in the spirit of valentines day!

Here I go, my first blog posting ever, I’m currently sitting on my ass at home, completely off my rocker trying to find the words to make this story flow. In honor of Valentines Day I would like to share how I fell in love with climbing.

Rewind five years back to 2005…

After enduring eleven years of attending an all girls catholic school, I decided to leave the only thing I knew and transfer to a school a good 45 miles south of San Francisco. At School for Independent Learners, I combined my junior and senior years together so I could graduate early, the school only had 10 full time students ranging from sophomores to seniors. We had two kick ass teachers, Terrell and Elliott, who quickly became our mentors over the course of the year.

Back in the city, my best friend Zelda, who went to different high school, called Urban, was apart their after schools’ climbing program. For months, Zelda had been begging me to join her climbing for one afternoon. Of course, me being a ditsy shallow city girl, at the time, was finally convinced to go to Mission Cliffs after being informed that the guys there climbed without their shirts on! So my over protective crazy mother came with me the first time to sign a wavier and pay, she left with a friend, the guy working the counter, Ryan.

Back at school, one of my classmates had really poor social skills and as a joke of an assignment, Terrell, assigned every one in the class to get a picture of us getting a kiss on the cheek from someone of the opposite sex. When school got out, my mom picked me up and we began to drive back into the city so I could go climbing again. On the drive back I was telling my mother about how excited I was about this assignment!

When we arrived at the gym, my mom walked me in yet again. Ryan was working that day and as he was giving me a belay test I was explaining my newest homework assignment. I don’t remember if my neurotic mother told him to kiss my cheek or if I asked him to, but I ended up with a picture marking the day that I consider to be my anniversary with climbing.



Here’s to you climbing! Happy Valentines Day!