I am so tired. completely. rock climbed for 8 hours today. and almost died again. well not really, but let me tell you, I am the climber that belayers in my group practice belaying on.
If you don’t know what belaying is, it is what the person with the “belayer” word over their head is doing below:
They are the ones that are pretty much in charge of your life for the time period that you are climbing. They stop you from falling, make sure there isn’t any slack in the rope so you don’t go crashing down and get major whip lash or death when you reach the end of your rope which is almost what happened to me.
Like I said, I am the one belayers practice belaying on.
The conversation goes kind of like this:
Me: “Hey, that would be a cool wall to climb, I think i’m going to try to climb it”
Person who has never belayed before: “I’ll belay you elizabeth”
Me: “uhh…..are you sure you want to?”
Person who has never belayed before: “Yeah, I’ve never done it before and I want to practice”
Me: “uh….okay? don’t drop me please”
Person who has never belayed before: “Don’t worry, I won’t. TRUST ME” TRUST ME?………
Those two little words that are so hard for me to believe in when it is just a rope, a little piece of metal, and the belayers strength that is hangging my life in the balance.
But I trust them anyway.
So today, I decide to climb this wall, and of course someone who has never belayed before offers to belay me, and I say okay.
So here I am, about 40 feet up on a wall, exhausted from the effort up, and I yell down, “LOWER” which means, please bring me back down to the ground safely.
Well, I slowly start to descend down the wall, when all of a sudden there is a jerk, and i go free falling for about 6 feet, freaked to death, and then another huge jerk and I come to a stop and am left dangling and scared out of my life at the moment, and i hear a “sorry” and i look and see my belayer, frantically, and desperately trying to get a good hold on to the rope so I don’t go free falling the rest of the 34 feet and crash and burn, while my wonderful guys in the group come running to rescue me.
But I guess how else is a belayer suppose to learn? In the end, all was swell and no one was hurt and we are all more experienced rock climbers because of it…right? sure.
Anyway, I don’t want to make this sound like a dangerous, crazy class, because it is. and I LOVE IT! Seriously, I LOVE rock climbing. And tomorrow I get to get up at 5am and go rock climbing for another 10 hours!!! It will be fun.
All of us in this rock climbing class have really connected and it is really cool. Like today, we all had this chalk throwing war. Who ever was climbing the wall got chalk thrown at there butt. haha, yeah, stupid, but fun. really fun. And we make up our own words for the call system. It is great.
Anyway, i’ll have to write another blog about the people in the class. Lots of different, funny people for sure! LOVE THEM ALL!
Anyway, I just got a call from my people that are in Iowa, and they are lost, so I must get off and help them. haha……life. Live it my friends!
-liz
Purify me from my sins, and I will be clean; wash me, and I will be whiter than snow.
~ Psalm 51:7
