terrible_ted

What about their harnesses? Has anyone had them make one? What about their other gear? I'm very intrigued. I'm just wondering how much I'd trust some engineers on acid?? -t

Jeez... Dr. Touchy!

Hey J: I'm game. Reminds me of "Ooh La La" (I wish that I knew what I know now, when I was younger...) Gotta love old Rod Stewert... Belay off the belay loop if you have one. Tie your personal anchor around both harness loops, not just the waist band. Protect traverses heavily, not just at the crux. Your second is going to pull out pro and be faced with a pendulum if they screw up the move... When setting running belays while simulclimbing, get a second piece in before the follower gets to the first. That way you always have something in when EITHER of you is facing a difficult move. Learn how to travel in coils properly. Looping ten lengths of rope around your neck without knotting it back into the harness means rescuers face coming across two dead climbers: one fallen, and the other whose head got popped off! Make your first placement early, and use it to direct where the force comes onto your belayer. My rule is: the first one is for you, and all the rest are for me. Don't bullshit your old lady about how "safe" you are when you're on ice... it ain't safe - that's part of why it's so damn fun... Assume every piece you place is marginal. -t [ 10-03-2002, 04:23 PM: Message edited by: terrible ted ]

There's nothing here that I disagree with too much... I just want to (choke!) agree with the sporty guy and db on tri-cams: cheap, light and bomber. Just make sure your partner knows how to retrieve them. I think I find more tri-cam booty than any other style. I like aliens for the small stuff and BDs for the big. I also try to place as few as possible - I save 'em for those '"gripping" moments. It builds character... Practice with your nuts like you did when you were a kid... It's always good to know exactly what your equipment can do. -t

Anyone have a harness made by these guys??? web page They do seem a bit on the excitable side... -t

double post [ 10-02-2002, 03:25 PM: Message edited by: terrible ted ]

quote: Originally posted by erden: ...I crouched low into the corner to take up the slack... ...training as a Wilderness First Responder... ...I was applying CPR with my right arm only, as my left arm had become useless at this point... ...pulled me away from Goran...I wanted to go back, plug his bleeding but... ...ready to care for anyone... I lost my hero. Erden: These were awful circumstances, but you did what the rest of us can only hope we would have done. Goran's final gift was showing that you could be a hero, too. Peace be with you. -t

Sorry SK, but I've already an engagement to entertain two other lovely ladies in the woods that weekend.... But don't sweat Oregon's 'represent': After all, you're just coming up to the northern end of Oregon Territory! Of course, I still call the junco an Oregon Snowbird and I swear profusely at Washington drivers... -t

Yeah, do Forbidden! It's much more fun. I went straight across the avy slope back in mid-July and the track through was very obvious. It was 2 hours to the glacier with mid-sized packs. Regardless, enjoy! -t

It seems to me that the example of a 'problem' you've brought up was largely taken care of by the (ugh... ) "community." If someone sent a PM with their advice, I'd say there's more culpability. Most postings, however, are not clearly directed at one person (battlecage cries aside), but are rather directed at the entire posting population. Hence, the preponderance of chestbeating... Of course, some people will always misconstrue what they hear or read. I take a position somewhere between WWJS and WWNS (What would Nitzsche say? on the latter...). You post for your own benefit, even if you think otherwise. If it bothers you to give unsound advice, then post to correct it. If you don't know your advice is unsound, then join the club... If you post to fuck people up, reap the whirlwind. -t

quote: Originally posted by Dru: If you read Thompson's journals he reports that large hairy creatures, much bigger than men, threw rocks at his canoe as his expedition canoed down the upper Thompson River - near Squilax, I guess. Sorta like the Thomas Pynchon Mason and Dixon book but real life weirdness! Just an early example of cold-induced semi-coherent Canadian sprayin'... See any large hairy creatures up on Slesse?? -t

Don't fool yourself. The only function a helmet serves when you get hit in the head by a (reportedly) "basketball-sized" chunk of whizzing rock is to limit the excessive brain-splattering on other party members. It's not that I don't wear one in a majority of cases, it's just that falling rock needs to be dealt with by avoidance, not protection. Even then, I think it's the mountaineering equivalent of having someone in the oncoming lane steer into you... -t

Awful tight looking line there... I thought Z-pulleys were supposed to pull you straight up... -t

