Freefallin'

Yesterday I walked over to the rock climbing wall at the student recreation center for a little more information. Fifteen minutes later, a one hundred pound girl who alternated between disinterest and enthusiasm had me suspended twenty feet above the ground in a situation which assured death if the rope gave way. Did I mention that I'm afraid of heights, as well as afraid of looking like a pussy in front of the young ladies. Which won? My fear of looking like a pussy. I made it all the way up, and eventually got used to glancing at the very hard looking ground below me.

I even think I'm going back for more. Every now and then it's nice to be afraid of something concrete, like falling to your death. At least it's a reasonable fear and you get a good workout too. My forearms were killing me afterwards.

Before mounting my fears, I went to a presentation on mobility and spaces by Ken Anderson of the People and Practices division at Intel Research. How the western world experiences in between moments is a fascinating area of technology research that's tightly coupled to social mores and cultural practice. It made me reconsider just how isolationist Orange County is, which is probably what made me climb the wall in the first place. It's harder to contend with pervasive social distancing than it is to contend with falling to one's doom.