ivan

don't know if ben has the time for a yosylum adventure this coming year, but i always am free come june and prefer to go south w/ an Known Ropegun i've been sworn to secrecy as to the deeds of the sabbath day

if j.c. does return to start a ruckus, just take him out w/ a curve ball - everybody knows jesus couldn't hit the curve ball

Trip: Wulf Rawk - Barad Dohl! Date: 10/6/2012 Trip Report: dog love traditions - 4 years now i've been spending my bday weekend in fucksaken or-e-gone, climbing pinnacles - last year was a bit of a bust, w/ heavy mist and driving rain at wolf, but good enough to set the hook in me and drag me back for another go (plus, still good enough to get up the good bits of morgul vale and to do some decent cragging under the conspicuous arch) raced home friday afternoon to pack up n' cast off - bending space through portland rush-hour traffic, bacchanalian-style - fred meyers at tualtin, our boy ben fuck knows where - a big bag of burgundy and bitter black smokes, a good book to pass the time - the connection made, the commerce dispensed with - a fine feast plan, bacon every meal to make sweet vengeance on the farmer-fucking porkies of this fair state - chuckles at the homestead and then a long dark drive to the Big Nowhere, stops every 20 minutes to drain the soiled n' sodden lizard the big objective, the mighty barad-dur, way beyond my weight-class but i've a bit of a rope-gun w/ me, so why worry? ran into a corvallis crew by the lake, and drank deep into the night - the morning after and too hung-over even to sort out the simple points of the french press up the sad-sweat of the satisfyingly short yet sadistically sandy-loose trail we set, ben only having half of his usual false-starts to shit n' recover his helmet n' god knows what else - the corvallis crew was ahead of us, and suckered in by the wrong dihedral for p2, but then we were on our way - ole'boy on the attack, p1! i followed w/ the pack quick enough, establishing my style right off the bat by immediately frenching on the bolts a restack and ben did p2 too - this one was the ugliest of the lot i thought, w/ gear that'd probably hold i suppose, but goddamn you don't want to test that if you don't have to... i got p3&4 - ben following on 3 (strange storeis on the rebolting - the first couple on the only serious part of the pitch old smc 1/4 inchers, then some fatties where you don't hardly need'em ben following the traverse into the top of 3 the corvallis crew did a good job of staying ahead of us - phillip (i think?) sending the last crux proudly as the sun keeled over in its wayward orbit ben contemplating the inevitable, just below the top of p4 - fun anchor, that'n - modern bolts i think, but w/ the musuem-quality original hangers? p5 ain't to be trifled w/, short as it is, but w/ gonzo-exposure - ben in the classic shot (and the only one where ole-boy wasn't grabbing on the gear ) - i followed in fuctacular style of course p6 was the real nut-kicker of course, and ben sent in a style good enough for me - no joke trying to pull past the last bolt into a traverse w/ a ton of space under your heels, any fall off leaving you dangling in space w/ hershey-stains in your shorts...ben after vaulting around the corner from there the real climbing is over of course, but there's no shortage of hill left to clamber up - several pitches, mostly simuling - a few bolts, but mostly no gear n' theoretical anchors (might as well shoulder belay there, no? ) - ben at the first summit w/ a fine vista below, hazy and smoke-fucked minor squeaks n' furies near the summit of course -strong winds n' weak sun - where the fuck the descent/etc? put my trust in big ben, who done the whole enchilada a few months earlier, but his memory proved fallible - no worries as it all worked out - a good bit of a path at first, followed it below the next summit to a lower shoulder, then it got wiered - ultimately we hemmed n' hawed but then just headed down adn skiers right from the shoulder and, though it looked scary at first, it all worked out in the end near the bottom of the scramble off, before pickign up a fine trail to the car great evening after - bacon n' onions n' taters n' franks sauce n' hendrix n' camels n' crawing at the moon to the light of a roaring bonfire - early to bed n' early to rise - coffee redeemed and capital reading - then we ate mescaline and went swimming (but that, of course, is another tale ) Gear Notes: cams from blue tcu up to #2 camelot - we brought doubles from yellow tcu to #1, but coulda done w/ just singles if we had to i reckon - plenty of long slings of course...

