Little use on the streets of Tucson, Day 4

Permanent couchsurfer Ben and I took the day to try and find rocks. We barely succeeded. Ben got the beta from a forum which led us to a hike in Ventana Canyon. We expected the rocks would be awesome so we passed by little clusters of blah around the time (one mile past the forest service fence) we were supposed to see obvious clusters of climbable boulders and hiked onwards and upwards... for five more miles. Fail. Canyons are always cool to hike, though, and Zebra enjoyed that bit of it enough that he requested a photograph. So I took one.



When we reluctantly turned back we wandered into all the washes and other boulder friendly locations until finally finding a couple with evidence of chalk. As in two. Maybe this was the "upper" area. Certainly not a great location. I climbed both lines and Ben climbed one on the prouder one, a lightly overhung vaguely polished granite hunk with a good landing and pretty good holds. Seeing as I'm so incredibly out shape (When I wandered to Himmel Park a couple days back I maxed out at around 10 pullups. How the mighty have fallen.) I felt pleasantly surprised to be able to send something outdoors. I tried the sit starts to the problems a couple times but decided not to try too hard for my tendons' sake. We didn't bother with the other boulder - the cool looking problem underneath looked like it lived in V7ville and the traverse was rather uninspiring.


Saguaro are cool and apparently mad old.

So my last pitch in Tucson was not my best. Ben and I went out for the night crowd, which on Wednesday night hardly existed. We received a total of two tips, but I rather enjoyed playing with Ben, who's absolutely excellent at filling in with solo riffs and slide guitar. I sang most of the tunes, and he sang a couple. Nothing really remarkable that coldish, breezy night on 4th. I stood while he sat on a red foldout chair outside the grocery store. Early on a couple stopped and requested Yellow, smilingly, and we later played a great Liberta - so easy to jam off of. Morgan stayed out with us, kindly, but after sufficiently long and people passing us with confused less kindly glances we packed up and returned home.

Earnings: $2.00, 45 minutes
Song of the Day: Yellow - Coldplay