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It’s 7:30 a.m. and you’re at the parking lot of your local crag. Today you plan to finally get on the choice route on the cliff. You’ve been waiting for two months to do this climb, and the perfect finger crack is a siren beckoning to you again and again. Now you’re finally heeding her call.
    Today’s my day, you remind yourself as you cut your car’s ignition. Grabbing your coffee mug, you open your door only to have it hit the car next to you with a resounding thud. You look up surprised, since you hadn’t even seen the car, and lock eyes with the climber in the passenger seat. You know in an instant that the climber and his partner are headed for your climb. Scanning their bodies reveals that they’re fit, though you think you could out-hike them to the base. Climbing out of the car, you mouth an apology to your opponent and move to the trunk in three quick strides. Less than a minute later you’re buckling your pack when your partner announces that she has to use the facilities. You fake an under-standing smile and watch as the other climbing team seizes the opening and heads for the trail.
    By the time your partner saunters out of the bathroom you’re ready to sprint the thirty-minute approach and don’t care if she’d prefer to walk. The cold morning air burns your lungs, and your calves cramp as you power up the rocky trail. When you arrive at the route’s base, the other party is just beginning to climb. “We’ll be quick,” the leader mutters over his shoulder.
    An hour later you’re still waiting, and your left leg is falling asleep from the inactivity. You look up to gauge their progress, and note that the other climber and his partner still haven’t dialed their French-freeing. Since it’s obvious that they won’t be making it up the route in any other
style, you re-adjust you pack, remove the number four Camalot that’s been jutting into your lower back, and hope for the best.
    When you finally get on the route, you can’t seem to clear your head of the background noise of dogs barking and the shouts of “take” that signify the arrival of the hordes at the crag. Quiet! you say to no one in particular as you try and wiggle in a RP before the crux. Too late, your stemmed-out legs begin to shake, most likely from your rigorous approach. Looking down, you yell “take” to your partner, only to see that she’s flirting with the belayer next door. Pulling on the runner with your right hand, you repeat yourself louder and are relieved when you feel the rope come tight. Your on-sight blown, you stack an extra RP as you hang, cursing the fate of the weekend climber.
    The following Wednesday you drag yourself to the gym after work and
arrive at the parking lot at 5:30 p.m. You circle the lot, then the block, and end up parking four streets away. You start jogging as soon as you close the car door, and wait out a red light doing arm circles. By the time you’ve changed clothes its 5:45 p.m., there’s not an empty locker in sight, and the waiting list for a lead route is seven people deep. Thankfully, your partner arrived before you and is flaking out the rope as you walk over to the wall. Your warmup crosses paths with another climber, and you keep one eye on his trembling hands and the other on your route’s purple tape, praying he doesn’t blow your on-sight. Upon reaching the anchor, you lean back and feel momentarily suspended above the chaos. While you’re only thirty feet off the carpet, you pretend you are 3000 feet up El Cap, and wish it were so for the rest of the evening.
 
