Wall climbing!

I went out tonight with a new friend, Sanjuanita, to try the climbing wall at a local sporting goods store. We chose to do it because it was our first time going out to do something together, and we decided to make a big deal out of doing something that neither one of us have ever done before. I have been thinking a lot lately about being stuck, about ruts, and what I need to do to try to break out of them. Sanjuanita was game, so we met and paid the fee, only $3 a climb to the ceiling, if you also got their special members card, which Sanjuanita had already.

I watched a kid swarming up the wall for about ten minutes before Sanjuanita arrived. He made it look easy. So we paid the fee and signed the intimidating and stupidly insane-to-sign waiver (no, we will not sue the store in case of injury even if the store is determined to be negligient. I asked the hunky young man acting as the rope monitor, "You won't drop the rope, will you?" He thought about it for a moment and said, "Naahhh.")

Not knowing any better, we each paid for two climbs. The wall was two stories high. I went first.

Omigosh. This was the right thing to pick to do. It was safe, I know, but still waaayyyy outside my normal thing-to-do and comfort level. I realized, belatedly, only when I was harnessed up and went to stand at the easiest face, that the wall sloped back toward you the farther you climbed, so that you weren't climbing at a 90 degree angle. I started up.

I am sure it was most amusing for the onlookers. I was noisy, I realized later. My arms got tired very quickly, and I would yelp when my weight shifted unexpectedly and transferred to the rope. And I would make loud "gggrrrrraaarrrghhh!" sounds as I struggled to hoist myself up. I should have been using my legs more, I realized, but I difficulty levering myself up. I am no lightweight. "Sanjuanita!" I cried, stuck at one point, my arms cramping, "I should have done more weight-lifting!"

I got halfway up and got stuck. I couldn't pull myself up because my arms cramped every time I tried. So I pushed away from the wall and hung from the harness and told the monitor to lower me to the ground. ("Whhhheeeeeeeeee!!!!!!")

When I got safely to the ground, I was sweating and trembling and laughing. I scrambled out of the harness and Sanjuanita took her turn.

She got about as far as me, halfway up. She was troubled by her shoes, which were apparently not quite fitting right. So she was lowered to the ground and after a kid went (scrambling right up, the show-off), I tried again.

I got a little higher, about ten minutes of climbing, and although I pushed off the wall several times and tried shaking out my hands as I hung in the harness, my arms cramped every time I tried tackling the wall again. So I got lowered again, still shy of the goal.

Sanjuanita looked at me and looked at the wall and laughed. "I'm not going to try again tonight."

I nodded, entirely understanding.

"But we'll come back."

I grinned at her as I scrambled out of the harness again and reached for my own shoes. "Yes, we'll come back."

"It might take us three or four more tries to get to the top."

I looked back at the wall. "It might."

"But we'll get there."

"Definitely."

Sanjuanita looked at the wall, too, and a little grin curled the corner of her mouth. "And then maybe we go bungee jumping."

We laughed, and adjourned to Baker Square for pie.

Help the two of us think of things to do if we get together again on future Friday nights (after we conquer the wall). Something to give us new experiences, stretch us a bit. Ideas? Leave them in a comment. Thanks.

Here were some ideas we already had:

Take an art class, something we've never done before. Watercolors. Scrapbooking. Photography.

Take a cake decorating class.

Take an auto repair class.

Go salsa dancing.

Go line dancing.

Go to movies, some genre that we usually never see (although I still draw the line at horror movies; I won't see 'em.)

Try a restaurant or cuisine we've never tried before.

Thoughts?

J.K. Rowling the writer?

Remember my earlier post which examined some of the critics' responses to the Harry Potter books, recognizing some of the threads present in Joanna Russ's How to Suppress Women's Writing? (She wrote it, but it isn't high art, literary, sophisticated. She wrote it, but she doesn't deserve the fame. She wrote it but it's too popular, and therefore not worthy of the attention of people with really superior taste. She wrote it, but it's about silly little childish things (i.e., like friendship, courage, self-sacrifice and death). She wrote it, but it's really just escapism.

Well, now the plot thickens. Now there is someone out there claiming she didn't write the books at all.

A Norwegian film director has sparked a debate in Norway over whether JK Rowling really is the enormously successful author who launched the Harry Potter craze, or whether she's just a good actress fronted by multinational commercial interests.

As cruisedirector put it, "Yeah, because of course no single mother could accomplish all that she did. . . Now I just want to know where I audition to become the next fake famous writer and live in a castle and meet Alan Rickman."

Thanks to cruisedirector for the link.