5.9

I take it back. Bouldering is not better than top-roping. Bouldering is just different. I've realized climbing a wall – where the fear of falling ads to the challenge and the thrill – is an equally valuable and often more fun kind of climbing. I spent much of this past weekend top-roping and I've fallen in love.

I can get up to 5.9 routes on the wall now, though I can't do them clean (or flash, I believe it's called, when you ascend the route without falling or resting in your harness).

Some things I've worked on and learned, both in the Saturday technique course and with friends who are awesome climbers:

1. There are three very useful moves to get you up the wall: drop-knee (in which you bring your inside knee in close to the wall and turn your body towards the hold in front of you), back step (in which you step one foot up onto a hold behind you to reach a hold behind you) and flagging (in which you counter-balance your weight by bringing one foot up to smear without using a foot hold). I can do all of them in practice, but using them on a climb... not so much. My technique goes to shit when I'm halfway up a wall and breathing hard and trying not to fall off a tiny crimp because my hands are all sweaty. I must look like a frog trying to hold onto a tiny branch that's way to small for me, rather than a butterfly gracefully floating up towards the top of a rose bush. Which is why practicing laps on a 5.6 route are ideal, and why I really need to do more laps.

2. Falling is not a bad thing once to get used to it. Falling is not nearly as scary as I'd imagined it would be. If you fall, the rope will catch you – quite smoothly in fact, because the rope stretches. This means, of course, that you swing away from the fall and drop a foot or two, but then the harness takes your weight in a seated position and your feet contact to the wall again, and there you go. You're able to take a rest, chalk your hands and re-assess your route.

3. Route reading is essential. As my instructor Daniel says, reading the route (imagining yourself climbing it, deciding where you'll place your hands and feat as you go) is a way to do it for free the first time, without expending any energy.

4. Climbing becomes a mild obsession not long after you get into it. This weekend I climbed from 1:30 to 6:30 p.m. on Saturday, and again on Sunday from noon to 3 p.m. and I wanted to go again tonight after work but figured I'd better take at least one rest day to avoid strains or injuries. The motivation to go to the climbing gym is the climbing itself, unlike a regular gym where you have to trick yourself into going to get a workout on the treadmill or the bench press or whatever.

I LOVE CLIMBING!!

Bouldering

Found this short film on YouTube that shows some great bouldering. 

Bouldering is definitely my favourite part of rock climbing. Ascending 37 feet off the ground is thrilling, but there's no way you'll challenge yourself – especially mentally – as much you will on a bouldering route. Take away the height and the need for ropes and a belayer and it's just you and your problem to work out. It forces you (at least, once you get past the easiest routes) to use proper technique, and it makes you use your whole body from the tips of your fingers to the tips of your toes to get to the final hold.

It's got to be one of the best workouts, both for your body and your brain.

Flappers

So it's been two weeks since I started climbing again and I've discovered what it means to have flappers – the little bits of skin that dangle from the spots where calluses should and hopefully will soon be.

My hands are obviously those of an office worker. They're soft and delicate and not used to hard labour. For now, I'll have to keep taping my fingers to prevent flappers and the bloody mess that comes from scraped knuckles and ripped blisters. Ew.

The climbing is going well. In fact, it's going so well I'm finding myself daydreaming about bouldering problems at work, and I realized tonight that ta-da! my fear of heights is gone. I'm not going to question it too deeply, but rather just be delighted that acrophobia is obviously something that can vanish as quickly as it appears.

Climbing again

Took the plunge tonight after work and bought a month-long membership to the climbing gym, plus a six-week intro to climbing course that starts next weekend. I may have made a foolish mistake, thinking I can jump back into this intense sport again, but what the hell, maybe the $300 investment will guilt me into not skipping a workout. I'm planning to boulder Tuesdays, Thursdays and top rope on the weekends. Also started tonight with some push-ups and sit-ups (like 20 each, which is just sad) and will do that nightly to build core strength. Right now my abs are about as strong as day-old kittens.