The next day at work you sit at your desk daydreaming about a never-ending road trip. Your climbing has stagnated, you haven’t increased a letter grade in over eight months, and you’re running out ofideas. Climbing fulltime seems like the most obvious escape from your rut. Your potential is thus far  untapped, and you’re convinced that you could be better, if not great, if only you had the time.
    By lunchtime you’ve decided that the only way to get better is to quit your job. After a morning of web surfing and dodging your boss, you’ve made a hit list for your new life. The desert first, Joshua Tree next, Yosemite in June, and then points beyond. Over a turkey sandwich on rye you make a list of what you’ll need for the trip, starting with a brand- new van. Fulltime climbers need vans, you reason. The few nights you’ve slept inside your Camry were worse than any night you ever endured on a wall. And not just any van, but one with perfect Tupperware-sized bins that are just right for each category of item, efficient drying lines for hanging wash towels, and convenient curtains to close on those nights when the van is sleeping two. A van is a must for my new life, you decide as you pick up the phone to call the local VW dealer.
    Five minutes later you hang up the phone and wonder ifyou might have a hidden trust fund someplace that you don’t know about. You briefly debate calling your parents to ask, but come to your senses before dialing their
number. Without a trust fund your dreams of a van become wed to having a job, and you wonder how you’ll ever climb hard with such limiting constraints.
    Having established the fact that you need an income, you consider changing careers. Professional climber seems like the most logical choice. Of course, you’d have to climb fulltime to break the 5.14 barrier and be at the caliber that attracts sponsors, but that small point aside, you’re not so sure about the pro life. You scour the magazines and catalogs, trying to discern if the facial expressions are smiles or grimaces. You think it could be hard to keep up the media image; the last time you tried to create an image was in high school when you ran for class president, and that ended with you demanding a recount, even though you lost 254 to twenty-three. Plus, you might have ethical issues with the available sponsors, for example, the local brewery (what would your Aunt Mabel think?).
    Scratching the pro-climber option off your list, your brain arrives at the next logical choice: mountain guide. Just another way of getting paid to climb, you think while taking a swig of the beer you’re sure would have been first in line to have you on their label.
    Four beers later, you remember a small detail about guiding: clients. You decide that this might throw a glitch into the otherwise seamless plan. You don’t like teaching, and in general, you don’t like newbies. Just last week you averted your eyes in embarrassment from the climber desperately trying to place his entire rack on a forty-foot 5.3 slab. The funny thing about guiding, you remind yourself, is that you need clients, especially those with generous tip money. You think back to the last guide you saw at the local crag, and you consider his 1983 Subaru wagon with rust spots like Rorschach ink blots and the muffler tied on with leftover ten-mill accessory cord. Definitely not your dream van.
    Better than a climbing job, you think next, would be a job with ample time off for road tripping. Teaching comes to mind, and you make a note to ask a friend if you had to have passed high school English to teach it. Nursing is also a possibility, and you think you could look good in a pair of blue scrubs, until you realize why they make nurses wear scrubs and remember that you’ve never gotten along especially well with the sick.
    Having exhausted your career options, you opt for the next best thing: a sabbatical. It takes two months, but eventually you convince your boss to let you take a month off, telling her your aunt is sick. You keep from feeling guilty by studying guidebooks to the cliffs on your hit list.

The morning you leave town, your Camry is packed full with every piece of climbing gear and car-camping equipment you own. You’ve lined up partners for each major stop, and you’ve given yourself time in between, just in case you meet other potential rope mates. Your first stop is Indian Creek, and you climb for five days straight. When you wake up on the sixth day you can barely get out of your tent and declare your first rest day, proud of your maturity. By 11 a.m. you’ve had your fourth cup of coffee and are bored with your book, so you start trolling the Moab café for an afternoon partner. After easily finding one, you buy an extra roll of tape and cover your strawberry-marked wrists and forearms, declaring yourself good to go.
    By the time you leave the Creek you’ve climbed ten out of twelve days. Holding onto the steering wheel seems more difficult than it used to, so you use your knees whenever possible on the long drive to Joshua Tree. On your second day there you hand stack in an offwidth and feel your shoulder pull out of its socket as you fight to keep your knee bar. That night your left arm falls asleep, and you wake up to an annoying tingling in your hand. By mid-afternoon your whole left arm is aching. You sit at a picnic table scanning the guidebook for tomorrow’s routes, trying not to wince as you turn the pages. Maybe slabs are the way to go, you think as you search for a likely route.
    By the next day you can no longer ignore the fact that your entire left arm is malfunctioning. For a fleeting moment you tell yourself that you can climb the moderates one-handed, until you realize you can’t even lift a water bottle. Your partner finds another rope mate for the day, and you lie in your sleeping bag wondering if your body is cut out for full-time climbing. Maybe, you think to yourself, I could do this if I’d started when I was young. Rationalizing that this is what has kept you from greatness comes easily, if not naturally, and you happily spend the rest of your day thinking about what might have been.
    After three days off from climbing your arm hasn’t gotten better and you’re tired of hiking for entertainment. You pull out your calendar and realize that you’re not even halfway through your sabbatical. You wonder what your boss would say if you returned early. Sure, you’d have to explain that your aunt miraculously recovered — maybe she could write you a note? You also wonder how the one-handed drive back home will feel, and you reassure yourself with comforting thoughts of stops for ice along the way.
    Two days later you’re back at home, having been diagnosed with tendonitis in your left forearm, compounded by a torn rotator cuff. When you arrive at physical therapy, the therapist takes one look at you before asking if you’re a climber. “Yes,” you say, feeling triumphant for the first time in a week. You gaze lovingly at your scabbed hands and wonder what other indicators might have given you away: your tapered waistline, or our ripped back accentuated by your tight t-shirt? The therapist sighs, interrupting your self-evaluation. “Does this mean you don’t have health insurance?” he asks. You meekly nod confirmation and assuage yourself by deciding to think of him as a mere hiker.

