Charming, Sunny, and Quiet front half of duplex

One of our biggest obstacles to overcome as part of our move back to Berkeley was finding a place to live in a city that is famous for the tenacity of its rental market and the hoops one must jump through in order to find a decent place to live. We knew all about it from our student days, having survived the skanky carpeted basement apartments of yesteryear and become stronger people because of it. We were determined to find a nice place to hang our hat in Berkeley, and our list of prereqs was long and thorough. We wanted it all, at a good price and a convenient location.

We spent the previous week craigslisting and looking for updates every five minutes, packing our weekend days full of appointments around the East Bay, and assembling our "Rental Packet" to present to prospective landlords upon introduction. In a procedure perhaps only rivaled in such real cities as San Francisco and Manhattan, each individual Berkeley landlord has a time-tested methodology to ensure that they will somehow pick a tenant that will be amiable in their place and not stiff them on the rent. We saw the whole gamut, from the sticklers who demanded full credit reports, resumes, letters of introduction, rental references, and background checks, to the hippie-dippie leasers who just wanted to scan your aura and take a quick look at your palms. In the end, we put on a clinic for the students and the newbies to the game, as we showed up with sparkling clean auras and a rental packet to match, complete with an irresistibly cute color picture of us grinning ear-to-ear in front of Half Dome.

To tour the Berkeley rental circuit is quite an experience, as many of the landlords are lonely, somewhat bizarre, and want to talk quite a bit. When you drop in on someone's place to interview for their abode you get a unique snapshot into their lives - one somewhat eccentric man showed off his 1880 Victorian Mansion and bombarded us with past, present, and future improvement and remodeling plans, all fit into an exceedingly unrealistic timetable while also complaining about the hormonal changes of his 13 year-old son. Another old salty-dog-sailor-traveling-hippie-artist type took us through his gorgeous Berkeley Hill four-plex while telling us about past mushroom trips and karmic cycles of his life. When Mo mentioned she used to work for Greenpeace he quickly directed us to a photo of him painting the mural on the side of the Rainbow Warrior "back in the day". It really is a small world sometimes, especially inside the Bay Area bubble.

In the end, the smiling color photo must have sold them all, because we were offered all the places that we wanted, including an absolutely beautiful front half of a duplex in North Berkeley. It was definitely at the upper range of our price scale, but has a stellar location near BART and on the bike path through the park, beautiful hardwood floors, and a Chef Ramsey-worthy kitchen sure to be the site of many a delicious feast in the next 12 months. Book your reservations now!

Life in the Vertical World

Check out pictures of our El Cap trip at http://picasaweb.google.com/mat.glaser

After 5 days of climbing and 4 nights on the wall, schlepping more than 200 pounds of water and an equal amount of food and gear, countless hours of extreme discomfort and unbearable hard work punctuated by times to relax and contemplate life more than a thousand feet straight off the deck, we sent El Cap.

The dream of climbing one of the largest and steepest walls in the world is one that many climbers of all abilities share. Resisting its draw is futile, as the wall is steeped in tradition and lore, to the point of obtaining an almost mythical status. Tourists and climbers alike spend days basking in the sun of El Cap meadow, staring upwards towards the top, following the progress of scurrying monkeys sending enigmatic lines towards the summit. For the past week we stepped out of our usual role of gawkers and fans and became those monkeys climbing through the days and nights.

Mo's brother JP was the instigator for the trip, having successfully been up the Captain twice already and ready to take on a third attempt. He had the aid climbing experience necessary to keep our progress moving upward, and invited his coworker Sequoia (AKA El Tigre) along for the adventure. Their background in rope-access work, rescue skills, and general belay management was invaluable to the team. We snuck in on the family card, having enough climbing experience to feel comfortable up there, comprehend the systems, and hopefully provide some brute force and positive energy.

It took us two days to lug all of our gear, water, and food up to the base, and on Tuesday the 22nd we blasted off and began climbing the 16 pitches of a "moderate" route called Zodiac. Our progress was slow, especially the first few days as our freight was heavy and we were all still learning our systems and becoming efficient. After spending the majority of the first day fighting a rat's nest of ropes and a belay organizational nightmare at the top of the first pitch, our morale was dropping a bit and we were starting to wonder if we could indeed make upward progress. Piton Pete, an (in)famous local big waller on an insanely hard route next to us looked over and saw our challenges as he was heading down back to the valley and yelled some words of encouragement. "I'll see y'all later - whatever you do, don't f*cking bail!!! It's amazing - if you keep going up, and don't go down, you'll make it to the top!!!"

As we fought our way closer to the summit, sometimes only climbing two pitches in a day, our systems got more streamlined, we all became more efficient, our load got lighter as food and drink was consumed, and things started to get a little bit easier. It was still probably the hardest thing we had ever done in our life, but for different reasons than we initially predicted. Neither of us were scared of the height or exposure, the things that petrified JP on his first ascent and that most people associate as the main difficulty of the climbing. We have climbed enough to trust the ropes and found that as we got higher and higher off the deck we felt strangely comfortable soaring with the birds 1500 feet off the ground. At some point you have to force your mind to turn off the fear and deal with the situation at hand, whether giving a belay, leading the next pitch, or hauling your gear to the next station. The main difficulties for us were found in the extreme discomfort of the situations - hanging from your harness for hours at a time, never having solid ground to stand on, move about, or stretch, and setting up and breaking down camp while swinging from a rope and performing acrobatics to assemble the portaledges.

In general, taking a team of four up the Capitan is something that doesn't happen too often, as the logistics and organization required increase exponentially with every new person. Our team was amazing, and we worked together almost seamlessly, the majority of the time all of us being at their physical and mental limit. Being up on the wall was a beautiful and transformative experience, like clawing your way towards spiritual enlightenment one inch at a time. And while the discomfort was extreme and the physical demands intense, the line was beautiful, a joining of cracks, features, bumps and minuscule ledges that ran uninterrupted from bottom to top, passing through the huge gray circle on the eastern side of the face. We flew up five pitches the final day, being pulled by the inexplicable energy of topping out, fueled by adrenaline and the excitement of being able to throw our sleeping bags in the dirt and sleep in luxury, taking our harnesses and shoes off and not having to pee in a nalgene bottle. We topped out at 10 pm on Saturday night, met by the two guys who had been climbing an adjacent route next to us, ate as much food as we could fit in our stomaches, and crashed.

In big walling, the majority of your experience is incredibly hard, smelly, uncomfortable, testing, and trying - Sequoia related how he had been training for the adventure by climbing, running and working out, and really he should have just "dug a hole and sat in it for 12 hours at a time". All big wallers can tell you about the numerous times they had been at the end of their mental and physical limits, coming apart while thousands of feet of the ground, miserable, hurt, broken, cracked, and crying - and yet, after you get off the wall, there is a mystical, magical, unreasonable tug to go back. A tug to test yourself again, to see if you could make it on an even harder route, to climb up with the birds, to fly to the top. As the days advance from your last trip, this tug becomes bigger, and pain becomes more distant, and pretty soon you find yourself heading up a wall again, wondering if you can make it this time, and questioning what you have gotten yourself into.

This may very well be our first and last big wall, but even after one ascent we were able to catch a glimpse and feel a splinter of that magic that radiates from the Capitan and permeates beautiful Yosemite Valley. Sitting in El Cap Meadow and staring up at that imposing, more than vertical cliff will never be the same.