Disqus - Latest Comments for mcquain2

Re: Little Cottonwood Canyon - Fall 2009

mcquain2 — Wed, 11 Nov 2009 12:59:38 -0000

Absolutely, have had two fab days out at the Plantation and truly enjoyed them :)
Awesome news about Font, wow, I'm jealous - especially after my week there recently. I'll have to see about a visit to Font in the coming months then...or persuade you that you need another tour of the Plantations ;)

Re: Little Cottonwood Canyon - Fall 2009

mcquain2 — Sun, 08 Nov 2009 18:43:59 -0000

Nice! Looks like fantastic bouldering and beautiful in Autumn :)
Hope you're well....

Re: Living the Nomadic Life: What to Pack

mcquain2 — Sat, 27 Jun 2009 05:33:06 -0000

Will update in the coming days once I get the confirmation letter :)

Re: Living the Nomadic Life: What to Pack

mcquain2 — Sat, 27 Jun 2009 05:05:08 -0000

Will let you know.
We watched the Petzl Roc Trip yesterday, the men and women's ultimate route was 120 meters long in one single pitch.........gulp!

Would only hope and presume CB is #1 on the list :) all well thanks and loving France as always. Starting into Teaching Masters in September.....

Re: Living the Nomadic Life: What to Pack

mcquain2 — Thu, 25 Jun 2009 13:16:46 -0000

Great post :)
As it happens, I'm actually putting together a post on basic essentials of gear to bring on a sports climbing trip (not necessarily going on the road) and I'll definitely be linking to this post.
As for 70 meter ropes, definitely a good idea although I'm starting to find that this is sometimes even too small for some of the newer routes here in France. 57 meters long.....
hope the boomerang got some use!

Re: Living the Nomadic Life: Best Car for the Road (Cont.)

mcquain2 — Thu, 25 Jun 2009 09:40:22 -0000

You'll laugh when you see my current car (blog post soon)! a micro Euro-car! can barely but our climbing gear on the back seat :)

Re: The Zen of the Zero Inbox

mcquain2 — Wed, 27 May 2009 20:29:10 -0000

Worst-case, my inbox is usually up to about 20. Makes my life feel a little more sane by doing so :) what can I say, I like order! :)

Re: The Zen of the Zero Inbox

mcquain2 — Sat, 23 May 2009 22:16:58 -0000

Nice post. I manage to keep mine consistently below about 5-10 emails so not too shabby. It rarely ever makes to zero however.

I'm definitely a big believer in having access to email by mobile also - I found by having it near to me whenever I wanted to check, or had a moment to spare, actually took some of the stress out of checking my inbox (I'm sure we all know the moment of holding your breath before your inbox opens up....).
Like you, I swear by filters. For some emails (mailing list, etc.), I treat them like an RSS feed - read them if I have time, or else just delete!

Re: Living the Nomadic Life: Best Car for the Road (Cont.)

mcquain2 — Sat, 23 May 2009 19:53:38 -0000

Interesting! that looks remarkably like the van I had in New Zealand (only it was a Toyota version). I found we got pretty good mileage considering it's size and had loads of room for storage. Ours had a custom interior (it was a rental campervan) but still worked amazingly well.
I know this is what I'll be planning for once I can justify the expense.....

Re: Living the Nomadic Life: Best Car for the Road

mcquain2 — Sat, 09 May 2009 14:35:08 -0000

Fantastic post. I've had every possible type of option over the years.
I do still have to laugh and smile when I see horror over $3.50 a gallon - still much cheaper than what anyone else worldwide pays (maybe with the exception of Venezuela!).
- Lived out of a tent beside a micro-car (don't even sell cars that small in the States from my experience :)
- A station-wagon type vehicle. Looks like 'Tight Squeeze' by your description but I didn't find that problematic - I had a small tent outside that my gear went into for when I was permanently based in one location.
- the ultra-cool camper van (in New Zealand). See image here: Picasa link
Sweet setup. They have a custom-built interior, very similar to the interior of a small yacht - it's all made of fiber-glass. Convertible bed into big seats, loads of storage space and really good mileage as those Toyota's are basically big cars. We regularly got 450+ miles on a tank. Had it's own cooler box, and DVD player also (I'm not joking!). Bad part of course is that we were renting this, but it cost about $500 a month - cheap when you put the price between two people.

I know that van is now my long-term goal!

Re: Leaving On A Jet Plane

mcquain2 — Tue, 28 Apr 2009 04:51:32 -0000

oh wow, good memories of Font from many years ago :)
must go back and try all those problems you've been on!

Enjoy that wine :)

Re: An open letter to the universe.

mcquain2 — Thu, 05 Mar 2009 14:22:55 -0000

Sounds great! any climbing trip is fun if you ask me :) although I'm guilty of going surfing this weekend cause it's pouring rain - got to have a back-up ;)
happy climbing!

Re: An open letter to the universe.

mcquain2 — Thu, 05 Mar 2009 07:13:30 -0000

brilliant :) I could forward that to every climber I know in Ireland and they could relate :) I managed only 5 weekends in the whole summer last year!

LOL, funny. If it helps, it's pouring in New Zealand right now.....

Re: In shameless self-promotion news...

mcquain2 — Mon, 02 Mar 2009 01:24:16 -0000

I'll keep that in mind :) congrats on the exciting opportunity though!

