Long weekend: The Game, rock climbing

[flexagon]

I read The Game this weekend and found it ever so entertaining, not at all what I was expecting. It’s bound like the Bible with gilt edging and a built-in red bookmark, and I always thought it was about pickup artistry. Nope, it’s a memoir about the pickup artist scene, MUCH more about the crazy in-scene dynamics (between boys, natch) than about how to get a woman to sleep with you quickly. (If you want to read that one, it’s Rules of the Game, also by Neil Strauss — and you’ll recognize all the authors of the other books that Amazon finds for you at that point.) It was a great read. As with any subculture (see also Word Freak, Lego Love etc) there are some wild characters; and this one comes with bonus hints on how to get a threesome started. I’m not sure what anyone objects to about this book — okay, so you see characters doing some shady things (distract a woman so she doesn’t object to you feeling her breasts, hmm), but at NO point does it suggest that lying to or mistreating women is okay, and it fully acknowledges the downside of getting good at pickup while having no clue about relationships.

Then on Sunday I went rock climbing with heisenbug, making up for both of us going rock climbing with others in the past but never each other. We were taking the Learn the Ropes class at BKB Somerville, preparing to get our belay cards. It was great to find that our teacher was someone I knew from the acro world -- I see now that rock climbing is where he’s really got game -- and I learned more about the figure 8 knot that climbers tie. I also learned more about not holding on too tightly to the grips with my hands, and I was able to scamper up a 5.9 and a 5.10a without much forearm fatigue (the bug had a harder time with this and tired out his forearms quickly).

The 5.10b I tried still seemed impossible though, due apparently to all the technique I don’t have. The teacher taught me how to do a swivel that got me one or two grips farther than where I got stuck on my own, but then I was stuck again. If I took lessons and learned the swivel, he says, I’d soon be warming up on 5.11s. Who knows... it’s not currently a goal.

Long weekends are delicious, because I did all that and defragged my computer’s registry and had sexytimes and got a bunch of work done (mostly just on Friday, but still).

Comments

[triesticity.livejournal.com]

Yay rock climbing! I went yesterday, too, in Philly, and learned that either BKB here has some grade inflation happening on their routes, or Go Vertical in Philly has the opposite problem. :P

[flexagon]

Interesting! I don't know anything about Philly, but I DO know that a route with grade whatever (say, 5.9) is gonna be easier on the west coast than here in Boston.

I climbed a 5.10c once in Sunnyvale CA, my first time climbing, and the biggest baddest thing I've managed to do in Boston, with more experience/help is 5.10a.

[triesticity.livejournal.com]

Interesting. I've only ever climbed at BKB and Go Vertical, so I have little basis for comparison, and I hardly top-rope at all, but these days when bouldering at BKB I'm doing most V1 or V1+ routes within a few tries (except in the room where the walls are aggressively slanted), while yesterday at Go Vertical there were V0s I couldn't finish. I also couldn't do the one V1- I found, though I almost finished it, and there was a V1 I almost finished, too.