AmeriClimb

Last Friday, we were supposed to go to the Air Force Base in Colorado Springs to do their obstacle course. I knew this was coming, I had heard that Denver AmeriCorps people do it, it was on the schedule, etc. I was pretty scared of this, but also excited. Before I came here, I had found a blog of a girl who did this last year, and she wrote about the course and how that had to jump walls and lift themselves over and under things and do all sorts of stuff. After the course, they had to do group problem solving stuff like figure out how to get the team over a 12-foot wall. It seemed like one of those things where I would hate it while I was there and never want to do it again, but later say "Yeah, that was fun." But...remember all that snow last week? When the powers that be knew the snow was coming, they said they were canceling the obstacle course part, but we would still do the problem solving. Then they said no, never mind, we're going to an indoor rock climbing place instead. So off we went on Friday morning. Well, off we went after taking 45 minutes to dig 15-passenger vans out of two feet of snow.

It doesn't look all that bad, but under the plowed part of the parking lot was a sheet of ice.

Team Leaders Jordan and Dani trying to dig the vans out.

Dangerous? Probably.

I was definitely nervous for the climbing also. I've never done it before, I'm kind of afraid of heights, and I have no upper body strength. Obviously we would use harnesses and ropes, but they were manned by other AmeriCorps people who went early to get trained how to do it. (Word of the Day: Belay [v.] the action of keeping someone attached to a rope while rock climbing.) So they weren't even the climbing gym's belayers, they were our peers.

The different sections of wall are labeled with numbers to show difficulty, with lower numbers being easier. The lowest number was 5.5. (They were all 5.something.) The belayer for the 5.5 part was someone from a different unit, so I didn't know him. There was a 5.8 part that people seemed to be doing pretty well on, and the belayer was a guy in my unit who I knew and trusted (he was wearing his own rock climbing shoes), so I decided to try that one first. Bad idea. The rock things were on the small side, which makes it hard. Also, I never remembered the part where you're supposed to push up with your legs, so I kept trying to just pull myself up from these tiny little handholds. Again, no upper body strength. I only got maybe 10 feet up on that one. It was pretty pathetic. Later, I decided that the 5.5 belayer guy was probably trustworthy and tried that one. The rock things were a lot bigger on that one, so it was much easier. I think I got about halfway up the 40 or 50 foot wall on that one. Not bad for a first try, I guess. I stopped not because my strength ran out (I remembered to use my legs more this time) but because I accidentally veered into the 5.8 section next to me, and also looked down and got a little freaked out at the height. Picture time!

Pathetic attempt at the 5.8

Gathering determination for the 5.5

Away I go!

That's me about in the center of the picture. I think I might have gone a few feet higher than that.

This guy made it pretty far up this 5.11 or 12 part. No, the camera isn't angled, that's the angle of the wall. Crazy!

Mom, Dad, this is for you. See how much I love you?

Friday night, there was a Halloween party for us on campus. A group of us decided to go see what it was like for a few minutes, but ended up staying till the end because it was more fun than we were expecting. Loud music with one speaker that occasionally goes out, way too much fog machine action, and a never ending strobe light? What could be better than that? But seriously, it was fun. Once you turn off your eyes from noticing the strobe light, anyway.

We had Saturday off, but I had a busy day. We have to do 80 hours of Independent Service Projects (ISPs) to complete the program, and most of us had some ISPs lined up for the weekend. I went with a group to the Denver Boys and Girls Club in the morning. No kids were there at that time, but the guy who runs it had a lot of little projects that needed to get done. I helped shampoo the carpet and cleaned windows most of the time. Is it weird that I find cleaning really dirty windows oddly satisfying? Probably. But I find dirty windows really depressing, and cleaning them makes a big difference. Other people changed bulletin board decorations, inventoried sports equipment, and did other random things.

I went straight from there to the Denver Children's Museum. They were having this big Halloween event that several AmeriCorps people went to help with. When I first got there, I was assigned to the game area. My first game was at the sandwich board with a picture of a monster on it that had holes cut out. Kids had to throw bean bags through the holes, and I had to repeatedly squat and bend to pick them up and hand them to the next kid. My next game was bowling. There were little 8-inch plastic pins that fall over when you look at them wrong. Over and over and over, they would go flying, and I had to gather them and set them back up. My legs are VERY sore today. Luckily, after only a couple hours of that, I got sent into the office to stuff bags that kids got when they first arrive. Then a friend and I got sent to the fire truck they had in the museum to give kids fire truck temporary tattoos. Little kids REALLY like temporary tattoos. It was pretty adorable how excited some of them would get. I would have been perfectly fine doing that the rest of the time, but I got sent to be the Critter Handler. Remember the children's books about Little Critter? Neither do I. I have been informed that I had a deprived childhood. There was a costumed Critter character walking around who apparently couldn't really see out of the costume, so someone had to stick with it and make sure it didn't bump into stuff. Seriously. Google Images says Little Critter looks like this (I guess this looks familiar, now that I see the real thing):

The Children's Museum says Little Critter looks like this:

Some kids started crying when they saw it. Some parents told their kids "Look! It's a monster from Where the Wild Things Are!" Some parents asked me what it was supposed to be, and I never knew how to answer. When the event was over, we helped break it down, then left. In all, I had a 12-hour day.

Today, I did more ISP. The Denver Police Department also had a Halloween event last night, and some of us went over there to help clean it up. They said they had almost 2,000 kids there last night! I can't even imagine. Apparently they also spent $4,000 on candy and almost ran out. The people were really nice, and I got to see the bowels of a police department. When Jordan, the Team Leader who drove us, came to pick us up, we got him to take us to Target. We can take a bus to Wal-Mart, which I hate, but really the only way to get to Target is to drive. There are also some food places nearby, and I got to go to SUBWAY! I was so excited! The cafeteria is not very good and they apparently don't believe in serving chicken, so I got to have my favorite Oven Roasted Chicken Breast Subway sandwich. I haven't been to Subway in a long time. Laugh all you want, but it was a big deal.

Alright, longest post ever, but it was an eventful weekend. Good night!