In my mind, few men stand as equally interesting, and no man stands as equally charismatic as Angelo Angelelli. An Italian expatriate, a young Angelo immigrated from the small town of Abruzzo to Detroit, then followed a woman to Santa Cruz, CA, where our paths would eventually cross. When Angelo was my age, 20 years old, he was a soldier in the Italian Army. Currently, Angelo owns and operates an organic pasta and ravioli company, Angelilli's Organic Pasta, and makes the best damn ravioli that your ignorant taste buds could ever hope to come into contact with. Angelo is wonderfully complex, and every hard drive on the planet could not adequately store a complete and comprehensive analysis of the man. So take this as a brief and raw illustration of Angelo Angelilli in one of his many elements: Red Rocks.
Our trip began on Saturday, the 19th of March. Early in the drive I turned on some tunes from none other than the Boss himself: Bruce Springsteen. Angelo's face lit up, and he reflectively stated, "Bruce Springsteen sings about the things I love about America." I couldn't agree with him more.
About 4 hours into the 8 hour drive to Vegas, hunger struck us collectively and suddenly. We weighed our options and decided to stop at Taco Bell. Angelo ordered 3 bean burritos and was shocked at the horrible quality and presentation.
"What the f*#k is this bullsh#t?" he disappointingly asked. "They give you half a tea spoon of beans in here- I'm basically eating a tortilla!"
He left the table, and returned with approximately 20 sauce packets. Using one entire sauce packet per bite, he reluctantly finished his meal.
Our dinner later that night more than made up for our lunch of sparcely-beaned tortilla. Angelo brought along 2 pounds of fresh, organic, spinach and ricotta ravioli! It was the most divine taste-sensation that one could ever hope to experience while camping or anywhere else, and I when I slept that night, visions of those vast Abbruzo plains danced through my head.
The weather was spotty for the entire week that we were in Red Rock, raining at least a little nearly every day. The soft sandstone takes a while to dry, so we decided to spend a rest day Vegas Style- poaching the Caesar's Palace pool, prank calling prostitution services, the usual. Angelo was disgusted at the extent to which American enterprises like Caesar's Palace and Starbuck's exploit Italian Culture. Every time we passed a Starbucks, Angelo said something along the lines of, "Oh f*#k that stupid f*#king company... Viente Macchioto... what the F*#K is that??!?"
One day we climbed Levitation 29.
We got a mega alpine start and began hiking at 10:30. On the approach, we passed a lizard free soloing an offwidth! YGD little lizard dude!
We reached the base, and Angelo made a horrible discovery: He had forgotten his rolling papers! I made some joke about snorting the tobacco like snuff to which he replied, "This is not funny dude, If I don't have tobacco it is... bad!" I did not want to find out what this meant, and was quite relieved when he was able to fashion a cigarette out some toilet paper that he was able to bum off a party that was just starting up the route.
Angelo let me lead the odd numbered pitches, because he had climbed the route before. He cruised the roof on pitch 2.
He rehydrated after following the crux pitch.
Angelo was very surprised at the number of bolts that had been added since he first did this climb!
The Eagle Wall is kinda steep!
....and a little exposed!
We made it to the top and got back to the car just as it was getting dark, looking back to see a party epicing on the Solar Slab that would later be rescued by helicopter. (It would start to rain and snow two hours later)
I was really craving cheese, so we went down to Albertson's, I bought a half of a pound of high moisture mozzarella, and scarfed it down in less than 30 seconds.
We awoke to rain soaked rock, and took another rest day at the pool.
The next day (planning to climb another long route), we awoke to more rain.
Angelo came into the car in which I had slept and solemnly muttered, "the rock doesn't want us now."
We packed up and left Nevada feeling the disillusioned melancholy that the leaving of Vegas is known for.
But Alas, Fall will come and with its arrival, we will return to Red Rocks with a vengeance, and an even greater stockpile of fine Italian Cuisine.
