Day 24

I went climbing today, and the wall got mad at me. I don’t know what it was that I did, but the wall decided to throw me off in punishment in the middle of a climb. Too bad for me that I was seven feet up in the air and hanging upside-down at the time.

I convinced some of my other friends to climb with me after class was over and for the first time was not alone in the gym. Peter was working today, too (remember, he got a job at the gym after I took him once?). This meant all five people in the gym were graduate students and good friends with one another. I helped my friends start off on some basic routes while I warmed up. Then I got to work on a bouldering problem that I've been working on for the past week or so.

It's a fun route with a tricky start. You start on an awkward hold with one foot directly underneath you and the other stretched out to the right. The only way to hold in is to lean backwards to the left and put all of your weight into the inverted hang. The next three holds are pretty much the same: your feet are off to the right while your center of gravity is to the left, forcing an upside-down hang from the handholds.

After that, it gets tricky again. You have to turn your body around and hang to the right with your feet to the left for four holds. The final hold is the last wrench in the works. You have to square yourself up and center your weight so you can throw upwards to the last hold. Keep in mind that at this point your butt is 7 feet in the air and you're hanging onto the wall with a precarious 1" x 1/8" toehold and a single handhold (unless you remember the other foothold you’re supposed to be using). This was where the wall decided to expel me.

I had given the large safety mat to my friends who weren't as courageous as me and weren't willing to be more than 3 feet off the ground without protection. That left me with a 3-inch mat to fall on, and fall I did.

I somehow managed to get my feet under myself before I hit the ground. No one noticed I had even fallen until I fell over backwards upon returning to ground level. It was a rush to be weightless for a few minutes and I now know what the base jumping I missed out on earlier this week would have felt like had that washed-up professor not ruined my fun.

But I think the point of base jumping is to not hit the ground that hard. Hence the parachute.

Day 24 of 100 – Summary: Be nice to the climbing wall lest it throw you to the ground.