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On Thursday afternoon we held the first annual stockholders meeting for Viapoint. This meeting coincided with Aaron's 50th birthday. So we all trucked out after some yays to vote me onto the board of directors to MetroRock to celebrate. Entering the MetroRock gym is an entirely overwhelming visual sight due to the large volume of knobs, colored lines, muscular climbers that looked like ex-gymnasts who had found a use for the muscles needed to do the iron cross, swinging ropes, fake arches, and plush blue floors. It got my heart racing before I opened the door from the lobby into the gym.

MetroRock is a big warehouse in Medford filled with big fake rocks covered with holds. Some of the rocks are boulders about three times the height of the average grown woman. The rest reach to a high ceiling about forty feet in the air. The holds, little odd shaped pieces of plastic screwed into the fake rocks, are marked with tape of various colors to mark the routes to climb them. At the bottom of the routes the walls have little laminated paper placards that at first look like hand written awards for Jr. high school students having climbed the walls complete with grades of the child. These placards mainly start with the number five and then have some digits after them. Some, but very few have a six on them.

The numbering system on the rocks represents the degree of difficulty. Upon asking Aaron why they start at five he went through the list of the numbers before five. In a fully labeled world the floor would be labeled with a one. A one is a completely flat surface. A two is something with a slight incline but no obstacles. This would be something like the walk I had to do to get home from school every day. A three is an incline with obstacles like big rocks. I think most of Monadnock is a three. A four is where you start to get big rocks where you might climb over but if you fell from any of the rocks you would most likely survive. A five makes a sharp shift and is an incline so high you need to climb it and goes so high that if you fall then you could die.

I didn't have much of an interest in dying but I did want to climb the rocks. The MetroRock people also were averse to the concept of us dying as well so they created a policy where beginners either need to take a belay test or take a course with an instructor to learn the basics of rock climbing if you want to climb. So Shelley, Chris, and I went to take a course with a lovely instructor named Jen while Aaron and Misha, his designated friend of his son's belaying partner took Aaron up and down the rocks repeatedly.

The course was mainly about creating knots. The first knot actually was trying to fit myself into the harness itself. It was like trying to get dressed in a snake. I am hopelessly useless with knots but I managed to learn how to make the required doubled over figure eight knot after about ten tries and having made some of the worlds most convoluted knots. The trick that Jenn taught us was the one that they teach kids for remembering. Make a head, strangle it with the rope and then poke it in the eye. You also need to learn how to work the bottom of the rope. This consists of paying attention to make sure that the person climbing has enough tension and not letting go of the rope when they are falling. This would seem quite simple but among the exercises was to fall off the wall and surprise the person below. Shelley had difficulty surprising Chris and was voted the worst actor. I climbed a little too fast for Shelley and had tons of slack in the rope so Jenn thought it would be safest to make me stop climbing since I could fall about six or seven feet if I suddenly surprised Shelley and fell off the wall. I then got tangled in the rope and would have hit my head and split my skull open if I hadn't fixed it.

We did finally finish our class and were pseudo-certified for the day. In order to really be certified we would have to return on another day and take the official rock-climbing test that includes putting on the harness, tying knots, making sure the buckles are doubled over, and belaying or climbing safely. If I do this I will be able to replace my blue card with a red card and become a member of the cool MetroRock climbing community.

After the rock climbing event we all drove about five hundred miles through Medford. Medford actually is incredibly wide, and went to dinner at Bistro 5. The food there was exceptionally good, especially by the standards of the town of Medford. The place is decorated with Venetian masks and artwork featuring people in Cirque de Soleil style costumes wearing Venetian masks. It is a small place but apparently used to be even smaller since one reviewer of the restaurant online had complained that it had lost the quaint feeling after over expanding. I wondered why it was called Bistro 5 in case it might be related to the numbering system of climbers but that isn't very likely.