Pro-Sports

When I got married, I slowed down the pace of my rock climbing.  Then when I found out I was pregnant with my son, I stopped altogether.  I decided that if the hubby could give up his penchant for fast cars and take up the responsibility that goes with being a family man, then I could give up my love for rock climbing, too (although I still maintain that rock climbing is a much safer hobby compared to racing). 

After a two and a half year absence from rock climbing, I find my hands itching to climb.  Ah heck!  Who am I kidding?  My hands were itching to climb a lot earlier than this. 

Sometimes, late at night, when I’m trawling the net and looking enviously at the climbing photos of friends, I wonder if I could go back to rock climbing and be satisfied if I can’t climb like I used to.  Would I be able to stand the inevitable disappointment that my body cannot climb as well as my mind remembers?  Would I be able to accept the fact that I won’t have the time to dedicate to climbing like I used to so that I could bring myself back to that level?

And as the days move into months and the months to years, I wonder if I have passed the time for such activities.  And then I see an article about Running America talking about Marshall Ulrich (age 57) and Charlie Engle (age 43) who ran 3045 miles (up to 70 miles a day) and I feel inspired.  If they can still be running at those ages, then surely I can still be rock climbing at that age, too.

One of the things about climbing that I liked which was unlike a lot of power sports where being five years older can seriously affect your performance, you can still climb just as well and better if you set yourself to it. 

Popularity: 6% [?]

Although Gavin is too young to climb at Camp 5, I’ve discovered another climbing wall that he can try out at Kizsports in 1Utama.  Kizsports is located in the old wing near Jusco Department store.  It’s on Level two above Toys ‘R’ Us and Marks and Spencer.

I took Gavin to Kizsports on Tuesday initially intending to wear him out with vigorous play activities and was pleasantly surprised to find the mini rock climbing wall.  Actually, it’s more like a small boulder wall but big enough for a child to get a taste for bouldering.  I tried to get Gavin to climb but he wasn’t feeling particularly adventurous that day.  I even climbed on the wall to show him how it was done but he didn’t want to copy Mummy like he normally does.  Perhaps a few more visits will help warm him up to the sport, or perhaps being able to watch other kids climb might help.

I didn’t climb much - just up the wall and to the right which was probably about four moves in total - but it was enough to kill my hands.  It’s amazing how two years without climbing has really softened my hands. Gone are the callouses that used to offer me some measure of protection against the harshness of an artificial handhold. 

I have a feeling getting back into climbing this time is going to be a lot more painful than I had anticipated.  I saw my old climbing shoes some time back when I was searching through the shoe cupboard for a pair of shoes and I’m not even sure I can cram my feet back into them if they were two sizes bigger.  The callouses on my toes have gone, too, and the black toenail has returned to a normal colour.  It is only when I reflect back to my climbing days that I realise the trauma I put my body through.  Then again, the euphoria of the sport tended to dim the senses somewhat so I guess that’s why I never really noticed until now.

Popularity: 8% [?]

Looks like my budding rock climber will have to wait until he’s a little older (try five years old - which is the minimum age you must be to climb at Camp 5) before he can climb at Camp 5.  Ah well, too bad…

I guess he’ll just have to stick to the jungle gyms in the meantime.

Or try scaling up the slides when he gets desperate.

Popularity: 7% [?]

Since I discovered I was pregnant with my son, my rock climbing career has come to an abrupt halt.  When asked about when I would return again, I often reply, “When my son is old enough to climb with me.”  I used to think that day was a long way away until I noticed recently that Gavin is displaying a strong inclination towards climbing.  He’s been wanting to climb anything and everything, which is freaking out his grandparents (although Mummy is secretly proud).

At 21 months, he might still be tad young to climb, but I was planning to take him to the climbing gym to see how he fairs.  I think at this age he might only make it to the kid’s boulder, but then again, it’s just to give him a taste for climbing and for me to see how he takes to it.

Stay tuned…

Below: haven’t got a picture of him in action yet so this will have to do.

Popularity: 7% [?]

I was skulking around the facebook sites of some local rock climbers when I saw a recent photo of Damai:

I almost didn’t recognise the place, if it weren’t for the fact that I remember the rock face so well…  In case, you’ve never seen what Damai used to look like, you can check out an old photo in my previous post.

