ivan
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22 hours ago, ivan said:
2018 saw 60 solo laps, a # beyond imagination, but possible by a weird combination of prime weather and a personal calendar no me gusta
7/20/19 - south side day 1 of the year, well after le grande opening i'll grant you as i sallied up n' down the coast courting more arduous adventures - swimming in the olympics, multi-day colonel bob bumblefuck, marriage counselor sheenagins n' regular ole climbing in leavenworth w/ the silvermans shit-talking each other at every turn, then near a week about mt whitney w/ the whiskey hooligans - 2 solo laps in the shade, every hold an old friend and unforgotten - geoff n' kyle n' larry the gnome at the top n' beers n' bullshitting at the base - managed 70 solo laps last summer, so that's 1/35 of the way to repeating that unbelievable total
7/21 - day 2 - laps 3-4 - hey, only 33 more days at this rate to top last year - foiled upon arrival at battle ground lake, i bounced off fallen leaf lake too n' resigned meself to clambering out at beacon - once again the rock all to myself, despite the weekend situation - a lap alone, then another w/ some folks thrashing their way up the original dods exit at the end - summer's halfway home n' i'm still all smiles
7/22 - day 3 - laps 5-7 - a hat trick on a hottish day, 2 in the sun and the third in the shade the hottest of all w/ numerous half-clad hotties along the way
7/23 - day 4 - lap 8 - swam a slow wetsuit-less mile in fallen leaf under cloudy n' cool skies, fetched the boy child from camp, then deposited him again before darting out to the bacon-wand for a single ascent before coming back camas-ways to peruse new houses and ultimately sup on delectable thai takeout
7/24 - day 5 - laps 9-10 - ten laps in five days not so shabby - nary a soul in sight on this sweatyish day, but steve in the parking lot - a week a paradise it would seem...
7/25 - another hat-trick makes it 13 laps in 6 days, a healthy clip - irish death's n' lovely crowds n' sun n' shade and all after a right-nice long swim continued a paradise-theme-of-a-summer so far...
7/26 - the end of my first summer beacon week and a productive one with 2 more laps to bring the total to 15, 1/4 of the way to last year's ludicrous total, but at a pace to bury it should that be my jealous jam on looking back (i've heard tale their no more nefarious thief than nostalgia though) - a mile swim in fallen leaf while the wulf-man paddled away on lake vancouver, then beacon just after noon in the brutal brightness - shed my black shirt in favor of royal blue - lovely pair of sheilas atop tree ledge on the first lap - sucked down my beer in a batch of shade in the gut under uprising, panting like a bitch - a horde of latinos on the way down, one fella w/ a pack to support the lot of them for a month if need be - the second lap lonely but bearably in the breeze, fat drops of sweat drip-dripping and sizzling away on the stone - then house-hunting and general real-world bummer concerns...
7/27 - summer beacon day 8 - the late morning meetup out near no'bo - adam n' claire n' naterring as we waited for ole'geoff to arrive w/ his prized n' feared jet-ski - beers n' bullshitting n' plan forming - claire drove us up near the dam and we flung ourselves into hamilton creek, expecting far more fun than the fickle world felt like paying out, stumbling mid-knee forever through the stream in wetsuits w/ stuff sacks full of beer - the main current at last and drifting down under the beacon face, admiring some hard-dudes dancing on the journey to the east above big ledge - many more bevies on the dock afterwards n' some soft-porn skinny-dipping by the masses, than back to the little road hold-out before cursing them fools n' cutting loose to clamber up the corner in the gloaming-dark before darting back to home for chicken salad n' discoursing over stranger things
7/28 - beacon day 9 - 2 more laps makes it 18, a tear beyond my tenous memory - wurst to drag adam's esposita up the corner at first, but she foreswore the morning heat and when adam got froggy on the immediate details i said fork-it n' went n' did a lap while he helped a timberline high-to-do set up a big kayak shuttle down to kalama- soggy as hell from sweat i returned as his business was concluded, having to concede another climb in the immediate future was fucked - we repaired to the river again then n' had a mort of swimming n' redneck shenanigans before i felt honor-bound to take advantage of the recent shade for another clambornation n' siddle on back home - plenty of folks casting about at the base, one even who recognized my nom de guerre n' threw a compliment my way that in hindsight i think i mighta thrown back a tad too heelish - perhaps if i spent more time on my people skills instead of scratching the Endless Itch?
