Skin vs Rock

Today, in the battle of skin versus rock, rock won.

It might have been a blow out from the start. Warming up felt harder than normal. Maybe it was the humidity. Or maybe it was my skin. Or maybe, just maybe, I was finding excuses to cover up the real reasons to why it felt hard. I don't know why it felt harder than normal. It frustrated me. I haven't gotten frustrated climbing...in months. SERIOUS frustration that lasts for more than five minutes. I guess that's pretty good considering that I used to let it get to me easily. I have come a long way from where I was in terms of frustration getting to me and affecting the rest of my day. So in that sense, I'll call it a success. On the climbing front, it wasn't so much a total success but more of a working success. let me explain if you don't understand what I mean.

A) A total success is when you work a problem, get focused and put all of your efforts into one solid attempt where you're going to do your project. There is no question of falling. You will not fall.

B) Working success is what applies to the effort into working out the moves on a climb before you can commence for total success on your project. You do move after move, working the route/problem until you either

1. have total success as in scenario A very quickly the same day
2. figure that you can have total success the next time

I almost gave up and walked away because of my frustration. I made it halfway down the street before I saw my friend Sue (the first woman to do Nat's Traverse back BEFORE the v-scale was invented by some Berkeley punk, John Sherman, respect) driving up. I figured, 'Well, there's gonna be pads now. I might as well go back up and give Impossible some goes.' The less than a minute walk actually worked on calming me down. In the past, I have stayed at Mortar frustrated around friends and my frustration just got worse and worse. I have since learned to pack up and walk away. One of the many tricks I have learned, just walk away and come back.

Both of us ended up having a lot of fun flailing around on it, myself not making much progress due to...below average skin upon my tips, but hey what are you gonna do about it? It's outside, and sometimes you forget that when you really want to do a certain route/problem. It's better than being in the gym and getting frustrated over plastic.

Thanks fir reading!