Fairer...

So, I'm back from climbing after a 2 week recovery period. My hands are looking like hands again; with skin and everything. It was a painful, distracted couple of weeks, especially at the start, but things have settled down and its not even keeping me awake at night now.

Its not really possible to wear gloves while climbing, at least covering the fingers and palm; so I just wear a cotton glove for the belaying; the previously white and non-torn glove now in my bag. Glad they're cheap.

So maybe things will work out okay – the climbing went better than expected tonight, with the highlight on getting up the corner wall on greens, over the lip and up without having to 'just bridge'.

The phrase of 'just bridging' came from when I was trying to get up that corner wall using only greens for the first time and ran out of holds to progress on. I asked one of the instructors on how to progress and he told me that I just had to bridge it. Which is climbing with a shoe gripping the wall on each side, doing the splits pretty much and stepping up. Just bridging. To be honest it wasn't too bad to get into the position, pushing a foot against the walls on each side of me. The trouble was what to do once I'd stepped up high enough to reach the hand hold. The thing about holding your weight on your legs against opposite walls is that you can't just move one of them and hang there. I was there for a wee while pondering this; then held onto the green rock with both hands and moved my foot to a nearby rock beneath. That was when my shoulder decided it wasn't going to simply hold my entire weight without a protesting, painful stretch. So I was there a wee while longer with a painful shoulder muscle before the following couple of steps to the top. It felt pretty good though to be honest; nothing better than confirming one's manliness than achieving something while in pain; like having a shower and having real dirt flowing down the drain.

Ah well, almost home.