Wednesday, November 27, 2013

Petzl DDE 2013 teaser :)

The last chance to book your flight and join the Dutch Drytool Event!

- Video thanks to Joost and Martin


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Video thanks to Joost and Martin
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Sunday, November 24, 2013

Petzl Dutch Drytool Event 2013

Almost. Almost.
Just one more route to set and some to fix a bit, and then we're done!
21 routes in just over 1 week time, that's not bad :)
Living in the gym and climbing, running and route setting every day makes me quite fit. And I love the climbing so much that sleeping on the couch is just fine actually...

I got really motivated by the progress and the help of Jeroen, Elwin, Bas, Erik, Jelle and all the happy people working in the gym.
Here some pictures of the progress...

Day 1. The first route, womens finals

Day 2. Chains in the finals, this is going to be spectacular!

Day 3. Routesetting in the rain...

Day 4. The wall is getting full of drytool-fun

Day 5. Getting tired. I need coffee...

Day 5 in the night... Barista Rens trying drytooling for the first time! In the freezing cold...

Day 6. My friends

Day 7. Rotterdam by night, whoa what a party...!

Day 8. Just 5 more routes...

Day 9. Jelle testing the Womans finals

Day 9, today, Jelle testing the womans finals whils I'm finetuning the mens finals.

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.