grommets in the gym

Now that I've given up any hope of climbing outside in our day to day life, the climbing gym has become our new home. We usually go to the oakland gym, but occasionally end up in Berkeley, which has gotten ridiculously crowded recently. Last night we totally lucked out and happened to be there when the teenage mutant climbing team was working out. It was sweet: every inch of the lead cave decked out in ropes and kids climbing 5.13. While I was cursing our decision to climb on a Tuesday night, I came to the realization that 1)zoe (hopefully) will be one of those kids at some point, so I should just calm down about having to elbow our way through them to get on the moderates and 2)competitive climbing in the US is amazingly under-resourced compared to europe. Even poor european countries have full time coaches, dedicated training facilities and state money to climb. France, for example, which has historically produced many international competitive climbing stars, has a very impressive facility in Aix-en-Provence. A lot of the kids from the gym are internationally competitive, but you have to wonder how much better they would do with the euro resources!