On a day I really felt like being ill, we tried Dry Heaves again. First I tried it and failed. I didn’t try nearly as many times as I wasn’t feeling well to begin with and nothing had changed. No gear, tricky smeary moves, insufficient confidence, made worse by nearly wishing I was dead anyway. Then Todd tried it and did me the courtesy of making it look ridiculously hard but umpteen strategies later he found the magic gear placement. It was a yellow alien which was what the new guidebook said it was. Who’d have thunk?

Once he found the magic placement he did a spot of aiding off it (thus proving it at least holds body weight) and messed around with the spot where we were expecting to get in a #3 and eventually determined that the correct piece was a .4. So, #3, .4, we were close. Then he did the rest of it which was a little dirty but not too hard.

When I followed I practiced placing the yellow alien both from where he placed (from beneath the traverse before starting it) and from along the traverse and I could do it from both spots. The sad thing is that I swear I’d tried to place it before. Anyway, I suppose I should be able to lead it now. The yellow alien is both good and close and although the smeary moves are more strenuous and smearier even than they looked, the stance I thought I was aiming for was really and truely a stance and it certainly doesn’t beat Inverted Layback for difficulty in the smeary undercling arena.

I don’t know if I care so much if I can ever do Dry Heaves though, not in the overall scheme of things that were making me sad today.

Dry Heaves (Todd)
Laurel (Andrew)
Junior (TR)
Retribution (Todd)