This weekend the MIT Outing Club held a Circus at their cabin in Rumney.

A circus is just a weekend away. In this case, for hiking and climbing with 60 people. We left late Friday night, and stopped at a Walmart along the way. It was my first time in a Walmart in probably 4 years, and visiting it with a German, Frenchman, Chinese girl, and Irish girl was quite an experience. Jules, the Frenchman, decided to borrow a motorized scooter.

We arrived after midnight and after the Saturday pre-trip meeting had taken place. Fortunately, I had plans to meet some friends from the gym to climb with, so I set up my tent in the woods, hung out by the fire for a bit, and went to bed around 2.

I never sleep in late when camping, so I was up by 6:30 (which, if you’re following along, means only 4.5hrs of sleep). Got to the parking lot for climbing around 8:30 and then waited for my friends to arrive.

I had never been to Rumney before, so it was up to Dan and Austin to lead us to the climbs.

 

We had a pretty strong group of folks who all boulder around V6, but 3 out of the 6 of us had pretty limited outdoor experience.

 

Dan and Austin led all of the climbs, setting quickdraws for top-roping ascents after them.

 

I didn’t climb anything harder than about 5.10b, and only led a 5.8, but I felt pretty good. My fear of heights and falling really kicks in when climbing outside, so I have to add about 2 grades of difficulty to any climb because of nerves.

It was a beautiful day, with rain in the forecast for Sunday, so Rumney was really crowded. Still, it’s a big place with limited parking so we never had too much difficulty finding routes.

At the end of the day I was lucky enough to be able to top out on one of the uppermost climbs in the area, netting a great view of the valley below. In the photo above you can see the anchor we had for top-roping in the bottom left corner, which I climbed above to get to the top.

In the photo below you can see how excited I was about climbing.

The day ended with a barbecue by the river. I wasn’t super excited about jumping in, but everyone else did, so I thought, “Why not.”

The answer to that question is, “Because some girl is going to kick your only pair of glasses off of your clothes pile and into the middle of the river and they are going to sink into 12+ feet of murky, quick-flowing river water, never to be seen again.”

Fortunately, it was light out when that happened so we (I) were (was) able to make it back to the cars without too much issue. I even helped guide us back to the MIT cabin since my friends had never been. They helped me pack up and we drove back to Boston earlier than anticipated.

Everything more than 6 inches away is out of focus without glasses, so losing them was a significant problem. It could have been worse, though –  I’d been putting off getting new ones for the last few months. If I hadn’t been so cheap, it would have been brand new specs that ended up in the drink. As it is, the ones I lost were 3 years old and the lenses were so scratched my friends were telling me I needed to get new ones.

I was able to stumble through public transit today to find a Lenscrafters that had some contacts to get my seeing again. I also ordered glasses (and sunglasses, since I lost those in a body of water as well last year) and wiped out my FSA in a single day.

It was a good, albeit slightly blurry, weekend.