everybody's getting belayed!

I’ve never gone legit rock climbing. My experience with rock climbing is the distinct memory of being about 8 years old at the Toronto Science Center and “climbing” a maybe 6 foot wall that wrapped around a corner with one or two outcroppings multiple times over the course of twenty minutes before my parents dragged me away. 

And yet, a couple months ago I heard Claire from Girls Gone WOD first talking about and then posting pictures of, going ice climbing, and my immediate response was THAT IS SO COOL I HAVE TO DO IT.  Of course, that was in Colorado, where there are many mountains covered in ice, and I’m in super flat Michigan where there is…not. So I put that thought out of my head until a friend I met (in Colorado actually) posted some Facebook pictures of a day spent out at Peabody’s Ice Climbing Club in Fenton.  The general story of my life is I reply to something like that with, “Oh my gosh, can we go do that together??”  Tentative plans are made (with a fierce sense of absolute determination that it WILL happen) and then never followed through on, and I pout endlessly as those plans drift off into the endless void of possibilities that is social media. 

But this time, my friend texted me a couple weeks later to tell me that she and a group of friends were going to go up to Peabody’s for the last climbing day of the season this past Sunday and that I should meet them there. I was actually kind of hesitant at first – these ladies & gentlemen are all skilled climbers/belayers, and here’s me, literally no experience at all, looking at climbing these enormous (awesome) rickety looking structures with about 2% skill and 98% sheer willpower.  I didn’t want to drag the group down, or fail miserably, or just look like a total idiot – BUT, 2015 is my year of doing things that scare you, doing hard things, unquestionably taking opportunities and just plain being badass. One of the best experiences of my life was that harrowing hard as hell ropes course a while back – and armed with that knowledge, I drove to Fenton Sunday morning to scale some ice.

Background – Peabody’s is the COOLEST place ever.  It’s located in what used to be an apple orchard & now is just a big retired lot, but it still retains a lot of the old rickety buildings.  The first thing I noticed when I walked into the “lodge” – where you dress, rent gear, drink coffee and sit by the fire when your fingers get numb from clutching axes and soaked through gloves – smelled JUST like the inside of so many of the old wooden structures on the farm my family used to own & operate. The place has this amazing rustic feeling while at the same time managing to feel completely safe, and the owner, who was out climbing with us for a bit, basically created Peabody’s as a way for ice climbers in Michigan to train despite the extremely short (and far away) outdoor ice climbing season in Michigan.  The giant towers are constructed out of a bunch of fencing, rigging, giant wood poles, and a huge crane stuck right through the center of them. 

Giant boot death spikes AKA crampons.

As expected, with zero climbing background I was NOT the most skilled ice climber on the lot – but there was a big group of people out when we first got there who were struggling at least as much as I did to figure out how to make all these sharp objects attached to us help us scale sheets of ice.  Thanks to my fabulous “instructors,” Kristine and her friend Lana, I learned the basics of belaying (which I did NOT try), got myself to the top of the small tower at least, and made it about midway up the big tower before the day was over.  Not that shabby!  Also cool: one of our other friends had not only a really fancy camera, but a drone that he flew around the property as well, taking some seriously cool aerial shots.

 The first few times up were slightly terrifying, since I had exactly NO experience with “falling” when climbing, or with how you can take rests – so I just kept pushing, kicking in with my one size too small boots and hauling myself up (rather than doing the smart thing and using my legs) with the ice axes I had basically a death grip on (ask me how my triceps feel today).  Weirdest thing: looking down, not so bad at all.  Looking up, semi-blinding and full of falling snow, but also not too bad.  Looking straight out in front of you?  Frozen in a panic of where can I possibly put my axes or my feet or my ANYTHING I’m stuck clinging for dear life to the side of this rock please tell my cats that I love them!  At that point I think it became more of a mental thing – stare at the same problem for too long and you can’t see the solution even when it’s right in front of you.

What happens when you try to do a headstand in a helmet on the snow.

