Determined little gal and her love of climbing shows. Very cool post! Will be amazing what we see her and some of the other young ones do in the future. It already is!
my 10 y.o. son just out bouldered me today @ the gym. Gee I'm outta shape. That's gotta be it. Or maybe he's just going to be my personal rope gun when he gets a little older?
I played for the Solons, named for the our hometown PCL team, and our opponents were likewise named for other PCL clubs, as we were the second-tier talent, the Coast League. The better players got taken for the Giants and the Dodgers and the Braves, etc., and played in the Major League.
I spent three summers doing this before moving south to Merced, where I continued to chatter till junior year in HS.
I had begun to read about the Himalayas and learned about Alaska from a sixth grade teacher who used to live there. I had a rock collection, too.
edit: I confess to having bouts of CRS (can't remember shit)--I forgot about having climbed partway up Pyramid Peak with the Boy Scouts out of Camp Harvey West in 1960. It was a side trip to a long day hike, leaving not quite enough time to summit, so we high-tailed it down to Echo Lakes.
At age 11 I was living in Washington, D.C. We formed a neighborhood gang to protect ourselves from bullies and thieves from other neighborhoods. We fought hand-to-hand with rocks and clubs. I was part of the team who ventured into hostile territory to recover stolen bicycles.
At 11 I had a horse; an American Saddlebred named Buddy Rich, who was taller at the whithers than I was.
Once at a local horseshow, we were registered in a 12 and Under Showmanship class and when it was my turn to have the judge review how I handle my animal, she automatically used the same phrase she'd done for the several before...."Trot your pony." She called. a 16 hand pony? Now that's a pony!
At 11, I was a gymnast-I'd go to the gym 3 times a week for 3hrs, and once on saturday-it was my obsession... So the thread, Surfing & Climbing-complimentary pursuits... I sort of feel like gymnastics & climbing are complimentary... or let's put it this way, if you were a gymnast in your youth, climbing is a great endeavor when your older and your body can't take the extremes of gymnastics anymore... the mental and physical challenge seems similar...
Having not been born and raised in Boulder with 2 World Champion climbing parents, I was in Texas playing in the dirt with a stick. Because that's what you did back then.
I found a picture on the internet of the tower we used to play on when we were kids. It was erected and occasionally used for simulated parachute jumps. It doesn’t show, but it was more like a crane with a steel cable. So the jumper with a chute was lowered from the cable. My mother actually made this jump. Anyway, there was a stairway going around to the platform on the top. We ( kids between 10-15 years old) played catch me if you can on that tower! You would run up the stairs, and at the top you would walk an 8” beam to the middle of the tower to a pipe that you would slide down to the bottom. Crazy? Maybe, but for a few years I lived over there nobody got hurt. Our parents new that we were playing on the tower and they asked us not to do it but of course nobody listened. They put a lock at the bottom but it was easy to climb around.
Interestingly this picture was dated 1965. I was then 11 years old!
I was living in a small country New England town looking for stimulation, both intellectual and physical. I found some stuff to satisfy those needs...
During this time, I first picked up Colin Fletcher's The Man Who Walked Through Time and The Complete Walker. His writing fertilized the seeds of inspiration that have lead me toward a life-long appreciation of the outdoors and the myriad elements that go with such experiences.
In tandem, I was also in the Boy Scouts (another long story unworthy of this thread). But, part of experience was earning these metal "skill awards" that would slide onto your uniform's flat webbing belt. One had to do with physical fitness. Running was something you could to to earn the award. A suggestion to get started was to walk 49 steps then run one. Then the next day, walk 48 then run two. And so on, until you could go without stopping and run a half mile. I measured our big backyard and and half mile was five laps around.
So I diligently worked at this, got up to running the whole way and earned the badge. Our next door neighbor's son was in the Marines and when home, he *ran*, yes *ran* on the roads around a lake in our town for FIVE MILES including a couple of ginormous hills! Of course, I thought he was not human, this being the mid-seventies. But he (I still remember his name, Gary) inspired me and eventually, my regular running expanded to the lake too. Later, when I began training for marathons, I ran the lake route three times in a row. Had to deal with harassment from townies who thought I was some kind of freak. Maybe I was! Freak Power!
And, those two experiences, my friends, are at the root of why I'm here, part of this strange, beautiful Taco Stand today.
Fletcher, good post. I knew you were in great shape, at one time or another--that sort of thing shows in how guys carry themselves later on when they are not in training; they seem at ease when standing--and I was wondering how you did it. But really, running is my own bugbear--having bad knees I needed to find something else.
