January 21, 2009: Overhand Knots Save a Gangsta

Another fun day has come and gone. I got up early so that I could get off work at 4 and go climbing. I got a ride home from work with Mr. Sikorski (can't pronounce his first name so I call him Herr Sikorski). He recommended that I look for a used bike at the store directly adjacent to the train station. There was some nice cruiser bikes for 45 Euro, I think that I am going to pick one up after pay day.

I took the train after Mr. Sikorski dropped me off at the station. At the downtown station I picked up some deodorant (forgot one side again) and a tall Earl Grey tea at Starbucks. While at Starbucks I enjoyed a plentiful Internet harvest and got my talking to friends and family in for the day. I took the U-Bahn to the climbing wall stop, walked a while and finally made it there.

I walked into the climbing gym and something did not seem right. In front of me stood six or seven teenagers wearing XXL bunny hugs, jeans down to their knees, baseball caps with stickers still on them and yes one was wearing the stereotypical XXL Lakers jersey. These guys were climbing? I investigated further. I looked at the belayer uncomfortably wearing a harness and clumsily using a gri gri and noticed that there was overhand knots approximately every meter down the tailing end of the rope fed out of the gri gri. What could these be for? Never in my experience as a climbing instructor had I seen this before. One of the teens reached the top of the wall and his belayer reached for the handle of the gri gri. Although the kid climbing the wall was G'd up from the feet up I could still see that under those baggy clothes was a heavy chunky kid. The belayer was not so big.

The belayer pulled the handle and the climber shot down the wall. As a response to this the belayer let go of the rope with both hands. The rope slipped through the gri gri until it got caught on the overhand knot. This ugly process made my inner climbing instructor cringe in pain. This apparently is how the instructor was teaching the kids to climb. I reiterate that in Germany people at the wall regularly climb using Munter hitches, figure eight belay devices and I even saw a guy solo lead climb the wall today. I guess there is no lawyers in Germany. That is the end of my climbing rant, don't worry.

After those shenanigans I met up with a guy named Thomas who is an electrical engineer here in Dusseldorf and we enjoyed some climbing. I headed home and after a brief skype sesh with ma and Sarah hit the hay.