10/10 - 6 days since last i'd climbed at beacon, my longest dry spell in a month? barad dohl (!) and cheeky sheenanigans over the weekend, then high-tech dentistry and parent conferences keeping me away... 2 laps on the corner, car to car in 57 minutes - most enjoyable solo yet of cruising, all movement and no pauses, maybe 3 minutes total?

hard to imagine snow and ice doing anything to torment other than improving it

doesn't the report say its more than people just aren't members of a formal religion, as opposed to true atheists? i can't see 'mericans ever giving up on that fuzzy fusion of jesus and santa claus, ya know? the funny thing is that most folks in this fair land of ours more physically resemble buddha

the day i find myself getting worked up over what a buncha folks i've never met claimed to do somewhere i've never been is the day i start doubling my meds as long as there's honesty in bowling...

is their an equivalent porn-service called twatter? i'm sorta scared to google it here at work

if you liked that report may i recommend this blockbuster trilogy by Oolon Colluphid: Where God Went Wrong Some More of God's Greatest Mistakes Who is this God Person Anyway?

wise sir, do not grieve. for every one of us, living in this world, means waiting for our end. let he who can achieve glory before death. when a warrior is gone, that will be his best and only bulwark.

all the COOL people have climbed j'berg

i might be able to get out there dave, but might well be raining - hoping to come out at least on thursday afternoon before the fall sets in... jealous astrov! haven't seen a beer out thee in a long time and never managed to catch a falcon in a strike

"dogs look up to us, cats look down on us, but pigs treat us as equals" - winston churchill

there's always room for bacon

keep feeding'em farmers and they'll do just fine i bet...

did he deck or just bash his head against the wall? hard to imagine decking head first and not getting taken out in a bodybag...

wasn't it a classic george w debate in which he railed against "new math?"

it's a disservice to teach someone about a topic they find interesting? you can't take your woman's study ba and go onto law? start your own business? my education school was actually quite frank at the outset: dude, you ain't gonna make shit if you pursue this career! if anything, the problem may be that kids feel serious pressure to go to college when if fact they're pretty aimless and disinterested, and w/ the current expense of school, paying a much bigger price for their apathy then previous generations.

true, but doing a wall w/ a guy just as clueless as you also has its charms - there are many paths to mecca, and i liked mine: first wall w/ an experienced guy, next several walls w/ a novice like me, than from there on out a mixture of partners all over the map it's only a handful of skills that are critical, and after that its more an art of finding ways to save time/increase the fun - the basics: aiding itself (pretty damn easy, at least if its c1), following (especially super-steep or traversing pitches which require lowering out or re-aiding), building good, non-cluster-fucked anchors, hauling, and setting up camp

How the fuck do you figure we have the best institutions? People have to get off the treadmill of hype and bullshit and see what is happening in other parts of the world. Why is it that Japanese kick our asses in auto production and electronics? Constant hearing about how this is the greatest is like hearing addict saying that there is no addiction problem. What used to be great about this country is that if they were problems, they would get acknowledged, addressed and fixed. Saying something is not good doesn't make you un-patriotic, it makes you wise. One of the reasons this recession is lagging as it is, it's because of lack of skills. And this is because people choose to major in political science or sociology, and then they end up working as a barista with 100K in debt from student loans and fuck all worth of a degree. are you ever NOT angry? maybe you're just paying more attention... i'm no fan of sunshine constantly being shown up our national colon, and certainly it's hard to measure "great colleges," but the fact that very large #'s of folks come to this country specifically for our schools would suggest they're pretty damn good, no? also, the polisci-barrista doesn't mean his polisci education was crap, just that there was no work for him in the field, no? and, as inheritors of the western dream of the enlightenment, i'd hope you can agree that the value of an education shouldn't be entirely tied to the economic prospects it opens up - knowledge is, of itself, a virtue, right jefferson?

might find a tall dorm building you could use railings/pillars as anchors for? might want to back'em up a bit? you can sort out the basics of rigging a haul system in your living room, w/ a book in front of you, but most hauling locations on a big wall end up being a bit unique (and usually hanging), so pretty hard to reproduce on terra firma

never done it - dirty i imagine?

you musta been a huge andrew jackson fan - the original ron paul! nope, nary an economic catastrophe prior to the founding of the fed, it was sunshine n' buttercups before that bastard wilson had to step in...

i can't remember a debate where the candidates didn't bulldoze the moderator?

what's sundance?