Me & my belay-dies ;)

Unfortunately being so inefficient meant I burnt out early – if I hadn’t made such a brutal mess of my upper body strength early on, I think I would have  been able to get much higher up the big wall. Even so, what an AMAZING experience.  So many wonderful people, a little bit of post-climbing snow-yoga (snow-ga?), and lots of invites to come climb with my new buddies at Planet Rock.  Cross ice climbing off the bucket list – can’t WAIT to go again when Peabody’s opens back up next year – and maybe have a little better clue of what I’m doing…

michigan winter beer festival 2015 (aka: "i've never heard anyone say 'butterfly' with such anguish")

Greetings from Day 4 of an attempt to detoxify myself from the wildly absurd amount of alcohol I imbibed over the course of this past weekend.  I was a straight up tour de force of craft beer consumption and I regret none of it except the way my body felt midway through a 75 minute hot yoga session the other night.

Last weekend was Michigan Winter Beer Festival in Grand Rapids – and since my nearest and dearest college beer snob friends still live on the west side, it was basically a given that we’d be going, so when my Christmas present from them was a ticket & a membership to the Michigan Brewer’s Guild, I was zero percent shocked.

I’ve been to the Summer Beer Festival about four years running now, and it’s always a lovely experience – you romp through a really lovely green park in downtown Ypsilanti, it’s in the middle of the summer, so you can wear sundresses and stick your feet in the river and take drunk recovery naps in the grass all afternoon.  This is NOT that.  This is brutal Michigan cold (thank god for the sun) in a parking lot full of slushy snow that soaks through your ill-advised cable knit definitely not waterproof boots and numbs your fingers to the point that you forgo Untapping your beer selections after about stop #2.  This is spilling your sampler glasses because you’re bouncing up and down trying to regain feeling in your limbs.  Fortunately, this is also high gravity beer lover’s paradise filled with a whole lot of barrel aged glory that makes a bit of a dent in warming you up.

I rang in the weekend at my buddy Tom’s with ALL THE SHAWARMA and sampling a slew of beers he’d saved up for my arrival, including but not limited to a coveted bottle of Dino S’Mores – (it’s everything you hope and dream it will be) – before heading up to Grand Rapids to round out our party and get Festival day started off right at Brewery Vivant’s Brewer’s Breakfast.  Vivant’s always been one of my favorite breweries because it’s in a building that used to be an old church, so it’s full of vaulted ceilings, ornate wood beams, and stained glass windows.  Plus they make a MEAN farmhouse/sour/ beer.  For breakfast we all picked out a different option so that we could share – I went with a red-wine barrel aged saison with brett and the crispy breaded chicken and cheddar-bacon waffles with an herbed cream sauce and maple syrup and I definitely won the breakfast lottery on that one.  We also made out on an exciting limited can release that sold out before we even paid our bills….

From our friends in New Holland......my favorite liquor to kick off the night.

The newest in Bell's planet series - maybe the best brown I've ever had.

ALL THE SHAWARMA KING.

At last, my precious nightcap.

Brewer's breakfast at Vivant!

Second best chicken & waffles I've ever had

The festival itself was, as expected, seriously chilly, but a good time – full of bearded dudes with carb necklaces (my favorite by far this year was the guy who upped his game from pretzels/bagels to a necklace of English muffins [??? Don’t you toast those???], and one I saw that was straight up Samoas and beef jerky sticks) and semi-frozen tap lines. I’d made a pretty solid list beforehand of brews I DEFINITELY wanted to try…..and I hit maybe half of those.  Still, there were quite a few standouts:

• Gravel Bottom – Jonny Applebottom [rye whiskey barrel aged apple butter brown ale].  Never in my life did I think something barrel aged or something brown would be one of my very favorites, but this was SOLID. Perfect amount of sweet and tart and crisp and liquor – I could have drank dangerous quantities of that.  (Side note #1 – the RISin Dead [maple bourbon barrel aged Russian imperial stout] was a very close second here, and Side note #2 – I’d say Gravel Bottom was probably the brewery I was most impressed with overall for having never heard about previously.)

