climb every....wall 

Friday, January 4, 2008 - Posted by Amanda Bast
Yesterday afternoon, I flicked on the TV to find that it was on the weather channel. This normally is not a special event, but at this point in time, they were doing the weather report for the Tobermory to Wiarton area. I then experienced a sharp pang of longing. I want to be at the cottage. Right now. Of course, this subsided once reality set in. The cottage is closed and will not be open until April or May.

Strangely enough, I picked up the phone later that day to hear "MAAAAAAAAAAAAANDIE!" and knew right away who was calling. It was none other than Justin (aka Doon), one of my Miller Lake buddies.

Now before I continue, I must tell you that the Miller Lake crew (Justin, Taylor the celiac, Shannon, Alex, and sometimes Steve, Matt and Trudy) have this strange power over me. They can convince me to do athletic things that I would not normally do. If anyone else would suggest that I get dragged behind a boat and potentially break some limbs, I wouldn't necessarily agree to it. But these guys...well they're a different story. This past summer, they got me out wake boarding (this comes after me nearly giving up on water skiing in previous summers) resulting in only minor injuries.

Yesterday, Justin wanted to go rock climbing. It took some convincing, but I agreed, because it was an excuse to wear sweatpants outside of the house, and because I thought that they would be entertaining enough to sit and watch if I couldn't do it.

We get to the Grotto in Guelph, and I was immediately intimidated. Everyone in the stupid place had stupid big muscles and looked stupidly good in all their stupidly amazing climbing gear and their stupid bodies were in stupidly good shape. It was...stupid. When I'm intimidated, it comes out as funny, joking, loud complaining, but I'm really scared out of my mind. If you were there last night, you would have heard me wondering out loud if I was going to loose teeth, break something or die.

Shan took the first trip up the wall, did well, and then it was my turn. Climbing this particular wall was uneventful and pretty straight forward. I was up, tapped the ceiling, and then looked down. Dangling by one tiny rope when you are 36 feet up results in quite the rush. Coming back down is also quite the rush. I had a little more trouble on my last wall, due to tiredness, and excessive laughter ("That rock looks like a *insert inappropriate body part here*, Mandie!") We spent the rest of the evening watching Trudy and Doon compete on the difficult walls. And after Doon jumped off a wall (about 10 feet up) with no harness, we went home.

It was a cool evening, and successfully satisfied my cottage longing (for a little while, at least). I'm definitely going again, if anyone wants to join me. It's totally bizarre that I'm enjoying athletics. I challenge you to find another sport that I will like.