Last year I was so depleted financially due to the Karakoram expedition that I wasn’t back in Kamikochi until the end of the season. Since I still wasn’t well off enough to afford another attempt at Denali this summer, I can instead hike in Japan every weekend as I please (or as the weather allows). Naturally that means that I was hiking next to the Azusa river at the first chance.
For my trip to Pakistan last summer, I’d signed up for the Global Rescue travel insurance in addition to my “normal” membership. I’ve been using this setup for most of my expeditions, since the membership covers helicopter rescue (a very important aspect especially in rural Pakistan) and the travel insurance covers pretty much everything else (though they refused to pay for my camera that was stolen in Argentina). For the Broad Peak + K2 expedition it wasn’t even a cheap endeavor with the travel insurance clocking in at almost $9000. However it included “interrupt for any reason” coverage, meaning it should pay up for pretty much any reason.
LUPINUSで逃してしまったWisteriaが俺にとってのメインだったが、ちゃんと最後まで楽しめるライブが渋谷THE GAMEで開催された。
大学の軽音部で何回かMad Capsule Marketsのコピバンが見れてかなり好きな音楽になった。AA=がその後継として（語弊）存在してることは数年前に知った。そしてやっとライブで本家が見れた。山嵐のツアーの最後のステージでAA=が出るという豪華な組み合わせはさすがに逃しません。
最後に花見行こうとしたのはもう数年前になる。その時も行ったもののすぐ雨が降り出したのでファミレス入ってランチで終わった。コロナ禍もあってなかなかそういう集まりも難しいとな… でも今年はもう諸々の規制のほとんど解除されたこともあって、石神井公園の八重桜の下で花見できた。
花見はソメイヨシノに限るとかいう人いるかもしれないが、俺はそういう差別はしない。夜のジョギングとかで公園も石神井川沿いの満開のソメイヨシノはたっぷり見てるし。
この前の四阿山登った時道の駅で買った雷電IPAのケースを差し入れとして持っていったが、意外とちゃんと解散する時まで全部なくなってよかった（持ち帰りたくなかった）。一日中天気がよくてこんな快晴で花見できたのは多分大学ぶり。
二次会では新しいお店紹介してもらったし。やった。
最近発見したバンドのEarthists.を見たかったので渋谷のMARUDASHI CARNIVALいってきた。Earthists.以外でもC-GATEなど日本のヘビーなバンドが勢ぞろい。ただこの日はかなり予定が複雑で… 朝から奥多摩で山登ってから御岳渓谷で軽くボルダリング、からのEarthists.だけ見てから一旦抜けて友だちと炙り食べてワイン飲んでの予定があって、から終電までMARUDASHIに戻った（そして終電で帰ってから近所で更に飲んでたけどそれはまた別）。
Knotfest is back! I’ve been there both times it was organized in Japan (though I only have a blog post from the 2016 event). I had to look through my photo archives to confirm I was there in 2014 too, and I was surprised to “learn” that apparently I’d seen Korn live back then… This year the plan was different.
I’ve been to Loud Park twice before, in 2012 (got a shirt but no blogpost) and 2016, so I was pretty happy to hear it was coming back after years of covid-forced absence. The lineup caught my eye because of Pantera—I thought they’d never tour again since the Abbott brothers died, so this was a chance I wasn’t willing to let go (even though I’m not that much of a Pantera fan).
ライブはライブにつながる。KNOTFESTの情報を知ってオープニングの魔法少女になり隊は見に行けないとわかったから、そのバンドの他の日程調べて下北沢のLUPINUSフェスを見つけた。下北の多数の会場で同時に開催される一日まるごとライブのイベントで、思った以上に楽しかった。
Observing my own behavior I realize that I tend to get “addicted” to things. For example last year it was League in the early months and interior design after getting back from Pakistan. Of course it’s on top of my generic routine of going to the gym and hiking, climbing and/or snowboarding, but it also means that it takes a huge amount of effort to focus on anything else. Even if I want to code up some of my ideas, I’d end up playing ranked for hours or looking up reversible interior hacks for my tiny flat.
For the past few weeks the ongoing addiction has been playing the bass. I don’t know why it suddenly clicked so hard (since I’ve owned a bass for over a decade now and practiced some riffs on and off) but it did. It’s been since I graduated (and thus stopped playing actively) that I had calluses on my fingers. My sense of rhythm is still trash, but even when I was in the music club it took two years to develop that, so no rush there.
This time though I picked up an audio interface (Focusrite Scarlett 2i2) so that I can hear and record better. I’ve often seen Youtube musicians joke about “the first time you hear yourself recorded” and damn it’s true. The bad is real. But I guess that’s what makes the progress of learning new stuff so enjoyable.
