My First Man Date

I go to the rock climbing gym twice a week to shred the gnar (i.e., get my climb on).  I usually climb with a guy named Rick who is really good (at climbing).  Last Thursday, Rick texted me to ask if I wanted to climb Seneca Rocks in West Virginia with him last weekend.  After reading all of the stories that I could find online about people dying at Seneca Rocks, I resigned myself to my fate and accepted the invitation.

Friday I left work early so that I could pick Rick up at 4pm for the four hour drive to Seneca Rocks.  We stopped in Harrisonburg and ate at a random pizza joint that served pizza slices bigger than yo momma.  I ran over an enormous opossum right before getting to the campground.  It was a nice night for camping.

The next morning, we stopped at the Macksville Mart to buy delicious, hot, breakfast sandwiches and sandwiches to take for lunch.  They did, however, put provolone on my bacon and egg biscuit breakfast sandwich, which I thought seemed particularly un-american (no pun intended (if that could be considered a pun)).  We then headed off to the staging area for our climb.

Here's the view of the mountain from the parking lot staging area.

We walked around the backside of the mountain for our climb.  The hike to the base of the cliff was a little sketchy, mostly because of all of the leaves and pine needles that made everything slick.  We climbed up two or three ledges to finally get to the base of the cliff.  We climbed a route called "Soler," named after the guy who first climbed it way back when.  Rick led the route (climbed first and placed protection) and I followed (climbed second and took out the protection).  It was absolutely terrifying.  In the worst possible way.  The first one hundred feet of the climb were so exposed, climbing sideways up the mountain and constantly facing the sheer drop.  I honestly considered wimping out.  I tried to distract myself from the terror I was feeling by repeating "I don't want to die."  When I got to the first belay station on an 18" ledge one hundred feet up and Rick asked me how I was doing on a scale of 1 to 10, I mustered the courage to say, "let's not talk about it."  I was feeling more positive than usual.

 Me on the first ledge.

 A cool but confusing panorama shot of me on the first ledge.  The rock wall on the right of the frame is the same wall, just behind Rick.  The view was really nice, and while I belayed Rick from this spot, I fluctuated between feeling fine and wanting to weep.

Rick reached the top, and it was my turn to climb the remaining one hundred feet to the top.  The second pitch of the climb was actually much more fun than the first--a more technical climb, and probably more exposure, as it was overhung at times, but at least I basically just looked at the rock and had to focus on the next move.

 Me getting close to the top.  I'm probably 170' from the ledge where we started, and nearly 1,200' from the valley floor, which made it all feel that much higher.

I made it to the top, hugged the biggest rock on the summit and never stood up.  It was extremely windy and cold.  The summit was probably four feet wide at that point, with a 200' foot drop on the side we climbed, and an equally sheer 300' drop on the other side.  I signed the summit register kept in an ammo box on the summit (so you can verify that I was there).  By the way, I've read since Saturday that this is the only summit east of the Devil's Tower in Wyoming that requires class 5 climbing (technical climbing/ropes/protection/etc.).

After sitting around for a minute, a couple other guys made it to the summit, and we teamed up with them to set up the 200' rappel back down to the base of the cliff.  We ended up climbing on the same cliff with those two guys and a couple of girls that were with them for the rest of the day.  I spent most of the time belaying other climbers and freezing my rear off.  It snowed a little, and the sun now was on the other side of the rocks.  We decided to climb to the notch of the mountain to rappel down the sunny side to finish the day.

 This is us going through the notch of the mountain (if you look at the first picture, you'll see the notch right in the middle of the mountain).  I'm the one sitting down.

This is me rappelling down from the notch.  We rappelled off of a big tree.

After getting everything packed back away in the car, we went to a free pig roast and concert being put on at one of the climbing schools in Seneca Rocks.  The pig meat was delicious.  We stood around a bonfire that the climbing school folks built inside a gutted propane grill, which was weird but worked really well, while we listened to some old guys play Tom Petty and Rolling Stones songs.  Then Rick and I left to drive four hours back home.

I've determined that I must overcome my fear of heights.

Lately

Here's a rundown of what we've been up to lately.

