigger and stronger than ever.
A couple minutes later we were joined by a party of four, who noticed the book (good thinking Andy!!!) and they were the ones to strike up a conversation with us and the Christian couple next to us (so there we were, four Christians and four non-Christians talking about Jesus in the middle of Maple Canyon).
Finally the time came to pack up and head for SLC - to meet Nancy and Tim: two AMAZING people of God (I'm actually typing this up in Tim's apartment where we've been staying the past two nights). To give you an idea, when we got to SLC Tim was still at work, but we were told we could just go into his house, shower and feel at home until he got back. We did, and as I was showering the cold water knob broke on me. I didn't know they could do that, but this one did. I had to introduce myself to Tim while at the same time explaining to him why the water in his shower could no longer be shut off (Andy by the way thought it was all pretty hilarious - and now, from from the distance of time I do too - but at the time I felt about this '.' big). Tim just smiled and said "I guess it had to happen sooner or later" and went to get the maintenance guy - who was able to fix it.
At 7:00 we went to Tim and Nancy's church. You guys have got to check out The Rock's website I dare say it's one of the coolest churches I've ever been in. It's inside of a warehous, it has a lobby/lounge full of couches, and the sanctuary itself looks more like a Rock Concert Hall than a Church. There's free coffe and cookies on one side, high stools and concrete tables on the other, and rows of chairs in the middle. The stage has a drumeset, a sound system, electric guitars - and you are really not sure where you are until the band starts singing, and people start worshipping the Lord with everything they've got. I loved it. Pastor Steve, one of the planters of The Rock gave a message about how God can heal wounds, accompanied by the loudes rain and thunder I've heard in a long while. We were invited to go on stage and Andy spoke a bit about what we are doing: everyone was pretty excited about our trip, and we ended up giving away half of our Solid Rock stickers, a bunch of brochures and a few of the New Testaments we were carrying. We got offered to stay at three different places for the night, and came out of there with a list of 20 places to go climbing the day after.
After Church Tim and Nancy invited us (and insited on treating us) for some Hot BBQ Pizza.
Sunday morning we hung around Tim's place for a good while, enjoying the view of out his apartment - down here whichever way you face you see mountains!!! Finally we went climbing at both Little Cottonwood and Big Cottonwood canyons. We climbed with Tim, Nancy and two of their friends, Andy and I spent a good while climbing a 10d slab - it was a whole lot of fun, but really really hard.
Later in the day, Chris picked up and started looking through Andy's "Case for Christ". The six of us started up a conversation, and we spent a good while talking about Christ, the gospels and their validity (and I learned a lot). Finally Andy, convinced Chris to keep his copy of the book - and Chris did.
Tim Andy and I then went to another area, where I got on a 5.9 which had me sweating and puffing and praying.
and which both Tim and Andy climbed nice and smooth. It's all good though, because 10 minutes later, Tim took us to a 10d, which he led. As I was ready to toprope it, Andy looked at me with a grin, pulled the rope and said "Opps - I guess you gotta lead it". To make a long story short, here I am after the first 5.10d redpoint of my life.
Yieeeeeeeehhha!!
In the same area, Andy took pics of two climbers, Dan and Shaw, who were hanging out on a different climb, got their e-mail addresses and told them he'd send them the pics. Talk about a new way of witnessing (I'm guessing they might get a link with their pics as well).
Here's a view of Big Cottonwood Canyon:
We finally rolled in back to Tim's apartment, to find out Nancy had cooked us a delicious dinner: chicken, squash, corn, and vanilla ice cream and peach cobbler to top it off. Now that's good eating!!!