belay

I was belaying my friend when he came over and said the word, “Hi.”

Like rock climbing, the sport entails a rope system — known as belaying — but differs in substantive ways.

Then, he heard what he thought was someone shouting that he was on belay.

“I think there’s something about climbing where you’re really trusting your life to your belay partner, your climbing partner, and that lends itself to relationships in a lot of ways,” she said.

But it adds that it is a "mess of old, rotting gear that has been left behind at each belay and accumulated over decades of use".