You return to your job on Monday to your boss’s surprise. Using her combined shock at both your early return and your dilapidated physical state to your advantage, you negotiate a four-day workweek with little effort. You amble back to your desk and stretch your shoulder as you walk, thinking that it might be better to start your new schedule after you’re finished with rehab. Back at your desk, you remove the power putty from your drawer. Small steps, you whisper as you methodically kneed the dark blue substance and scan the climbing web pages for inspiration.
.

    I leave New Hampshire and get on a connecting plane in Baltimore. I am surrounded by successful investment bankers with Armani suits. and just like that, I want my own peony crepe ensemble and everything that goes with it. I do not make sense, even to myself. And maybe I am not enough in either of these worlds because I am trying to be in both of these worlds.
    When I started dating again, post-marriage, I had a friend give me advice I’m still not sure I understand. Just because someone likes you, he said, you don’t have to like them. If I can picture myself in a half-finished cabin with an Oscar De La Renta dress in the closet, am I supposed to make that my goal? What if I can picture everything? Then what? The best I can figure out is that it’s time to acknowledge the person on the would-be lettuce tour. That certain things are bound to come with me wherever I go. Besides, a lettuce book is not such a bad idea, really. Most everyone eats it, right?

La Petite Epic:

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It all began with an overhanging limestone pocket at Wild Iris. Actually there were two of them, and, due to their distance apart and the lack of other features surrounding them, I was supposed to be holding onto one and heel hooking in the other. The problem was, however, that I am unfamiliar with the art of heel hooking. The concept seemed simple enough but each time I tried to lift my left leg into the pocket, I felt like I was beginning an upside-down cartwheel.
    “Try the Gaston!” yelled my partner Charlie.
    “Who?” I screamed as my arms gave way and I launched into the space below.
    While I hung on the rope trying to catch my breath, I looked up at the route that had suddenly taken on the equivalent appeal of a high-school calculus test. I envisioned a bright red “C” spray-painted on the cliff as I was lowered to the ground. While Charlie untied my welded knot I looked up and counted the seven additional bolts that stood between my high point and the chains, and decided it was time to learn how to sport climb.
    It did not take long for me to conclude that learning to sport climb would best be accomplished in France. Where better to perfect my skills than the modern Mecca of overhanging limestone, pain au chocolat, and merlot rolled all into one glorious pastoral scene? Plus, I explained to Charlie, I spoke French, or at least I took French classes in high school and a trip to France might finally be a way to make something of my illustrious education.
    Two months later we flew over the Atlantic with our luggage nestled below. Packing had been easy: a rack of draws, two ropes and plenty of extra halter-tops thrown in to take up the extra space. In the spirit of vacation we’d outlawed any prior planning, guidebook purchasing, or worrying. This is the way to travel, I thought to myself as I emptied my three-ounce bottle of gin into a plastic glass.
    By the time we were an hour outside of Marseilles I began to question our lack of foresight and absence of a map beyond the small sheet from Hertz signifying its branch locations in Southern France. Though we’d located our destination (the Verdon) on the map, Hertz apparently had a need to place its logo directly over the space which rep- resented our highway exit. Seeing this as an opportunity to showcase my verbal acumen, I suggested a quick stop for directions. As we decelerated on the exit I began to clear my throat and gargle my “r’s,” warming up for my first foray into the French language in more than a decade.
    But, five minutes later, when I was face to face with a real live French person, my entire speech vanished from my brain and all that I could recall of my extensive studies was a nursery rhyme about three elephants.
    “I thought you said you spoke French,” Charlie said when he noticed the blank stare on the attendant’s face.
    This comment, coming from the man whose only French vocabulary came from the chorus of “Voulez-vous couchez avec moi, ce soir,” only served to make me try harder.
    “Por favor, nous neccitez vamos a climbing,” I said with authority.
    “Nice Spanish,” Charlie said as he took out our map and used the international language of finger pointing to get us on our way.
    By the time we arrived in the little town of La Palud outside of the Verdon I had my communication down to a science. Charlie, for his part, pretended not to notice when I returned from the local bakery with a baguette instead of directions to the climbing shop.
 
