After a month of climbing withdrawl (symptoms of jitters and constant obsessive dreaming about huecos and slopers) that golden moment of perfect 70 degree weekend weather finally came. The game plan was perfect. My pile of laundry was quickly overwhelming both the air and ground space of my bedroom, so it was a fierce debate between sitting here and doing laundry or going climbing... but, with the cooperation of my brain cell, I had the perfect option. Buy just enough extra socks and underwear to get me home to both a washing machine and a quarter mile of outstanding bouldering along the Roger's Park cliff band.

Ken, a long time buddy (and pretty much my parent's third son) drove in the night before to join in on tomorrow's climb. In fact, there was no hello's, how's it going old buddy... Ken was practically sawing logs by the time I got there. At 4am Ken gets a crisis phone call, wakes up the household, and I boot him outta the house into the frigid night air. Mom wakes up, accidentally locks him out, and Ken drives to get some apologetic Jack n' Jill Donuts by 6am. It's 9am, I'm pumped and ready to hit the cliffs and Ken's working hard to suck in the bags under his eyes. After passing the enticing Bake Flake problem near the entrance of the cliff band trail, we head down to the Billiard's wall to warm up. Billiard's wall is about a 40 foot long section of near vertical limestone scattered with everything from fingertip huecos to the kind you could almost hold onto with your elbow. Ken an I jump on Impact Addict (V4). A bold attempt and a quick lesson in humility. If you try this, you will feel a vast difference between getting to the large shallow hueco, and getting past it.

Realizing my grip strength had loosened to about the level of opening ketchup bottles in grad school, we did a quick look to see if anyone was watching and quickly moved the crash pad about 15 feet over to work the beginning of Sack Up (which also turned out to be a V4). Sack Up is an excellent trow problem starting off on two easy-grip pockets to a thin bucket about 10 feet up. As with almost all problems at Roger's Park, the crux is at the top, and this is a ballzy problem. Directly up from this thin bucket at 20 feet is sloper just begging to be held (The picture shows a climber from Dallas at the crux). With shrieking tendons and at least one flapper per finger, it was time for "Good Beer and Bad Pool Night" in Austin. Another good day of climbing.

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