A truck on a train

Posted by on July 10th, 2020  •  0 Comments  •  Full Article

As we get closer to retirement we’ve been planning how that’s going to look. I clearly remember standing in dad’s sunny laundry room when he was about my age now. He was excited about the plans he’d made  concerning his extra health insurance plan. He predicted (correctly as it turned out) that he’d end up in a nursing home, so he bought a special policy that would cover the cost.

Sue and I, on the other hand, have been looking closely at our  stable of vehicles: a 2010 V6 RAV4, a 2004 two wheel drive Tacoma, and a 1991 Corolla. When we load them up with climbing, camping and painting gear there is no room to sleep inside. Our Corolla wagon is even worse. It’s a 370,000 mile beater for around town that’s drive-able but missing fourth gear.

Many folks in the  climbing community are investing in vans that cost up to $200,000. Some news stories speculate that young people are priced out of the housing market and choose to make car payments instead.  We’ve seen  charming young climbing couples who have fixed up Ford and Chevy vans from last century. We saw dozens of them in our last climbing trip to Idaho. There were also a slew of climbers in vans and trucks with pop up campers on the back. There were even a couple sprinters with popup tops added. Do they really need that much space and luxury?

We camped up in BLM land in the RAV4. We had our little 20 year old 4 season  Bibler backpacking tent. It leaks badly, so I staked out a tarp on top of it. It looked like a legit homeless encampment up there. During two nights of our stay our neighbors in the next campspot drank until 2. There was a drunken woman who had a very annoying  laugh. She brayed, kind of like a drunk donkey with a toothache, and it went on and on. There is no campground host to call up there, and no such thing as a quiet hour.

Boondock  camping has been compared to the wild west.  Truth be told, it’s been me and my climbing buddies talking and playing music late into the night on past trips. So this was a bit of karmic payback.

On the second night, Sue slept in the RAV4 (better sound proofing) while I braved it out in the tent, wearing ear plugs and numbing my brain with whiskey. While climbing in the city, we kept seeing all the van life people driving by in their gas hogs. There were literally trains of them going up and down the rough dirt roads.

My 2004 Tacoma runs like a top, but with 270,000 miles it’s a bit gutless going over the passes with a full load. And it’s far too small to sleep in without a lot of extra luggage shuffling to the front seats every morning and evening. Both cars run fine, but neither serves our needs well.

We are getting older and feel like we’ve earned some luxury in our retirement. We spent a few days looking at new trucks and settled on a very rare model of the Tundra. They are extremely hard to find. Our dealer actually gave up on finding one, but I kept looking and eventually discovered a way to make autotrader.com filter by: new, Tundra, within 50 miles, low to high pricing. Hours and hours of searching eventually revealed the truck we wanted at a heavy discount.

I used the vin number to find the same truck at a much higher price on the dealers website. I called them and told them about the low price on autotrader.com. She confirmed the details but said it wasn’t yet available…that it was on a train and expected to be on her lot between the 12th and the 20th. Long story short we placed a deposit on the truck. Once we get the truck in hand we can look into canopies.

I have thought about building my own canopy from fiberglass or poor mans fiberglass (PMF). I just finished a test box to learn the process. I made the food storage box out of 1/8″ plywood…maybe closer to 4mm. PMF is not nearly as rigid as true fiberglass, but it was a good learning experience.

My son and his wife came over last week with some good news, but it’s not my story to tell.

Christine and I climbed at the gym with masks on yesterday. First time since Covid shut everything down. Tod and his family were there running the place. He seemed very happy to see a  couple of us old timers  in there doing our thing. They have a new juggy ten minus in the lead cave for all us rusty has beens to practice on. There is a whole community of climbers in this town who really miss our favorite local hangout.

Marty – Off Belay

Posted by on July 3rd, 2020  •  0 Comments  •  Full Article

I was on a bicycle ride over to Gig Harbor when I got a text from an unknown number.

Hey Buddy, if you haven’t heard;

Marty died yesterday while running.
Word is a heart attack.
He wanted me to help him on a basic climb of yellow jacket. But covid got in the way (cancelled the trip).

This hurts

Mark Webster:

Who is this…Marty’s gone?

Old Friend from 1976:

It’s Lemon
Yes

Old friends die. I guess I have to get used to it. Not saying I like it. But life goes on.

In looking back at this post 4 years later (March 2024) my eyes teared up a little thinking about all we lost when Marty died. As you can tell, the guy was ripped. Mid sixties with the body of a 25 year old, six pack and all. He was the climbing committee chairman of the Tacoma Mountaineers. I met him when an old friend  talked me into re-joining for a year, and there was Marty. We became regular gym partners, which expanded  into many trips to Squamish, Smith, Leavenworth and City of Rocks. We climbed at about the same level and could swing leads up most nines on the west coast. We were the same age with a lot in common: wives, kids semi retired, etc.

He climbed Liberty Ridge, one of the hardest routes on Mt. Rainier, for his 60th birthday and he was the strongest partner on the team. So with all that going on, to suddenly get a call that he had died while on a run…a whole lot of family and friends were shocked and saddened. Turns out he had an enlarged heart with  90 percent blockages on two of his coronary arteries and a 40 percent blockage on the third. His only symptom was slightly swollen fingers. He’d had to stop gym climbing for a couple months.

His primary care doctor had given him a clean bill of health. She was shocked to see the autopsy results. My medical friends told me there is nothing short of invasive $3000 procedures that could have foreseen the problems. So basically, when your time is up, that’s it.

Just got back from City of Rocks with Sue. My best  climb was  My Private Idaho rated 5.9. It was either too hot or too wet to climb much else. The trad climbs there don’t have anchors directly on top. They are usually 50 feet off to the side. You need to be able to bring your partner up and walk over to the anchor.

We stayed with Jim for  3 nights, then BLM for 3 nights and Pam for one night. Weather was thunderstorms for three days straight. We barely dodged getting caught in a thunderstorm on Wheat Thin. It had just rained and was drying out. I led up, feeling rusty but ok. As Pam was following a huge black cloud was rushing in behind me. We rapped off in light rain, but as soon as we pulled the rope it began to pour. We rushed over to the dry cave as thunder crashed immediately above us.

In the morning Sue and Connie wanted to bail so we drove home in 11 hours. It was an ok 9 day climbing trip. Not great, but fun to get away. Today I have jet lag, though we did go test drive a Tundra. Covid has made the the 8 foot beds  in short supply.