A Peek Into My Mind

Something that I’d been wanting to do for a long while now was to try rock climbing. When this interest sparked into my head, I immediately thought of my friend, Chester. We were classmates in colleges and became good friends. I knew from seeing his photos that he’s an avid rock climber and has scaled massive geological formations in places like Joshua Tree National Forest.

So, i pinged him!
I asked him if we could get together to go rock climbing. I knew he had a membership to an indoor rock climbing gym. We settled on the date and kept it! Woot!

I went to Chester’s place first. I hadn’t been there since he graduated, about 5 years ago! His place is still the same. I saw his parents and talked to them briefly. His parents are lovely and they smile a lot. I was glad that they didn’t remember me, because the last time I encountered his parents, I was laughing my bum off watching Van Wilder, but I didn’t even know that his parents and grandma were in the other room praying the rosary. Oops!

Ok, so back to rock climbing!! Hangar 18 in Upland, is where we went. Driving up the street I knew which building would be the gym because of the look of it. It was just a big, huge, tall “square” or I guess, “cube”.

So, thats the inside of the gym. Pretty cool, right? When we got there, there were already people hanging from the ceiling upside down. There were also little kids, around 7-10 years of age climbing with their parents!

Here’s Chester. He was my belayer. What’s a belayer, you ask? Let me try to explain.
When you go up the wall, you need to be secured with a harness and rope. Every time you climb further up the “mountain” or wall, the belayer will pull back on the rope, so that in case you lose your grip and fall back, you won’t fall to the ground. Is that right, Chester?

Of course I wasn’t going to leave this post before showing you all that I actually climbed the wall!! I made it to the top! WOOT! This particular wall I scaled has a small incline, so as I was approaching that part of the wall, I started to get scared. I had to stop a few times and breath deeply to calm myself. I called back to Chester, “I’m scared!! I don’t know if I can go any further!” But, Chester, being the great support system yelled back, “No! You can do it! Keep going!!” As I was about the scale the incline I thought to myself, “Chester isn’t going to let me fall. Besides, I’m wearing a harness!” The photo is a bit blurry, but thats what I get for letting someone else  use my slr without prepping them first. I totally failed, because I brought my small point & shoot camera, but the battery was dead.

It’s kinda fun coming down from the wall because you’re like, bouncing back down attached to a rope!

Here’s one more picture of Chester as he scales a wall without a harness or rope!
“Hey! You climbed hard enough to take your shirt off!!” That’s a running joke him and his friend, Paul has.
Oh, you don’t get it? Well, maybe in the Day 70 photo– you’ll figure out the meaning. LOL.

THANKS for taking me indoor rock climbing, Chester!
Comp Sci till we die!
NOT! I didn’t even get a job using that degree!
HA!