Wednesday, November 20, 2013

Drytool roller-coaster

Trailrunning, climbing, bouldering, yoga, running, route-setting, writing, more writing and more training. And planning. Planning big things. 
It feels like I'm planning the whole year of 2014 already and that feels really strange. I've never planned that far ahead.

Last week we ended the Expeditie Geluk. 
Finally. 
I was dragging myself to the finish line. 
Physically I was all fine and fit enough but mentally I could hardly manage the thing. 
No climbing, "for the sake of the team" someone in the team who turned out to be a completely different person almost broke me. 
Alltogether the whole project was a great experience and I'm still grateful that I was invited to be part of it all. 
Walking the whole (almost whole, as I went to the Alps for a couple weeks in between) border of the Netherlands is something more people should do. 
People that say that the Netherlands is "full" for example.
People that say the Netherlands is all the same everywhere. 
People that say the Netherlands doesn't really have a culture. 



On the way I found people with passion and compassion. 
The big red line though all the meetings we had every day was the connection within the community and the importance of this connection. In the Netherlands politicians introduced a new law, the participation-law. Making it obligatory to participate in the society. 
It's something that was really a need for, but mainly in the bigger cities. Participation is something so logical in the smaller communities, they don't even understand the (in Dutch) difficult word of par-ti-ci-pa-tion.
Culture and language is something I find really interesting. The way how you can see culture through language and language through culture is something very special. 
And also the landscape, infrastructure and history in the Netherlands is so interesting. 
By slowly moving through the landscape by walking I really could see the changes, what closed borders have for effect on culture and how it all changes. 
I have the feeling that I understand the Netherlands much better now.


But I was also happy it was all over and done. 
Now I had time again to do what I really love to do: climb, sport, train. The first thing I did on the evening that we were back again was drive to the climbing gym as fast as I could and climb till closure. 

Right now I'm trying to do a million things at once. 
Preparing two different big lectures, setting routes for the drytool event, searching for 2014 climbing objectives, trying to find and prepare for a job in Germany, making money to pay for my car, and in between só many other things... Waking up at 6:30 and going to sleep at 12:30...


And in between all that I'm trying to get in shape again for the upcoming season. Ice, rock, mixed, snow... Ahhhh, real stuff....soon. 

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