The climbing wall

I found out a new fun activity today...the climbing wall! I've never really climbed before. Although I've never been strength challenged, I've always been a little inflexible - so I never really gave climbing much thought.

But it's really fun! Fun doesn't get much easier than this. You just strap on a harness, a helmet and then all you do is climb. Doesn't get much simpler than that!

I was volunteering at the County Parks and as a volunteer I helped their staff manage the kiddie line at the climbing wall for a private party. Hoardes of kids kept lining up to scale the walls. Although I've always loved kids... four hours of getting them to get into harnesses and slapping on helmets makes for some pretty intense physical labor. Give me a couple of hundred sacks to lug around any day! Not to mention that a lot of them were quite excited about being able to climb the wall and so wouldn't stop shouting and screaming!

It was cute in the beginning, but got old very quickly! My ears are still a little hard of hearing when one girl of about 8 started shrieking to her parents about how excited she was to climb and how they should watch her make it to the very top! And all this with my poor eardrums a mere 10 inches from her open mouth!

Well anyways, the harness changing for the kids was really worth it, coz at the end us volunteers could go up and down the wall for free. I really wasn't planning on climbing the wall, but after seeing all the kids go at it I figured why not give it a go. So it didn't take a couple of other volunteers much to get me to get strapped in and doggedly swarm up the wall. It was surprisingly easy and even more fun! And I actually managed to do the second most difficult climb. Coming down though was my favorite part. Once you get all the way to the top, you just lean back, keep both hands on the harness and rapel your way down. I was a little disappointed to find that we had to pack up. I envied the little kids that kept coming back again and again to climb the wall.

I know I'm going to volunteer again for the county parks so I can try out some of the other climbs on the wall. Hopefully we'll have to serivice some playboy centerfolds this time instead of a bunch of screaming kids.... not that there's a difference... I mean it would just be so much more fun getting the former into harnesses and making sure they had the harnesses on correctly. :D. (If not playboy centerfolds, even the local cheerleading team will do. After all for us volunteers it's our work that comes first)