Can you smell what the rock is cooking?

Little known fact about me: I have an irrational fear of falling.  Off something high.  Down a steep slope.  Through the glass bottom of an observation deck (thanks, Canada).  When I hike on a steep trail, I stay as close to the inside of the trail as I can.  When I reach the top of something, I stay as far back from the edge as possible.  I’m not at all afraid of heights (airplanes? roller coasters? skyscrapers?  No biggie.), I’m just terrified of falling from those things (my worst nightmare as a kid who had a season pass to Great Adventure was Rolling Thunder breaking down at the top of the first climb and being forced to walk down those rickety stairs on the side).

So you’d think that rock climbing would be a total no-go for me.  Au contraire! You see, rock climbing involves a harness.  And ropes.  And someone that theoretically knows what to do with that harness and rope so that if I fall, I go about 2 inches instead splatting 40 feet to the ground.

What on earth would make me even want to test this theory?  Second little known fact about me: Ask me to do something new, weird, odd, or different, and most likely I’ll say yes first. (It’s how I wound up at a lecture on serial killers.  I think John Wayne Gacy is my favorite.  He was a clown, for crying out loud!)  Then I’ll remember that I’m scared of and/or hate that thing, but I’ll have already said yes and don’t want to wuss out.  So I go.  That’s pretty much what happened the first time I went rock climbing.  A friend asked me if I wanted to go, I said yes, paid a ridiculous amount of money for a Groupon, and headed off to Brooklyn before thinking “what the hell am I getting myself into?”.

But I actually had fun!  And, even more shocking, I realized that rock climbing was one of the only activities that actually made me concentrate.  Not think about the soap opera playing out in my head.  Or the soundtrack to my life that’s on continual repeat.  Or the lists of crap that I have to remember to do (or at least to write down and then ignore).  No, the only thing I was thinking about was how to get to the top of the course.

I loved it.  So naturally, I went one more time, realized how ridiculously expensive it was, and never went again.

Then, my sister sent me a Groupon for an outdoor rock climbing class.  Well, I was obviously a pro from my two times rock climbing indoors, so I readily signed up.  We woke up at the asscrack of dawn one Saturday morning, drove over an hour to some state park in northwestern Jersey (and obviously stopped at Wawa before we headed to the boonies), and met up with our instructor, a Seth Rogen sound-alike (and it took me about an hour to figure out who he reminded me of and why.  It drove me crazy for that entire hour.).

Now, being the pro that I was at rock climbing (and hiking), I knew enough to wear the proper clothes for climbing and shoes for the hike up, I knew how to put the harness on.  Hell, I even knew to cut my nails beforehand so that I could get a good grip on the rock.  This was going to be a piece of cake! (Yummmm, cake….)

Ok, maybe not a piece of cake.  It was totally fun.  But there were so many things that I didn’t expect.

1. It was way harder than indoor rock climbing.  By harder, I mean the freaking rock is hard.  I had bruises all on my legs from kneeling on things and pulling myself up.  Also, it was early April, so it was still fairly cold out.  And wet.  And when it’s cold and wet out, the rock is cold and wet.  Which means…
2. It’s really hard to climb when you can’t feel your fingers after five minutes of gripping a cold, wet rock. Good thing you’re hooked up to a harness and it’s totally acceptable to just hang (ha!) for a minute while you get the feeling back in your fingers.
3. The ropes for outdoor rock climbing (or at least the ones that we used) have more give than indoor rock climbing.  While they’ll still obviously catch you, you will go for a bit of a bigger drop if you fall off the rock outside.  It’s like a fun little roller coaster.  Where the only thing holding you on is some fabric around your crotch.
4. Ummmm, you’re outside.  Meaning there’s bugs.  And animals.  And sun.  And clouds.  And cold.  And heat.  And that’s all within 5 minutes.  I changed clothes so many times people probably thought I had clothing tourettes or something.
5. In the group that I went with, there were about 18 people and three instructors.  Three instructors means three belayers (the people that hold the other end of the rope to make sure that you don’t go flying if you fall).  Three belayers means only three routes to climb.  Which means a lot of waiting around and watching other people climb.  Which is totally fun (you learn a lot and rock climbers in general are very happy and supportive people).  However, 6+ hours of looking up at people on a rock means that your neck gets sore.  I didn’t realize this until the next day when I couldn’t turn my head more than 20 degrees to the left.  For three days.  No amount of Tiger Balm could help me.

So, I’ve learned my lessons.  Next time I’ll know better. More layers.  Be rude and don’t watch other people.  Wear bug spray and sunscreen and reapply often.

I’m already planning to go indoor rock climbing again in a few weeks (with a still pretty ridiculously expensive LivingSocial deal).  And trust me, the next time anyone says to me “want to go rock climbing?” (as if that happens EVER, since I have such a vast and diverse group of outdoorsy friends), I will most definitely be saying “hells yea, climb on!"