I started with this, donated by Eamon (thanks Eamon)

and worked my way through this stage:

and this stage

and got to

here

There’s still some tightening work to be done on it but it’s no longer a mess all over the living room floor. And it’s no longer a pile of old rope.

I followed the guidelines here to create the knot – it’s called an ocean plait – and it’s currently about 2 feet by 15 inches.

The thing which struck me most was how tiring it was to do for the first hour or so – this is when you are laying out the rope. Lots of moving about and bending and walking with ends of rope and hopping up and down. When it’s about twice the size as it is in the picture, ie, tightened up a good bit, you don’t do so much moving around, just a lot of rope pulling. If you’re lucky you find mistakes comparatively quickly (they aren’t that easy to miss anyway).

I want to do another one, strangely enough. I know this one is not quite finished but it won’t take so long tomorrow or Thursday.

It’s very therapeutic, just pulling the rope every which way. And I didn’t even get rope burn. In an ideal world, if my flu jab doesn’t lay me out, I’ll go climbing tomorrow – not much opportunity between here and Christmas otherwise – and I’ll show it to the people who were wondering what on earth I  was taking a pile of old rope around with me.

I want to make one of these for the bathroom.

Hint hint.

I’m not good at buying shoes, and specialist shoes – let’s be honest, from about March to November I wear flipflops. I hate wearing shoes. Hate them. And I don’t know much about climbing shoes and had no real desire to guess work it over the internet on this occasion at least. So, Great Outdoors then because they are closer to what used to be the least expensive carpark in town.

The girl who took care of me doesn’t climb. She does ski, and she did know what she was talking about with respect to climbing shoes. This compares very well to people in hifi shops who know nothing about hifi systems (voice of bitter experience there). She measured my feet, something which no one has done since I was about 9 and then we went trying on shoes and I wound up buying a midrange pair that were also slightly wider fitting (required for Missy here) that were reasonably within budget and off I went.

We don’t often praise good customer service, although we’re fast enough to whinge about bad customer service. So kudos to the girl in the Great Outdoors today and thanks for the help.

A few months ago, the physio who was looking at other related problems called “bockety knee” or, more technically, “strength deficit in knee” asked if I suffered from vertigo. The answer to that question is, actually, yes.

He was somewhat surprised that I’d go climbing then. I did say that “I want to climb and in that case, I’m not letting a little detail called vertigo get in my way”. So I traipsed off to Edinburgh, learned how to belay and came back and spent three months forgetting how to belay and working out whether it was financially viable to join Westwood Gym to go climbing seeing as there isn’t really anywhere else that I can get into easily within easy reach of home and work. I’m all for the easy life, me, and I’m allergic to cross town traffic during the rush hour. About 4 weeks ago I started climbing again. It was hard.

No, seriously. Hard. The walls in Westwood – the easiest two anyway – are harder than the ones in Edinburgh, but the ones in Edinburgh sloped slightly in such a way as the wall supported your weight. The ones in Westwood are vertical. The first day I was in there, the end result was not pretty. For the first time that I can ever remember, I very nearly fainted when I got down after getting something like 5meters up the wall. This was euphemistically described as “has height issues”. Yeah right. Height issues and Wuss issues, thanks. I’m not afraid to admit it.

In the meantime, don’t ask me how I managed it, I discovered ice climbing. I mean, I discovered it existed. Not that I tried it and discovered I loved it. Bad and all as the weather is in Dublin right now, it’s not cold enough to freeze the waterfall in Powerscourt.

I’ve decided I’d like to try it, however.

It looks roughly like this:

yep. Let’s not discuss the random sanity check, okay. I have discovered that there are indoor ice climbing walls in London, Manchester and some part of Scotland not right next to an abandoned airfield servived by a low cost airline. It has struck me, however, that I should probably be a better climber before I try to scale up a frozen waterfall, or, in fact, a fake frozen waterfall.

So, I’m back climbing, watching 8 year old kids scale up the walls faster than me, with the objective of building up the upper body strength between here and Christmas.

Today wasn’t bad. Today, I got higher than I have gotten so far, without someone yelling at me that I could do something or other. And I didn’t faint. I know that both times that I scaled up that far today, I missed a foothold and – irritatingly, they were two different footholds. I guess the plus point is that I’d learned from the first mistake and on the second time up made the foothold I missed the first time, then promptly missed the next one. Bah.

On the plus point I got higher today than I did on Tuesday. And on the really plus point, I did better the second time than I did the first time – usually I do worse on the second run because I’m tired. But I still didn’t reach the top. Three dudes who claim they’ve never climbed before managed it of course. And the pesky 8 year old child. That’s the hard part.

I reckon with how things are going at the moment though I may well get to the top this week and with that achievement I’ll be good to work a bit harder on the next route that floored me last week. I also got reminded how to belay as well which is no bad thing.

So today, a better day than Tuesday, more or less.

If you do watch the video above, the second music track (from about 2.30 in) is a song called GBA by a dude called Xavier Rudd. I’d never heard of him before today but man, that track rocks.

Put in that context, going to Edinburgh for a day to add another item to the list of things I do which could potentially break my fingernails is kinda tame really. I went to Edinburgh International Climbing Arena in Ratho. Before I went climbing of course, I had a lot of time to mooch around Edinburgh and elected to go to the National Gallery – they have some very nice impressionist stuff, but a lot of portraits of people I don’t know.

Anyway, the climbing turned out to be less painful and more fun than even I expected – I was expecting it to be good – and I was planning to do some more climbing except, while out walking, I injured my knee and that softened my cough on the nail endangering sports like kitesurfing and climbing for a little ickle while. I got the all clear a few weeks ago, have been back kitesurfing – brrhhh – and put some thought into going back climbing.

There are a few climbing walls in Dublin. There’s nothing like Ratho, of course, but all told, I can think of 5 climbing walls. Three are linked to universities and the other two are linked to Westwood Sport and Leisure. I live close to one of the Westwood ones, and the DCU one. In fact, I live much closer to DCU than to Westwood; however, to use the one in DCU, it appears, you need to be a member of the DCU climbing club which you can only join if you are a student or member of staff there. Well I’ve spent 6 of my years in DCU and am now just a graduate. Climbing in DCU out. I’ve joined Westwood instead.

When I announce that I’m going to do something like this, various people around me either think it’s cool, or they think I’m nuts. I spent a lot of my life not doing stuff because people told me I was nuts and then I got to the age of 30 or so and wondered why it was nuts. Yesterday, before I sorted out access to Westwood, I looked for rock climbing videos – you know – the type to keep you going.

I found this.

I’m never going to be able to do this. I can try but still….

Anyway, what I wouldn’t mind giving a shot at when I’ve developed a few more muscles and a little less vertigo is ice climbing. I have a way to go; lot of work to do.

So here’s hoping.