It just goes to show how much can change over four years (which is about how long I’ve been away from outdoor rock climbing)…

I wonder how much more will change by the time Gavin’s ready to come outdoor rock climbing with me?

Popularity: 9% [?]

Above: Monsoon is the route that runs to the right of the cave with the big boulder inside it.

There’s a route in Damai called “Monsoon”.  It is a multi-pitch with three pitches, graded 6A, 6B, 5C. It should be noted that Damai routes are graded a little higher than Nyamuk so you might find they aren’t as difficult to climb (although when I first climbed at Damai, I was a newbie climber who found even a Damai 5C to be challenging).

Monsoon got its name because it rained when they were bolting this route (or something to that effect).  Monsoon held true to its name because whenever someone was projecting this route, it would always rain.  So, too, was it for me when I was projecting this route - it seemed that every time I wanted to climb this route, it would start to rain.  One time, it started to drizzle the moment I put my hands on the rock face.

The crux of Monsoon is just before the anchor.  Looks can be deceiving because, from the ground, it looks like the easiest part of the route. From the ground, the crux looks like a sloping ledge that you can just walk up to the anchor on.  When you get up there, it’s a whole different story.  Most of the climbers I’ve seen attempting this route for the first time were pretty gripped on this ledge, granted that they weren’t very experienced climbers.

Monsoon is one of those routes which was very near and dear to my heart because it was the first route I took on as a project route back in my early outdoor rock climbing days.  I can still recall the day I first top-roped this route.  I had gotten to the ledge and something got caught in my eye. Feeling pretty gripped up there, I brushed my eye as quickly as I could with one hand while I held on for dear life with the other.  At about the same time, the wind blew and my contact lens dropped off my eyeball.  To add insult to injury, it started to drizzle as well!

In retrospect, perhaps not being able to see so well (since I only had one good eye - I’m pretty blind without contacts or glasses) was a good thing.  Since I couldn’t see, I don’t think I was as scared as I would have been if I could see properly.

I don’t remember who was on belay, but I think it was Thin Man.  When it started to rain, he asked if I wanted to bail.  I would be lying if I said I wasn’t sorely tempted to quit and try again another day.  But, recalling that it had started to rain so many times before when I wanted to climb Monsoon, and the fact that I was so close to the anchor, I thought, “I’ll be damned if I bail now.”

I also don’t remember when I red-pointed Monsoon, but I do remember that when I finally did, I had out-grown the title of newbie rock climber.  It was as if red-pointing Monsoon was the initiation test to get into the inner circle of the local rock climbers’ club.

If I was proud of my achievement of red-pointing Monsoon, the feeling paled in comparison to how I felt when I red-pointed the second pitch of Monsoon.

The second pitch of Monsoon was officially my first red-point on a 6B (albeit a Damai 6B). The first time we went up there, Akmal Noor took us up (us being Thin Man and me). Akmal was so kind to mark the handholds at the crux with chalk, but unfortunately, only Thin Man made it through the crux. I had to cheat and climb off-route (I climbed straight up instead of through the crux which was a diagonal move to the right).

I have to thank Akmal when I finally got my red-point on this route because thoughts of bailing were flashing through my head as I sat in a little cave just before the crux sequence. Akmal had been descending from a route not far from me and he called out to see how I was doing, so I told him I was scared. I can’t remember what he said to me, but I did climb on and red-point the route that day.

The thing about projecting a route on the second pitch is that you’re so high up, you can’t really talk to anyone on the ground. Sometimes you can’t even see your belayer, so it feels like you’re all alone up there. There’s a good and bad part to this. The good part is that no one from the ground can call up and offer you unnecessary beta. The bad news is that you don’t have any encouraging “allez” from the ground to keep you going.

After red-pointing the second pitch, I practiced climbing from the ground to the anchor of the second pitch without stopping. Thin Man and I would do this to train our endurance - it was part of the program for our plan to conquer Humanality in Krabi (which, sadly, I never did in spite of the fact that I went to Krabi three times).

Climbing up to the second pitch is fun because you can get a nice rhythm going with about 50 meters of straight climbing. Most of the single pitches in Damai were less than 25 meters, so sometimes you can’t really get the flow of movement on the rocks going. The only thing about leading up to the second pitch anchor is that the rope drag is so bad, I don’t even think you need a belayer to keep you up there (please don’t take this literally, though, because you should always have a belayer when you’re climbing - unless you plan to solo which then becomes your own liability).

