One-shoulder climbs
March 10, 2008
Climbing is something that I always liked to do, though I haven’t done it in about 15 years. I used to climb trees as a kid to the point where I even had paths up different trees. When I was in middle school, I used to climb on a climbing wall they had there once or twice a week, but pretty much nothing since then. For my birthday last year, Hanne indulged me with a gift certificate for the two of us to take the intro class at the nearby Portland Rock Gym completely out of the blue, though since I had been considering taking the intro class for some time, I accused her of reading my mind at the time. After much procrastination, we finally went last Saturday and had a grand old time.
The Portland Rock Gym has an interesting array of walls to climb, from the not-entirely-vertical beginners walls to the oh-my-god-I’m-supposed-to-climb-that advanced walls, but given our inexperience we stuck with the beginner walls after our training. I busted my shoulder a few weekends ago putting a shower rack in our new bathroom, and even though it has been getting better, my climbs seemed to have set my recovery back a couple of weeks. My reach and maneuverability had been almost back to normal, now I’m having trouble just doing basic things like throwing my towel over the top of the shower curtain and putting on deodorant.
Yes, I need to see a doctor. This is not in question. I avoided it for so long because things were getting better.
In any case, I got about halfway up the wall on my second climb and all of a sudden realized “Oh shit, I can’t pull myself up with my left arm.” Now, I have two perfectly good legs and a second perfectly good arm for climbing, but when you’re already suppressing every natural instinct you have that’s saying “Don’t look down because you’re 25 feet up a wall with nothing but a rope the thickness of your thumb, a knot you tied yourself, and your girlfriend who weighs about 75 pounds less than you holding you up,” having one less tool in your arsenal to fight that imagined plummet to the ground is a bit disconcerting. Mostly I just froze, which I might have done anyway, but realizing my left arm was dead didn’t help things in any way.
You think you can handle yourself on a wall? Try being 25 feet up and…letting go. Even when Hanne had prepared to bear some of my weight, I still dropped a foot or two before that harness cinched up in my crotch and I stopped. Ouch, and yeek. That one moment of “Oh my god, I’m falling!” is always humorous.
I climbed once or twice after that, but I mostly spent the rest of the morning belaying Hanne so she could get in a few climbs. She rocked, too. I think she made it higher than I did. Our intro class purchase gives us full and unlimited use of the gym for the next week, so I’d like to go back an at the very least use some of their actual gym equipment since my shins are in bad shape right now from too much running, and maybe go carefully up a wall a little ways. I can belay Hanne a bit, too, though my shoulder gets stiff from holding the rope in various positions. This is something I want to continue doing, though, so I’m going to give it my best effort. And see a doctor.
Saturday night was the Fark Party I’d planned for this year, though it didn’t go nearly as well as I hoped it would. It was a combination of live music that, while good, interfered with conversation and a low turnout that kind of spiked this year’s Fark Party, but I’m going to try and arrange a second one later to make up for those shortcomings. Oh well. I went home remarkably sober (when compared to last year’s party at the Lucky Lab) and somewhat bored, but I can’t imagine I would have done anything else really exciting that night instead.
I had an odd realization not long ago, that being that I haven’t rebuilt my computer in more than two years. I think that might be a new record for me, to be honest. I used to do it every six months or so, but things have been running so smoothly for the last couple of years, I haven’t had a need to start over and reinstall everything. That also means I haven’t swapped out all my hardware for new stuff in that long, though I did replace my video card and DVD burner in that time, plus I doubled my RAM. None of that required a rebuild, however. I’ve tossed around the idea of building myself a new computer for awhile now, but I use my computer so infrequently, I tell you, I just don’t see it happening anytime soon. At least, not with the level of power I normally build my computer at. I’m just not gaming much anymore, and pretty much the most use my computer gets is ripping and compressing DVDs these days along with my everyday web browsing, email, music, etc.
So, I thought, instead of building myself a new computer, why not buy a Mac? I have my MacBook and I tend to enjoy using it more than my PC these days. I like the operating system better, I like some of the software better. I’m going to run my current PC into the ground, though, and I won’t be replacing anything until something critical breaks. I’ve got awhile to make up my mind if I want to be a part of the “halo effect” of iPod users who switch to Macs.
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