Updated 1/15 — Completed 18 of 24
Climbing
1.
I've always avoided this portion of the gym due to a healthy fear of a) falling and b) hipsters. Still valid concerns, but bouldering's nonetheless helping me climb "more dynamically" (read: less lazily) and giving me something to do when I can't wrangle a belay partner.
2.
Passing the test took me three tries—not unusual, to be fair—all of which were completed while trembling in a cold sweat. My start-line jitters are evidently multisport, though how much of my anxiety was related to falling and how much to the drama of being judged on a clipboard (a clipboard, man!) remains to be seen.
3.
How can I possibly know what to do without color-coded jugs? But baby steps at Indian Rock are inevitable successes for the bay view alone.
Bikes
4.
We can quibble over whether it counts if the experience didn't involve armor or diamonds, but there's a cultural shift that occurs in a lift line; I got that much. And it was rad. "Bigass" is relative—and this is a far cry from my hardtail.
5. Ride the track
Similarly, I have no reason to think I would enjoy riding in circles, on a hard surface, near other people2, without brakes. But I will try it once.
6. Go on a (mini) bike tour
Two nights is admittedly not real bike touring, but were I ever to have more time than that I would obviously use it for a mountain bike trip.
7.
Even for someone who once crashed off a stationary trainer (...), this is not actually that hard. I won't stray far from a wall, and I'm not signing up for the Indoor Challenge any time soon, but sure, done.
8.
Snow
9.
Generally requires no skill. Can occasionally be enlivened by pretending to be a French fur-trapper3 or pointing yourself straight up the most vertical piece of terrain you can see.
10.
As everyone said would be the case, day one on the bunny slopes was totally manageable. Everything else will be tough (see list item No. 4)—and expensive! The hours I'd need to put in to be competent enough to try backcountry (my actual pie in the sky; I have no aspirations or attraction to resorts) would bankrupt me. Alas, had I only shown interest when my parents were still prepared to bankroll a week of ski school ...
11. Cross-country ski
For some reason I've gotten it into my head that this will be, like, totally easy. Ha, right.
Water
12.
It's not that I couldn't swim before I sucked it up and took lessons; it's just that the casual observer couldn't have distinguished between me and a really awkward dog.
13.
Too technical for me to ever really get into, I think, but as a consequence the associated lingo is really fun.
14.
Quasi-accomplished via baby sea kayak in the super-mellow Oakland estuary, where I could confine my anxiety to the possibility of being mowed down by channel traffic. But what truly terrifies me is this madness.
15.
This was fun—and so different from anything else I've tried, particularly in that you can crash over and over without ever bleeding (awesome!). I'm handicapped by an extremely poor understanding of basic physics, but totally enchanted by the instructor's giddy descriptions of water starts and planing and, and, and ... .
Uh ... mortal combat?
16.
The most sobering moment of this experience was when the revolver jammed and I confronted the absolutely absurd and immediate impulse to flip the thing around, peer down the barrel, and pull the trigger again. That, boys and girls, is how accidents happen.
17.
This is a Redwall item—the quiver-toting squirrels were always my favorites. After the Long Patrol, wot.
18.
Dubious, since I never held off my middle-school P.E. demons long enough to take an actual class—but I do have a heavy bag hanging awkwardly in my bedroom doorway4; that's got to count for something. What Would Teddy Do?
Miscellaneous
19. Start a fire
This is silly, but I've really never done this. Whenever everyone wants a fire, everyone wants a fire quickly. Ricardo rears his head and it just never falls to me. What do I do instead? I don't know; indeed I have no camp-craft to speak of ... but fire's the beginning, right?
20.
Wrote this one off after the cables came down for the year—turns out they were down but not out. Glorious.
21.
Sadly, lyrical mastery of "Heaven is a Half Pipe" has no effect on my balance.
22. Ride a motorcycle
Don't get smart with me.
23.
I'm not telling what this one is. The relevant information is that it was adequately new and scary to count and didn't involve anything illegal, mom.
24. [Open for mid-year epiphanies]
and the backs of my eyes / hum with things I've never done
___________________________________________________1. Note my clever redefining of "this year" to mean "the year that I'm 24" and not "2011". Come my birthday I will probably adopt the fiscal calendar.
2. You're welcome.
3. This is one of my favorite paintings ever. Check out that guy's hat!
4. Thanks, KP.
