Back to the regular life?

Are things getting back to "normal" for me? Gosh I hope not but at the same time, eventually, we all settle back into the rhythms of our everyday life, even after travels to exotic lands.

Lucky for me, many things in my regular life are activities I love to do such as climbing and hanging with friends so that helps. I've tried a couple climbing crags since coming back from Mongolia. I've had some reservations about climbing crags and those haven't changed. (For the non-climbers, climbing crags are areas that people can climb single pitch length of rock and there are many climbs beside each other.) I'm not a big fan of climbing with lots of other people around. The quintessential difference between the sport and traditional climber as I see it is that sport climbers don't worry about other people being around and trad climbers actively avoid them. Even before climbing, the trad climber hopes no one will be on their route. If someone else is climbing on the same route that means falling rocks and in many cases it signals you'll be climbing somewhere else that day.

Having said all this, when I've gotten my head out of my ass and gone sport climbing with friends I've had a great day out. It's fun and casual, fear factor is lower and sometimes that's a good way to spend a day.

But still, the call of the mountains is strong and it's not hard to convince me to get out there on a trad route. I still bemoan the rockies limestone and its insistence to move, slide, drop and scare the bejesus out of me.

Tom and I got out a couple weeks ago and climbed the "Guides Route" on the East End of Rundle. For the most part the climbing was cruisey, route finding was a challenge in some spots and a few of the crux moves felt harder than the assigned grade of 5.6. For Tom and I there is always an element of adventure when we go out, maybe that's because of our challenge with directions and reading topos - who knows! We both maintain a positive attitude and I think that's part of the reason why we climb well together. When we topped out the sun was just beginning to set behind the mountains. The light had that golden glow and we were bathed in mountain beauty.

This past weekend was spent with a bunch of gals and Deanne who was celebrating her Stagette. We still enjoyed the mountain scenery by going on an organized river rafting trip on the Kananaskis river before getting into the serious drinking/partying that is required of any stag or stagette. Sure Sunday was a write-off for me. I wasn't "technically" hungover, just slow moving... ya that's it.

But the best part of the weekend had to be that while I was out partying with the girls, Colin was working steadily on the climbing gym in the garage and Tom was busy organizing the gear room in the basement. I mean.. can it get any better than that? A couple man-servants at home while I was out playing? Maybe getting back to the regular life isn't so bad after all....