I'll second the vote for "Ham on Rye" as the best Bukowski. Last night I started re-reading "The Sound and the Fury" by Faulkner. You either love him or hate him - and I'm in the first camp. Kazuo Ishiguro has written some compelling works - "An Artist of the Floating World" and "The Remains of the Day" are pretty approachable. Let me know if anyone else has read "The Unconsoled," the strangest novel I've read this side of the afore-mentioned "Dead Souls." Can't support the unabashed slamming of TV, however. If you don't know a few Schoolhouse Rock tunes or are unable to pick up on Gilligan references... Actually, maybe I'll skip the reference to social maladjustment... Hey Dru, you ought to put a plug in for "Sources of the River" by Jack Nisbit. It's an account of David Thompson's (no, not the former hot-shooting guard for the Denver Nuggets)explorations of the West in the late 1700's. He's kind of a forgotton "Canadian Lewis and Clark." -t

Hmmm... You wouldn't believe it was a semiotic plug for Foucault's Pendulum? Looks like I picked up a computer virus. I could have sworn that plague was bacterial... Where's the bleech? -t

Okay, the easy ones are taken, but y'all need to expand your horizons a bit. The protagonist of Dharma Bums, Jacky Ryder (sp?), was modelled after a truly amazing PNW icon: Gary Snyder. Go read any of his books of poetry (gasp!). Maybe you'll find a short vignette that captures more of the North Cascades in 57 words than many complete novels. Mid-August from Sourdough Mountain Lookout As long as I'm putting in a plug for poetry, you semi-literate typo-plauged CCers may find a recognizable landscape in e.e. Cummings. This'll get your engine racing... shebeingBrand I've found Kundera has grown less entertaining and more pedagogic in recent years, although "Slowness" was entertaining. David Sedaris is hilarious. Get anything and laugh your ass off. Lydia Davis: "Break it Down" is a dreamy and mesmerizing collection of short stories. I didn't see Philip Dick's "Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep" - the creepy inspiration for "Blade Runner." "The Blind Watchmaker" (Richard Dawkins) is a clear explanation of Darwin's TOE and draws upon hundreds of beatifully rendered descriptions of the natural world. G.G Marquez, "One Hundred Years of Solitude" has the greatest opening sentence of any novel, in the opinion of many, including myself. The rest of the book ain't bad either... While CC'ers may get a woody from Nabokov's "Lolita" - a short must-read - my vote for best Russian short fiction goes to pretty much anything Pushkin wrote. Accidents in North American Mountaineering is about the limits of my tolerence for the "climbing literature," so I can sympathize there... -t [ 09-21-2002, 01:08 PM: Message edited by: terrible ted ]

quote: Originally posted by forrest_m: In fact, the program is often held up as an example of the kind of "practical" science that appeals to politicians who might balk at "basic research." - which are what governments and other organizations use to make decisions like "how much money do we allocate to emergency services this year." Oh my god, you're killing me! Good science never influences governmental funding decisions in anything approaching rationality. The understanding of either pure or applied science in this country is laughable. That said, I'm sure it's largely as poorly understood in any other country as well... In at least that regard, American congressional representation mirrors the American people. I'm glad your old lady has a nice gig working on understanding long-term climatic cycles. As a scientist with interests ranging across both pure and applied science, I can see the intrinsic value of hammering away at the big questions. But, I suspect that the "thousands of lives and billions of dollars" saved has more to do with NOAA's ongoing funding needs than it does with a critical causal analysis critically evaluating "informed" planning vs. "uninformed" planning. That said, I have no problem with it, and I play the game myself. Excise sticky details from final reports, oversimplify and emphasize benefits, extrapolate valuation figures, then go for the gold! Literally... If it wasn't happening, we'd still be huddled in the remnants of our earthquake-shattered homes, spreading our viruses in hospitals, and consulting the Farmer's Almanac to see when the drought ends... Hey, wait a minute! -t