Mostly, I'm just hoping to have a lot of fun exercising, though, 'cause I just really can't bear the thought of having to force myself to go running or go to the gym and thinking the whole time just about getting in shape. Why not have a good time and have the fitness part be a side note?

Keen to see how much I can improve in the next six weeks...

Juggling 3 Balls

Learning to juggle is like learning to ride a bicycle. Once you've got the basic move, you can't unlearn it. I can safely say I can keep three balls in the air, but only for just over a minute or so, on average, before I drop one. Here's a bit of proof:

I started learning to juggle about two or three years ago, but after a couple of weeks I stopped practicing and then have picked away at it in fits and starts. Kind of poor that this is the extent of my ability in all that time, but then, I never was a rapid study. Also, I've realized that, as with learning to ride a bike, there's this steep learning curve in the beginning and then there's this long plateau where you just can't get rid of the training wheels for what seems like eons. In terms of juggling, that seems to be the one minute mark.

Get rich, and see the world

According to an article published earlier this year in The Daily Mail, most of the dreams and wishes on people's bucket lists involve travel or some kind of adventure activity. The top 10 items, in order:

1. Become a millionaire
2. Travel the world
3. See the northern lights
4. Trek the Great Wall of China
5. Be mortgage free
6. Walk the Inca Trail
7. See the seven wonders of the world
8. Visit the Egyptian pyramids
9. Invent something that changes lives (like an iPhone?)
10. Visit Antarctica

Unfortunately, the study (a survey done by Helly Hansen of 2,000 people) also found that most people will only fulfill five of their dreams. If travelling is such a popular dream for so many, why don't more people pack a bag and get on with it, then?

If this survey is any indication, human beings think getting the most out of life means seeing the world and having a big bank balance. Maybe that's just because getting rich means having the means to travel? Thing is, though, you don't need a lot of money to go walkabout. Here is a great article from Verge Magazine about how to travel cheap or even free. I particularly like the last suggestion – enter contests. If you don't enter, you can't win, and if you do enter, you've got nothing to lose; so why not?

If I won the Biggest, Baddest Bucket List contest, which is a really great marketing campaign by MyDestination.com, I'd basically be living the ultimate dream and getting a taste of what it's like to cross off the top two fantasy items on most people's lists: get rich and see the world.

I'd also potentially get to cross off a few of my own bucket list items, all within six months:

#17 - raft down a world-class river
#27 - drive the Autobahn
#29 - ride a camel through a desert
#32 - ride a helicopter and a hot air balloon
#61 - go dog sledding
#65 - visit St. Peter's Basilica
#79 - best suite at a five-star hotel
#85 - kickboxing in Thailand
#86 - experience a dude ranch
#93 - see the Aurora Borealis
#96 - sky diving

...and I'd be a lot closer to #14 - visit every country!

Why travel?

This is Robin Esrock. He's been to 107 countries since 2005.

A few weeks ago I met this guy and his lovely wife Anna at a house party. We got chatting, and I asked him about the hat he was wearing. It looked like a faded old Australian outback hat that he said had been all around the world with him and that it was time to let it go because it had seen better days.

Anna is due to give birth to their first child imminently, and the hat wasn't exactly clean (and had even picked up some radiation at Chernobyl). So, like any good adventurer, he took it out to the backyard to give it the only respectful end a good hat can have – with a ceremonial burning. I'm sure either hairspray or lighter fluid was used to speed things along, but it sure did go up in a blaze of glory.

Back inside, we formally introduced ourselves and I learned his name is Robin Esrock. The Robin Esrock. As in moderngonzo.com and the TV series World Travels, seen in more than 100 countries in 21 languages. He's led an incredible life, and yet he really does seem to be just like anybody else. I really enjoyed what he had to say about where he's been and where he's at now. When he told me he and Anna live in Burnaby the lightbulb went off, and I thought, hey, I could write a feature about this guy for the paper I'm working at. So I did. You can read it here.

Sometimes being a journalist working for the mass media really is the (second) best job in the world, and a serendipitous job to have when you get the opportunity to interview one of the last great travel writers working today.