9/10- String Him Up

Wendie and Daniel run an early rising house and I'd asked them to wake me so I could have breakfast with them in the morning. The standard here is oatmeal, so I fit in well. So in the morning I woke up to Wendie yelling out the side window for me to rise and shine and that breakfast was ready. Toss the bivy in the garage and hunker in for a meal.

Wend and I were going to head out to Sequim and Port Angeles for the day. She had an appointment in Sequim for an hour, so I occupied myself with her computer in a coffee shop for that, then later in the afternoon she has a Challenge Course that she's qualifying to be a facilitator for. As part of the qualifications she was going to learn how to do a high altitude rescue with ropes and things. I had volunteered to be the "victim" for her to practice rescuing on.

We spent a good while after her appointment in the coffee shop on the interwebs geeking out over Google Calendar. Both of us being gadgety, systems, organizational nuts we spent quite a while looking that over, then we went off to Port Angeles for the course. Trudy, the lady who runs the course, was quite pleased to have such a willing volunteer to be strung up in trees and rescued by novices. I liked her a lot as we chatted over our childhoods that were both spent dangling from trees and such things. She had that same glint in her eye of really wanting to do something adventurously stupid.

The afternoon was just fucking awesome. I've never been belaying on ropes before, or anything like that. Generally when I'm climbing things its usually illegal and unsafe, but I have no problems throwing on harnesses and safety hats for another excuse to scramble up something very high and dangle from a rope. That's what I did all afternoon with Wendie and another guy, Nate, learning how to cut me down.

Wendie gave me a tour of the Challenge Course afterward and I desperately wanted to play on it. Cargo nets, big wooden walls, rope swings, tight wires, it all calls my name. The point of the whole project was right up my alley as well. It is designed to encourage ingenuitive thinking and problem solving for seemingly impossible tasks. AA groups come through it using the walls as symbols for their issues with staying sober and children's groups come through teaching leadership, group cohesiveness, and outside of the box thinking.

We headed home after a good day of play and stopped in for groceries on the way back. I got a nice giant block of cheese and a big box of ghetto crackers. Chris happy. The hour ride home also gave Wend and I a good chance to really catch up on what's really going on with us these days. After a nice dinner with Daniel at home it was time to retire again to bed.