Climbing - Car - Climbing - Car - C...

It has been a week since I wrote a new blog post. The climbing last week was as good as that last day when I posted something. I climbed with Mike last week because of Tom who left for a week back to Colorado because of his foot injury and his waiting girlfriend. It was a nice week and we did a lot of good climbing. Almost every climbing day we went to a new crag with new routes. The rest days where really shitty because of some car problems.

Chevy Van SMOG master! (I’m not proud of it)

Let’s start with the bad news of the car. I’ll start with the very beginning.
I bought the car in Texas, where I first was planning to register and have insurance. That didn’t work out because as a foreigner I wasn’t able to register in Texas. I could have a temporary license plate every 30 days but then I couldn’t go out of the Texas state. I made some research on the internet until I found a good insurance company in Nevada, where I was planning to go to. Insurance and registration most of the time needs to be in the same state. I took the Nevada insurance for the car and called with the registration company DMV. They gave me a temporary Nevada license plate so I could drive over to Nevada. Now I’m in Las Vegas where I’m trying to get a real Nevada license plate. I have an address here of a friend I use to register the car.

So now the problems are coming. To get that Nevada license plate I needed to do a smog test. My car failed for this test because of two reasons. The first reason is that the car doesn’t have an air pump, what causes more smog. But this car was officially made without an air pump so if I could prove that to the DMV smog-lab that was no issue anymore. The second reason why the car failed the smog test is because is just has too much smog. Simple! I went to the DMV smog-lab where they were really unfriendly first. They told me to go to a garage to do something about the smog and to get an emission label that says the car never had an air pump and don’t need any. So I went to a Chevrolet garage where they wanted to give me a new air pump and wanted to charge me 160 dollars only to make research. When they told me this I jumped really fast in the smog machine and drove away really desperate. I decided to go back to those unfriendly people at the smog lab. With a really desperate face I went inside and told them the problem. Finally they were friendly enough to give me that emission label themselves. They were too lazy the first time to do an effort to give me that label. So one problem was solved.

Now I needed to do something about the smog itself. I went to another garage where they were really friendly from the beginning. They first asked 100 dollars for the research, I agreed with this and decided to wait until it was done. After 1.5 hours they told me they needed to take out the front seats of the car because of the engine that is completely inside and under the car. For this they asked 200 dollars. I didn’t saw another way out so I was ready to pay this amount. I also told them the whole story that I’m travelling, just only for 5 more months and that I want to register to travel around the country. After one more hour they came back to me and told me it was going to cost over the 1000 dollars, maybe even thousands of dollars if I wanted to do something about the smog. So they gave me some new advice to register the car somewhere else. They saw that I was just a bum without so much money and they told me really friendly to sign some papers and get my poor ass out of there without paying. I was really happy with this and at the same time I could cry. :)

So after all this waiting and crying I went to my DMV agent and told him the whole story. So now I have two options:
1. I go to a garage and offer them 100 or 200 dollars if they give me a receipt that I paid them 450 dollars for doing something about the smog but it didn’t work. The law here is that you need to past the smog test to get the registration. If you fail you need to spend at least 450 dollars for your smog. If you tried to do something about it and can prove you paid at least 450 dollars they can give you the registration for one year. So that’s one plan.

2. The second plan to go to Kingston, Arizona, on my way to Indian Creek. In Kingston, only 1, 5 hours from here, they don’t have smog tests. The only possible problem would be that they want me to have also Arizona insurance. If this is going to be the solution I hope the insurance is not a problem.

So this was my Chevy Van story. I’m getting a little bit sick of it right now. Today it is Sunday so I can’t do much. I’ll do my best tomorrow again!

Happy climbing is my sport!

Between all the hassle of the car, believe it or not but I climbed! Almost every day we climbed in Red Rocks we went to a new crag with all new routes to try. Only last three days we went to the same crag, called the 13 wall. Because there are a lot of 13a’s and harder. I did every day an 8a or harder.
I on sighted almost two other 8a’s, instead I did them second go. Then I tried a route called ‘Where Is My Mind’ graded 8a+ but really hard. I’m wondering if there is nothing that broke in that route. It felt like the hardest 8a+ I’ve ever done. But it was really nice. The long crux was really boulder with some extreme movements. Although is felt really hard I did it on my third go. On the end of that day I also on sighted a 7c+, ‘Ambushed’. The 13 wall is a nice overhanging wall with two 7c+’es, two 8a’s, one 8a+ and one 8b. I tried the 8b but apparently the holds are worse than before and it wasn’t even so nice as the others on the wall.

So last days I had some good days and enjoyed the climbing a lot! Now I’m looking for a trad climbing partner to explore the trad climbing over here.

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