7/29 - was supposed to be a beacon-less day but the beacon lords giveth n' they take away too - beacon day 10 (in a row!) at any rate, n' solo lap 19 - met the k19 near noon after carting the boy child to row-row-your-boating on lake vancouver and stuffing in a quick swim at fallen leaf lake - after dressing his sadly chapped hands i cast out camas-ways - the plan was the adventure swim to phoca rock from the washington side, a jam i've yet to even get wet for yet despite numerous attempts, and this one the same - nastia said she was illish and prefered a columbia crossing at hood river instead, so sure, why not? we both drove to set up a car shuttle and noticed near arrival that the wind was whipping, the waves white-capped and their swells nice n' rolling long - gave me the heebie-jeebies a bit, soul-scarred as i remain from the one and only trans-columbia transit i made a few years back w/ ole'pat when the gorge was freshly burnt and i was perhaps drunk by naval standards at our 10 am departure (holy jeebus, that incident still ranks high on my most-terrified ever list) - after setting up the shuttle though we gave her a go, me in my wetsuit and snorkel and boots and web-gloves and day-glo orange personal swimmer buoy (and sober besides, having learnt all kinds of lessons that chilly october morning) but the russkaya of course was just in her dainty 2-piece and rocking the doggy paddle stroke, true russian-berserker style and blazeningly loving it - not too far from shore the waves and winds announced their presence with authority and our humble tribe quailed at their querulousness, first she then me after starting a 2nd attempt alone - retiring to the oregon side once again to recover her car n' kick about the conversation-can we revolved the rubik's cube of future combinations and settled upon giving something/anything a chance someday soon, assuming we live that long
- a solo beacon lap on a wind-wracked n' shady south side sans shirt was my true reward for listening to the Little Voice Inside Me and chopped the voyage home neatly in half - all i have to worry about now is tomorrow...
7/30 - 11 back-to-back beatard days and i'm a bit drained - 2 more laps for 21 total on this still youngish summer - crater lake complications and house-swapping horseshit clouds everything, my spirits low - might it be that nothing ever really gets better?
8/1 - sou'side summer beacon day 12 of 2019 - solo laps 22-23 - early morning rising to house-hunt n' tidy up domestically, kinda lame really but we are rarely masters of our own destiny i reckon - the daughter-child to her amiga's skamania abide in the late afternoon left time for yours truly to scramble up the bacon wand twice before achieving apogee and getting sucked back west once again to stuff more things into the bursting garage before the photo man comes to record it all in the morning - the great crater lake creep south at sunrise, all mortal concerns cast aside in the gawdamned interest of aquatic glory
8/8 - day 13 - laps 24, 25, 26 - a sad week away from the bacon-stone, but well spent - a swim-trip to crater lake - cock-blocked by the feds, we found better refuge at waldo lake, which was much like taking the 2nd hottest girl at the party home - union bidness in mcminville and quite alright, though it brought the summer death-knell to the forefront of a keening mind - rain in the west, after hours the beaconwand cast its spell and the world was my oyster again - gnome the larry in the gloaming lot, then kyle n' company came crawling in - three laps passing through numerous parties - some-guy-named-steve earned his Hero of Beacon Rock w/ oak-leaf clusters - placid blood flowed freely as it should in the scraping places - kyle got the kid up though competent legal counsel would eagerly have urged him not
8/9 -estival beacon aeon 14 - laps 27-28 - a lazy friday summer sleep-in, the first in some time - warm coffee n' cold eggs w/ the wifey over steven colbert n' some orange-is-the-new-black - the kids like college students, slow to rise - afternoon i ambled out to beacon to meet old ben - beat him by an hour so got a lap in alone before he arrived with his boy asher, sullen n' silent, as a man should be in this shocking modern age - led them up the route sans belays, which i reckon counts as solo too, though a rope was technically tied round my ample beer-gut - a gaggle of elk gamboling about the meadows below the eastern train track, their worries little ones in this wonderous season - the drive home dominated by the sweet smell of summer rain n' the dying sun...
