We left Kate and headed over to watch the Sport Climbing speed competition. I was amazed. They were the tiniest, toughest and most graceful women I have ever seen and they would just fly up this monster wall. And they certainly captured the attention of many locals who I wouldn't otherwise suspect of enjoying this type of athleticism, or maybe they were just scopin' babes climbin' walls. It's better than a day at the beach I guess. I tried rock climbing a couple of weeks ago and it took me 5 minutes to climb a wall half the size of this monolith and these women were prancing to the top in seconds. My absolute favorite was little Katie Brown from Paris, Kentucky. She is 15 years old. She had a difficult time with her first climb, but remained totally focused and calm as she prepared for her second. I watched and cheered as she gracefully flew to the top of the giant rock looking like Spiderman. Then, all of a sudden, she stopped because she couldn't reach the bell to stop the timer. It looked like her arms were just too short to reach it. She made several attempts but finally got exhausted and had to come down. She was such a good sport about it-- no whining and complaining-- she just walked away, thoughtfully. Later I found out that she had taken first in the women's difficulty climbing competition. She was the only woman to successfully complete the course and this was her first International Competition. Go girl. I loved her cause she seemed totally unimpressed with herself. She recently told Climbing magazine that right now her goal for climbing is "to have fun." She works out at the gym a few days a week and spends her free time playing the flute. A classic athlete. Pure and Simple.

Once we'd had our fill of climbing rocks--it was quite exhausting you know-- we headed to The Pier of Newport to have a tropical drink and find out the local scoop. Daniel, the bartender, who made the most amazing raspberry margarita, confessed to being an X Games volunteer. He was assigned to the women aggressive in-line skaters and had to attend to them during practice and before their event. He told us that Tash, one of the skaters, told him that they had partied so much the night before that they were all hung over. He said that the French girl got off the vert ramp pointed to her stomach, made a face and then collapsed on the bleachers. He couldn't get over how hungover they were. "They'd get up skate this enormous half pipe and then return to their prone position on the benches." He thought it was remarkable that they were actually able to compete in the state they were in. I investigated this drinking binge later and discovered that one of the girls from Switzerland was tossing her cookies while praying to the porcelain goddess all night and couldn't make it to her practice session. This must be the nutritional conditioning part of the training.

That evening we drove to Providence to see the bicycle stunt dirt jumping competition. On our way we picked up some girls hitchhiking. We questioned them about the games and they told us, in that 14 year old way, that they didn't like the biker guys "É'cause they're pigs". They explained that, "They would try to kiss you and then if you let them they tell their friends they did a lot more. We hate that." What is really kinda scary is that we ran into a friend the next day who said she got a ride back from Providence with some biker guys who were talking about these chicks they wanted to "do," but they couldn't figure out how old they were and wanted to make sure that they were at least 16. Anyway, the BMX area in Providence was quite impressive, this mammoth hill/ramp thing lead into these monster piles of dirt that sent the bikers flying up in the air so that they could do their stuff. These guys were flying down the ramp and going for it. And I really mean going for it. We watched crash after crash after crash. I think less than 10% of the tricks we saw attempted were landed. They were spinning, flipping, and contorting themselves and their bikes into some ridiculously outrageous positions. They must've figured, Hey I've landed a back flip with a bar twist fakie rocket air 360 stall in my dreams, so I may as well try at the X Games. That would look good on TV--right? Yeah. I think the guy that won, Joey Garcia, was the only one that actually stayed on his bike. My favorite bike trick was when one guy thought he'd break a couple of laws of physics. While in the middle of a flip, completely inverted in the air, he took his hands off the handlebars. I guess his idea was to stall and then re-grab the bars, pull hard, and complete the flip. What he hadn't considered until just a few seconds later when he had to bail at twenty feet, was that once he stopped rotating, there was no hope of creating enough torque in the air to begin to rotate again. From my vantage point it looked like the bike bounced off his head and then he fell to the landing ramp, only to be hit again by the falling bike. Nice jump.