By nightfall we had procured a guidebook, and were splitting a bottle of red wine and picking out the next day’s route. Tradsters at heart, Charlie and I chose the Verdon for its famous long routes. After my second glass of wine, though, I began to get confused as I flipped through glossy pages and saw the multitudes of routes that had a funny looking icon next to them that looked suspiciously like a nut. I poured Charlie another glass of wine and hoped he would not remember it was me who suggested we should leave the nuts at home. “Nuts,” I’d said, “They don’t even have a word for nuts in French.”
    By 11 a.m. the next day I cursed my stupidity. While I’d expected long runouts, I did not anticipate trying to keep my head together and hyperventilating while staring at a perfect placement for a #6 Stopper. In an attempt to assuage my growing anxiety, I hung off my right arm and traded out my wire-gate biner for a locker on my light- weight quickdraw to use at the next bolt, whose existence I had yet to visually confirm.
    That evening Charlie and I sat in the campground trying to fashion jammed knots with any extra cord. Any hopes of making friends with local climbers began to disappear as they walked by and shook their heads. “Vous-etes Americains?” asked one woman with forearms bigger than my calves.
    “How’d you guess?” I muttered, not even bothering to try it in French.

The next morning, while our European counterparts were sleeping in their tents or performing their morning constitutionals of cigarettes, Charlie and I were the first to arrive the bakery. When Charlie ordered a Café Americano, I shoved my elbow into his side and covered up his yelp with a request for a cappuccino. “We’re in France for Christ sake,” I said.
    “Actually,” the woman behind the counter replied, “what would be most appropriate is a café au lait.”
    I stared at her, taking in her jet-black hair arranged in a casual twist and knee-length A-line skirt. She went on to describe the difference between each drink in impeccable English.
    “Now that’s a woman with a knack for languages,” Charlie said when we walked out of the bakery. I nodded, wondering who in the world bakes in a skirt and wishing we’d started our day with Clif Bars instead.
    By the third day at the Verdon, Charlie and I decided to take the plunge on a classic long route. At 7 a.m.I watched as he jotted down route notes on a napkin, noting the powdered sugar cascading from his pastry onto our plan for the day. A Xerox machine would have been impossible to find, and I had my doubts about the resiliency of a cotton napkin.
    “It’s sport climbing,” Charlie replied when I asked if he wanted a piece of paper, “You just go up.”
    Two more pastries and another café au lait later, we were standing on the edge of the Verdon, strapping into our harnesses, and looking into the void. Though many of the routes are labeled with delicate red paint, ours was not, and we’d resorted to a highly refined anchor-counting system to arrive at what we thought was our line. The morning’s approach took approximately four-and-a-half minutes, and by the third rappel the sugar and caffeine burning through my bloodstream caused my heart to flutter and hands to shake. By the time I was perched on the two-foot-wide grass ledge, my bloated belly began to mount a revolt. I looked between my feet at the river several thousand feet below, in front of me at the small painted arrow pointing upwards, and above me at the myriad bolted lines. Our napkin topo showed only one climb. Its features were limited to one roof on pitch four and the approximate lengths of each pitch.
    “I have to go to the bathroom,” I announced, grabbing the topo from Charlie’s hands, figuring I’d at least found a use for it.
    After three pitches and several pendulums, I decided maybe we were not ready for the Verdon. The top of the cliff was hours away and we’d already left four bail biners as we swung from line to line. “I can see a roof!” Charlie shouted triumphantly from above as I fed out more rope and wondered if I should point out that every pitch in the Verdon
has a roof.
    By the fifth pitch we had settled on a line, chosen for the plethora of chalk and big holds. It took me fifteen feet of climbing to realize the obvious downsides of the easiest route on the cliff as I tunneled through yet another French version of a scrub oak on my way to the next bolt. When we finally topped out my arms and legs looked worse than they did after a week at Indian Creek. Sport climbing, I thought to myself as I wondered how to say Neosporin in French, is supposed to be easier than this.

