Friday, February 1, 2008

Taylor's Back



Bid for this painting on Ebay

As a climber, I have 'favourite' parts of the body, which fascinate me. Shoulders, backs and hands are particularly important to a climber, and usually the parts which sustain a lot of injuries too - so you become quite familiar with them on yourself and others. Taylor and I went to the 'Bodies' exhibition at the Carnegie Science Museum in Pittsburgh over Xmas, a fascinating collection of preserved cadavers. Some where whole bodies, in 'action' (such as kicking a ball) and the rest were dissected, skinned, cross-sectioned, in all manner of ingenious ways to show what amazingly complex forms we as humans are.

So of course at the hands section, Taylor and I were fascinated by the structure of the tendons, pulleys, and ligaments we've so often injured whilst pulling our body weight up on our fingertips. "Oh, there's the pulley I partially tore on both my ring fingers!, no wonder it made such a horrible sound" Anyway, I spare you the rest, unless you climb, it's as nerdy as Star Wars.