YAHOUUUUUUUU.
Ahem.
I would've been waving my fist while typing that one too, except I can neither lift it nor clench it (but can apparently still contact juggle) but...
I made it up the 5.5 that I always have trouble with, on the first try.
Then I figured, I just belayed the purplehaired girl up the tricky 5.6 with the letter-shaped holds that I got stuck a metre off the ground on last time. I should try it.
I did.
All the way up. Everyone else stopped by at some point and just sort of went "Hey, uh... Wow, you're all the way up there already, eh?"
Then I tried the green 5.6, the forty foot one, (you can tell I'm Canadian if I use both feet and metres in the same breath) and drove my fist into the spot where the wall meets the ceiling the way all the real climbers do when they finish a climb.
Two weeks ago I couldn't even get a foot off the ground on that one.
Then I tried the red 5.6, the one next to the green one, the one where the handholds were WAY too slippery and shallow and I couldn't get past this one spot no matter what.
My first rest break was with my foot on that hold, not my hand.
I banged the top of that one too.
Then I tried a few 5.7's and my arms were throbbing by then and I didn't even make it onto the first footholds properly on any of them.
Not even a foot off the ground.
Just like that green 5.6 .
Which I did again for good measure.
While everyone else was in the changing rooms.
While my arms were whining. My fingers slipping. My wrists singing their "we're going to make you pay for this big time lady" song.
I banged it in the exact same spot as the first time.
That spot is burned into my memory.
That green climb was right up the wall beside Mr. Pyke's yellow 5.9 - the impossible one from last week, and when we both started off he said "race ya" and in my head I figured I'd be avoiding his feet until I abandon the climb partway up.
You know, that may actually be the first time I saw the top of his beautiful head, while he hung in a spot that is going to be impossible to me for a very, very long time, and while I used the pride of being on the grown-up wall to push me onward.
(Onwards and upwards, as TSOTL used to like us to say. If you get that reference you get bonus cuddles. ;)
None of this is spectacular. None of this is anything that any of the guys couldn't do on their first tries. None of this is impossible and it certainly didn't impress anyone in that gym...
...except me, who finally feels like I've attempted the sport for real.
And in the sushi restaurant afterwards, when the foot of the table felt like a foothold and the rice-paper walls were beginning to look like fingerholds...
Steph was right. I might just be hooked. I think I might just be ready to get my own gear.
Impossible. I honestly feel like I did something utterly impossible tonight. There's no way I should have just snapped and made it up any of those climbs, let alone four of them.
I love it when that happens. But y'know what? I can think of worse addictions.
And that ice-climber last spring in the bar in Chamonix?
I understand the light behind his eyes.
And if that's a great way to meet death, so be it. It's a hell of a way to breathe life.
Shit. One day you think maybe I could?
Maybe. In the meantime, one day maybe I'll make it off the ground on a 5.7 ...
Cuz that red 5.6 is going to be my warmup climb on Sunday.