The Year of the Second Chance: Finally, Finally, Finally a Lead Climb

So, this is very, very bad.  I was so proud of my careful maintainance of my blog during the Year of 52 and the Year of the Challenge and the Year of Living in Jordan.  And then, as the British would say, it all went pear-shaped.  I thought I had a really great idea: the Year of the Second Chance.  But somehow, I've just done a really poor job, both in terms of moving towards my goals and in writing about them (and maybe those two deficiencies are connected?).  In any case, possibly the greatest irony of the Year of the Second Chance is that the Second Chance has just been given a second chance.  How great is that?  I am pleased to write that I have finally accomplished Goal Two. 

My first lead climb.  My friend and student Kyra is on Frosted Flake, the climb next to it top roping while awaiting her turn to lead climb, too.

Back in March I wrote a post detailing the plan for the year.  The basic idea was to take five really ambitious projects or goals I'd started in previous years and see them to completion (or at least the next level).  Each was to have a specific task or product that would signify that point.  The five goals were:
1. To run a marathon.  I am happy to report that I did it!  Completed the Burlington City Marathon in late May, 2013 and wrote all about it here.
2. To become a better rock climber. The next level point on this one was to do a lead climb.
3. To become a better ice skater. Being a better skater was to be marked by being able to skate a very short combination to a bit of music.
4. To finish the book on the Millennium Development Goals I began as a group project with my students. The product, obviously, would be the actual manuscript.
5. To become proficient in French. As demonstrated by conducting myself in French for a weekend in Montreal.

So, anyway, after the marathon, thinking about these projects, and especially keeping track of them, got away from me and might have stayed that way, except that good fortune, and in several cases, my students and Jon, have intervened. Rock climbing, the subject of this post, is a case in point. 

The thing about rock climbing is that it's a bit of a dilemma for me.  On the one hand, I really enjoy it.  Out of all the things I tried during my year of 52, I think it was my favorite, and it's certainly the one that I've introduced the most other newbies to. The conundrum comes from the fact that I don't have much natural aptitude for it, and this is compounded by the fact that I never even tried it till I was in my 40s.  All of this is a long-winded way of saying it's taken me a long, long time to get to the point of this lead climb, and there were some pretty great people along the way who encouraged me to keep going.

One of the best things I've done climbing-wise was to participate last Spring Break in the Saint Michael's College Wilderness Program trip to southern Utah.  We had a great group, led by Eben Widlund from Saint Mike's and Andrea Charest, who co-owns our local climbing gym, Petra Cliffs. We camped for a week at a state campsite hit a number of area cliffs.  That trip was also my first time "mock leading". 

Eben Widlund and Andrea Charest, our leaders of the Utah Spring Break Trip.  Couldn't ask for a better pair of instructors -- they even cooked great camp food!

 

Climbing in an area called Soul Asylum.  Long climbs, but porous, slabby rock that was "sticky" for footholds and easy to hold with your hands.

Jess, an amazing SMC climber who is now a Wilderness Instructor, and I had the job of dumping our used water every night.  Now Jess and I and another instructor, Alex, staff Saint Mike's small climbing wall on Tuesday nights.
 

For those who haven't tried it (yet), there a number of different ways climbers have figured out to get up something.  There is free climbing that doesn't involve a rope at all and there is bouldering, which also doesn't use a rope, but only focuses on climbs that don't go very high up, but involve lots of tough moves and strength.  The easiest way to climb with a rope is to "top rope". This means that the rope is attached at the top of the climb, and the climber is tied to one end, and the belayer (who takes in the slack on the rope, usually from the bottom) is attached at the other end.  If the climber falls, she doesn't really fall, because the rope is holding her in place vertically.  A tougher type of climbing is "lead climbing".  Here a climber is not attached to the top, but instead brings the rope up as she goes, and hooks it into the cliff, either using bolts pre-placed in the rock (sport climbing) or by inserting special gear that is inserted to hold the rope in the cracks (trad climbing).  So, mock leading like I did in Utah is top roping, but bringing up a rope to practice clipping it into the bolts.

There's a pretty big difference between climbing indoors in a gym and outside, and I have been lucky to have some awesome partners working with me on both.  My two stalwart gym partners have been Jon, who had climbed a little before we started dating, and Amanda, my friend and former student who was one of my original teachers. There's also Kyra, a current student and Wilderness Instructor-in-training who's been climbing with me both indoors and out, and pushing us both to seize opportunities to learn new skills and try new challenges.  She's really great at anchor-setting, yet another skill you have to learn to climb outside, and she's very patient with the fact that I'm not.

Amanda is not only a great teacher and friend, she's also an amazing climber.  Jon and I always talk about the way it seems like she floats up a wall.  Here she is at Upper West Bolton in Vermont.

A couple weeks ago, Jon and I also joined Dan, a former student who was another of my regular teachers of all kinds of outdoor sports during my year of 52.  He met us on the other side of Lake Champlain, and took us for a spectacular day in the Adirondacks that included another big rock climbing first for me -- my first multi-pitch (that is basically climbing up more than one routes put together with a ledge (for belaying) in between).



In the morning of our Adirondack day we warmed up on some fun climbs,  I think the one Jon is doing was called Space Cowboy.

Jon and Dan loaded up with ropes as we get ready to head up the path at Chapel Pond for our first multi-pitch climb.

The fact that I had kicked up my climbing, both indoors and out in the last month or so re-ignited my interest in taking that next step to try a lead climb, and when Kyra pointed out that the Wilderness Program was running a day of sport climbing, we signed up and went.  And so, on a lovely October Saturday in Rumney, New Hampshire on a route called Peewee's Playhouse I finally did my first lead climb. 

