Your guide to the perilous waters of the internet

4-28-09

Climbed in Leavenworth with Sue, Clint and Craig this last weekend. We started on tunnel route as there was a bee's nest on A Crack. Craig had never climbed outside before, and rarely at the gym. He sailed up the tough fist jam crack on tunnel route like he'd been climbing for years. It's incredible how some people are just natural climbers, while the rest of us have to practice for years to show any talent.

Next we did porpoise route, which was horibly rotten on the traverse past the last bolt, which is also the second bolt on the 80 foot route. I need to stop climbing that choss pile. Gray whale was lovely as usual. Those thin friction moves are very improbable. You have to stand on next to nothing. The cliff leans over at about a 50 degree angle. It is smooth sandstone with very few ledges. On the crux move, you have to place your right foot on a blank section of stone where there is no foothold. It's steep, smooth sandstone and you think that your foot would slide right off. But as you gradually tranfer your weight onto the foot, it sticks.

From then on, you at least have minor bumps and edges to put either a foot or a finger on and it becomes a pleasant progression of carefully weighting each foot while balancing with your hands on small bumps in the stone and climbing up the slab. There are only two protection bolts in the 60 foot route, but it is reasonably safe assuming you can stick clip the first bolt, or get to it on lead with a couple spotters. It's really a lovely route, all four of us climbed it. I was surprised and please to see Sue climbing it just like old times. Even she couldn't beleive it. She came down and exclaimed: "I've still got the touch!"

We had a nice campfire, with Clint and Craig staying up late talking about their high school days. I led dogleg crack right of meatgrinder first, and had to hang at the bottom, something I've not done in years. I guess my crack skills are rusting again. Hard to believe I was just on Karate 3 weeks ago...but there you have it. I lose my skills fast.Still, I hung around and finished it. Craig followed it like it was a 5.2, but Clint fell a couple times. He is still trying to get back in shape after gaining weight in nursing school.

We climbed a goofy 5.9 on icicle buttress next, then finished out the day on classic crack. I've become a bit of a facebook junkie, so if you are looking for pictures, go see them there. This journal is great documentation, but very onesided, whereas facebook is interactive.

4-14-09

Spent a boring weekend at home balancing my checkbook and working on the honeydo list. We got a $1000 tax refund which I used to pay off a credit card. When I went to write the car payment, I saw that we only owed 500 in principle so I payed that off as well.

We are now debt free. No car payment, no house payment, no credit card balances...this is too good to be true. Probably the trucks transmission will go out or something to put us back in debt...knock on wood. How many times are you supposed to knock, when you do that? I went with three.

We still have a slew of monthly bills:

• $65 water bill homeowners dues
• $180 car insurance for 4 paid off cars (clint pays $40 of that)
• $190 on 4 cell phones (Clint pays his $40 share) [ I can't believe we spend that much on stupid cell phones! ]
• $150 electric
• $24 garbage
• $53 broadband internet
• $120 bridge tolls for 3 cars
• ?? on gas and food

That totals $782 a month, with two of us earning money. Lisa earns a little but mostly she just studies, and Clint is moved out. We plan to save the $676 we used to spend every month on house + car payment. That should build up quickly and give us a cushion for car repairs...and maybe even go toward retirement, something we have neglected for decades.

The truck had squeaky brakes, but when I pulled off the wheels I found 4 mm on the front pads, and 6 on the rear shoes. I have no idea why they are squeaking...maybe they are polished from the 98,000 miles. The truck has never had a brake job.

I've been painting a native american design around my new white vinyl backpack. It's a Black Diamond Touchstone Haul Bag back pack and it is made from indistructible white reinforced vinyl similar to what snowshoes are made from. To me it looked like a blank canvas, or maybe I have a secret hankering for a tattoo...at any rate, it's all pimped out now...not sure if I like it, but at least it's different.

Saturday I also worked for a 3 hours on the school web site. It tiresome work, but I try not to say no to freelance work in these uncertain times. Sue has had a bad cold for a week now, I should be getting it anyday now.

All my gym friends are climbing. 7 of them went to Smith for the weekend. Fletch, Christine and Bobby are in Red Rocks. Mark L. and Marty just came back from Red Rocks. My knee hurts, and I needed to work on some chores so this one was my rest weekend.

4-14-09

I've been feeling very scattered. If I'm not in a lecture, I seem to just be putting out fires. I have about a 14 hour backlog of freelance work waiting for me to attend to. I've been climbing every other weekend so between the honey do list, and doing income taxes, I've not been a good little worker bee lately.

