Paperless Waivers at Touchstone
The Touchstone gyms are moving to a paperless waiver system at the climbing gyms. To help save paper and take some of that environmental impact away, Touchstone placed computers at the front of each gym for people to sign waivers with. Waivers expire every 18 months so there is significant work involved in filing and data entry. It is also possible to sign a waiver online and have them show up instantly in our system.
The system began in July at Mission Cliffs and recently a station was installed at Pipeworks. Stop by your gym and check out how Touchstone is getting a little more digital.
The Studio: New Touchstone Gym in San Jose
The south bay area will be getting a little bit better this year with the addition of a new Touchstone climbing Gym. The Studio, located in central downtown San Jose on 1st Street and San Salvador, will be 12,000 square feet and feature lots of wall and tons of bouldering. The old night club and theater will undoubtedly be one of Touchstone's best new gyms.
Mark Melvin, Touchstone's wall builder extraordinaire, described the three tier building. The bouldering will overlook the route climbing, which will be up to 40 feet tall. The unique structure of the theater will require significant custom work. "It won’t be a cookie cutter gym," said Melvin.
The recent construction of MetalMark in Fresno has allowed for the team to gain a significant amount of experience and the team will be implementing a number of the ideas that they used in Fresno like adjustable cracks and curved walls for climbing.
Check out The Studio's Facebook Page Construction of the gym will begin in the next couple of weeks with construction hopefully ending late this fall.
Great Discount on Intro to Climbing LessonsGroupon, a website that offers all sorts of deals on great restaurants and activities in the bay, has an awesome deal today. For $25 you can get an introductory climbing lesson for two people at Mission Cliffs in San Francisco, Diablo Rock Gym in Concord, or Great Western Power Company in Oakland.
Each gym has a ton of climbing space and the lessons are taught by experienced climbers with expert knowledge on route climbing and bouldering. Learn how to tie in properly, how to belay, how to top-rope, and how to move smoothly and efficiently up the enormous walls of three of Touchstone's best gyms.
After the class, you'll get a day pass and all the necessary climbing equipment. You'll be ready to get out and climb all over the walls of the gyms!
Simply sign up at Groupon.com today, and get the coupon, which is valid until March 17, 2011. It's a great deal and a 57% discount.
Diablo Rock Gym Summer Block Party
This Sunday, Diablo Rock gym employees and staff members will be having a party to kick off the summer season. The gym will have a BBQ for members to bring food and vegetables to grill. The festivities will start at 6 pm and continue until 9 pm. There will be games, prizes, and a rad climbing movie shown during the party.
Take the opportunity to enjoy the summer season with some of Touchstone's coolest staff and members at Diablo Rock this weekend.
Climbing Clip of the Week: Manaslu Expedition
Just this Monday I mentioned how one of our very own members, Tom McMillan recently returned from an epic climb of Manaslu in Nepal. The pictures really got me excited, really got me jealous and really made me want to see more of not only Nepal, but of Manaslu itself.
My jealousy and excitement leads to this week's Climbing Clip of the Week! Not only do we get to see more of Manaslu, we get to see an entire expedition, from start to finish in 6 full parts. I'm only posting part 1 here, but if you are interested and want to check out the whole saga, feel free!
This is also a call to arms, as it were, for all you readers of this fine blog. We want to feature more of YOU on our Climbing Clip of the Week! Let's use it as a forum to show off, to brag, to learn, and to highlight just how awesome Touchstone Climbers are! If you have videos, slideshows, or anything else of you and yours getting out there and climbing, send them in! Send us links, emails, or whatever you need to do to get featured on here!
Vote!! Voting is the most sacred right of a democracy, but you can't vote if you don't register.
So, who is eligible to vote? You must be 18 years of age and a U.S. citizen to vote in California. (17 year olds may register to vote if they will be 18 by Election Day.) Legal residents of California who are not U.S. citizens, and illegal California residents are not eligible to register or vote. Convicted felons currently serving a prison term or on parole are not eligible to register or vote. A California driver's license is not required in order to vote.
