Rock Climbing, Tall Ships and Baby Duck: MIMM #32

Sharing is Caring:

Hey guys!! Happy Monday!! I am so happy this week because I have a 4 day work week. Thank you July 4th (I have July 3rd off)! I am doing some traveling next weekend too so I have to figure out all the stops and make some plans with people, but for now let’s talk about this weekend. I really can’t believe this was the last weekend of June. Maybe it was because of all my plans that this month just flew by, but all the rain made it feel more spring like than summer like.

Friday evening I made dinner but beyond that, I pretty much didn’t do anything. It was just one of those relax on the couch type nights.

Saturday Brian was here and I ran some errands in the morning after making us pancakes for breakfast. Around lunch time, we decided to head out and check out a rock climbing place. First we stopped for lunch at HoneyGrow, a delicious salad/stir fry place. I went there for the first time for my birthday with yogi friends. It was delicious!

Then we headed over to rock climb. I didn’t really know what to expect. The only time I had rock climbed was in middle school and 1 time in high school since we had rock climbing walls. This place though, those walls were tough. I had a 50% off coupon that I got this past week at our fitness fair at work so we used that and went through an instruction on the climbing knot and how to belay. Once we finished that, it was time to go off on our own and explore. Brian let me choose a wall and belayed me the whole time. It was actually a great activity for working on your communication skills as you have to pay attention to the person climbing and be ready if they slip. I definitely learned how tough it was to rough climb, but was able to make it up some of the challenging walls and quite excited when I did.

The hardest part for me was my right shoulder. When we learned to belay, the instructor was teaching us to break with our right hand constantly on the rope. However as the person climbs you have to quickly bring up the rope, hold with your left then bring it down with your right. I struggled with punching out my right arm and when I tried with my left it was much easier for me. The right was too much for my shoulder. We asked the instructor if we could use our left hand and apparently that is not practiced, but knowing that it would be safer for when I was belaying Brian, it was OK. Climbing was also a bit tough as my shoulder started to ache and I don’t know if it is from practicing the belaying part for so long before climbing or if it was from the climbing. It can be hard when you want to push it but you also know, it is best to back down to not injure yourself further. Still learning my limits when I try new activities. It is not to say that I can never rock climb, but there is strength I need to build up in my shoulder and I can’t push it like others. So after a few walls, we headed out, since Brian had to leave in the evening, it worked out best to make the most of our time.

Since we were near the area where our old apartment was, we took a drive by to see if it was torn down yet. Nope. It is still standing, but the gate is locked up and the grass is overgrown, so it is just an abandoned looking building now. Then we stopped at the cookie place in town and got 4 cookies plus the last mini cupcake shaped cookie. Then we stopped at Chick-fil-A to get some dinner and ate our chicken and cookies while finishing Harry Potter and the Goblet of Fire before Brian had to head back to work. Every cookie was worth it! I miss having the cookie place walking distance, but maybe that is better for my belly and my wallet lol.

Sunday morning I got some food prep done and then my friend Sam met up with me at my apartment and we headed to the subway and went into the city to go to the Tall Ships Festival. They also had the World’s Largest Rubber Duck. Sadly, after we grabbed food, we overheard that the duck (over on the NJ side) got injured during the parade of ships on Thursday when the festival began so it was just a rubber splat floating in the water. Somehow the pontoon it was on tore into the duck and it was deflated. They had hoped to fix it by Saturday apparently but due to the rain, the festival closed early and the fixing didn’t happen is my guess.

So we didn’t take the ferry to the other side since most of the ships were on the Philly side. However, lines were like half a mile long. I easily got my 10k steps for the day lol. We first waited in a line that was moving only to find out it was not the right line so we skipped that ship. Then we found another ship that had a shorter line. It still took at least 30 minutes to get onto the ship and then it was a line slowly moving around the ship, so we spent 30-40 minutes on the ship, but at least we made it on one ship.

After that we took some photos with the 10ft baby duck (the largest duck is 67ft so quite a difference). I, of course, did my bridge photo, which the kids were fascinated by.

From there, we left. I am not really an all day festival type person. We took the subway home and I had the evening to relax. I headed over to the pool but it was very windy so I just sat and read for a while. Then I came home, made dinner and made some Spoon’s banana bread muffins since I had some bananas that needed to be used.