Whoa mama

Got an early Mother's Day gift from our son, as I got to go along with him and his dear woman friend for a day of climbing on the Index Town Walls up in Index, Washington, which is off Route 2 on the way to Stevens Pass.  Every year the beautiful granite cliffs get harder for me, and this trip was no exception.  You have to relearn how to climb this rock, it is utterly unforgiving.  After some warming up, we did a couple of kind of hard routes, and I was feeling pretty good. Then, ironically, I fell off the start of the easiest route which we had chosen to warm down on, which had the most difficult start of all the ones we did.  Just about yanked the little finger of my left hand off.  Blood, sweat, and almost tears; bruised pride, I guess. The other bruising showed up the next day. Yet it was a lovely, coolish, breezy, cloudy day, with views of Mounts Index and Perseus across the highway when you got to the tops of the walls, and a waterfall and plenty of snow.
I treated us to some delicious Thai food afterwards, and silently appreciated my efforts to trick aging and time in order to feel a little eternal youth. It's ambrosial.