Gear, Gear, Gear!

Last Thursday night, I rode down to Summit Hut, a local outdoor retailer. I wanted to look at rock climbing gear. I climbed a lot last year with Brandon, but hadn’t been climbing since June of ’04, or something like that. Kelly kept nudging me to get back into it, since she really enjoys it, and had had a great time climbing with Jared, Bess, and crew back in February.

In any case, I check out a bunch of gear, looked at prices, made a list of stuff I needed, etc. (Harness, shoes, chalk bag, quickdraws, biners, belaying device, for the record).

Friday night, I rode back to Summit Hut. First, a short note on the riding. I find it interesting how cities have such different feeling “pockets.” For example, the neighborhood that I’m in is medium nice. Small houses, but pretty well kept up. Not too much weird stuff going on in the night, etc. But cross one street, and go a little ways, and it’s a completely different feel, with lots more run-down houses, mobile home parks, etc. And riding a bike, I see it more, since I take small streets, and am of course moving more slowly. End of digression…

Friday, I bought all that gear, as well as a rope for Kelly for her birthday. (More on that later). It was a bunch of stuff, and I had to do a bunch of choosing. I bought a Petzl Corax harness, which is very comfortable, Montrail Splitter shoes, Trago quickdraws, and other good stuff. It seemed like a lot of money to plunk down, but I realized that it was really comparable to 3-4 hours of flying. Not that bad after all.