Re: In shameless self-promotion news...

mcquain2 — Wed, 25 Feb 2009 17:47:39 -0000

nice going with ending up on Climbing's site :) I think the life balance issue will plague us all :) Now, how do I get involved in Climbing.... ;) keep up the writing

Re: Is blogging about climbing bad for your tendons? Coping with climbing injuries.

mcquain2 — Thu, 19 Feb 2009 18:28:10 -0000

Great and interesting post. I'm seeing loads of people here with proper injuries! Only thing I can think of is to warm up properly (see link at bottom if that helps), and make sure not to over-do it while training. By that I mean in two ways, 1) the number of training sessions you do, and 2) the amount of time you spend in the gym training at any one time.

1) Don't know if it'll help but check out this article from myself and my friend on our site Irishclimbingcoaching.ie. We haven't been using it for a while (both went off on different activities) but I'm thinking of refreshing the site with more articles (thoughts on this welcome!).

2) make sure to leave the gym/wall before you get too tired. If you continue climbing till you're completely wasted, you're just asking for injuries - tendons/muscles are just too stressed to support you properly and are asking for an injury over time. The simplest trick I have is that I just set an alarm to leave after 2 hours (if I'm bouldering/fingerboarding/etc.) and 3 hours (if I'm doing stamina work). Obviously the amount of time will differ for everyone but it's stopped me getting injuries - injury-free for over 4 years now.
Remember: Quality not quantity when it comes to training. And if you feel pain at all when doing an exercise, stop and do something different!

Disclaimer: I'm not a qualified sports physio - but have read wayyy too many books on training and sports science for my own good :)

Re: Thinking about projecting

mcquain2 — Tue, 23 Dec 2008 09:31:35 -0000

Sounds like you're well sorted :) Although you've mentioned slopey and pinchy in one sentence. *shudder* :)
I'm off to find some pockets and crimps....

Re: TOMS Shoes - Perfect for Climbers!

mcquain2 — Tue, 23 Dec 2008 08:52:23 -0000

What a cool idea! Yes, 'duh' they're a bargain in Argentina, and yes, they're probably a bargain in Thailand (where I am now), but if you're not there, this is a pretty simple way to do something even slightly charitable!

Re: Thinking about projecting

mcquain2 — Mon, 22 Dec 2008 06:16:26 -0000

Nice post :)
If a route looks inspiring, I try climb it. Keep it as simple as that and then go for it :)
As for training, well, I just aim to get stronger generally - I'm never keen on focusing completely on one route so I just work on my general weaknesses (e.g. crimps, pockets, or even increasing stamina - the worst one to train for me!). With this theory in mind, I also aim to set a limit on one route, keep it below 10-15 attempts or something like that. If you don't get in that time, try other routes and come back to it. You're probably starting to get mentally burned out from that amount of time on it.
Just my two cents. Happy climbing! And keep up the great blog :)

Re: Thinking of Holiday Giving…?

mcquain2 — Fri, 19 Dec 2008 05:55:57 -0000

Interesting! seems obvious when you say that it's mainly colds that you're affected by that Vitamin C would help...can't have enough of that stuff :)
Hope the climbing is going well now though

Re: Thinking of Holiday Giving…?

mcquain2 — Wed, 17 Dec 2008 05:44:35 -0000

Are you taking any vitamin tablets? I regularly take them (a generic multi-vitamin tablet) especially when I'm doing a lot of sport. It helps keep the immune system in good shape!

Re: Thinking of Holiday Giving…?

mcquain2 — Sun, 14 Dec 2008 05:53:46 -0000

What a great idea coming up to Christmas. Unfortunately, in Thailand, I don't have the opportunity but would make sure to do so when I'm back in the Real World.

Re: Won’t somebody please get me a Nokia E51?

mcquain2 — Wed, 27 Aug 2008 10:04:53 -0000

I want to recommend this phone to you. Really!

But the tiny buttons (and I mean tiny - even my 19 year old sister has resorted to using her nails to press buttons - if I delete another text instead of hitting 'abc' I'm going to go mad! :), and random user interface of Symbian has driven me to despair with this.
Watch in amusement as it auto-sets the volume of bluetooth headsets to a volume of it's choice (2 of 10 it seems) every time you answer the phone.

I've been using Nokia for 9 years now and this is another example of why I describe Symbian series 60 v3 as the equivalent to MS Vista: tons of useful features but you have to use the Force to get any of them to work in any userfriendly manner!

Re: What’s so great about the iPhone?

mcquain2 — Fri, 11 Jul 2008 18:21:18 -0000

In short. I had a Nokia N05 in 2005 - yep, a developer model. Sure, it had GPS, 3G, bluetooth. way before the iPhone. But you know what, try using any of them. The iPhone changed that cause they're actually useful (unless you're a sad geek who willing to go and put up with weird quirks - note, I regard myself as one of these people - I've been using a mobile since 1997 so not brought up on the early tech but since they introduced functions like SMS, etc.!).
for once, the iPhone makes all these items a little easier to use. Note, a little easier to use. someone will hopefully get their finger out and prove that they can be even easier.

In short, there's hype - but incomparison to most other interfaces, the hardware is easier to use. doesn't matter what the hardware is if the front-end is crap (try a cutting-edge pc from a hardware point of view with Vista installed as an example of this).