Today was the final exam for my summer class, and after I proctored it I decided I would not jump immediately into the grading. I went home, I ate some food, I took a nap (in which I dreamed, alas, that Joe fell in love with the single most frustrating student I have ever taught), I put in my writing time. And then, my friends, I went to the climbing gym with Pete.
There was a stretch of time when climbing was our thing. Joe was mostly away at supergeek boarding school and no one had ever heard of COVID-19. Pete and I would spend a couple of evenings every week sweating our way up to the top of the wall, joined by Joe when he was around. [Insert a heavy sigh in memory of 2019: you don't know what you've got till it's gone.] Pete still goes regularly with his friends, but I could count on two hands the number of times I've climbed in the past two years. I don't enjoy their outdoor climbing options as much as the indoor walls, and they have not been great about COVID mitigation practices. Pete either climbs outside or climbs in a mask; neither option really appeals to me.
But it turns out that if you go in the middle of a weekday afternoon, you might have the place to yourself.
When you hire young adult staff in a college town, it's natural to have a lot of turnover. We used to know all of the route-setters' names: the guy who always put a toe hook in his routes, the lone female with her distinctive setting style. All of the old setters have moved on now, and the new routes are not the same.
Climbing is like a time-lagged conversation. The setter says, "Here, I am making a puzzle for you -- can you solve it?" If you have comments ("your puzzle is very hard"), you can submit them by scanning a QR code at the bottom of the route. Over time you can get a sense of what to expect from a particular setter. (Sometimes this means you are 40 feet in the air yelling "I do not like this move! Why does this setter love this move so much?")
Today I was noticing my unfamiliarity with these setters. I would stand at the bottom of the wall, trying to read the route and feeling flummoxed by their figurative handwriting. Or I would get partway up the wall and think, "Now what??" Some of it is that I just haven't been using those skills lately, but some of it is also the turnover at the gym: I don't know this new crew. I don't know what they think is fun or hard or novel.
I'm pretty sure they're all taller than me. It's a little frustrating to be climbing a route that should be within my abilities, based on its rating, only to find that I do not have the wingspan for it. Pete says maybe as I remember more climbing technique the routes will feel less reachy, but we'll have to see whether or not that's true. My guess is that most of the people setting routes are 6' men, whose imaginings about the abilities of 5'6" women are a leetle off the mark.
Anyway, climbing remains a super-fun way to make the happy neurotransmitters fizz in my brain. I sang out "DOPAMIIIINE!" as I sailed down from the top of the first route -- there's something so satisfying about solving the puzzle and seizing the topmost hold with both hands.
While I was digging up links to old climbing posts I came across this video from three years ago. You'd never know, watching it, how many tries it took me to figure out the moves at 0:10-0:16. Maybe it's a good time to get back in the groove.
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