last week, i went rock-climbing at vertical hold with preston, his old roommate, steven, and steven’s wife, haley. preston and steven have both rock-climbed before; my last experience with a belay was at summer camp when i was 15. so i strapped my harness on and learned how to do a figure eight knot, which is the only thing keeping my body from falling from 20 feet high to a rocky death. i like to think that i am athletic although the only real outdoor activities i do are related to riding my bike to and from coffee shops.
i conquered a few fun climbs at first and watched in awe as preston traversed from wall to wall using his chalk-covered hands and the littlest holds to put his feet on. haley and i were getting bored as the guys went bouldering so we tried to do some more difficult courses. i never understood how people couldn’t get more than a few feet off the ground when climbing but when your pinky finger is the only thing that has room on the tagged hold, you see how difficult these walls could be. after failing miserably at getting anywhere on the wall and almost dropping haley, we decided that the next time the boys wanted to go climbing, we would go to bikram yoga.
my [1] new thing will probably not be a lasting hobby, but it was fun to get some exercise in a completely different way. and it was fun to see my boy being a spider monkey on the rock wall.