8/11 - day 15 - a rare reverse-golden-sombrero raises the lap count to 32 on the summer - the trip took weather-faith, for the rain fell throughout the gorge on the drive in, even in the lot itself a profound mist made its presence known - a fool's errand i thought, but took my shoes down to the base anyway to see if the stone was dry despite 2 days of storms and so it was, and with hordes of portlanders putting their dirty libturd-hands all over it in flagrant degradation too - kyle n' bill n' joe n' countless over fools all encountered and gavreeted with, and one parcel of folks i passed 4 times in total over the next few hours - the history of the world it would seem, and fitting that the soundtrack was 4 episodes of a podcast all about the ending of it
8/12 - day 16 - lap 33 - the smell of sudden fiery death roused me at 5 and an hour later i arose in protest at my prickly senses - after tea and trailer park boys i eased myself eastwards for a single lap in the sun - the stone alone, i savored my solitude, the drip-drip of sweat the only sense of time to contend with - afterwards car-chores and lake-swimming w/ many chilluns
8/13 - day 17 - laps 34-35 - the world waxes largish, so what exactly is the goal now? last year the improbable # of 60 made me think 61 is all any sane man might relish, or maybe just 62 to stick a fork in the eye of roger morris, but now something much bigger indeed seems possible - how about 74 to offer the proverbial bitch-slap to barry bonds? even if that is to be the improbable mark, such a tally looms already large in the wind-screen and is to be sought for - the hazy outlines of a plan for a phenomenal 14-in-a-day assault in september with a whole heap of fools to propel the thing to a frenetic conclusion - that's in the future though - tonight was sublime solitude and shade and space for easy contemplation - a podcast on theoretical physics' hapless potential to create an end of the world to keep me company - the peregrines on the scene after being rather silent this past month - stone throwing teenage tourists and a positive conversation on the merits of manslaughter - a road trip begins tomorrow w/ the family and maybe a giant swim in crescent lake at the conclusion - there's marrow still in the bone of summer boys, and meat on it to spare as well
8/19 - day 18 - laps 36-40 for the rare Reverse Platinum Sombrero - a near week at the beach w/ the fam - a crossing of quinault and an epic lake crescent thing - barely a week left in summer 2019 i awoke wicked sore but set out east anyways - the stone near alone for the first 4 laps, but then dave n' steve where there n' we cackled our way upwards together alone to mushroom ledge n' some serious meditation
8/24 - day 19 - laps 41, 42 n' 43 meant it was a douglas adams day (shamefully i must admit i forget my towel, but proudly i can say i did not panic) - 3 days in the alpine lakes wilderness didn't beat me down enough i guess, 'cuz the girl-child asked to get carted out to skamania for the afternoon to cavort w/ her polish friends and i rallied to run laps while letting her have her what-have-you - summer is doomed and so are you
8/25 - day 20 - laps 44-45 - 11 CBIs n' 13 runs (new stats, to keep things fun n' make a game of the mundane - every meat-popsicle lapped is a Climber Batted In - runs are laps plus CBIs - good lord, the record couldn't be higher than 50 runs in a day could it?) - the coast guard earns its gold from yuppie scum along the banks of the rude columbia - nastia n' her main-squeeze set to scramble up blown-out in the blistering shade under the heavy hail of tourist stone, our beers n' smokes n' smalltalk cut savage short - the experiment to substitute a cordelette in lieu of a bolted anchor at the top an abject failure within 24 hours, though kinda an apollo 13 one since i got the cord returned as requested - 2 cruiser laps in the autumnally-building breeze with the crowds abounding, summer's done been set on a goddamn gibbet
