This is an excerpt from a larger list, where I give various activities a Sober Fun rating of 1-10. Entries from this list are scattered throughout my website, or you can find that complete list HERE.

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ROCK CLIMBING: N/A

Oh boy. This is something I don't really feel comfortable including on here and would never advocate for anyone to try. I don't really know what I'm talking about, I didn't know what I was doing at the time, and I still do not know very much about rock climbing to this day! All I know is slightly more than I once did, enough to know I wasn't qualified to do what I attempted and would never be so dumb as to try it again without more training.

I had experienced the tiniest modicum of success, one time, during a singular visit to a climbing wall in Grand Prairie, Texas. It was one of those meticulously crafted environments where the handholds on the wall are placed, by design, in the perfect spots, just where you need them, so that you’re never stuck without options. But even on the hardest walls, where giving you fewer options is the whole point, you are never in any real danger, since you are strapped in a harness and connected to the ceiling of the gym, should you fall.

So after leaving a contrived, indoor climbing wall -- and armed with all the knowledge that one might expect, following a single, two-hour session -- I felt that I was ready to try climbing out in the real world, in Palo Duro Canyon.

It was terrifying, I regretted attempting it almost immediately, and I would not do it again. The problem with brash naïveté of this sort, is that once you realize you are in over your head, it's often too late. What are you going to do? Just hang there until your muscles give out? I had on no harness, so that would have been a fatal choice.

Obviously, I'm writing this, so I survived, but what you can't tell from the photo of me on top of that rock formation is that I'm physically shaking, and it isn't just from muscle fatigue! It was scary as hell, and I wouldn’t recommend it. What you can see from the photo is that I'm alone up there, because no one else was stupid enough to follow me.

For all these reasons, I feel unqualified to give this a Sober Fun Rating of any kind, so it gets an n/a.

In hindsight, was it fun? Sure! But it would be like saying to you that it's a fun and totally safe idea to go out and wrestle with a lion, all because I tried it once and for some reason lived to tell about it. I'd hope you wouldn't listen to me, and also, just to be clear, I've never wrestled with a lion.

I've SHOT ONE though.