hey all,
Just got back from Joyama again (every time I type that I'm reminded of "Yo mama" jokes...). Saturday we climbed several single pitch routes as a warm up for today's main serving of multi-pitch madness. We only got in one multi-pitch route: a 4P route called Battle Runner. We climbed it before together with our climbing instructor, and we waited for a long time to climb it today. We had to wait both at the bottom, since it was very crowded, and also about two pitches up, where a really annoying woman stopped us. She was terrible at rock climbing, constantly saying "oh! scary!" and had long, decorated nails. She had no business on a multi-pitch route, and yet there she was, blocking the way, slowing us down, and constantly getting afraid of something that ...I was about to write "isn't scary," but actually it can be. Still, I don't see many sane people walking around at night exclaiming "Wow, it's dark" for 10, 20, or 30 minute stretches. What is the point in that? Yes, rock climbing is scary. Get on with it, or get out of the way.
In any case, we got up and down without incident, and actually ran into our climbing instructor again as he was either climbing with some friends or instructing more students. I was able to tell him that we climbed the whole route without falling once, and also without resting or asking for tension. (At least I was able to. Michi has a ways to go yet.)
Although I'm feeling pretty worn out from shopping, coordinating trips, dealing with troubles at work, and the muscle/mental ache of climbing (especially multi-pitch gives me this feeling: we were separated from the ground from about 11:00 to 16:00, or 5 HOURS), it was a good weekend. Michi and I haven't had any of our huge "It's over!" fights recently, and we're probably getting better at feeling out the mood of the other. It helps that we can lose our tempers with each other, and then patch things up quickly and move on.
One of the larger projects looming over my head is a presentation I'd like to give about my stay in Japan so far, but some of the features I'd like to do are a little tricky.
Cheers
