Our journey has officially begun! Wednesday (our planned departure date) arrived, and – as expected – we were nowhere near ready. So we simply took everything and just piled it into the middle of the van. It looked like a disaster, but made it possible for us to get to Phoenix in time for the wedding. On the bright side, if someone breaks into our van, they will probably think it has already been ransacked and that there is nothing of worth left to steal. And in a fitting turn, only a few hours before we left, my cell phone officially went kaput… so I’m really going off the grid. If you’re trying to get ahold of me, be patient.
Besides getting caught in Austin traffic one last time (a fitting sendoff considering Austin’s traffic issues), the trip was completely uneventful. I wouldn’t even bother writing a post about it, except that it is the start of the journey we’ve been planning for so long and warrants some sort of acknowledgement. We spent the night at a rest stop near El Paso and found our bed to be completely delightful. In fact, we found it so comfortable that after arriving in Phoenix, we brought our bed into our hotel room because we like it better than their beds (for the record, we are only staying in a hotel for the duration of the wedding that brought us to Phoenix).
Me leading the first climb of our trip
Anyhow, since John and I decided that we could not count the trip as officially started until our first climb, we hit up Queen Creek as soon as we had gotten settled in Phoenix. I started by leading an easy – but tall – climb; however John refused to be that compliant and picked out an overhung 11 that started on a precarious ledge. Now I will preface this by saying that his climbing was quite impressive; however, as the writer of this post, I choose to focus on me. As his belayer, I was forced to climb up onto the starting ledge, where the rock sloped down to a ~30 foot drop, with no available footholds. It took me about ten minutes to transfer from a frightened huddle leaning again the rock wall, to a position where I could actually belay from (which required me to lean out over the drop-off while being uncomfortably supported by slings). But it was a successful climb, and our trip has officially begun!
John’s first climb of our trip
Sounds like a pretty eventful start to me!