An Introduction

First things first- I'm a new blogger. (DUH). I don't really read blogs... and I used to write a lot, in school, but I fell out of that as a teenager. So, the obvious question is, why in the hell am I starting a blog?

I guess I like to talk? I have all these ideas floating around, and I rarely get to share them, and I'd really like to!

I really hope this blog becomes a super interactive thing. I want to hear from readers (hopefully, not READER). Whether I know you personally and we climb together all the time, or you stumbled upon my blog in whatever way this beautiful interwebz allows, I want to hear from all of you! Thoughts, opinions, how your day was, your favorite place to get a reuben, that CRAZY DOPE FOUR STAR CLASSIC you got to send- I want to hear all about it!

And with that, a brief intro of me.

My name is Avi. At the time of writing this first post (it's June of 2015) I am 23 years old. My parents are both immigrants from the Soviet Union- they came here in 1991, just before having me. And yes, I do speak Russian :).

 I started climbing in Summer of 2010, just after graduating high-school, and I'm going to be very, very clear about one thing; I was never an athlete. I was overweight, lazy, awkward and nerdy in all the ways. Around 16 or 17 I started to discover some level of fitness, and did just enough to keep myself sane and happy, but I was never an athlete. And I certainly wasn't when I started climbing.

My first day climbing was at Sportrock, in Sterling, VA. I. Was. Awful. No technique, no focus, no physicality. I was super psyched to send V0 (Which, by the way, is always an amazing thing and don't let others tell you otherwise). A year later, I had made my way up. I think I was working soft V5. I discovered I loved crimps and powerful shoulder movement, which led to my first shoulder injury in 2011. When I came back from that about six months later, I started developing technique, and I also began climbing on ropes. I was sport-climbing soon after that.

Fast forward to now. I work at Earth Treks, one of the biggest climbing gyms in the country. I'm aspiring to route-set there one day (I am the chief-setter at a very small gym as of now). I climb indoors, I climb outdoors. I do ropes, I CERTAINLY do boulders. I train, and hang out with climbers, and talk about nothing but climbing, and blah blah blah I'm in the life. Hard.

I will go ahead and close my very rambly first blog post, and hope that I learn to clean this thing up soon. If you got this far, thank you SO much for reading, and I hope to climb with you soon!

Climb on my friends!