The first time I lead all the way to the second pitch, I felt so pumped, I was even planning to cheat and hold on to a root growing out of the rock somewhere before the anchor of the second pitch. Not only was I pumped from climbing all the way up to from the ground, but the rope drag was like climbing with weights. When I finally reached the root, I was devastated to discover that it had been ripped off the rock face!

That day, I learned something new - in the face of adversity, you can find the strength within to push past the limits of your mind. Since there was no longer a root hold to cheat with, I had to keep climbing without it.

Popularity: 14% [?]

I posted up some old climbing photos on Facebook recently and it got some memories stirring for the Rockrats which made me think back to some of the old craziness we used to get up to.  While digging into the archives of the Rockrats history books, I found these priceless gems:

Thin Man: Sim, give Derek some beta!
Simian Boy: USE THE JUGS!!!

Thin Man: Just pull the runner.

Lelek Le Grunt: Okay, here’s the plan. When I move up, you tighten the rope.

Fearless Leader, while struggling up a really pumpy route at Dairy Farm Singapore, drops a
classic on the belayer: OI PULL ME UP, MAN, YOU ARE NOT DOING ANYTHING DOWN THERE!!!

5C Master, on the crux of Parang Buta, Comic: TIGHT! TIGHT! TIGHT! TIGHT! Phew, thanks!

Simian Boy: It helps when you tell chicks that you do rock climbing, until they realize that it’s the only thing you ever do…

Climber: Hey, did you hear about the guy who dropped his rope while threading the anchor and then had to have someone climb up to rescue him?
Fearless Leader: Oi! That was me!

Popularity: 10% [?]

Thin Man sent me a link to a rock climber’s tale about her initiation into rock climbing.  As I read the pertinent sections related to her climbing experience, I find my palms beginning to sweat and a knot of envy forming somewhere behind my sternum.  Here was a lady who did what I had always dreamt of doing, if only I had the courage to let go off the solid security of a paying job that offered the certainty of a roof over my head and food on my table.  To add to my envy, not only does she travel around the world and climb, but she is also an excellent writer crafting her words with wit to paint vivid pictures of her adventures. 

The second of January was the day of my initiation to the sport of rock climbing. I remember specifically because I was scheduled for the morning climb on the first but when I showed up fifteen minutes early (somewhat heroically, I thought, as I had celebrated the dawning of the new year downing buckets of vodka and Red Bull and dancing on the beach) the Thai guys from the climbing school were all too grimly hungover to do anything but laze red-eyed in the hammocks drooping from the wooden beams on the porch and told me to come back the next day. As I recall, in my last clear memory of Wee from the previous evening (I had met some of the boys from the climbing school the day before) he had an enormous spliff dangling from his lip and a bottle of Jack Daniels in each hand from which he was alternating swigs, so if that was indicative of the level of revelry perhaps I would be better off not being 25 meters above the ground with a still-wasted climbing guide shouting whiskey-muddled instructions from below.

The next day I went out for a half day top-roping course with a (presumably sober) instructor named Sol and a few other climbing hopefuls. Inwardly I was bitterly cursing my flip flop that had disloyally broken the day before as we hiked over the RAZOR sharp rocks that low tide reveals on the way to Eagle Wall, the crag where we would be climbing that day. We arrived at a tiny jewel of a beach which we crossed into the dense jungle forming its lush backdrop. The crag itself was easily accessible from here from a thickly rooted dirt pathway aided with a rope thoughtfully placed though of dubious reliability.

We had two climbs, one graded a 5 and to its right a long and beautiful 6A called “Spiderman”. The exact details of the rest of the day after my hands and toes (clad in my borrowed, unfamiliar, and uncomfortably restrictive footwear) made that first contact with that mesmerizing limestone are irrelevant. After that first injection of the adrenaline-releasing exquisite high where you are clinging with precarious balance to a rock face high above the ground, and there is no map laid out to trace your tentative steps, and you are trusting your body weight on a foothold the size of a non-genetically modified peanut, and you are willing the moisture forming on your palms to evaporate because you are not yet fully aware of the presence of a little drawstring bag of chalk hanging at your waist for the express purpose of combating said symptom, and your muscles are strained to capacity, and a little rivulet of blood is making its way down your left shin, and there is no other place to go but UP…in the words of the Flaming Lips “suddenly everything has changed”…

