Forty & Climbing

A friend from work asked me to go indoor rock climbing with a group of people he gathered. There is a place in the park where I work that is basically a large warehouse converted to an indoor rock climbing facility. I've always wanted to do this and would have loved to have gone, but the cash flow had other ideas. But it got me to thinking...always a dangerous proposition at the best of times.

I wanted to do something to ring in my fortieth year, something fun and exciting. Not a party, not a family dinner like every other year. But something different that would mark the milestone with some excitement and adventure, a way of saying I'd hit the mark and had no plans of slowing down. That it was a brand new decade and a fun new bend in the road.

I clicked onto the website of the rock climbing place and had a look around. They do group parties. Suddenly the idea of a big group of friends all hanging off the wall in their harnesses, laughing and having a ball seemed a great way to ring in the big 4-0. I could invite my friends from my old job that I don't see enough of, my siblings and their significant others, friends from my current job, friends I'd collected along the way through life, the softball team. The list grew and the more I thought of combining all these groups of people from my life and hanging them off the wall, the more the idea appealed to me.

So I decided to do it. I'm going to ring in the big 4-0 in style. If stylish can be considered wearing a harness, helmet and chalky hands whilst trying to climb up a wall that bends over backwards and has you hanging upside down.