Kicking Butt

Sometimes friends can make all the difference in the world. I'd been stressed out all week with proposals, homework, little sleep, etc. By Friday, I was running on basically nothing except adrenaline. My bestie Brett showed up in the last 20 minutes of my proposal writing tornado and said, "Take your time, we do have the next 48 hours to do nothing."

It hadn't hit me yet how true that was. I'd been working on an INSANE schedule, freaking out and generally not being a human being. I was frazzled, and didn't realize that the weekend had in fact arrived!

So true to our athletic natures we decided to go rock climbing after dinner and did some great climbs. Brett had never climbed before, so he had the virgin climber fear of falling, which meant he only got half way up the first time. I was just calmly belaying him when his hand slipped a little on a caterpillar hold and heard the word, "DOWN!" as clear as day.

Deciding to be nicer to him than I was to my friend Ian, I let him down and started releasing him from the rope when he decided that he wanted to climb again. His fear apparently mastered, he managed to get to the top and did a nice job.

My first climb had an overhang in it, but was pretty "juggy" so not too bad. I had a rough time at a spot in the middle, and totally cheated, but felt pretty good about it for the most part.

And here's where the story gets good. There's a guy named Noah who works at the climbing wall, and has the biggest crush on me. He's this tall, gangling brown haired human monkey-man. He tries to be nice to people, but is one of those "trying way too hard for female attention" kind of guys. It can get pretty annoying. I try not to abuse that too much, but him and his friend were doing a run right where I wanted to go. They climbed it maybe 5 times before I decided to ask Noah if he'd belay me, incidentally on the run that they were at.

It was a 5.9, which meant it was going to be rough, but I don't feel too bad hanging on the rope with Noah on the bottom. He's actually a pretty supportive belayer. He's patient and doesn't hurry climbers.

So long story short... Noah helped me a little on a rough part, but I finally managed to climb up a 5.9 on an overhang, using an under-cling and kicked just a little bit of butt.

In order to really haul my butt over cliffs, I need to drop a little weight, but until then, I've defeated a 5.9. And that's something.