…In that same spirit of enchantment, in the giddy heights of discovery, I climbed my very first rock in Tonsai. Again I had many choices laid out in the crevices and intricate indentations of the limestone I gripped, only this time the destination was a set point, a tangible ring-shaped goal that begged to be tapped in triumph. Here was a turning point, a solid threshold to reach demanding not only my attention but the utmost physical and psychological determination. Every sport-related cliché gained relevance: wanting something so desperately “you could taste it”, “adrenaline junky”, the word “addiction” assuming new and oddly positive associations. I would find my mind wandering at breakfast during the interminable wait for a bowl of porridge (my God, what were they DOING back there, sowing the oats?) contemplating whether there might be a handhold further to the right I had overlooked in the crux of a particular route and I would wake in the middle of the night to find my fists sweatily clenched and my feet pressing soft craters in the sheets, struggling, even in my dream state, to reach that elusive pinnacle.

Those six weeks in Tonsai were a special time in my life. I did some more climbing in Chiang Mai in the north of Thailand and in Vang Vieng, Laos and spent some time in Cambodia before returning to Mykonos, and the climbing was lovely and peaceful, absent of the throngs of climbers in cue for popular routes, classes of beginners, and the odd chubby German tourist clicking voyeuristic shots in the Ibiza-reminiscent resort of Railey Beach adjacent to Tonsai, but nothing could compare to the splendour of the Krabi limestone…

…Five days later I had a stuffed backpack once again, the climbing shoes and chalk bag were still clipped to the outside of the rucksack, the carabiner grown sticky with with moisture and the gathering sad dust of disuse, and I was on a plane to England. Since arriving here three weeks ago I have formulated and discarded several plans, and even now as I sit in the Botanical Gardens in Sheffield in the Peak District of England I find myself pulled in several different directions still, all seemingly equidistant. I have not only donned my climbing shoes again with a resurgence of my initiatory enthusiasm to learn the delicate art of trad climbing here in the pretty rolling hillsides of the English Midlands, with the same sense of renewal and a startling ripple of inspiration like a pebble dropped in a still lake I have finally picked up my long discarded notebook and pen, perhaps metaphorically recovered from that same corner of my bedroom in Mykonos where my climbing gear was gathering dust. Both activities open a valve for me to allow release, both challenge the very aspects of my being I strive most to improve, and both occasionally cause my hands to cramp in exhaustion. Even as I continue my gypsy-tinged vagrancy, I have grasped something even more solid than the intriguing English gritstone, and that something is self, and it is what serves to keep us grounded however high we may ascend.

I remain uncertain of which direction my path will meander next, but when I look up at those gorgeous routes etched in multi-layered stone stretching up to the mercurial English sky, rarely following a straight-line sequence themselves, I am sure of one thing. Wherever I may be in this world, and whatever magnets of the north, south, east, or west poles exert the most powerful pull on me, there is one direction in which I will be perpetually drawn, and that direction is UP. 

I find myself reflecting upon her words as if they were the alternate reality of what I might have been had my life taken a slightly different path.  And then I recall myself to the present day and remember the reason why I stay firmly grounded and responsible:

Yes, I might envy her for the experiences she has had and for her writing prowess, but no, I don’t regret taking the path I choose.  One of the things I really like about climbing is that, unlike some other sports, age doesn’t necessarily affect your ability to excel in the sport.  For some sports, hitting thirty marks the beginning of the end, but for rock climbing, it isn’t so.  So while I might be out of the count at this present time, I suspect I’ll be back to the sport with a new climbing partner who is currently in training on the jungle gym.

Popularity: 14% [?]

Back in April 2004, the Rockrats had planned a trip to Krabi which was cancelled at the last minute after some news about riots in the Southern border of Thailand. Extremely disappointed by the cancellation (especially since most of us had arrange our leave so we could score nine full days off for the trip), the Rockrats planned a marathon climbing trip that began from the summits of Genting First World Rock Climbing Gym all the way down to Singapore.

Although I followed them up to Genting for the start of this marathon trip, I parted ways with the Rockrats while they passed KL on their way down to Singapore. I had planned to fly up to Phuket, then travel down to Ao Nang by cab and take a boat across to West Railay.