The next morning we waved goodbye to the Verdon in the rearview mirror and drove the winding roads north to Ceüse. Two hours into the journey our gas tank was hovering on empty and we pulled into the nearest station to fuel up. As Charlie fit the nozzle into the car, I noticed that the dispenser next to ours looked suspiciously like diesel. “Are you sure that’s not diesel?” I asked as he contracted the lever.
    “Nah, this is the regular stuff.” The Euro counter started to spiral upward. I looked again at the machine next to ours, saw its yellow label reading “Disele, Gazole 97”and noticed our tank had gazole written on it as well. Never having learned this word in my high-school French class, I decided to cast my faith in Charlie’s innate car knowledge. After paying the equivalent of forty dollars for eight liters of gazole, we sped away in our blue box.
    The road soon began climbing upwards and I casually asked what would happen should a person put diesel in a regular car.
    “Can’t be that bad,” Charlie answered, as the car suddenly lurched forward with a groan and a creak unlike any vehicular noise either of us had previously heard. Within a hundred yards, Charlie had to put the car in neutral to turn it around and go back to town. I made a mental note to double-check his mechanical expertise at a later time.
    Ten minutes later we spotted the gas station and I got out of the car to practice a whole new set of French words. “J’avais une petite problem,” I said to the attendant, feeling momentarily impressed with myself until I realized I would have to continue.
    “La yellow, ici es diesel, oui?” I tried, wishing I was wearing the bakery woman’s skirt instead of being four days into my current pair of shorts. “Es un problemo,oui? Nous car n’aime pas la diesel, oui?”
    The attendant looked at me in confused disbelief and proceeded to rattle off a string of words that I interpreted as one big, “why?”
    I shrugged my shoulders and rolled my eyes. “Je ne sais pas,ce n’est pas le fault de moi,” I added, happy that Charlie decided to stay in the car while I talked to the attendant.
    Four hours and $160 dollars later we were back on the road. The diesel was siphoned, fuel injectors cleaned and both of us chastised (or maybe cursed at, since I am still not that up on French swearing) about the difference between gazole and sans plomb.
    “Apparently yellow is always diesel,” I said as the gas station faded from the rear-view mirror.
    “Glad to see your French is improving,” Charlie replied as he depressed the accelerator.
 
After the four-hour diesel detour, we arrived at Ceüse in the dark and pitched the tent by car headlight. The next morning we headed up the hill to the cliff, thankful for the forty-five-minute approach that many Europeans claim is reason enough not to climb at Ceüse. When we got to the cliff, sans guidebook, we used the time-honored European tradition of finding the most popular routes by looking for the ones with the most cigarette butts at the base. Once we found a route that was not completely overhanging, I cleared the rain-sodden butts away with my shoe and flaked the rope. I was up for the first lead of the day and as I cried for a take at the second bolt, Charlie backed up to hold me and promptly stepped into the other sign of a popular route, toilet paper and all.
    By the end of our day we had attempted eight routes and finished three — I decided we needed a new strategy. Since being in France did not seem to be the solution to sport climbing, than perhaps being French might. That night we drove into town to buy cigarettes and muesli, and promised each other there would be no more pastries until the end of the trip. By 11 a.m. the next day I had picked a worthy objective and stood at its base, smoking my first cigarette in twelve years as I tightly cinched the Velcro on my shoes and tied into the rope.
    “Au revoir,” I said to Charlie as I wrapped my fingers around the first holds.
    “Hasta luego,” he replied, scanning his surroundings for possible hazards.
    Three bolts up, I wondered if my lightheadedness was cause for concern when I saw the pocket to my left. This was my chance. I threw up my foot and caught the edge with the back of my heel and tried not to yelp as I rocked my weight onto the stance. I swung my butt down, took a breath, and launched upwards, missing my hold by a mile and flying into the space below. That afternoon we hiked down to camp leaving our quickdraws hanging on the cliff above, glimmering in the evening sun. Three days, thirteen tries, and a new nicotine addiction later, I finally reached the chains.
    As we drove back to the airport I took a mental tally of my vacation. By my count, I onsighted two climbs and redpointed four during two weeks in France. The sixteen biners we’d left behind twinkled in my mind, and I wondered if it was a fair trade. As I mulled it over I massaged my heel and watched the French countryside whirl by, thinking I might even feel a callous.

