Life, Love, and the Pursuit of Core Strength: Arhi

We didn’t get much sleep last night because of those crazy kittens. We tried to wake them every three hours to dropper feed them, but they all cry at the same time and we had to use strategies like running the shower and playing music so that the owner of these studios would not catch on to our kitten scheme. After we got the kittens fed early this morning and finally back to sleep, we took them to Birgit. They will be going to a wonderful home: an American woman who knows kittens and knows how to care for them. We left a donation to the animal welfare group and felt a huge weight off of our shoulders with trouble, troublesome, and much trouble now out of our hands.

We headed to a crag called Arhi which looked amazing in the guidebook, but was deceivingly mostly very slabby. There was one steep, clean-looking wall that had some phenomenal routes on it and was well worth the scooter ride out to it. I warmed up on an amazing route called Eros (7b+) and very classic. And then I got on Angelica (8a)- was planning on getting on some other routes, but after seeing this line, it was definitely the one I wanted to do. I made a very valiant (and close) onsight attempt, but was thwarted by the upper crux. Again, an hour later, I fell going to the last clip. There is an upper rest on the route which is too far for me to go to so I am trying the very direct line and it feels pretty stout for the grade.

By the time I had a couple of goes and finished up some of the 12s at the crag, the sun was in full blast and we headed to the sea for an afternoon swim. Yesterday while we were eating very eggy pancakes, we watched as a woman from a nearby hotel threw a perfectly good float into the dumpster. We snagged that quickly and reaped its benefits today. I could lay on top of the float and watch the ocean beneath with goggles and I saw all sorts of flounder, sea bass, and kelp. We took an evening scooter ride to Pothias and ate a delicious dinner of dolmades, feta-stuffed calamari, swordfish, and wine at the Aegean Taverna. Not a bad day. Not a bad day at all.