So, anyway, two days after I called off things with Lisa, she happened to be at McHenry library. She acted surprised to see me. I was early for work so I went over and talked to her (later she told me that she had waited for about four hours for me to show up for work, that she had planned our meeting). I went over to her house that night for dinner. One thing lead to another and I wound up spending the night. The next morning I woke to a familiar reality; things were right where they were before I broke off our relationship. Lisa interacted with me as if there had been no break in our relationship. I’m not sure what I had expected, but the same attitudes towards my friends, from her, as before was definitely not it. After over a week of that I left to meet Ron and Diane in Yosemite.

When I left Lisa to go to Yosemite, she was sitting in the couch on her porch, a dark cloud of anger and hostility. We had been arguing over my refusal to end my friendships to be with her. She was particularly upset with me for seeing Jana. The fact that Jana and I shared an apartment, but were not romantically involved brought out a side of Lisa that was not very becoming. Lisa’s jealousy and spitefulness had always bothered me. I got the idea that because she was back with me, she expected me to drop all my friends and move to a studio apartment so she could have all of my attention. Now she was mad at me for making no effort to do that. The women she shared her house withwere pretty stiff and abrupt with me. I did not know what Lisa had been telling them and I did not care. I was really tired of the disaster that my relationship with Lisa had become.

Driving away from Santa Cruz I was thinking about how unhappy I was with her. Nothing had changed. She was the same Lisa that made me call off our relationship weeks before. I realized that when I returned I would have to end our relationship permanently. I was going to be really clear this time. She had to understand there was no possibility for us to continue, I wanted and needed to be free of her and her spitefulness forever.

To celebrate my birthday, I was going to climb Washington Column (above the Indian Caves) in Yosemite Valley. I was looking forward to the upcoming climb. The feeling of focusing on the matter at hand, the climb, to not always be thinking of my problems with Lisa or my doubts about my academic direction would be a relief. The flaw in my assumption was that I would be able divert my attention to the seriousness of the matter at hand. I never considered the possibility that those thoughts could cause me to shift my focus from rock-climbing.

Ron, Diane and I had hiked into the base of Washington column on Saturday morning. Ron and I were climbing Washington Column, in Yosemite Valley, to celebrate my 28th birthday. His wife watched us as we laid out the rope, climbing hardware and runners. Ron and I munched energy bars and discussed the upcoming climb.

"Climbing," I stated as I began moving upwards. At one point I stopped and threw down to Ron a tarp that had been left on a ledge. It fell past him, down twenty feet, to the foot of the wall. Although an accomplished climber of boulders, I had never lead climbed a big wall. It is the lead climber's responsibility to place and properly fasten the rope to each point of protection (chock). I could not stop thinking about stuff with Lisa and my academic direction. I was not really focused on the seriousness of the matter at hand. I did not want to risk falling the extra ten or twenty feet if I used runners to keep the rope straight, so, while I had them with me, I did not use them.

After thirty minutes of climbing vertically, I began moving to the right onto some very smooth treacherous granite, climbing for the ledge at its top. I slipped, my last thoughts, “Uh, oh.” as I fell past my top-most piece of protection. The rope grew taut, every chock underneath was yanked sideways and pulled out (because I had not used runners), then, the top chock pulled out too.

Diane yelled, “He’s falling!” Yelled it again as I accelerated downwards and then she started screaming.