Climbing wall update

I realized just now (thanks Ryan for making me look at my blog) that I never updated everyone about the actual getting of the climbing wall. Click the preceding link to see photos of the day. So here goes.

Pizza and I arrived at the school around 10:00am. I was still trying to get over a pretty bad cold, so I was all stuffed up and coughing and just generally gross. Pizza was a champ and immediately started taking down holds using my homebrewed allen wrench bit for my screw gun.

I had the proper size allen wrench, but manually unscrewing c.200 holds would have taken forever and been a real pain in the arse. During one of my sick days away from work, I alternated 5 minute intervals of sawing through this allen wrench with lying on the couch to recoup my strength and energy. After 1/2 a day of this I was only an 1/8th of the way through so I decided to just whack the crap out of it with a hammer. This also drained me so I, again, alternated 5 minutes of whacking with 5 minutes of lying down. After 1/2 hour of not bending the allen wrench even the slightest bit, I decided to try to whack it the other direction. I setup my hammer for a test swing and lightly tapped the place I was going to throttle. The piece fell right off. I didn't have to whack it the other direction at all. I must have really focused my chi to make that happen. On to the rest of the story.

Pizza and I and my good buddy Tom started disassembling and had all the holds off in a half hour. Pizza got tired and didn't want to do anymore so she left. Tom and I kept working, and around noon, he went to meet a friend for lunch and left old sicky to get the last two thirds done. I started losing steam at 1:00 and texted Pizza to bring me some food, which she so kindly did (gluten-free pizza!).

Replenished I went back to work at which point, the reserve team showed up. Andy P., Ken K (K2), and Tom all arrived on scene and proceeded to neatly demolish the rest of the wall. The individual large panels went into Andy's gargantuan vehicle (which needs to be since he's 6'7") and the smaller ones went into Ken's truck. The holds and lumber that we took down went into the Honda and Tom's Audi A4, which is showing off it's shoes in one of the photos.

Jim and Donna also stopped by on their way back from their Anniversary weekend in Vancouver, BC. They very generously offered to take the crew out for food and a drink. We were all pretty wasted so the closest bar was the best. That turned out to be the Roanoke Park Place Tavern, which is a fantastic place. They were just about to start the NCAA final when we left.

Closing statements: The wall is safe and dry in my shed, but still needs a design and frame. I think it would be fun to build a little miniature to design it. (Or maybe I'm really geeky.) I'd welcome suggestions. :)