Originally, we had booked an entire bus to ferry us from KL to Hatyai (on the Southern border of Thailand) because we had that many people confirmed going. Eventually, one by one began dropping out of the trip as news of the riots along the Southern border of Thailand sounded more and more hostile.

The funny thing was that I remember saying I would still be confirmed going as long as there was one other person going. In the end I agreed to pull out when I was told no one else was left on the bus but me. But after talking to a few others, they also said they had said the same thing - they would still go as long as someone else was willing to go. Here’s the strange part - we were all told we were the only ones left on the bus so we all agreed to cancel. Sounded rather fishy to me but I think someone didn’t want any of us to go…

Since I had already locked in my leave, I figured it would be quite safe to fly over the border and travel down from the north. And quite frankly, I saw no hint of riots while I was there.

Anyway, Simian Boy wrote an excellent trip report of what the Rockrats got up to while I was in Krabi. Told with his usual tongue-in-cheek style, I thought this was too funny to keep locked up in the archives of my rock climbing folders. Enjoy…

Friday, April 30, 2004.

We were supposed to go to Krabi today, but everyone was a little uneasy with the unstable situation with muslim rebels near the southern border. Between breakfast and dinner time, all 24 passengers on the bus had pulled out of the trip.

We met at the SS2 to figure out what to do next. Adrian suggested we bring 4 bottles of booze to Genting to see what would happen, and for some reason that sounded like the best of ideas at that moment so that’s what we did.

He-whose-name-shall-remain-unnamed decided to play bartender and managed to get most of the boys to drink an unhealthy amount of vodka and whiskey. As the hours went by, it was becoming apparent that the ladies were not drinking enough to get stupid with their items of clothing, so card games were thrown into the mix, but alas it never moved beyond chor-tai-ti. The boys, however were not faring so well with the sweet poison in their blood. The bartender himself was told to keep his clothes on by the owner of the apartment when he started acting out a joke involving a stripper. Undaunted, the barkeep went on to try to talk the boys into a game where some unlucky participant has to eat a cracker with ungodly bodily secretions in place of cheese dip. Inebriated though we were, we did not let this happen - as far as I can recall anyway. Poor Jason discovered that immunity to alcohol wasn’t one of his mutant powers and spent most of the night and following morning trying to transfer the contents of his stomach to the toilet bowl, but not through the usual channels. CJ felt the urge to join him in the early morning, but because his sleeping bag had ideas of its own, he almost didn’t make it to the bathroom.

Saturday, May 1, 2004.

The morning, among other things, always comes too soon when you’ve had too much to drink. We were all so out of it. The barkeep woke up with unexplainable cracker crumbs on his lips and some mysterious white gunk on his chin. We’d have gone straight back to bed if we weren’t so climb-starved from our failed trip to Thailand. We were on a mission to try all the climbs between Pahang and Singapore before the weekend was over and that meant there was little time to lose.

So it was with this sense of purpose that we valiantly attempted the overhanging walls at First World, despite the states our bodies were in. Boy, was that ever a pathetic sight! We were tired and sleepy and filled to the brim with roti canai but that didn’t stop us trying. We climbed with the grace of ten elephants. It was probably the first time in climbing history when a mantle move was employed to get up a 5B gym climb. Jason sat out the whole climbing session, although ’sat’ was probably the wrong word for it since he was in his sleeping bag. A crowd gathered round, not so much to see us climb, but to see if he was alive. Meanwhile, the rest of us trashed ourselves on the wall, slowly but bravely moving up the climbs like salmons swimming up a waterfall. I guess we were all dehydrated,…well all except for me who had the foresight to drink about 5 gallons of water the night before, which meant I got rid of most of the alcohol from my body, but it also meant I spent more time emptying my bladder than sleeping. I think the only ones who got in some decent climbs were the ones who drove up in the morning (Mike, Kim, Clyda and Evelyn) but then they had been sober the night before and that’s cheating, I say.

Late in the afternoon, we gave up on all that overhanging nonsense at Genting and decided to try and find some slabs in Singapore instead. We had it all figured out - we’d leave around dinner time and reach by midnight. We’d climb on Sunday and because Allsports is closed on Sunday, we’d shop for gear on Monday instead. For some reason, Kim got it into her head that nobody is supposed to participate in any sports on Sunday in Singapore. Since she’s new, we made sure she felt like part of the group by making her cop an embarrassing amount of flak for thinking that.

