This past week, I’ve had the privilege of housing one of my good friends from Canada, Marshal German. He had planned a trip through Europe with the hopes of swinging by Egypt and managed to get his flights in and out of Toulouse, where I’m living. Marshal arrived on Wednesday after a heinous 24 hours of flights starting in Edmonton and going through Vancouver and then Frankfurt. He also had the unfortunate situation to be sitting beside an individual that didn’t smell all that good on the long haul flight.

For the past few days, we’ve just been settling in and touring around Toulouse. On one of the days, Marshal and I went on a 5 hour adventure through downtown Toulouse while Mathilde was doing some homework. We left at 11, and after a couple of hours, we went for lunch at Les Faim des Haricots. I’ve been there before and it’s a pretty good restaurant. It’s a small place that’s 100% vegetarian. There’s 5 different type of “all you can eat” you can get. There’s

• Salad Bar (including some pasta)
• Quiches
• Plate of the Day
• Soup
• Dessert

For 1 dish all you can eat, it’s 10€, for 2 it’s 11€, etc. We grabbed another daily special that included a half L of cider and a coffee and after a good hour at the restaurant, we were two very happy individuals. I had been there before and gotten take out in which you just grab a bunch of stuff, they weigh it and charge you whatever. Sometimes I find it hard to actually eat 10€ worth of food but this time, I decided it was worth a try!

Another new thing that I got around Christmas was a new DSLR camera. After going to Switzerland and seeing Daniel Woods and Courtney Sanders who have the same camera body, I decided to invest in a nice camera so I bought the Nikon D7000. After reading a bunch of online articles, that was the top of the list. Along with taking very nice pictures (after I learn how), it also shoots 1080p video which is perfect for my climbing adventures. After a couple weeks of looking around, I found one that wasn’t too cheap and bought two lenses to go with it. I found the standard Nikon 18-55mm VR f3.5 which comes with many of the Nikon packages and also bought the Tokina 11-16mm f2.8 wide angle lens off my friend Gary Foster mainly because he found he didn’t really use it. That was the lens I really wanted to get mainly because I set up my stuff on a tripod and just hit record. With the wide angle, it’ll be perfect for getting climbing videos!

This shot is from my couch, looking towards the TV with a little Panda!

I’m excited to start shooting and I’ve never had an SLR before. I’ve been reading up as much as I can including all of Ken Rockwell’s articles and almost the whole D7000 User’s Manual.

This is one of my first shots of my living room as well.

Yesterday morning, after getting halfway through breakfast, Marshal goes, “oh, my mom just let me know it’s my birthday today…” I could hardly believe it, but then again… it’s a common thing to forget isn’t it? So after getting a few things together, we had a nice dinner for Marshal, opened a bottle of wine and finished it with an apple crumble that Mathilde and I made. Not a bad way to spend your birthday, at least he wasn’t camping

Marshal is also the first person to stay with Mathilde and me in our apartment. It’s a small place, but for 3, and possibly 4 people, we can manage for a while.

While Marshal is still here, we’ve decided to try and do some bouldering in Fontainebleau. We’re going to try and drive up Monday morning and I’ll stay for the week. Mathilde has some crazy school days, so I’d be bored at home anyways. After our week, I think Marshal will stay in Font while I’ll come back down to Toulouse and train for the last 3 weeks before ABS.

I know it’s been a while since I’ve last posted and let’s be honest, I’ve been on vacation, and while on vacation, I’m lazy… After the last world cup last season in Barcelona, I took it easy. I started eating whatever I wanted again and even divulged into candy, pop and really whatever popped into my mind. That’s the great thing about going back home, going to parties and seeing all of your friends again, you’re doing whatever you want, whenever you want. While I’m training, I try to watch what I eat a bit; eat balanced meals and at least 3 times a day.

I can’t say that my life over here in Europe is that much different. I wake up in the morning, have some coffee and then really I do whatever I want as well. It’s a bit different because when I’m over here, I have more concrete goals set up. Right now, I want to get back into training, I want to get back into shape, and I want to get stronger for my upcoming competitions. Although the world cup season doesn’t start until April, I’m thinking of going to ABS Nationals at the end of February, and seeing as I won the one in 2011, I have to be strong enough to at least give Daniel Woods a run for his money! I hope that I can head to Hueco just after to try and compete in the Hueco Rock Rodeo. I’ve never done that competition before, but I always read the stories and watch the videos from climbers just absolutely crushing it on those days.

From what I understand, you have one day to do your top 6 boulder problems. This is not unlike a bouldering scramble format. The only big difference is that most of these problems will be redpoints, or training laps one could say. I remember reading a story of Daniel doing 6 V13′s or harder in one day. That’s absolutely ridiculous, and props to him for doing it. On top of doing that, he did like 4 of them that I can’t even touch! So back to my main point, I’m trying to get stronger. For some reason, every time I go to Hueco, I get shut down. Actually that’s not fair, every time I go to Hueco, I get shut down on anything harder than V12. I’ve done my fair share of V12′s in Hueco but I’ve been unable to break that little bubble into the 13′s. One could say, oh boo hoo, I can’t climb harder than V12, stop complaining Sean, which is fair. I’m just saying that if my upper limit is V14 (V15?), then I shouldn’t be getting shut down on all the 13′s in the park. I’ve been able to do Alma Blanca, Crown of Aragorn and El Techo (pre-break). These were all considered to be low end 13 at the park, so I’m stuck.

Hopefully I can make it out to the rodeo and maybe even get the chance to run around with Daniel for some if not the whole day. I loved climbing with him and the crew in Hueco and if we can all feed off others people’s good energy, I know we can take down hard lines back to back even.

So for now, it’s back to training. I had a good holiday in Vancouver and now it’s back to 4 times a week in the local climbing gym. I’m psyched even though this is the hardest part of the season for training. I just want to get back in shape like I was in November when I had my trip to Switzerland. Check into my Sendage page for my upcoming sendlist if my trip to Hueco and ABS gets approved!! I can only hope