• Brewery Vivant – Fat Paczki [Belgian inspired ale with prunes & powdered sugar]. Brewed for Fat Tuesday, it’d be easy to dismiss this as just another kitsch beer (Rogue Voodoo donut beers anyody?), but this is actually really great. Drinkable, like a nice, dark, fruity Belgian, but a little lighter. Upset I missed out on the can release.

• Harmony – Capricorn [chocolate donut absinthe stout]. At one point during the day I met up with my lovely friend Kristine, who I had met for the first time in Colorado & who I had bonded with immediately over our shared experiences traveling to Prague, which of course entails drinking massive quantities of absinthe.  We toasted the lovely memory of Praha while drinking this beer, which, while I deign to say was “good,” definitely did taste exactly as advertised.  (To be fair to Harmony – we also tried the Fee D’Hiver [Belgian dark strong with sugar plums] and I was really impressed/pleased with that one…)

• One Well Brewing – Xalapa [jalapeno blonde].  Yet another style I wouldn’t expect to see show up on my own highlight list, but One Well did something really cool here – they used a very mild jalapeno to flavor the beer itself, & then offered raw jalapenos that you could add on your own to hit the spice level you desired. Pretty neat, and pretty strangely tasty.

• Perrin – No Rules [maple bourbon aged Vietnamese porter]. If I’m being honest, I don’t know what on earth a “Vietnamese” porter is, but it tastes friggin awesome.  We actually got this twice.

• Pigeon Hill - Oatmeal Crème Pie.  I’ve had various types of ambers and browns that tried to go for “oatmeal cookie,” with varying levels of success, but this one nailed the sweet spot right in between “delicious disgusting overly processed sandwich cookie” and “that one really creamy cinnamon shot you had twelve of before you realized it was a really bad choice.”  Awesome.

• Tapistry – Reactor [dry-hopped American IPA]. I had quite a few good Tapistry beers, but the thing that stood out about this one was that it was EXACTLY what I want in an American IPA. Crisp, a little green, nice hop bitterness……the sophisticated beer drinker’s lawnmower beer (and I mean that in the best possible way).

• Stormcloud – Red Wine Barrel Aged Fun Guvn’r [Belgian black IPA aged in red wine barrels]. I love hops. I love bitter things. I love Belgians. If I had to drink wine it would be a dry red with lots of roasty dark fruit flavors.  This was the first beer I had all day and damn if it didn’t set the tone.  Kind of wish I’d tried the straight up regular Fun Guvn’r just to compare.

• The Livery – A toss up between Maillot Rouge [oak aged sour biere de garde with raspberries] and St. Valentine’s Day Massacre [wild ale aged on blood oranges]. The first was the sour fruity delicacy I dreamed of all day, and the second was its sparkly, drier, less approachable best friend.

• Witch’s Hat – Bourbon Barrel Cherry Cordial Night Fury [imperial stout]. I mean….damn. Already a good beer, but now it’s syrupy and liquor-y and like a malty, roasty chocolate covered cherry melting in my mouth.  I wanted to never stop drinking this.  I’m still dreaming about this beer.

My Space Team <3 <3

Xalapa!

Met this lady in Colorado, reunited in Michigan.

Long lost beer running buddies.

Stella's Lounge in GR - good food, good beer, good arcade games - and also a ton of skeleton stencils.

Basically the coolest ceilings I've ever seen.

My poached eggs were a little cold, but they were covered in habanero hollandaise, so win some lose some.

All we could manage to imbibe at Osgoode's after the Saturday binge.

After all that…………………………………the obvious choice was to dump our things off at the hotel, change into dry socks, and head out to downtown GR for disgustingly big slices of spinach stuffed pizza, arcade games, and a growler of Anderson Blood Orange Gose from Hopcat, which we proceeded to drink until we passed out in front of some cooking show.

Sunday was mostly full of driving back to the real world – but not before hitting up the bloody mary bar/brunch menu at Stella’s Lounge (my salmon-y eggs benedict was all right, but the breakfast pot pie stole the show…..), and a quick flight at Osgoode’s – MI brewery #96!