So we came down the hill, dropped off all the extra weight from our cars (dirty laundry, unneeded equipment, Shen), and drove down with sleepy eyes and weary minds to visit Kiat Hong’s folks at JB because we were too skint to rent a room. After what seems like 20 stops and 10 change of drivers, we arrive at Mr.Tey’s house six hours behind schedule, upholding what is beginning to become a climbing tradition.

Sunday, May 2, 2004.

The sleep is a little better this morning. We wake up in time to go climb at the Dairy Farm. Kiat Hong stayed home to spend more time with her family and Kim went shopping. The remaining eight of us took six hours to attempt (and generally fail) to climb three ten-meter routes at the Dairy Farm at Bukit Timah, Singapore. Out of the three routes, one remained unfinished by any of us, one was climbed by Lai (hangdog) and Jason (toprope), while the last one was something we all managed to climb but the fact that it was named “Boring and Pointless (6A+)” didn’t do much for our already deflated egos.

Feeling beaten, discouraged and badly in need of showers, we headed back across the border to find Kiat Hong’s family had cooked us a nice feast of … I forgot what it’s called but it’s like Pan Mee except, nicer. Yum! I can still taste it in my mind.

Just when I thought that was the highlight of the day, something happens that almost made me glad we didn’t go to Thailand. We were all feeling clean and fresh after showering and had hijacked the living room from Kiat Hong’s family to watch the telly and as we were flipping through the channels, we came across an advertisement for the Van Helsing movie. Kim got all excited about the movie and started asking if it was out already and when would it be out, etc. Jason, sitting next to her on the couch, put his arm on the back rest - his hand coming inches from the back of her neck - put on his Don Juan-expression and (God, it doesn’t do it justice even attempting to describe it here!) goes something like “So, you want to catch this movie?”

There was a moment of post-apocalyptic silence as we all just stared in disbelief before we broke out in this huge laughter of atomic proportions. Kim laughed along after a moment of awkwardness. At first, I figured maybe Jason hadn’t realised the appearance he had taken on with his body language and all. I would have given an arm to have had my camera with me then so I could have captured the moment, but it was in my backpack and as I started to realise Jason hadn’t moved (yet), I went to retrieve it but alas, I was too slow. Jason had retracted his arm and was explaining how he was joking and pretty much how we should be laughing at his joke and not him while Kim had moved to the kitchen where she spent the next hour enduring the heat from a yam-cake-cooking stove and discussing the finer points of yam with Mrs. Tey until she (or perhaps Mrs. Tey) couldn’t take the heat any longer. When she came back out to the living room, she sat on the floor, staying clear of all couches as though she has developed a new phobia.

Sorry Jason and Kim, I know I shouldn’t be finding this funny and I know it is insensitive and childish of me and I ought to just let it go and forget about it and move on but … you should have seen the look on your faces!

But, hey - look on the bright side - at least you now know how to make yam cake.

Monday, May 3, 2004.

Adrian had mentioned that he’d like to get back home before too late in the night. I decided to help us keep good time by waking everyone up at 8am, and keeping a semi-rigid schedule in my head and reminding people how much time they had left, so here’s pretty much what happened…

7:45am - Started waking people up and lying to them about the time.
8:30am - The last of the living dead decides to wake up, so we’re all making good time so far.
9:00am - Breakfast outside. It was good except Lai for some inexplicable reason, kept sending everyone’s orders back whenever they came so we kept having to order again and hope the frustrated food stall owners didn’t give us any ’special sauce’ with our noodles.
9:30am - 2nd Breakfast at Mr. Tey’s house. Yam cake and red bean soup. How did they know my favourites?
10:30am - Across the border to Singapore again and at Safra. The lady at the counter was this sweet old lady with sweet old granny glasses who took her sweet freaking time processing our tickets so it took awhile before we could climb. I was waiting for her to finish doing that while everyone went off to deposit their breakfast at Safra’s five-star lavatories. I was holding mine in and I didn’t know how much longer I could keep it in when Adrian (fast as always) came out of the toilet to relief me of slowpoke-waiting duty.
11:00am - At the Safra walls finally. Okay, I figure we can get in some good climbs in two hours so I figured we’d leave at about 1pm. No problem. Only one of the routes had no ropes on it. I started to traverse on the warmup walls but that was getting me tired. Well screw that! If I was going to get tired, I was going to get tired climbing. So I took the rope and grabbed a belayer (Jason) and led up the juggiest wall (6A+ I think). Forgot to bring my chalkbag but as it turns out that worked to my advantage because it made me climb the steep parts in a hurry.

