dreadedmonkeygod . net

Okay, so I pushed my tri training off a day, but it was worth it. I the lead climbing class over at Boulderdash last night. I've been wanting to get a taste of leading for a while, and this was a great way to do it. As it turned out, I was the only one in the classs, and got what ammounted to a two-hour private leading lesson at a bargain price.

Really, I was never truly leading. I was tied in to the lead rope, and to a toprope. But the TR was just for backup, and had plenty of slack-- the nice long falls I took proved that.

Incidentally, I also discovered that the Petzl "Reverso" belay device is complete crap for belaying a leader. After catching a fall, it tends to stay in lock-down posisition, and it's hard to start feeding out rope again. Switching to an ATC fixed everything in a snap. (It may be that simply changing configurations on the Reverso would help, but I didn't want to waste time tinkering.)

And today I participated in Save Betamax's calling campaign against the staggeringly ill-advised "Inducing Infringement of Copyrights Act of 2004" (S. 2560). As instructed, I called Senator Tom DeLay, and Representatives Nancy Pelosi and Dingell John. Senator DeLay's office was very polite, and knew exactly what I was talking about. However, the offices of Reps. Pelose and John seemed a bit mystified about why I was calling about a Senate bill. Not sure how to take that. I'm new to this political stuff.

So anyway, I'm off to the gym tonight to resume training, and then a trip out to REI to invest in some quickdraws, and a short length of rope with which to practice clipping. Whee!