Weekend!

So I was researching the cost of a shark cage and, according to this, an aluminum one that gets rented to film crews cost $100,000.

That one is probably made to order and extra expensive and all that so I’m guessing, and this number is ex rectum, that a regular run-of-the-mill shark cage would cost somewhere around $20,000.

With that in mind, I imagined a website called “Bob’s Discount Shark Cages” and that he would sell shark cages for $5,000.

My response to that thought experiment was not “hey, what a discount! That’s practically an arbitrage opportunity!” but “what in the heck would be wrong with that shark cage?”

This thought experiment came to me as I was driving home from the rock climbing gym after the first time I used the auto-belay.

Who made this auto-belay? I thought to myself. I was told that they were good for up to 400 pounds. I’d kinda like them to be good up to 500, but that’s me being a worrywart, I’m sure. But who made them? I hope it wasn’t Bob’s Discount Auto-Belays.

So I went back to the gym tonight. I still haven’t made it all the way up the wall to honk one of the little squeezy horns. I made it up half way, then froze up, then, instead of jumping off and riding the auto-belay down, I climbed all the way back down the wall.

I needed to figure this out. What the heck is going on in my head? Well, I played all of the negative ninny tapes (you know the ones: “you’re the fattest person in this gym”, “look at that 6 year old… they went all the way up the wall in about a minute, never stopping, then they just jumped down”, “everyone here has a physique somewhere between ‘tattooed seven year-old’ and ‘Greek statue'”, so on and so forth) and I let them play out and fizzle (despite them being pretty much true, after you get past the parts where they contradicted each other) and realize that I still didn’t know how to let go and jump.

So I got back up on the wall and I only climbed up six feet and then I jumped.

I grabbed the belay line so tightly that I ripped out about a dozen beard hairs. Didn’t feel a thing.

Then I did it again.

Then I did it again.

So, this weekend, the plan includes buying pony-tail rubber bands. Well, and recuperating. My arms feel like they’ve been holding onto a rope for dear life.

So… what’s on your docket?

(Image is “Play” by Clare Briggs. Used with permission of the Briggs estate.)