Lead cert

A friend's regular climbing partner was out today, so the friend needed a belay at the gym. Except he usually climbs in the lead cave, and I've never bothered to get lead certified at a gym, in SB or SD. My attitude towards the gym is that it constitutes training in a very general sense: it's supposed to develop or keep in shape the muscles I need to be able to climb outside, as I do every other weekend, but I don't treat the routes there as serious climbing challenges in themselves. I don't know whether it's because they're set by humans, or because the place is mobbed with people who are either new or simply not that good, but I just can't take the gym seriously as anything more than gymnastics. This is all by way of explaining how I found myself taking the lead certification test tonight. The test was far easier at this gym than it was at the UCSB gym, where in addition to belaying, arresting a fall and leading successfully, they wanted you to give a dynamic catch, demonstrate back-clipping and z-clipping, and would fail you if your hands went anywhere near the rope while taking a lead fall. So, of course, I passed, and got to climb in the lead cave. I took it very easy, since my elbow and left ring finger, my two current injuries, were both making themselves felt after Monday's hard climbing. I made it 4 clips up the white "cakewalk" overhanging route, on which I could have gone much further, a couple clips up another juggy overhanging route, and did a 5.8 and a 5.9 vertical route. All in all, it was a fine experience, and it's given me a couple more projects to work on... Oh, and I saw a guy z-clipping and yelled out to him to let him know, but since I never raise my voice, the whole thing made me feel really bad, even though it was obviously for his own good.