I just watched King Lines, the rockumentary that follows Chris Sharma's audacious, worldwide quest to climb stunningly difficult rock formations, and I have to say: Now is definitely not the time to complain about the number of trips I made up and down the basement steps to refill the snacks during the Super Bowl.

I would only feel justified in my exhaustion if I had repeatedly rappelled into the basement with a bag of tortilla chips snug in my belay device. Or if I had spent the evening "sending" (climbing term, probably a version of ascend) to the kitchen by clipping into holds randomly hammered into my staircase walls.

It's only a matter of time.

Here in Janet's World, we have converted one area of our garage into an overhung climbing wall (photos on www.janetgil bert.net). But I'm sorry, for insurance reasons, only my children are permitted the thrill of potentially experiencing horrific bone breaks at home.

So far -- perhaps because we insist on spotting and a crash pad -- the rock wall has been quite safe. Anyway, it's not the trip to the emergency room that scares me. It's that part when the doctor questions your child on how he became injured, to ascertain if he is an abuse victim. I can just hear it: "I slipped off the garage wall." I'm sure the doctor might find that intriguing enough to recommend me for a Parenting 101 refresher, wherein you learn you should only let kids climb on neon-colored plastic yard sets.

But I've been there/done that; it's just that my child always used the neon plastic yard set as a launching pad for the nearest fence or tree. I had the only kid in the neighborhood who consistently rode on the roof of his "Cozy Coupe."

So when he was around age 10, we took him to a local indoor climbing gym. I secretly hoped it would be a phase.

Fast-forward to Super Bowl weekend. Late Saturday afternoon, our son and some students from St. Mary's College of Maryland drove to College Park to participate in "The Great Big Experiment," a climbing competition.

All of the students at the competition appeared to be attired in varying old and worn-out hues, and many sported the low-maintenance hairstyle of really long shaggy hair. This is not to stereotype the climbers as hippies. This is simply to say that their focus is on other, more important things, such as not dying.

If you've never been to one, a "climbing competition" is unlike any other sporting competition, mainly because the element of competition seems kind of ... absent. It's more like an event where environmentally conscious young persons hang out and encourage each other to defy gravity in successively more outrageous ways.

And how's this for outrageous? There are no ropes in "bouldering" competitions. Bouldering is the aspect of the sport where enthusiasts happen upon a boulder and climb it. Maryland has a lot of boulders -- especially in Carderock -- but College Park is a bit short on them. So the organizers of "The Great Big Experiment" built bouldering walls in their backyard.Part of the experiment must have been to see how many neighbors would put their houses up for sale after a daylong event with music blaring and excessive traffic.

The last tough climb included a "dyno" to the final hold. A dyno is a leap up and off the rock surface to reach another section -- probably climber lingo for dynamite, which is what you'd have to ingest to attempt such a feat. I enjoyed watching my son do that by holding my breath and wearing a very fake smile.

Later that night, we all watched the Sharma movie, and I got to thinking: maybe I'm missing something. So I'm going outside now to check out the view -- from the roof of the Cozy Coupe.

Contact Janet at janet@janetgilbert.net