Big deal. This is the analysis that goes into figuring out TOMORROWS weather. That's right, the stuff that's about 200 - 300 miles outside my window, right now... .DISCUSSION...SATELLITE IMAGERY SHOWS UPPER LEVEL RIDGE CONTINUING TO BUILD OFFSHORE WITH THE RIDGE AXIS BETWEEN 135-140W. MID LEVEL WARM ADVECTION DECK OVER THE NORTHERN PORTION OF WESTERN WASHINGTON AND WILL ADD THIS TO ZONE UPDATE. NEW MESO ETA IS SLOWER AND WEAKER WITH THE NEXT SYSTEM AND GIVEN THE STRENGTH OF THE RIDGE THIS LOOKS REASONABLE. MESO ETA STILL HAS 576 DM 500 MB HEIGHTS OVER KSEA AT 06Z FRI AS FRONT MOVES BY TO THE NORTH. WILL GO AHEAD AND PUSH CHANCE OF RAIN FURTHER NORTH AND SLOW DOWN THE TIMING IN UPDATE. ONCE THE FRONT GOES BY RIDGE REASSERTS ITSELF FOR SPELL OF DRY WEATHER. CURRENT FORECAST HAS THIS COVERED. "El Nino" has some slim meaning for dry farmers, fisherman and graduate students of oceanography and atmospheric sciences but, as a practical matter, it's useless for weather forecasting. An additional 1" of rain spread out over 3 weeks doesn't matter at all, unless you happen to be out on the 2 days it all comes down. -t

Three is a magic number. Yes it is! It's a magic number. feel better?

Hey K: Sorry to hear about the arm. It's funny, but I've always considered low-angle stuff to be a much greater hazard than the high-angle stuff... slipping and twisting/fracturing/tweaking/gouging some joint is always out there, while leader falls often result in nothing more than a stretched rope and a freaked-out partner... Don't get too wrapped up in the "Doctors Orders" BS. Most doctors are aimed at restoring full function to a sedentary population with the lowest risk factor. The changes in the treatment of injuries have changed dramatically in the last 20 years, and much of this has been propelled by the advances in sports therapy. Remember the clips last year of Picabo Street doing leg curls a few hours after ACL surgery?? The goals there are a bit different: restore full function as soon as possible. Ask for opinions from other doctors. Keep in mind that someone that graduated from med. school 20 years ago (i.e. a 50 y.o.) may or may not have kept up with recent medical advances. FC9 is right: keep those other muscles working! The higher you keep your metabolism, the faster the healing process works. You have a broken bone, not a damaged tendon. Treatments for the two are very different. Try to call a sports clinic and see if they can offer any advice - perhaps a custom PT session (they show you the exercise, then you go home and repeat on your own dime.) Find one affiliated with the local mega-million dollar professional athletic organization. People that make 10 million a year for their athletic prowess don't spend 6 - 8 weeks down unless it's absolutely necessary. Make sure thats the case. If nothing else, try curling. Pints, that is... -t

I think we should start a boycott! The crass commercialization of Memorial Day has cheapened the sacrifices made on our behalf by thousands of soldiers. Sears should be made to pay!!! I don't know which is more pathetic: struggling to find a means to "reach out" by offering a free climbing day... or the anger people feel at the "cheapness" that such a gesture evokes...

Our cat associates the leash with getting to go outside. I wouldn't say he loves it - he just never learned otherwise. Walking a cat, however, does take a bit of patience. And don't let anyone tell you cats can't be trained to do tricks... -t

You won't get any sympathy from me. Dogs bark and more often than not are poorly trained. A large number of people out there have a personal history that leaves them deathly afraid of dogs. Even leashed ones. As much as I dislike horseshit on the trail, not to mention muckholes, washouts and ankle busting ruts... I think the average horse packer is more responsible than the average dog owner. Your argument makes little more sense than arguing that motorcycles should be allowed on horse approved trails. They shit even less than dogs. -t

I'm glad you posted this Iain, although don't expect any "answers" from anyone as sickly white as me... I've climbed with one black man, and know (but haven't climbed with) one other. 'Number one' said, "too damn expensive" and I haven't asked 'number two.' I've always figured it to be a mix of economics (gear plus the expense of 'leisure' time) and location (climbing hot spots of the NE and NW USA and northern Europe tend to be pretty white). I'm way out on a limb here, but I'll offer this speculation: The American climbing population tends to come from an economic middle class with access to rural climbing locales. American blacks tend to be more urban and less economically well-off in the north. Everyone has less access to good climbing down south. Both mean that fewer blacks start climbing, because fewer blacks are climbing. Pretty simplistic, like all generalizations, but you have to start somewhere. I'd be interested in hearing why I'm right, or wrong, or just someone else's ideas as well. -t

Your behavior usually ends up reflected back upon you. Occasionally, I end up coming across either the genuine asshole, or the generally acceptable person having an 'asshole moment.' If I'm pretty sure it isn't me, then I can console myself knowing that it's probably the only asshole I'm going to deal with that day. The asshole, on the other hand, will be confronted with an endless string of assholes from morning to night, day after day. Seems fair. -t I wonder how many pure "ass fetish" posts will come from this...