Aaron's Status

10:37 am

Building a “ninja gym”

You can buy these ninja warrior obstacle course things on Amazon for about a hundred bucks. You put up a top and bottom slackline between two trees and hang the obstacles (or elements, or whatever you want to call them) and kids can go wild.

$kid loves jumping around and doing ninja stuff, so I bought it thinking that we could certainly use it if we all go outdoor climbing together, so he’ll have something to do in between climbs. He gets antsy. We’re working on it.

But it then occurred to me… Why not put up a bunch of anchors in our rec room ceiling and hang these elements from them and let him go crazy all winter, too? The answer to that question is: because it’s hard.

I consider myself to be a very handy person. I have a ton of tools and a ton of experience. This ninja setup is going to happen, but it’s going to be a lot more troublesome than I originally imagined.

This is because, instead of the ceiling being hung directly from the joists, it’s hung from approximately 5/8" thick perpendicular slats. I don’t know if this is a standard thing or not—I’ve never seen it before—but it makes the whole operation so much more tricky.

For starters, you can’t locate joists with a stud finder because they aren’t touching the sheetrock. Then, of course, when you watch to attach an anchor to the ceiling, your lag bolts have to go through 5/8" of air. That’s no good.

So what I’m doing is, I’m roughly locating the joist by measuring, then cutting a 5x5" square out of the ceiling, attaching a 5/8" piece of wood to the joist, noting the exact location of the joist, replacing the sheetrock square, and finally drilling through everything and setting my bolts.

This is going to work fine, it’s going to be strong as hell, and it’s also going to take me ages.

Add to this the element of trying to keep this all a secret so it can be a Christmas morning surprise (meaning I can’t really work on it while $kid’s at home or he’s going to want to spy on me), and you have a pretty tricky situation. I do have a few hours here and there over the next few days when I can work on it, and I think it’ll actually go pretty smoothly now that I have a plan, but this is the main thing on my mind.

Climbing and back stuff

The last time I climbed was Monday, which was a solid session, plus the lead class. Given that it was a pretty strong climbing day for me, I think my back is doing okay, but it has been a couple of weeks since I’ve been able to simply exist without it bugging me and reminding me that it’s there.

I’d still put it at around 90% or so, but I’d love to clear that last 10% in the next couple of days, ideally. We will surely climb on Sunday during $kid’s class and I’d really like to project the V5-ish comp problem and V6 that I have been working on. There are some new boulders as well that looked pretty fun but it was too crowded to get on them.

Then on Christmas eve, during the day, we’ll hopefully go for our third and final lead climbing class, which involves falling practice, so I need to be in good physical shape for all of that.

I continue to do my PT exercises every day, and I’ve added a hip adductor stretch as well, specifically for climbing reasons.

Here we go!

It feels in many ways like Christmas and the new year are just tip-toeing toward me, silently, waiting to jump out and pounce. We’ve been playing Christmas music around the house and our tree is up and everything, and yet it still doesn’t feel like it’s here.

It’s interesting how our experience of these moments changes as we get older. Surely, also, as a parent, the focus of your attention is much less on yourself and more on creating the right conditions for your kid(s) to enjoy it. “Christmas is for kids,” $wife always says.

I’m really looking forward to at least a little bit of time off. Actual time off. We’re going to send $kid to an all-day climbing camp at our gym for two of the days between Christmas and new years, and I plan to literally lay around like a puddle and do fuck all. It’s going to be glorious.

I hope you get some time off from whatever is stressing you, too.