Sometimes it's a struggle

Monday Nea and I were at a rope jam. We were coming off both being sick on top of the changing of the seasons which always brings it's own array of complications. For me that meant that I'm more depressed and a little less patient. For Nea, being sick means they have a slight lingering cough and the tissue injury on their rib is acting up. The cold means that Nea's general pain is higher and their back, in particular, is upset.

I was wanting to do a real transition test of a chest harness we've been working on, and after talking it over with Nea on the way over we decided to go for it. Part of what we liked about this harness is that it spreads the load out in a way that doesn't stress their rib injury as much, and we felt this was a trial by fire. We went into this tie knowing that we might take the chest out part of the way through. I went in thinking that the chest would be the point of failure. I was focused on the residuals from them being sick and what that might mean and didn't think through all the pieces of what the colder weather would mean for them.

The chest went on fine. I tied it a hair loser than previous tests, but it was still plenty tight for their body. I loaded it while I tied the lower body. From the moment I loaded the futo Nea hated it. Futos are typically one of our reliable ties but I've been playing with how I tie them, and this one wasn't it. That was fine though, some days are like that. Also, from the moment that Nea had the futo loaded they were far more panicky than they usually are in rope. Breathing in a way that clearly wasn't falling into the ropes. After it became clear that the futo had to change I undid and retied it and that worked much better for them.

Still, several times as we tied I had to remind Nea to breath. Remind them that they're strong, that they can do this.

When we first started tying we ran into this problem where things were rough whenever we came back to rope after any time away. After some time we talked about this issue and eventually it got better. It got so much better that when they were 5 hrs away in grad school and we often went several months without tying rope always felt like coming home. It had gotten so much better that it was shocking to find ourselves back in this struggle. It wasn't exactly the same though, back then, I don't know if we would have kept trying things until something worked. Monday, we worked through it and ended in a good spot (waist-rope).

We talked through it on the way home. Talked about our thought process both going in and during the rope and how we could have done better and what we learned. And it's a good reminder that old problems sometimes rear they heads and that's okay and we handle it and we move forward. Winding road and all that.