I found swimming about the time I was eleven and kept this up thru HS and college's first year. You runners (and Jerry Rice was the most in-shape man I ever heard of, except Jack LaLanne) are lucky. Pair of shoes and go: Talus. Track. Sidewalk. Trails. STairs.
I wrote an award wining essay.
I was traveling the Pacific NW with my mom and dad
I was studying classical ballet and playing piano
I was singing, privately, in my bedroom
and I was writing a report on our 11th President, James K. Polk.
A Brooke Raboutou I wasn't - and I don't mean just gender-wise.
Fresh out of the mountains and home-schooling, I was Class President of Whatcom Middle School, and had just met some bad neighbors who turned me to the dark side for a few years.
My first crime with the bad crew was robbing an UNLOCKED fireworks stand - easy. I got the rush big-time - by 12 I was ransacking cars, stealing drugs from my parents for myself and "friends". At school, I was also tripping girls in the hall because I thought that was a good way to flirt. I got a round-house from a 7th-grader that left a bone-bruise on my jaw for 4 months.
Needless to say, I didn't make Class President the next year.
Some of you were stealing guns and drugs in grade 6? bad ass!
I was collecting comics
I won the award of excellence for physical fitness - the only one in the school
I played footsies under the desk with a cute native girl... a sign of things to come.
Loved Star Wars
And spent a lot of time on my bike, climbing cliffs and bridges, and hiking and exploring in the woods with my best friends.
I was on the City Swim Team
I was delivering Papers everyday after school.
All hell wouldn't break loose for a few more years..
I hadn't seen that Caylor clip in a while. Love it! Man, you should be certified a national treasure. Anyone who can go through all that mayhem, live through it, and tell about it with a smile and humor is a gem!
Hmm, at 11 I was running 10km races and throwing stuff at the track... The first shot is me at 11 with my dad after the "Forty Nunners Run" in Foster City, CA. The second is me throwing shotput at age 10 at Modesto Junior College.
Hey Mouse! You talking to me? YOU TALKING TO ME????? You saying I'm out of shape???? Hee hee!
For 35 years, I've been 5 lbs. away from being way honed. Damn Peanut M&M's and TJ's Coffee Blast Ice Cream!!!!
Many moons ago, I was one of those distance runners who had to get out every day, do big miles. But I loved running so much (particularly the being outdoors in the elements part), that in my late twenties I knew I need to diversify and cut back. Goal has since been to have knees that work when I'm seventy for running. I have my Mom's husband as inspiration... he's 85 and still running! He inspired me to get into distance running back when I was a kid, BTW.
Sorry to hear about your knees... but there's lot of other stuff out there with good benefits.
Some of my best memories are of that 11 year old time period. Running around the desert around my home in Desert Hot Springs, just outside of Palm Springs and down the hill from Joshua Tree. Chasing lizzards, hunting snakes, getting stuck with cholla on a routine basis, digging forts out of the sand around cat's claw. Smelling the rare, itinerant rain with the overwhelming scent of creosote. Bliss.
When I was 11, I was thinking about the easy days when I was 10, before I got my drug habit south side of Chicago teaching the blues. I figured I was 4-F from the get go, but a low draft number is a real kick in the balls, you know. I was stressing - boom - woke up in Saskatchewan after getting cold-cocked in a Detroit saloon. Or maybe I just got on the wrong bus going home. Whatever. I still don't know.
We used to say "whatver" before cellphones, you know.
Got a new name which I never even tried to pronounce. Formed a paperboy union; we boycotted and burned product to stay warm. Light the power. Convinced them it was "punk" to burn hockey sticks, too. That kinda got out of hand, one of those Prime Minister dudes or someone got deposed. I got to meet "Yosemite" Sam - hey, I know it's not his real name, but I was a kid, chill.
Got bored, headed south after I heard my friend (met him playing pee wee soccer in Bed Stuy) was coming out with a new line of ice axes in Mexico. Never hooked up with him, can't say the same for a bunch of bulls. Most of them were really old, really slow. They look big because they stand them next to midgets. Farrah Fawcett was 4'2" in heels. When I was 11, the playing field was level.
Co-founded gentrification. Joined the Foreign Legion and Spanish Inquisition when I was 12 and started trading oil.
My mom told me I could only pick on kids my own size. Turned 13, game over.
I was busy being awkward, confused and childish. Not much has really changed, eh?
I remember that my favorite past times at age 11 were riding my bike with my dog and hiking in the Sespe with my dog. Again, not much has changed except... These days I like bringing along the husband a kid too.
Plus no one yells at me when I get home for being gone for hours.
Let us know!