I was thinking I’d just had a bad day on the wall. Then I opened my climbing journal to record my workout and discovered that my last workout, a week earlier, had been “a bad day.” Likewise, the workout before that, during the week between Christmas and New Year’s, had been “somewhat aimless.” Aimless and anti-productive, I discovered upon further review: Had it really been nearly two months since I’d done a 5.9 climb? My journal said it had.
While most of you are staring down Day 3 of your 2012 New Year’s resolutions, I find myself with less than five months to go on my annual birthday resolutions. Make that “first” annual birthday resolutions: When I turned 55 last May 11 I got to Googling and discovered that 55 is a somewhat pivital year for a male. Among other things, our muscles and organs begin to atrophy; we shrink, on average, 0.4 inches a year; we dehydrate more easily; our joints stiffen … . Suffice it to say that on May 11 of last year I didn’t feel I could wait seven months to set some goals, so I set 10 immediately. All with a theme of 55.
Starting Dec. 19 and continuing through the end of the year, we’re suspending our normal programming to help those of you with kids on winter break find stuff to do. Every day through year’s end we’ll throw out an idea to get you and the kids out of the house and, most importantly, have the kids exhausted upon your return. Consider it GetGoingNC.com’s gift to you.
When I wrote for newspapers, about a tenth of the information I gathered in any given day made it into print. There was limited space in the paper and I was competing with other reporters for that coveted real estate. Thus, lots of interesting stuff wound up on the cutting room floor. Then along came blogs and just like that I had a home for all my news that didn’t fit into print.
I stood behind the boulder, behind the two climbers puzzling over the boulder. Their puzzlement was interspersed with suddenly leaps into action, attempts to make a seemingly impossible leap from one not-so-generous hold about 10 feet an overhang to another modest hold perhaps 10 feet away. Interspersed with those unsuccessful attempts was the occasional bad word muttered under their breath. After each unsuccessful leap — known as a “dyno” in climbing circles — after they’d picked themselves up off the crash pad they would sidle up to a guy in a full black beard, jeans and a black jacket with a USA Climbing patch on the back.