A year of nicknames
2008 has three nicknames so far: "The Year of Goals", "The year my life becomes a chick lit novel", and "The year I take advantage of my youth". In the spirit of the last one I went to a indoor rock climbing gym last night.
A girl from one of my meet up groups invited me to take a belay class with her. I had absolutely no experience with climbing, so color me surprised by what can only be called the Wedginator(aka the harness belt you have to wear). nurikot assured me that belay was only doing the support rope part at the bottom, but after we learned all the knot tying basics and belay support we had to climb. I have a fear of heights and halfway up the wall my whole body was shaking in terror. I stupidly looked down and began mewing pathetically, but my partner and the instructor just smiled and told me to keep going, or they would never let me down. Evil wiley bastards. Then they told me to fall. You let go of the rock and the person at the bottom can easily keep you steady, but you have to have faith in the rope, the harness, and the belayer. I made it up and during the following 3 climbs I got less and less shaky.
Am I a born climber? No way! Still I will go back and get my belay certificate and hopefully move up to a slightly harder climb level. I feel strong today. Tired, but accomplished.
A girl from one of my meet up groups invited me to take a belay class with her. I had absolutely no experience with climbing, so color me surprised by what can only be called the Wedginator(aka the harness belt you have to wear). nurikot assured me that belay was only doing the support rope part at the bottom, but after we learned all the knot tying basics and belay support we had to climb. I have a fear of heights and halfway up the wall my whole body was shaking in terror. I stupidly looked down and began mewing pathetically, but my partner and the instructor just smiled and told me to keep going, or they would never let me down. Evil wiley bastards. Then they told me to fall. You let go of the rock and the person at the bottom can easily keep you steady, but you have to have faith in the rope, the harness, and the belayer. I made it up and during the following 3 climbs I got less and less shaky.
Am I a born climber? No way! Still I will go back and get my belay certificate and hopefully move up to a slightly harder climb level. I feel strong today. Tired, but accomplished.