Eli -

Eli is almost nine months. I can't believe it! He started worm-crawling over a month ago. His skills have quickly evolved from this:

To this:

To this:

Now he's all over the place and into everything. He mostly likes to unplug our wireless router and his monitor. He takes everything off the shelf in the kitchen that houses all the kids markers/play dough/ craft supplies. He finds lint or dust bunnies on the floor and promptly puts them in his mouth. When I try to put actual food in his mouth (anything other than baby food) like tiny cheese pieces or bread, he spits it out immediately.

Case in point: He hates crawling in grass, but eating it?

No problem.

He loves bath time and now he plays peek-a-boo. He's pretty serious, though, and people try to get him to smile at them wherever we go and he'll just stare back at them stone-faced.

He doesn't sleep through the night, yet. He usually wakes up once around 4. He's on a bottle, now. That transition went pretty smoothly compared to when we did that with Sam and Afton, thankfully. He takes a morning nap around 9:30 for about an hour, then another nap around 1:30 that lasts from 1-2 hours. He likes all fruity baby foods and he likes sweet potato baby food. He peed on Dan's head yesterday.

Afton -

I thought that when Afton started kindergarten she would talk my ear off everyday about the things they do, but she doesn't, really. She likes school and only has meltdowns when she thinks they're going to have some sort of drill. (Fire drill, hurricane drill, tornado drill, lockdown drill, it's kind of ridiculous.) I had to bribe her. I told her that if she didn't cry during the next drill, I would buy her a frosty. It worked! She hasn't cried during a drill since. She likes the "resource" time during school. That's when they get to go to the library or music or PE or art, or French.

She does not like omelets.

She is very creative. She loves to draw and create things. This is a dalmatian. She still loves to dress up and changed costumes at least 4 times yesterday alone. Captain America, Spider-Man, Cinderella, and Rapunzel.

She got her first loose tooth last night and started to cry because she said, "I don't want to lose my teeth until I'm a grown-up."

Sam -

Sam is loving second grade. His teacher is super nice. He forgot his lunch the other day and I didn't notice until his lunch time was just ending. I raced over to the school only to find that his teacher had helped him through the hot lunch line. (I don't think he minded missing his PB&J since it was chicken nuggets, french fries, and chocolate milk day...)

He plays soccer and he really likes it this year. He still likes to build things with legos and blocks and he plays with his hot wheels tracks all the time, too.

His front teeth are FINALLY growing back in!

He still loves to read, too. The other morning he told us he had gotten The Old Man and the Sea off the shelf and had read it in one night. Last night he stayed up until 10:30 reading Harriet the Spy and when I went to check on him this morning, he was reading in bed until he finished the whole thing.

Me -

I had grand visions of all the things I would be able to do once the two older kids went to school. That's not happening at the speed at which I thought it would... It's hard to get anything done when Eli is awake! I have done some organizing and some baking.

This is one of the prettiest cakes I've ever made. It tasted pretty great, too, but it was more work than I thought it was going to be.

I'm coming around to pumpkin baked goods. The pumpkin muffins with chocolate chips were good.

I reupholstered our dining room chairs. They really needed it.

I volunteered to be in charge of book club for church, so I spent a good chunk of time this last week trying to finish the book I'd selected before I hosted our meeting on Wednesday night. A Tree Grows in Brooklyn. Great book.

Afton finally lets me do her hair before school now. Hooray!

I had been in a great habit of taking Eli for a walk around the neighborhood after we dropped the kids off at school, then putting him down and working out. Then rainmageddon came and it's been raining for a week straight. I'm still working out, but the walks have ceased. I'm looking forward to doing that again. We were supposed to have family pictures taken last Saturday. It rained. Then we moved it to yesterday. It rained again. Here's hoping next Saturday is sunny!

Dan -

 Dan has been really busy lately with work and church stuff. Eli and I went downtown to meet him last week and watch the UCI World cycling competitions. We saw guys doing a 100-mile course around Richmond.

It was pretty neat.

Dan's dream of owning a grill has been realized. Before the rains came, we used it three times in one week.

 He also bought some patio chairs to go with the hand-me-down table the old owners left.

Dan continues his rock climbing love and he's also been running a lot.

His home project list always seems to get longer and longer! He's amazing and we are so lucky to have him.

That's the latest for us!