This video shows one of my classmates attempting a “dyno”–that’s short for “dynamic movement.” A dyno is essentially jumping to grab a hold that’s otherwise beyond your reach. There are a few things that this poor quality video doesn’t quite get across:

1) The angle of the wall is such that every move, for relative n00bs like us, is a battle against gravity.
2) The hold we’re trying to reach looks close to climber from the ground, but looks UNREACHABLY far away from the climber’s perspective.
3) The climber in this film is a handsome grad student from Barcelona and is a nice human with a beautiful Spanish accent. If he’s single, you should consider him a “catch.”

I made the same attempt a few minutes earlier. I climbed up so that I was where you can see him in this video, and thought, “this is fucking impossible. If I can only overrule my instinct, I’ll just jump and see how close I get.”

I made the same attempt, and I fucking nailed it.

It took me three tries. The hardest part was convincing myself to let go of the wall, to leap up and behind me, and to trust both my belayer (the same dude from Barcelona) and my ability to grab the hold just below the lip of the overhang. The first time I touched air. The second time I swiped it. The third time I caught it, hung, and pulled myself back onto the wall. My grunt of exertion and surprise was probably heard across the rec center.

This was after an hour of climbing where I felt completely off. I was surprised at how weak and sucky I was tonight. In retrospect, I think it had a lot to do with the fact that my substitute instructor, who was belaying me during that time, was paying more attention to chatting up fellow climbers. Nice guy, friendly guy, but the trust I have for the classmates who have been belaying me for the past couple of months is almost tangible.

I trusted them enough to take that leap of faith, when they were belaying me under the overhang.

I deserve the beer I’m drinking right now. I worked hard today moving projects forward, taking care of the kiddos, jumping off rock walls. I was witness to inspiring acts of generosity from friends and from strangers. If I can complete my final draft of my zombie story and get a bit of reading in before bedtime, this will be a ***perfect*** day.

Geeez. I love you all. I love life.