The rock climbing trip yesterday was great. It was such a change of pace to get away from school and have no constraints on me all day. All the deadlines and tests and things that just had to get done didn't matter at all.

Around 7:40 Catherine and I set out for our door for the outdoor recreation office, becaue the trip leader, Lumpy, had mandated that we be there by 7:45. Lo and behold, it's so early we can't get into the building, so we had to wait until he got there several minutes later and let us in. We waited for everyone to get there and then set off for Alabama.

The ride there was uneventful except for Lumpy getting us lost at one point, which didn't last too long. We were in the school-owned 15-passenger van which Lumpy was driving. There were three other girls on the trip and the one who sat next to Lumpy was very talkative. Constantly. Catherine and I were amused because her initial assertion "I don't do anything to stay thin," was followed by renditions of how she runs 2 miles a day, no matter what, and only eats vegetables, fish, and whole grains. Nope, nothing at all.

The park itself, called Sand Rock somewhere in Alabama had a lot of these outcroppings that were relatively easy climbing. I had wondered before how natural climbing could compare to wall climbing, but it was actually easier, I'd say. Probably because on the natural rock it's all due to chance where the cracks and handholds are, whereas at the wall there's a sadistic overseer going "Well, I can reach this hold from here, so that's okay" so the five-foot-one me goes there and can't reach it for the life of me.

The first thing the instructors had us do was repell down the rock face. We hadn't done that before. It basically involves threading the rope through your harness and all that's keeping you from falling is your right hand on the end of the rope. It scared me at first but once I was over the cliff edge it was amazing how secure I felt, even though all that was keeping me up was two strands of this rope looped simply through the device hooked through my harness. Halfway down Lumpy yelled at me to wrap the end of the rope around my leg rather than use my right hand to control it, and there I was, hanging off a cliff on a rope, without using my hands.

Throughout the day the instructors set up various climbs and the students would climb them. Sometimes to take breaks Catherine and I would walk around the area, which was quite neat. There were little caves and one place where one giant rock was balanced on two others.

It was impressive to see what the other climbers could do. The nice-butt guy who was in love with the concept of the "dyno" -- a move that involves jumping to another handhold, was able to run at one section of rock, jump onto, and grab on so he was hanging off the rock around three feet off the ground. Later in the day Lumpy went up one section of the cliff blindfolded.

Once the sun was going down the instructors packed up the gear and we headed out, stopping at a strange Mexican restaurant for dinner (the people who had gone before were very enthused about it, but it made me feel kind of sick), but then it was in Alabama. While we were eating the people who'd been climbing at Sand Rock before told the story of the time a guy unassociated with Tech had been climbing and having his 12-year-old son belay him (meaning the son was holding the rope that kept the dad from falling), and when the son was letting the dad down the rope burned his hands and he let go - and the dad broke his back. Us students were glad they'd waited until after the trip to tell that story. Holy crap. That was why Lumpy was repeating all day long "Rock climbing is an inherently dangerous sport", though not as much as he kept saying "Do not step on the rope!" (that makes it dirty).

After sleeping a solid 11 hours, which I greatly enjoyed, today has been studying for all the things I have this week, namely a Kinetics test tomorrow, a Biochem test Thursday, and a humanities paper Friday. I'm at that apathetic phase in my studying. For Kinetics, I've gone over the homework and the book and done my equation sheet, and I tend to do pretty well on any of my ChemE tests because of my BS ability. For Biochem, we've only added on a chapter and a half of material last time, so I have no idea what kind of stuff he'd want to test us on. I'm hoping he doesn't expect us to have memorized and know how and when to use the molecular cloning methods because there are a whole lot of them.

So maybe I'll study a little more and then play Sims.