my effing finger (andrewchasteen.com)

If you’ve been climbing long enough to be off the TR then chances are you’ve had a gnarly flapper at some time or another. They suck. They hurt and they are an annoying little injury to your body’s smallest appendages (I HOPE your fingers are your smallest appendage). Flappers make you feel like you should be climbing but you can’t. You can do nearly anything else that’s related to a climbing day like carry a pack, hike to a cliff, belay your friends, smoke cigarettes, drink beer and stare at your project. The only problem is you can’t touch it because ONE FINGER PREVENTS IT. It makes me feel like a little tiny man. Like this man actually. Almost awesome, but so totally not.

It’s even worse when your finger injuries happen when you’re not even climbing. Take yesterday for example. I arrived at the crag to find a few friends having fun on some fun pitches in the Wichita Mountains. I get my harness on and I start to belay our friend Jer on a wonderfully classic warm up he has never done. I was relaying a story to a friend about how Limit decked the day before before he clipped the first bolt 20 feet up and like a true idiot, tripped backwards and fell to the ground. I stuck my hand behind me to catch my fall and when I stood up I was dripping bright red blood all over everything including my totally awesome white Michael Jackson belay gloves. Another friend put him on belay so I could clean myself up and I come to find my finger has a perfectly large gash/flappingpieceofskin that is going to prevent all climbing. It’s terrible so I’m giving all you faithful readers a few ideas for passing the time when you can’t climb because of insignificant little pansy injuries like this.

1. DO NOT under any circumstances let your friends convince you to just “come hang out” while they climb. It sucks.

2. DO convince your friends climbing kind of sucks anyway (even though it doesn’t) and try to play drinking games instead.

3. DO get them intensely intoxicated after so that the next day they are unwilling to wake up to go climbing.

4. Take this time out to do MAD pull-ups. Since you can’t crimp just grab the big holds on that hang board and strap on some weights and do dead hangs and pull-up workouts until you have to drink beer from a straw because you can’t pick anything up anymore.

5. Do some yoga bitches. Look at this and TELL ME TO MY FACE that you’re not attracted to yoga at least a little bit.

6. Don’t be a whiny baby like me. No one wants to hang out with you if you are.

7. Now if you’ll excuse me there are drinks to be drunk around here and I have to make up stories about how I cut my finger to impress women at bars.