Rock Climbing

After work on Tuesday I went with a coworker to see Drag Me to Hell, Sam Raimi's new movie. Other than that Mac guy, it was pretty awesome genre fare. There were a lot of gross-out gags that had me cringing. At one point early on, I was really sorry to be eating at that moment.

I went rollerblading Monday, rode the bicycle Wednesday and Friday and hiked the hill of life 3 times on Thursday.

I slept a lot later on Saturday than I have in a long time, until 8:45. I puttered about for a while, then I went to the South Austin Rock Gym for the first time. I had a bit of trouble finding the place at first, since it's in an industrial complex with very few signs to tell you what's inside. When I got there around 10:30 I found it was a generous space, but not huge, with the walls covered in rock climbing holds. I signed a release and put on rental climbing shoes, then got a quick lesson in belaying. I didn't know they didn't have an auto-belay system, so without a partner I couldn't do the walls that require ropes. I did get some pretty good use out of the bouldering walls, starting out with a few easy routes. I was a little uneasy with the height at first, being about 10 feet off the ground with only some padding to break my fall. I felt a little more confident after I completed a route or two and made it back to the ground safely. I tried some of the harder routes, but didn't make it very far, so I just played around, using whatever holds I wanted. By noon my arms were getting pretty tired and I was losing grip strength, but I didn't want to leave, I wanted to get my money's worth. Since there was nobody on the high roped walls, I did some climbing and traversing staying within ~8 feet of the floor. I finally threw in the towel around 1 when I could barely grip the easiest holds. Overall, it was pretty fun, and a pretty good workout- in addition to the burning forearms I was sweating despite the A/C. It was kind of expensive, and not really applicable to the Rainier climb, so I won't be in a rush to go back. I went and had lunch at Home Slice, then went home and took a nap. Once I finally woke up and dusted off the cobwebs, I had some dinner and went to check out the sale at REI. I bought a few things, then went and parked along the hike-and-bike trail. I set out on a jog and actually did better than I thought I might. I maintained a jogging pace all the way from MoPac to Lamar, about a mile and a half. I got into a decent pace, keeping my heart rate around 175. I took something of a breather on the Pfluger bridge and stretched a bit, then started jogging on the other side of the river. I didn't make it nearly as far, I slowed down to a walk when I got to the Barton Creek bridge, then started to jog again at town lake. I barely made it any distance before my legs started hurting and I slowed back to a walk for the rest of the way back to the car.

I woke up close to 9 again on Sunday, but had a hard time getting out of bed since I'd stayed up until 2:30 for no reason Saturday night. After breakfast I packed up the big bag and went to the greenbelt to do the hill of life. I was sweating pretty good the first time up the hill, and was soaked the second time up. I went down a third time and went all the way down to the water. I took off my boots and went in. The water wasn't all that cold, but it was refreshing. We've been in a drought for so long, the creek is barely flowing- I was at the only falls with water. That made it a little popular, but it was such a hot day there weren't many people in the greenbelt. There were four people there when I got there, then two more showed up, chatted with two that were already there, then those two left. I had a bit of lunch while I drip-dried. When I was mostly dry I put my boots back on for one last trip up the hill. I thought about doing a little bit extra, but it was hot and I was tired, so I just went home and took a nap. After an overly long ~2 hour nap I took a shower and had dinner at Doc's, then watched the drag race for a while.