Its Silo Time!

This past weekend was a little crazy. We went to go see Matt's graduation from ISU at Bloomington/Normal, Illinois. Well, his graduation was, blah blah blah, long and boring. But the other stuff we did was fun. The first notable event was lunch after the graduation (or commencement as ISU calls it) at the American Legion hall. It was good, like buffet style, cooked by Matt and his family at the hall. We played pool while they were cooking. We weren't any good, but at least that was some fun filler before the real reason that we came: rock climbing at Upper Limits!

A lot of people were supposed to come with us, but they all passed. Thats okay, it actually turned out better that they didn't come with, because the easiest route they had set up was rated a 5.6 "Citrus Tree" and let me tell you, it was harder than 5.6, it seemed. Not exactly beginer friendly over there.

Well whats cool and unique about this place is that it is built inside of abandoned storage grain silos. The routes are 65 ft high. The pic to the right is between four silos (the rounded walls are actually the outside of 4 silos, which make up even more climbing routes). Thats Romy going up "I'm a banana" a 5.9. Aside from the erie lighting inside, and the freaky heating, it was awesome. They set up the routes with the minimum amount of holds, so that you climb up and you have to use only what they give. Other places give you a million holds, but color code them, but then its so tempting to cheat, and I get confused when I can't see the color tags. Also, the concrete walls provide a lot of friction for smearing.

There was also a bouldering cave, and an open bouldering area in the front (not inside the silos). All in all, we climbed for about 3.5 hours, and had an awesome time doing it.

When we came back, everyone at the Legion hall was ready to go out to the bar and celebrate Matt's graduation. So we went to some Irish place, where they had HUGE long island ice teas served up in a mason jar! Woah, we saw the bartender make us our teas, and she just kept pouring the booze in, and the last 10% she poured in some ice tea concentrate. I had one and was finished (we really didn't eat dinner after rock climbing. . .) and I don't know how many Romy had. But we ended up crashing at Marty's motel room with our sleeping bags. We drove home this morning, and I was soooooo tired driving! Ugh!