The Climbing Years

Early on in my illustrious career as a Renaissance Woman, I joined my then new boyfriend in his burgeoning climbing business. Having just graduated from selling mountaineering equipment out of the back of his car, we moved into a two room office in a run-down section of Burnaby. The neighbourhood, now known as Metrotown, was filled with dreary warehouses and wholesalers—a shabby backdrop to the wanna-be highway known as Kingsway and a far cry from the metropolis it is now.  And, as we were both financially challenged, we forgo the traditional concept of home and office and combined the two. Our sleeping bags fit perfectly in the sublime surroundings of ropes, carabiners, packs and chocks.

Here is an excerpt from Notes from the Bottom of the Box: The Search for Identity by a Modern-Day Renaissance Woman.

The main purpose of this office-cum-home was to sell climbing equipment. Our hope each week was to sell enough gear to climb, hike or ski on the weekend—gas money being the main expense. We lived cheaply: Safeway bread, puffy and white; peanut butter and bananas for breakfast; Kraft dinner and Campbell’s soup for dinner deliciously cooked over a Bluet stove on the desktop; and coffee—lots of coffee—to complete our nutritional needs. Our offices were connected to the outer hall by an eight-foot long alcove with doors at each end. The idea was to keep both doors open, but being rather new in our relationship and with meager sales to boot, we tended to close the inner door a lot for, shall we say, inventory analysis. One such rainy Saturday afternoon, our rampant rabbitting was disturbed by a noise: Did you hear something? Naw. We continued. No really, I said, someone’s in the inner hall. We quickly finished our play, straightened our dishevelment and opened the door. Eight travelling climbers fell in with eight rather lecherous smirks. A minor embarrassment made much better by their decision to buy enough climbing gear to gas our tanks and feed our bellies for the rest of the month. Who says sex doesn’t sell?

Stay tuned for more weekly excerpts from Notes from the Bottom of the Box. If you like this blog, please like me on my Modern-Day Renaissance Woman Facepage.  Thanks for the support!
If you like my writing, check out my other blog, The Interdependent Life.