Not exactly what I would have expected as a moment of Zen (especially because I managed to take a fall a couple minutes before and bark my shin pretty hard), but I was a pretty happy camper, I must say.

It was an easy route, and I still have lots and lots to learn.  But for me, it was an exciting chance to realize a goal, and be reminded that it's always better to start late, and if necessary go slow, than to be so daunted that you don't even try.
 

2013: the Year of the Second Chance

So, I've been meaning to write this post for a couple of months now, but it just wasn't coming together in my mind.  My plan for this year is a little different than in previous years, and I've been struggling with how to think about it.  And then it hit me yesterday.  For me, 2013 is the Year of the Second Chance. (Actually, even the fact that I am writing this post on March 7 rather than January 1 tends to point in that direction).

So, why "Second Chance"? The plan for this year is to focus on five big goals.  All of them were begun previously, some in the previous years of New Things (2010) and The Challenge (2011), and some even earlier than that.  But all required a level of commitment that I just haven't been able to muster to see them through, and so they are back, like bad pennies, waiting for a real plan to get them to completion.  Here's the list of goals and why to me they represent Second Chances:

1.  Become a Better Rock Climber. When I was in high school and college (in southern Idaho and northern Utah respectively) I had barely heard of the whole idea and definitely knew it had nothing to do with me.  But during the year of 52 New Things, from the first time I tried it (in a climbing gym in Nepal, of all places) I was suprised at all much fun I thought it was, and now I'd actually like to work on getting better at it.  The amazing Saint Michael's College Wilderness Program gave me my big Second Chance on this one, and on Saturday I'm headed back to Utah to have the spring break I never did when I was an undergrad at Utah State University.

I have lots and lots of people to thank for taking me climbing and giving me lessons, but probably the biggest thank you goes to Amanda, who graduated in 2011 but has stuck around Burlington to do outstanding work in combating gender-based violence and also coach her former professor on rock climbing.

2.  Run a Marathon. I imagine this one's on lots of people's life lists, and I had big plans to do it during the Year of the Challenge in 2011. But a mishap on an ill-advised run well above my pay grade at Mad River Glen that year put an end to it when I ended up on crutches.  This year, the gods smiled on me again, first by having one of my best friends and fellow New Thing/Challengista, Siham, decide that this was the year we must do a marathon.  Though it's now an open question whether she's still going to be able to complete the training with everything else on her plate, I also lucked out in finding the best possible personal coach in my boyfriend, Jon.  He's a lifelong runner and veteran of several marathons and even a 50 mile trail race, and a font of wisdom in all things running-related.  So, this is the year.  I'm signed up for the Burlington City Marathon, following Jon's  training schedule with a minimum of whining, and hoping and praying that I can finish 26.2 miles.

Jon's a good multi-tasker.  He's my boyfriend and my get-me-through-my-first marathon coach. Here he is showing me how far he expects me to run on our last day in of our recent quick trip to Puerto Rico.

 3.  Become a Better Ice Skater. When we were in elementary school in Michigan we skated on our pond and I loved it.  On and off over the years I've taken a few lessons, but something always seems to come up just when I'm starting to get a few more advanced skills.  This is the year I want to stop making excuses and make the transition to actually stringing some of those things I've learned into a sequence I can do all at once. 

4.  Finish a draft of the Millennium Development Goals Book. This is another project begun in the year of the Challenge that I managed to grind to a halt when I headed out to Jordan for the year.  Right now I'm doing an independent study with four students, one of whom was on the original student team, and we're getting a few chapters, as well as the case studies into draft form.  After that we'll be seeing if any of the other original writers can come back in for some more writing work. 

5.  Learn to Speak and Read French. I took French in 9th and 10th grades in high school, for two semesters in college, and as an audited course at Saint Mike's.  I seem to be permanently in an Intermediate French class cycle, but my hope is to use summer and fall as a time to focus more academically on goals 4 and 5.  Though Siham doesn't know it, she is part of the plan, because she is going to agree to correspond with me in Facebook in French as part of my regular practice.

When I picked these goals for 2013, the plan was to work on them all simultaneously, but in a matter of weeks I learned that was basically impossible.  So, the current working plan is to try to keep them all at least minimally in play, but focus on different ones at different times.  The order of the goals above is roughly in line with the new chronology. Each goal has some kind of built-in deadline or event to test my progress, beginning next week (March 9-16), when I head to southern Utah for a week of outdoor rock climbing with the Saint Michael's College Wilderness Program.  After that, the Burlington City Marathon is May 26.  There is a built-in deadline for a draft of the Millennium Development Goal book in that I am teaching the course that will be using it in the fall, so it has to be completed so we can use it as a text and also critique it.  French will be a focus in the fall, and will culminate in a week or weekend in a French-speaking place.  I'd like to reach my figure-skating goal in December, but still need to figure out exactly what form that would take (figure skating friends, I'm open to suggestions!).

The plan for the newest incarnation of the blog is to help keep me accountable and on-track with these goals.  I plan to write a post at least twice a month, with a focus on one or two of the goals and at least a brief statement on where the others are at.  I've talked to a lot of people who helped me out in the original Year of New Things and Year of the Challenge, and many of them have goals of their own that they're working on this year.  So, I'd like to make a request that if people have their own goals, that they write in on this post and list them, and also use the blog (or their own) as a way to keep track of their own progress.  And of course, anyone who is sharing one or more of the specific goals listed above, by all means, let me know so we can figure out how to do some work on them together.