Everyone looked very tired climbing at Safra. I felt it too. I climbed about 5 routes and had to really flail up the last 3. I think it’s the heat. The little rocks and gravel they use to lay the ground under the climbing walls really act like a big stove slowly cooking us as we climb. I went through my 1.5 litres of drinking water in the first hour.

Richard pointed out that when we finished climbing, the whole place had quietened down. It was true. When we were on the wall, you could hear us yelling encouragement, spraying beta, making excuses and lastly, but most loudly, making rude complaints about the climbs (mostly juggy 6A and 6B climbs). Then we came off the walls and while waiting for everyone to finish cleaning and packing up, a few of us watched the hardcore Singaporeans train quietly. Some of them were climbing for difficulty training while some of them were training their endurance by climbing up and down on lead (unclipping on the way down) on what looked like 6C routes. They had a clever way of unclipping the rope with one hand which was to push the gate open with the rope (effectively clipping both sides of the rope and letting it all fall through the biner) which was much better than what we used to do (hold the gate open and then try to dig the rope out). We learn something new every day.

2:00pm - With everyone clean and packed, we leave the sweet overhanging walls of Safra.
2:20pm - We leave the Safra parking lot when Derek finally figures out the way to Peninsula Plaza.
3:00-ish pm - Yay, Peninsula Plaza. New rock shoes, here I come! But first, we eat.
4:00pm - With money in our pockets and food in our tummies, we head up towards Allsports but are sucked into two other equipment shops on the way up.

There’s something about the one-eyed shopkeep at Allsports and his assistant Igor (don’t know his real name) that just rubs me the wrong way every time we go there. Somebody mentioned that we cancelled our trip to Krabi and Igor said if we were afraid of dying we shouldn’t be climbing. What has that got to do with the price of eggs? Anyway, none of us could find any good shoes to get there. Richard pointed out how much more expensive the prices have become at Allsports. Some of the items he bought a few months ago have doubled in price. Same goods, same crappy service, new inflated prices. We ended up mostly buying Mad Rock shoes from Campers Corner instead.

8:30pm - We head out of Singapore to have dinner in JB.
11:30pm - We leave JB to go back home to KL. I found out that those chemical heat packs that Su Chin uses to warm her hands can feel uncomfortably hot if you sit on them. Derek slipped one on my seat as I was getting into the car. It took me half an hour before I realised what had happened. At first, I thought there was something wrong with the car or the air conditioner and I thought to myself - boy, this is going to be a long journey. Then I thought maybe I was dehydrated and just needed to drink more water. But soon, it became obvious that it was something else because, not only did it feel like my body was burning up, it felt like one of my ass cheeks was on fire. I was like “WTF, why’s it so hot under here?” and then I heard Su Chin, Derek and CJ laughing their heads off. Su Chin tried to play that prank back on Derek at the next stop but he was on to us.

4:00am - Derek, Adrian and Lai got us all safely home, keeping each other awake with the walkie talkies. Derek had to be especially alert. He had to hold back on a lot of crotch jokes because Kiat Hong’s mom was awake in Adrian’s car.

It’s been a fun few days. I doubt it could have been any more fun even if we did go to Thailand.

Popularity: 18% [?]

Something I wrote some time back about falling into the trap of chasing grades:

It’s amazing how the utterance of a number and a letter in association to climbing can have such an effect on climbers. Before the days of numbers and letters significance, any route goes as long as we think we can make it by looking up at the holds. As the awareness grows, we begin to fall into that encumbrance that afflicts many minds where decisions are made based on the meaning derived from a set of arbitrary numbers and letters.

A spectrum of divergent outcomes emerges. On one extreme the decision to climb a route is hinged upon a number and a letter – this limits the realization of our full potential. On the contrary, the resolution to project a route based on its grade, the importance of that level among the climbing community and the resultant puffery leads to an explosion of the id. Hopefully, most of us will fall within the middle band of moderation, but I suppose in the end, it depends on what tugs your cord in climbing.

Popularity: 20% [?]