Rowan Gets His Lung Transplant As many of you know, Rowan Jimenez, former Touchstone employee, parent, rock climber, and musician was diagnosed with a rare disease called scleroderma about six years ago. We just heard from Chris Bloch that Rowan received a lung transplant on Monday morning. Here is the update from Chris:
Today Rowan is alive and well, and recovering from lung transplant surgery! Last night around 8pm, he got the call from UCSF that a suitable donor had become available, and he needed to be there in two hours. Arriving around 9:30pm with Heather, his brother Juan, and yours truly, he began the long wait for surgery. While we thought he would go right in, they needed to do a lot of prep work, and we ended up saying our goodbyes around 3:30am. It turned out, the surgery started at 5:19am and lasted about 7 hours. He had no complications at all. In fact the doctors said the surgery was "routine," as if there is a routine lung transplant...He is now resting in the intensive cardiac care unit at UCSF medical center. He is sedated and they probably won't wake him up until tomorrow sometime. They said he could be up and walking around tomorrow evening! Sorry, no visitors until he gets out of the ICU. I will keep you posted as to when he can have visitors.
Thanks to everyone who has helped out thus far, we have raised over $30k just from Facebook, Rowan's blog site, email, and word of mouth!! We still have a long way to go, as Rowan now faces a lengthy recovery.
The Full Lung Capacity comp is looking good, with well over $10k in prizes coming in, and it now will be even more fun as we will be celebrating the fact Rowan has his Full Lung Capacity!! Hope to see you all at the comp on November 1st. Please buy a t-shirt, check the blog, and send good vibes Rowan's way as he gets well!
We will be posting more info on the Full Lung Capacity comp that will be held at Berkeley Ironworks on November 1st.
Touchstone Kleen KanteensYou've heard the news: plastic water bottles have been found to leach trace amounts of bisphenol-A (BPA), a chemical that has been shown to disrupt normal hormone function leading to a myriad of health problems in mice. If you've been thinking of kicking your Nalgene to the curb (the recycling curb, that is), now is the perfect time. In your friendly, neighborhood Touchstone gym, you will find two sizes of of the 100% stainless Steel Kleen Kanteens priced to sell at $15.50 for 27 oz. or $22.50 for 40 oz. Who doesn't want a clean, BPA-free and odor free glug of h20 that's better for your health and better for the environment than those ubiquitous plastic water bottles?
Grade School It’s very easy for a climber to get sucked into the grade game. Climbers expect steady improvement through the grades as the months and years go by. At the very least they expect to be able to climb at the same grade difficulty for every workout. And once they can do some 5.10s, they expect to be able to do all of the 5.10s.
That’s not the way the human body works. Even when you are getting better over the long haul, it’s normal for your grade level to fluctuate. And even strong climbers won’t climb at the same high level all the time. In sports training they have embraced these variables and they incorporate it into training: Plan for slumps and rest cycles.
How can you keep the right frame of mind when training and climbing? A lot of people will mentally rehearse routes or moves before they climb. That can help set a good mental tone.
Gravitate towards positive, optimistic, encouraging climbing partners. Avoid negative, grade-driven, aggressive, or unpleasant people who can easily throw off your performance. It helps to work out when the gym is less crowded. If someone nearby is distracting you, that’ll take the edge off your performance.
Try moves that are difficult for you, but don’t do them because you or someone around you is pushing too hard. Do them because you know they will be a useful part of your training and learning experience.
Having good partners who know when to shut up is important too. Nothing’s worse than trying to focus and do hard moves while some back seat climber who’s belaying you can’t stand to let you work it out.
No Initiation Fee for June If you want to do someone a favor, let them in on the secret: climbing is ridiculously fun and keeps you in great shape to boot. And June is the month to sign up if your pals want to get a great deal - $0 initiation. This is a savings of at least $100!!
Spread the word so you can see that desk jockey morph into a fit and graceful climbing monkey.
