I've been slacklining a lot. For one, it's easy; there is a pair of perfect trees directly in front of my room and it takes me approximately fifteen seconds to get to them. It is also quite fun and I mentally connect it with climbing. But unlike climbing, I can do it alone. This is the principle virtue of slacklining: it allows me to feel active while simultaneously relieving me of the pressures of communicating.

So I have made a habit of it, in the same way that I have made a habit of hanging out in my room, reading about climbing on the internet and wishing I had somebody to go with. To my credit, I tried to meet some climbers at the local gym. I did meet some "climbers", but none of them actually climbed outside.

Last week, though, I did something about it. I joined a climbing club and went climbing outside on Saturday. After a cursory check to be sure that I was safe and knew how to tie myself in and belay, I took off on a fairly easy lead while the Frenchies watched from the ground to make sure I knew what I was doing.

When I got down a few minutes later, Sébastien told me, "tu as galopé cette voie!" (you galloped up that route). After one more check to be sure that I could lead belay everybody was pretty satisfied. I spend the rest of the day swapping leads with Sébastien on harder climbs.

The limestone in France is great, and there's an almost infinite amount of it. I can't wait to get out and sample some more French rock, hopefully in the form of some multi pitch routes (grandes voies). I forgot to take pictures, mostly because I was busy climbing. I'll see what I can do about that next time I go out.

In other news, more music! I'm trying something new this week, instead of simply uploading all the songs in a folder I've synthesized them all into a podcast of sorts. It's about about 30 minutes long and 15mb. It's in .m4a format, which should work fine with iTunes, and this way it's more like a radio show. I'm still hosting my files with Mediafire because I haven't found anything easier and I'm not sure I'm up to the technical challenge of setting up a feed podcast (the kind that you can subscribe to). Let me know if the format and host are working okay.

Track List:

"Every Time I See You I Get a Funny Feeling in my Stomach"

1 Falling In - Ha Ha Tonka - Daytrotter Session
2 Home - Edward Sharpe and The Magnetic Zeroes - Daytrotter
3 In The Summertime - The Rural Alberta Advantage - Hometowns
4 Have I Told You? - Dreamdate - Patience
5 She's Fantastic - Sondre Lerche - Phantom Punch
6 Stockholm Syndrome - Yo La Tengo - I Can Hear the Heart Beating as One
7 Since You Stole My Heart - Saturday Looks Good To Me - Every Night
8 God Made The Automobile - Iron & Wine - Around The Well
9 Undeclared - The Dodos - Visiter
10 After Hours - The Velvet Underground - The Velvet Underground

Download here.