Just came back from my first brush with rock-climbing. I've always like clambering over rocks. I think it's in the blood -- Korea being so mountainous and all. Now it's the next level -- climbing straight up.

I took a lesson ($10) at a local rock-climbing gym. The lesson was okay, not great, and I didn't like the gym that much (I overheard one of the senior instructors telling our instructor that he'd taught us an inefficient way to break the belay, but when I asked if there was something we should know, both of them shook their heads and smiled), but the climbing was great. It's a little terrifying to start feeling the pull on your arms and then look down and realize you're 20 feet off the ground. I know they say to use your legs, but when the wall starts slanting outward, how exactly do you do that?

Most people there had come with a partner, so me and the one guy who came alone naturally paired up. Nice guy, but he must have been at least 200 pounds, so when I was on the ground, he was a little nervous about trusting his safety to someone half his size. Fortunately, the physics works out so nicely, you can actually belay someone much bigger than you. The tie attached to the floor also helped a great deal.

Charm and her friends are in Seward tonight; hopefully they got to see a lot of sealife on their 8-hour tour today. She asked me last week when they all first arrived what things I still wanted to do here this summer. Good question. I wanted to try rock climbing, and I did. I'd like to try sea kayaking and whitewater rafting. I'd like to make it up all the way to Flattop, for once. I'd like to do the entire Harding Ice Field trail. And finally, inspired by Roommate, who came back yesterday from Denali, I'd like to do some serious backcountry hiking and camping. They rented the gear, listened closely at the backcountry center at the park, and set out, encountering caribou, ice cold rivers, and not a single other soul for three days. (Sounds cool, doesn't it, bigbro? Heh... like it or not, you will be assimilated. You can't escape the pull of Alaska...)