Touchstone Running at the LakeBerkeley Ironworks spinning instructor extraordinaire Wendy Georges, and Marc Trotz represented Touchstone Running at the Lake Merritt Half Day Run at Lake Merritt on Saturday May 10th. In the race each runner has either 6 or 12 hours to run as far as they can, doing laps around Lake Merritt. Each lap is 3.1 miles around the lake which just so happens to be the nation's largest urban saltwater lake (155 acres) and the nation's oldest wildlife preserve.
Both Wendy and Marc competed in the 6 hour version and did really well. Marc, in his first ultra race ever, covered 33.2 miles and placed 8th in a field of 25 runners. Wendy covered 37.3 miles, good enough for 1st place in the women's category but 3rd place overall!
Memorial Day Hours
This Monday May 26th, all Touchstone gyms will be open and operating on weekend hours. Standard weekend rates will apply for all gyms. Please contact your local gym to find out the exact hours of operation and pricing.
Cat in the HatFashion is always changing, but the one thing that never goes out of style is representing your local climbing gym. There is a whole bunch of new Touchstone gear including Diablo Rock Gym's new logo t-shirts and a very "cool" fast wicking synthetic mountain hard wear running top. If your a cyclist we even have a full jersey and bib shorts. To top it all off all of our clothing is 100% pet friendly. Check out the new Touchstone threads at your local gym.
New Bike Club Blog The Touchstone Bike Club has grown up and is graduating from weekly email announcements. From this point on, all club announcements, ride info and last minute updates will be posted on http://touchstonebike.blogspot.com/ -- easy for you to access and leave your comments for others to view real-time. If you still prefer to receive these updates through email, you can sign up for an email subscription which will email any new posts once a day (between 7pm – 9pm).
If you're interested in contributing your own posts to the blog (new route ideas, Sunday/mid-week ride call out, need for carpool to get to a ride start, etc.), send us an email and we will invite you to be an "author". (Note: You'll have to sign up for a gmail account if you don't already have one.) Otherwise, you should be able to leave comments.
Blog Rules: This site was created in the spirit of community. Please limit your comments and posts to Club/bike-related matters only. Any inappropriate postings will be deleted and we'll have to limit site access to members only.
Suggestions for making the site better are welcome!
Jeffery Earns His Master'sOur master of IT and poohbah of marketing, Jeffery Bowling, received his master’s in philosophy from San Francisco State last month. The title of his thesis was Johannes Climacus and Socrates: Irony, Eros and the Ladder. Herein he argues that Climacus, a pseudonym of Soren Kierkegaard, should be read as a work of irony rather than a straightforward philosophical work. Kierkegaard uses Socrates as a model for the kind of philosophical project he is undertaking.
Jeffery's interest in philosophy extends outside the academic realm all the way to the naming of his dog Soren after Kierkegaard. (Not sure if Kierkegaard was sweet, but Soren is.) So, if your workout is beating you down, look for Jeffery, probably reviewing our marketing materials or fixing our computers, and strike up a conversation about reason, knowledge, truth, ethics – all the fun stuff in life.
And you thought all management did was climb and bike!
Message Board FixedWe were having issues with the confirmation e-mails not being sent to new members who registered with the Touchstone Message Board. Anyone who tried to join the message board between Jan. 03 -Jan. 22 2008 did not get a confirmation e-mail sent to them.
We have fixed this and you should be able to register now. We have deleted all the old, non active accounts so you should be able to register with your preferred user name and e-mail. If you tried to join between Jan. 3 - Jan. 22 you will need to register again.
Happy Holidays from Touchstone ClimbingJust a reminder, our gyms will close early on Christmas Eve and be closed Christmas day. The same is true for New Year's Eve and New Year's Day.
Touchstone Climbing will once again host the Touchstone Bouldering Series, now in its third season. With the opening of the Great Western Power Co. in Oakland, the series will expand to seven comps this year, that will be held on Friday evenings, one at each of the Touchstone locations. All events will include a red point Bouldering comp as well as refreshments, games and prizes. Points will be award for each comp with overall winners being announced after the final comp. The first event will be held in October in Concord and will conclude this year at Berkeley Ironworks.