San Francisco Voice

Have you been staying on top of the lessons in love which I have derived from rock climbing ever since I discovered the Mission Cliffs indoor climbing gym here in San Francisco?  (If not, you can catch up here.)  If so, you might have started to get the hint that I really haven’t been going climbing as much as I’d like to because there have been other things getting in the way of my ability to take the time to do the climb.  That brings us today’s lesson:
Make time for what you love. Make time for who you love.  Make …read more

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One of the questions which inevitably faces people involved in both indoor rock climbing and the average dating life is:

Should I go alone?
In indoor rock climbing, there are two basic options for you if you do not have a partner that you want to take with you to the rock climbing gym.  The first is to go ahead and go to the gym alone and then to really put yourself out there in trying to find a partner who is already at the gym.  This really hasn’t been too hard to do at the rock climbing gym in San Francisco …read more

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Usually, I go do my indoor rock climbing at Mission Cliffs and I pay attention to the things which I am learning from rock climbing to see if they apply to my dating life.  In many cases, they do, which is how I originally came up with the idea of drawing connections between rock climbing and love.  But today’s lesson comes from a backwards look at the situation – instead of looking at rock climbing for lessons to apply to love, I looked at my love life for lessons which apply to rock climbing.  And it turned out that the …read more

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Due to other things in life taking up a significant amount of my time, I haven’t gone to the San Francisco indoor rock climbing gym lately.  But that doesn’t mean that I’ve completely ignored rock climbing.  Sure, there’s nothing to replace the actual activity of the climb, but it’s not a bad idea to keep infusing your life with information about the topic when you can’t actually make it to the gym.  Which brings us to this post’s lesson:
When you can’t do, learn.  But then go do!
You have to get up on the wall and climb in order to get …read more

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It’s okay to cut your losses and try again later.
I know that I can climb this one particular path at Mission Cliffs because it’s the first one that I ever beat and I’ve done it several times since.  But today when I tried to do it, I just couldn’t get to the top of it.  In fact, I couldn’t get to the top of anything that I climbed today.  And finally, I realized that there was no point in forcing myself to do something that wasn’t working for me.
Sure, I could berate myself and beat myself over the head in …read more

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Even when things are neatly labeled, they aren’t always what they’re supposed to be.
When you go to Mission Cliffs (San Francisco’s indoor rock climbing gym), you find that you have over 100 options of routes to climb there.  They’re each neatly labeled with their level of difficulty.  I’m a novice climber myself, so I usually stick with the low ones, the 5.5 or 5.6 ratings that I know I can get to the top of.  Sometimes I’ll challenge myself with a 5.9 or I’ll make things easy for myself with a 5.4.
These ratings are professional ratings and they’re usually right …read more

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If you don’t show up, you miss your chances.
I was going to go to the rock climbing gym yesterday, but after the trip to Tahoe, I was overwhelmed with work and decided to stay home instead.  I got a message from the friend that I usually climb with telling me that I’d missed out by not making it there, since Dave Chappelle had shown up at the gym.  I’m not much of one to brush against celebrity – to be honest, I’m often so oblivious to pop culture that I probably wouldn’t know most famous people if I tripped over them …read more

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As you know from my previous post, I am a novice indoor rock climber who also happens to be a member of the San Francisco dating scene, and I’ve discovered that the lessons learned in the rock gym apply to the world of dating.  I went to the Mission Cliffs gym yesterday and learned a lesson which I’m sad to say pretty much sums up my current dating status.
The San Francisco rock climber’s lesson for the day?  Sometimes you just aren’t in a place where it’s going to happen.
I was tired before I even left for the gym.  The cable …read more

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There are two San Francisco activities which I currently adore: indoor rock climbing and falling in love.  The former I do through the Touchstone gyms (more specifically at the Mission Cliffs).  The latter I do every time that I step out in to the city which won my heart in a true case of love at first sight.  And what I’m learning as I get more in depth with both of them is that the lessons learned in one apply equally to the other.  So, each time that I head to the rock gym, I’m going to find a new …read more

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