Before a fall

Most of my problems are due to the fact that, although I've aged physically, I haven't matured mentally. Normally this is a minor inconvenience - forgetting that if I drink a beer after 8pm I'll have to get up three times in the night to pee - but sometimes it's more severe, like if I blithely attempt something that was perfectly fine when I was 16. And today that happened, when I decided to go climbing.

To be fair, this was Hannah's idea, and she'd found a Groupon to a climbing gym here in Houston that she'd always wanted to try. So off we went, renting some climbing shoes, and entering into the world of "bouldering".

Bouldering is like climbing but more misconceived, where you climb up stuff but do it without a rope. Fine if your bones have retained any youthful springiness, ridiculous if you're like me. There are soft pads on the ground underneath, but when 90% of the welcome video was dedicated to "how to fall without causing yourself severe injury" I should have turned around and walked out.

But I didn't, instead being an extremely nervous Dad standing below Pete as he skipped like a mountain goat up the multicoloured handholds of a curving wall. By the time Hannah had mastered several double-black-diamond runs, and I'd felt shamed watching the many hardcore (younger) climbers ascend sheer overhanging faces, it was time to assert dominance.

I picked a purple route - so easy that it didn't even appear on the difficulty rankings - and began at the bottom, urging immobile fingers to grip rough ledges, seeing if it was possible to hug the wall with my knees and elbows, wondering if I could form my lips into some sort of suction cup for extra adhesion. After a few minutes, the ground was out of sight (i.e. roughly three feet away without my glasses on). The uncontrolled beating of my heart could have been physical exertion or simply fear, but with a little more ungainly scrabbling I pulled myself over the top of the wall, flapping like a landed fish as I willed my centre of gravity to move higher than my stomach. I clawed my way onto the small rest plateau palpably spent, empty, a shell of a man. Then had to climb the eight feet down again.

So I wouldn't say the visit was a complete success, but Pete and Hannah had enough fun that they're already talking about a return or even, God forbid, buying a month's pass. As for me, I'll be spending the next few days wondering why every muscle in my body aches, then suddenly remembering what I put myself through. Then forgetting, wondering, then remembering again. It's not just the physical things that go at my age.

Pete, a natural. Of course.

Like something from a hallucinogenic nightmare, because it is.

You don't have to tell me.

There goes Pete.

And here goes me!

 

Hannah, making it all look very easy.

I've always preferred the horizontal over the vertical.