The Balls

There are many expressions with balls: dropping them, not having any, keeping them rolling, waiting for them to drop, wax ones, etc.

I was supposed to be climbing with seven friends this weekend. Instead I was climbing with four, because two of them dropped the ball. One sort of had an excuse, but the other didn’t have any balls, so she stayed home. A third one in the same car didn’t want to drive to our rendez-vous point alone (it was far) because that was a whole other ball of wax.

The one who didn’t have any balls didn’t want to come because the weather was supposed to be unstable, but it worked out just fine. We’d chosen a rather long multi-pitch route and the weather was sometimes a bit iffy. We needed to keep the ball rolling and I went as fast as I could (in spite of a few moves far from the nearest protection that sometimes made me a bit stressed). I kept climbing, waiting for the ball to drop and for the rain to make continuing impossible, but we finished just in time.

After that, tired and happy, we made it back to our lodgings and had a very nice dinner, listening to the rain fall outside. All the friends who’d made the journey to go climbing together… had a ball.