This has been an absolutely perfect weekend. I know I haven't written in a while, because we've just been so busy with the start of summer and camps and all, but this weekend was really notable for me.
It started around 4pm on Friday when I left with my friend Andrea. We got pedicures, went to dinner, and then out for the evening to a painting class. It was at this place in Raleigh, where you are led by an artist to paint your own painting. I painted a 16x20 canvas of a martini glass. It was really stressful, because I've never painted before, but it was also a lot of fun. And after I got it home and saw it the next morning, I didn't think it was too bad. It did suffer by comparison to the original, but on it's own it's kinda funky. I'll take a picture and post it sometime.
Saturday morning we all slept in, got up and went to our friends' house to swim in their pool. We played lots of diving and water games, and had a great time. Then we came home, regrouped, and went out to dinner with another set of friends. Our good friend Pam was visiting from California, so we got together with her and her pals at a restaurant we'd been wanting to try for a long time. The company was terrific, the food was OK. ;-) Then we left from dinner to go to Koka Booth Amphitheatre where the symphony was playing along with the Wizard of Oz movie. This is our second year getting summer symphony tickets and I enjoy it so much more than the winter series we did one year. They play in an outdoor amphitheatre in Cary and we take wine and dinner and snacks, and picnic while they play. Saturday night was a special event with the movie, and we met friends there for a great time in the hot Carolina night. Alek had been invited to his friend's birthday party sleep over, so it was just us and Ben.
Now on to Sunday! We started with brunch with Pam around 11, which was at our new favorite hamburger place (Alek was dissappointed that he didn't get to go) but Ben had fun with the grownups once again. After brunch we came home and met Alek at our house - he had a great time at his friend's sleep over. Then Pam left, and I did a little laundry. Then it was time to drop Ben off. Ben is at an all-week science camp at NC State. He doesn't sleep over, he will come home each night, but he is there for 11 hours each day. It's going to be an intense week for him! It's a big camp for grade schoolers, and so they are broken down into small groups of 10-11 each. The boys in his group seem very nice, and we got to meet his Lego Robotics instructor. How fortuitous! He lives here in Apex and teaches grade school & middle school teams, and runs the Lego Robotics camp in Cary Parks & Rec - which I had been intending to sign Alek up for. However, Alek may be out of camp opportunities for this year because we are on the verge of our busiest weeks of the summer.
Anyway, part of my new job at IBM is managing our global K-12 outreach efforts which include camps for girls and boys. I'm the global manager, and there are local managers around the world who run the local camps - I coordinate and provide financing, oversight, business controls, etc. Anyway, this guy knows the guy who just retired and whose job I took over. Small world! Anyway, the meeting may be fortuitous for both of us.
So now I'm folding laundry, Alek vacuumed the upstairs (!), and in a few minutes we leave again to go pick Ben up.
It's gonna be a busy week! Hope you're all having fun!
And he makes it - it was tricky because you have to dyno (jump over) to it, and your body swings, and if you don't control the swing then you'll flip right off the hold. Ben got it! He's been practicing these at the gym.
Ben has gotten so tall over the last year, he can reach a lot further now.
The climbing walls all have different angles, so you have to control your body over the angles.
The next few pictures follow this amazing route - it was the most difficult route he completed, and was a 5.11. Here he's starting to turn parallel to the ground to traverse the arch. We have a similar set-up at our gym, only it's 6 feet off the ground. Here, Ben's about 30 feet off the ground.
Following the route along the underside of the arch. Ben is anchoring his feet while moving his hands.
The most difficult move was from the last picture to this one - going from hanging under the arch, to reaching up and shifting your entire body weight over an up to start moving up the wall. Last year, there was a move like this in one of his season finals routes, and Ben couldn't make it. He's gotten so much stronger.
Now the hand and foot holds get really small and flat. It takes a lot of strenght and balance to move up the wall without much to hold onto. And, get over the big triangle!
Perfect execution over the triangle.
And he's up to the top! 70 feet off the ground. He looks back at the belayer to ensure he gets full credit for the route.
