An unexpected invitation
Oct. 9th, 2013 08:10 pmJust as I was thinking I ought to arrange to do something this evening — my plans involved taking some jumpers to be dry cleaned! — a text arrived inviting me out for the evening. Result!
As always we went climbing. I managed a nice clean send of a 6a I'd fluffed earlier in the week, completed a rather scrappy 6b that I'd previously thought utterly impossible, and got far enough with a couple of other 6bs that I think I'll probably complete them in the next week or two. R managed to conquer a couple of routes she'd struggled with on Sunday — even if she did have to stop and chalk up 5 to 10 times on the way up one of them.
Finishing up, we encountered a minor crisis: the end of the webbing on one of R's rucksack straps had got caught in the door of the locker below and she couldn't get it out. I gained some kudos for having been right to point out the potential for disaster when she put her bag away, lost it again for being a smarty-pants, and then got it back in spades by successfully using a one of the cards in my wallet — one of the ones I didn't mind losing — to work it free.
Happily — or perhaps not! — it was exactly the sort of crisis I'm good defusing: my father's very prone to doing exactly this sort of thing, so I've had lots of time to become very adept at coming up with a neat, practical solution to minor but potentially very annoying failures of common sense because, well, someone has to the be the practical one...
As always we went climbing. I managed a nice clean send of a 6a I'd fluffed earlier in the week, completed a rather scrappy 6b that I'd previously thought utterly impossible, and got far enough with a couple of other 6bs that I think I'll probably complete them in the next week or two. R managed to conquer a couple of routes she'd struggled with on Sunday — even if she did have to stop and chalk up 5 to 10 times on the way up one of them.
Finishing up, we encountered a minor crisis: the end of the webbing on one of R's rucksack straps had got caught in the door of the locker below and she couldn't get it out. I gained some kudos for having been right to point out the potential for disaster when she put her bag away, lost it again for being a smarty-pants, and then got it back in spades by successfully using a one of the cards in my wallet — one of the ones I didn't mind losing — to work it free.
Happily — or perhaps not! — it was exactly the sort of crisis I'm good defusing: my father's very prone to doing exactly this sort of thing, so I've had lots of time to become very adept at coming up with a neat, practical solution to minor but potentially very annoying failures of common sense because, well, someone has to the be the practical one...