My Man Skills Come Alive

When I was looking for a house this fall I had one very large criteria that I wanted met, I really wanted to have a garage with my new place. Most people said, "Oh yeah, having a garage would be nice so that you can park your car in there and out of the wintery elements." My usual response was, "I guess I could park my car in there." But the main reason that I wanted to have a garage was so that I could build a bouldering wall in there. There was only one little problem to this great idea, I have virtually no MAN SKILLS. Sure I can run a chainsaw, but as far as building anything, just about the only thing that I can build is a sandwich.

One of the main things that you need if you are going to build a bouldering wall is the actual plastic handholds. A large set of these can be a bit pricey. So naturally it was around Christmas time so I asked my parents for a set of them for Christmas. I didn't really think I would get this as a present which kind of relieved me from actually having to try to build this thing. However, ask and you shall receive, sitting under the tree on Christmas morning was a large package full of climbing holds. I was both extremely excited and extremely scarred. Oh shit, I would actually have to build this thing that I had been talking about so much. Well, I guess it was time to put up or shut up. I had the holds and now I was committed to actually building the wall.

The other main component of building your own climbing wall is to get a bunch of lumber. For this, I drove to Idaho Falls to visit the Lowe's there. When I walked in and was confronted with all the power tools, lumber, and other construction materials I felt something welling up inside of me. Was this the testosterone that most men feel when walking into a hardware store? No, this was more like panic that I was feeling, which is usually how I feel when I walk into a hardware store. I always feel that I have this look of bewilderment on my face and that everybody there can see it. Fortunately, I walked out of there with a couple hundred dollar charge on my credit card and a lot of wood.

Once I got everything home and started measuring, cutting and drilling holes, something amazing happened. It all was going as planned. Maybe this was because I was actually paying attention to what I was doing and using the ole "measure twice, cut once" theory. There were a few minor hiccups along the way but in general my man skills were coming alive. The only problems that I was having stemmed from the fact that I was doing this all by myself and hoisting the large 2x10s, 2x8, and large sheets of plywood was difficult. Luckily, I'm wicked strong and was able to handle this, though my abs were sore for days after all the work.

After I got everything constructed the fun part began. I got to actually put the holds on the wall. Setting the routes was probably the thing that I thought about the least so it took a little while to figure out which holds I wanted where. This is still a work in progress and I can move most of the holds around at will. Soon I will have some great bouldering projects to work on and my forearms muscles will be bursting out of my skin. I will also be looking forward to further projects around the house where I can feature my ever-increasing man skills.