Speaking of climbing, I almost got killed when someone pulled off a loose flake 50 feet over my head Saturday. They were climbing the 10a variation on the Peaceful warrior route at Vantage. The guy that pulled the flake off said it looked normal, and wasn't loose. He grabbed it and it pulled away in his hand. He was able to hold to the cliff as the piece fell toward the ground where his belayer, me and Tyler were standing.

The flake was the size of a 15 inch pizza, but 3 inches thick. When it hit the ground 5 feet from me, it exploded into fragments that flew 20 feet in all directions. My rack was not damaged, nor was the lead climbers rope, both of which were within inches of the landing zone. It freaked me out so bad that I put up a post on www.cascadeclimbers.com asking if vantage rockfall was rare or common. I got quite a response. One (true) story was so good I'm going to paste it in here.

--------------------------------------------I did not write this. this was posted by a friend of mine named Sobo on cc.com

Wow, that made me remember why I don't climb at Vantage anymore.
How could I have forgotten about this one???

Years back, during the early 90s exploration of the south-facing walls closer to the river, I was climbing on some thing (near today's Chicks and Hens??, Fox and Hens? Hen something?) whereupon the whole column teetered away from the wall, with me on it in a mid-mantle move to the column top. I leaped off and to the right, "Superman-ing" it toward the earth. Anything was better than riding the column down, but I had no idea what I was going to do next. I figured, "Hey, one problem at a time."

My pro was popping all the way, as the crack formed by the column widened and disappeared as the column fell further and further from the wall. I thought for sure I was going to die, but as I approached the talus for what was sure to be a hard landing, the rope came taught against the first piece off the ground (my leap had outpaced the column's fall), and I performed what can only be described as a "Wiley E. Coyote", whereupon one finds himself over the edge of the cliff, but doesn't fall until he looks down and understands that there is no longer any ground beneath him.

I came up short against the end of the rope, decelerated rapidly, hung near-motionless in mid-air for a split second about 6 feet off the ground and parallel to the talus slope, then slammed into the talus. The impact force was akin to rolling out of the top of a bunk bed and landing solidly on the floor. I'm sure many of you have experienced this same feeling as a college student waking up after a night of binge drinking.

The remnants of the column, now big chunks about the size of a Smart Car, came crashing down the talus slope toward me, grinding and melting the rope about 2-3 feet from my harness knot. Someone's pile jacket was effectively returned to its post-pop bottle state, a mass of melted plastic fused to the rock upon which it recently sat. Clouds of dust peeled up into the air, and I could hear Bill Robins' and Paul Certa's voices through the melee, "Oh my God, we finally killed somebody!" Being Hanford employees, I later learned that had I been killed in their presence, they would have had mountains of paperwork to fill out about the incident. I feel overjoyed to have been responsible in helping them avoid this inconvenience by not dying on them that day.

Anyway, much to the amazement of the assembled crowd, I slowly arose from the ashes like a Phoenix, quietly dusted myself off, and proceeded to find a quiet place to assess my injuries: an elbow the size of a softball, multiple scrapes, lacerations, and contusions along one side of my body (where I landed) and both of my palms, and totally dusted in volcanic ash and dirt. No head injury, and I was NOT wearing a helmet back in those days. The whole place was silent for several minutes, as those present were in awe of my highly unlikely survival. I think they may have actually expected me to just fall over dead any second, as surely no one could have survived that plunge and the subsequent boulder barrage.

I credit my life to my belayer that day, Randy Yeates, who stood fast his position instead of cutting and running, because it was he who buried himself in a crack, making a de facto body belay out of himself, and never let go of the rope, as I made my trip toward terra firma. Thank you again, Randy, wherever you may be.

This is a no bullshit story. If Bill Robins were alive today, he would confirm it. If you know Paul Certa, ask him. I lost contact with Randy after that day. He may have ceased climbing after this. I do not climb at Vantage anymore.

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4-10-09

I feel kind of like the guy in the hood that ran the Guillotine back in the 1700's. When a program gets cut, I'm the guy who removes it from the website. The people who work in these programs are my colleagues and friends, some of them going back 6 years. I'm just following orders and earning a little freelance money, but jeez, deleting these programs has a human side that I try not to think about.

Oh, well, somebodies got to do it I guess, and I shouldn't be so sensitive. It all comes down to dollars and cents in the world of business. If you aren't paying your way, it's out the door with you. I guess that is only fair. I've got a date to go climbing this weekend, I'm going to forget about all this stuff and just have fun. If you haven't seen me writing much, it's because I've begun spending a lot of my time on facebook. If you don't do facebook, you should. It's the new way to stay in touch with friends, much better than these old one sided journals.

I plan to keep up this journal just because I never quit, and this is the story of my life...at least, as much as I feel like sharing online, but facebook and all the climbing friends I have there have been stealing time and quality from this journal.

 

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