I just checked into this blog and realized that the entry that I spent 30 minutes on yesteday was somehow deleted from the system. And, even worse, I didn't have it saved anywhere, so I pretty much lost what I'd written. Basically, it was a summary of the first week of pre-term, including an overview of the 'Cardinal Cards' management simulation we did on Weds. and thurs. and the welcome presentation the GSB had for us on Friday. I'm salty as a mofo right now because I'd given pretty in-depth descriptions of all that stuff.
Anyways, I'll put down a few sentences about this past weekend's OA trip to Yosemite to go rockclimbing with some of my classmates. As a way for all of us to get outdoors and get to know each other, Stanford set up a series of Outdoor Adventure trips that varied from weekends of shooting, golf, and gambling to trips for folks to go surfing. The biggest of the trips was a whitewater rafting excursion that interested me, but one of the rules for going on that one was that you had to know how to swim and, as you know from my St Martin entries, I'm not exactly a fish when it comes to messing around in the water. As an alternative, I signed up to go on a rockclimbing trip to Yosemite National park. I'm not a huge fan of heights, but that was a fear that I was determined to conquer.
We left campus on Friday afternoon to start the drive up to the park and I was the driver for one of the 6 SUVs that took all of us to the location. The drive up gave me a chance to get to know 7 of my classmates and, because of traffc, it took us over 6 hours to get there. Once all of us arrived at the cmapground, we proceeded to hang out, talk, and drink together...and just when it was getting nice to schmooze with each other, The Man came and messed it all up. Some park police broke us up saying that we were making too much noise, which was far from cool. The next day, we all loaded up and went over to the climbing site where a set of trainers taught us all of the little things that we'd have to know about climbing, including how to put on the harness, belay and repel, and tie the knots that we'd need to secure ourselves to the ropes. I ended up climbing up two rocks to heights of about 70-80 feet, which may not sound like a lot, but climbing those things were not easy tasks. I never knew that I had so much strength in my fingers and that less than an inch of exposed rock was enough to stand on, but I know that all very well now. It was an exhausting day because of the heat and there were several times that I wanted to give in and just chill, but I knew I couldn't go out like that. That night, we cooked dinner at the camp site and did more meet, greeting, and bonding. Saturday was definitely one of the highlights of my time here at Stanford so far. On Sunday, we got up bright and early and hit the road toward campus.
I was dead tired and my back muscles and hands hurt like crazy when I got back to my room , but I couldn't help but smile because I'd 'conquered' my fear of that rock. I really like climbing and I need to try to find some indoor climbing spots around campus so I can get some practice in. You never know...your boy might just try to take down mt. Everest next ;-)
Posted by marquis930 at September 14, 2004 11:33 PM