Exhausted and Sick

Chinese food is the plan for the evening, assuming I can stay below the radar. Which shouldn't be too hard.
Two interesting climbing tower stories:
Yesterday I was on top encouraging kids to the top. A scout, clearly terrified of heights, had reached the top. Generally, that's when they get lowered to the ground. His dad, the scoutmaster, of course knew better than that. So he yelled at him to climb up. Once on top of the tower, the scout curled into a ball and began to cry. After fifteen minutes of this, I finally got him to sit up and look at me. But then he grabbed onto my arms and wouldn't let go. So another fifteen minutes later, Les (previously described) the climbing director, climbed up and hooked himself onto the kid. The kid's name was Andrew by the way. Les hooked Andrew to his harness, and pretty much jumped off the wall, pulling Andrew behind him. Andrew screamed until he was halfway down the wall and realized he was moving at about an inch an hour.

Story two happened today at the tower with my SALT guys. Nathan, a bigger guy, probably around 225 and 5'6", was on the line I was belaying. I looked down for a minute to get the sun's glare out of my eyes and suddenly Nathan yelled, "falling," which indicated he was falling. I locked the rope off but the rope has about eight feet of stretch and so he still fell that distance, the entire time I watched in horror hoping he would stop as I pulled with all my might on the rope. He stopped and eventually made it up that side, and down the other on a fireman's rappel line.


Ta-dah!