Finding Your Better Half : The search for the perfect (rope) mate (April 2004)
 
You wake up to your alarm at 6:30 a.m. Your dog hears the buzzer and jumps in bed to make his wet nose your second reminder. You have a date today — this morning, in fact. At 7:45 you are meeting a new climbing partner at the local coffee shop and you don’t want to be late. You spring out of bed and briefly debate whether to take a shower. Will your new belay slave/rope gun be more impressed with yesterday’s odor or today’s Irish Spring? You opt for a two-minute oral-hygiene attack instead. By 6:43 you are standing outside in your flip-flops staring into the trunk of your car. You’ve offered to bring the rack and wonder: Should you go light, to encourage questions about your virtually unknown alpine career, or should you load up with doubles of every cam and the offsets in between — maybe he is a potential wall partner?
    You decide on an eclectic mix: your new set of RPs commingled with various bootied nuts, and one cam of each size, including a couple of rigid Friends to show your climbing breadth. You clip your draws onto a sling and smile as the sun reflects off the biners into your eyes.
    Today is the day.
    Arriving at the coffee shop right on time you spot your partner on the patio. You make eye contact and feel the vibe begin. Both of you are wearing the same Verve pants — same length (you don’t do capris, and neither, thank God, does he), but different color. You both order double nonfat lattés and skip the baked goods. By the time you load the gear into your car you’re chatting effortlessly about the new crag pack you both have.
    The approach goes quickly today and you arrive at the base of your first objective before 9 a.m. You offer your partner the first lead and he starts racking up immediately. While flaking the rope you compliment yourself on your generosity. As he scampers up the initial moves you make a list of all the climbs you will do today, allowing yourself to dream of surpassing the ten-pitch ceiling. That’s when the rope stops moving through your hands.
    You crane your head up and see that Elvis has joined your partner on the pitch — they are dancing together forty feet up, your partner’s left leg beating in time to some long- forgotten tune. You don’t let yourself believe that he can be pumped already, but your daydream of cruising pitch after pitch begins to fade. You hear a whimper from above and watch the biner full of new RPs come tumbling down the face. Should you offer words of encouragement? You decide you do not know them well enough for words of encouragement, and mentally review your rescue skills.
    Two hours later you are both back on the ground. Your partner apologizes for the ninth time and you nod your head again and say that it’s all right. You accept his thanks for lowering him from the midway anchor because he could not seem to see through his tears. You promise again that you did not mind only climbing the first quarter of the route, and that you were not too scared down-leading. \
    As you throw your rack in your pack you gaze wistfully at the party on the route to the left. They have perfected hand signals and rope tugs and don’t even have to talk. They move as one up the cliff, having climbed over 500 feet to your forty.
 
