Guess who has rock climbed?
That would be me!
I know, you’re thinking “but hey, don’t you really hate
heights? And isn’t the general goal of
rock climbing to climb these rocks up a wall?
Generally into the air? Higher
and Higher? Until, eventually, you are
very high up? At a point many might
describe as a height? And shouldn’t you
hate that?” And these are smart thoughts
you’re having right now. Good you.
But as it turns out no!
There’s a whole long story about medicated head and floaty dreams and
bright sounds and loud colors (and I know that it’s long because I originally
started this blog post with this story before I realized that it was so long
and REALLY not the point) which ends with me dreaming about rock climbing and,
in the dream, loving it. And you know
how some dreams just haunt you for a while?
The rock climbing dream – it haunted.
It kept whispering to me “go.
Climb the rocks. Touch the
ceiling. Find out if these crazy dreams
you’re having are truly crazy, or if you were meant to be a climber of rocks.”
Stupid talking dream.
But I couldn’t shake it!
The talking dream wouldn’t shut the hell up! So I forced poor, supportive, ever-eager
Queen to go with me and we went to the local rock climbing gym’s ‘ladies
night.’
‘Ladies night’ at the rock climbing gym is just like all the
other nights at the rock climbing gym EXCEPT the rates are a little lower and
the place is chock-a-block full of chicks.
But strong, nimble, super-confident chicks who are climbing the walls
but in a good way! We got there and put
on the special equipment, which consists of special shoes and a harness. The point of the shoes are to cover your feet so tightly with shoeness as to
practically be bare of feet. Your toes
are wedged right up into the tippy-toe part and the shoes lace around your foot
like a strong shoe hug.
The harness, on the other hand, is not sexy. And not hot.
And not lovely. The harness is
all about “how to be ok with hanging twenty feet in the air by one lone rope,
held there by some person down on the ground who is also just holding on to that one lone rope.” The way to be ok is to have your ass-parts
wrapped up with this totally safe harness.
It cuddles the buttcheeks and snuggles the thighs and shows serious
lovin’ to the waist. And not the place
that all the jeans keep telling us are our waist, but our ACTUAL waist. The equator between tummy and chest. The harness is strictly your proof of safety
for that moment you have to hang back and let somebody lower your big, old bones
to the ground.
So we spent the night with the climbing chicks and we
climbed. We scrambled our bodies up the
walls over and over, going higher and higher.
I touched ceiling several times, and this is a ceiling that is at least
2 stories tall. I figured out some
tricks and had some others given to me by the tremendously experienced ladies
who literally showed us the ropes. (oh,
and can I just marvel at these women,
who were somewhere in their older years, probably their 50’s, with handsome
grey-streaked hair and creased faces, but rock-hard abs and arms made from
cabled steel??? Holy CRAP do I want to
be them when I grow up!!!)
At the end of the night my arms and legs were all
jiggly-muscles, but I definitely loved it.
I’ll be going back. Not right
away, because the last two days after the climbing my shoulders and hips
reminded me every second of the day that I am old and crumbling like an elegant
but ancient coliseum, as well as OW, OW, EVERYTHING HURTS ALL THE TIME OW! But I’m definitely going back. After all, this is one of the last pieces of
the “becoming a super hero” puzzle, right?
This, leaping tall buildings in a single bound and the invisible
jet. I’m so close…
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