On the drive home from the crag you curse your stupidity. You found this partner at the local mountain shop and had a plan to climb after chatting for less than ten minutes. Never again, you tell yourself. Next time you will do your homework.
    The next week you go to a slideshow at the same shop. In line for the bathroom you strike up a conversation with a fellow climber. You casually ask about her experience and feel your heart rate rise with every climb she lists. She seems to have been everywhere. You ask her to go climb. She accepts. You’ll meet at eight o’clock. You arrive at the parking lot late — it’s 8:03.Your new partner is leaning against her truck waiting. She is already racked up. You choose not to hold this against her. You shift your attention to her attire, and quickly see that you have very different tastes. She seems to like capris. In fact, her pants would more accurately be called knickers. When she bends down to hide the key in the wheel well of her pickup, you glimpse neoprene-wrapped knees. Her elbows sport matching braces. She’d offered to bring the rack and you had agreed, thinking yourself congenial, but as you eye her gear you promise yourself never to be so careless again. You count seven draws, two of them frayed in the middle. All oft he biners are ovals. The five hexes, the bulk of the protection options, are slung with what looks to be secondhand rap webbing, its color long lost in an extended battle with the sun. You wonder if your partner also has wooden pitons stashed in her pockets, and console yourself with your contribution to the climb, a two-week-old sixty-meter bi-color dry-treated rope.
    Your partner climbs the first pitch in thirteen minutes. She places two pieces of gear. When you get to the anchor you see that it consists of a hex cammed in a horizontal crack and a jammed knot. When your partner starts to hand you the so-called rack for your lead you tell her to go ahead. You wedge yourself against the rock to avoid weighting the anchor. After following three pitches you broach the subject of modern climbing gear. Your partner harrumphs. When she asks what you are doing next weekend you say you are washing your dog.

The next week you scout the climbing gym every day. You arrive at a different time each visit, and decide that the kind of partner you want is most likely to be found during the 8 p.m. to 10 p.m. shift. You mark off every Tuesday and Thursday night on your calendar. After a month of scoping out the prospects you settle on the criteria for partners: They dress in the current styles, they lead efficiently up all the moderate gym routes, they backstep and foot switch effortlessly. One Thursday you are feeling lucky and identify a candidate to whom to pop the question. You leave that night with a phone number and a tentative plan for Sunday.
    Sunday morning dawns crystal clear. You both arrive at the same time, both driving fuel-efficient Honda Civics, yours blue, his gold. You slide your pack on and within seconds you are on the trail discussing best and worst Honda mechanics in town. You admire your partner’s approach shoes and notice how well he smears and edges on the talus leading to the climb.
    Your partner lets you have the first lead and you think that this is the way to start the day. You offer to carry a CamelBak up the route and he agrees to this plan. You have never before had a partner who will drink from the same nozzle on the first climb. Your lead goes well (you’re sure your partner doesn’t see you pull on the cam behind the roof). The sun is just warming the ledge as you set up the first belay. Minutes later your partner arrives. As you hand him the rack you watch as he arranges gear on his harness, making a mental note of the style: left shoulder gear sling, carabiner gates in, draws on both sides of the harness, gates out. You decide to make this your style, too, shaving precious seconds at the belay changes. By the end of the day you are discussing hand signals.
    After two weekends of climbing you and your new partner have logged over twenty pitches. At the bar you discuss stepping it up. Your partner wants to push his leading grade; you pretend you want the same. The next weekend you arrive with extra TCUs and hope he will not mind the additional gear. Your partner warms up and by 9:30 is ready to take it to the next level. Nestled in for a comfortable belay, you are surprised when the rope barely stops moving through your hands. You try to be an attentive belayer, tie in, and lace your shoes all at the same time. You almost make it, but end up making your partner wait at the anchor while you run and pee.
    Thirty feet of moderate climbing bolsters your ego. By the time you reach the second piece, however, you start to worry. The lieback corner he raced up seems to lack footholds. As you pull into the first move you tentatively place your left toe onto the granite. It skids back down to meet your right. You try again. The belay tight- ens as you achieve a desperate smear with your left foot, dyno for a finger lock — and skid back down the corner. Looking up you make eye contact with your partner at the belay. He gives you what you hope is a smile.
    A half an hour, two aid moves, and one stuck nut later you join your partner on the belay ledge. He has already threaded his end of the rope through the rap rings. You meekly untie your own end and watch it snap to the ground. As you rappel you search for a plausible excuse but your partner is already a step ahead. He’s forgotten
about an appointment, he says. You wonder who has appointments on Saturday, but do not ask.
    At 1:30 p.m. you pull up to the gear shop. You make your way over to the clothing department and check out the newest capris. Suddenly they don’t look so bad. You take them to the register and strike up a conversation with the person ringing up your sale. You leave your name and number on the back of a piece of register tape and drive home hoping she will call.