8/26 - blackjack day - laps 46-7 make me prime again - 4 CBIs for 6 runs - a soft slumber ended in the gentlest fashion - the damned dentist - the dmv denied - summer slams into the brickwall while i straighten out the classroom - a big breeze builds as we stumble eastwards - the first lap looms into the time-traveler and his canadian dame, well over her head on the second pitch, so i stayed to help her suss out the sitch and sacrificed a hat trick - beers and the inevitable bullshiting - the world careens and carries us along in its endless crapulous fucking fashion
8/27 - summer beacon day double-deuce - laps 48-9 make me prime n' prone to wine - 96 degrees n' a big-breeze in the parking lot - the first day back to the what-have-you and the bullshite-factory appears to have been working overtime in my absence - cryptic runes n' rude cynosures, thank-fuck their clutches are so fleeting - a lap alone in the wild wind, and then another, all to seek and find the freek
8/28 - day 23, laps 50-51 - another hot day, minus the breeze - the mechanisms continue to rumble up to speed on the work machine, the corporate speak as thick as cancer but only half as deadly - hit beacon in a hurry w/ familialial functions to attend to in the soon-time - 26 minutes car to car on the first lap, but a bit more mellow on the second - a curtailed conversation on retro-bolting an anchor on the corner down in the parking lot, sadly one that seems to have concluded with them deciding to add yet another scar to the recently patched rock in question - i guess we'll see if they go through with it... - lovely thai dinner after back-to-school night at least and so it goes and goes
8/29 - day 24, laps 52-53 - awoke to the crack of thunder and the cold iron sound of roiling rain in the early hours - such wondrous slumber in a dry place, the wicked world just an open window away - the final pre-season day before the Big Show, the crest of bullshit surmounted and now we ride the flood tide to a preternatural future, knowing what is to come merely from a fleeting look back - work over, i walked out the door to doom-streaked clouds and rain but bounded east on enthusiasm alone, sure that the universe intended me to climb today or never again at all and not caring which it was to be - the deep funk of strange humidity on the trail down - mama deer and baby deer surprised me at close quarters on the trail and gave me a sudden sharp stab of quicksilver-fear, a sensation too rarely felt in this saccharine world where tomorrow is always assured and death is a landlord easily dispensed with - new friends re-encountered on the warrior path, lovely souls i'll never see again and that's a shame - ruminations atop the ridgeline, soaked in sweat and soon to get heading west, tower-bound yet pleasantly besotted with the present...surely someday this will all make sense?
8/30 - 7 days in a row at the fabulous beacon-wand summer-sweet spot makes it 25 total so far - corner laps 54-56, plus 11 CBIs for 14 runs on the day, the greatest since gestating the concept - the final friday before the big plunge - easy rising - dishes n' breakfast - the grey-gloom of many summer mornings that inevitably yields to glory soon after noon - adam's afterwards in the shade and breeze was total bliss - felt a bit frazzled n' forlorn before the end of the laps really, maybe a sign i need to sit my ass down for a few days, which would make some sorta sense i reckon given i can't remember a day i devoted to just lying around for a long while - that said it's a tower rock approach n' set-up tomorrow w/ a huge sunday afterwards, so maybe labor day will equal its lamentations and i'll rest then?
9/3 - day 26 - 1 lap (#57), 2 CBIs - opening day of the 19-20 campaign, the 22nd of my career - old enough now that i'm teaching my daughter's friends, apparently she talks to them so i can actually find out some things about her from them
- only time for one lap before fetching the boy-child from crewing out there on the big lake - for the best really, i'm wicked whooped still from the trial of tower rock
9/4 - day 27 - lap 58 n' 2 CBIs -bill n' ujhan n' the prodigal-son-come-home adam in the parking lot - bill scooped up my dropped hook from tower rock's base yesterday along w/ plenty of other debris left over from my fellow floggers, yet he nay managed to bring it with him (no matter, we know he's good for it) - chris b' n company coming down from the party ledge, near the 2 year anniversary i reckon since i first made his acquaintance, busted badly at the base w/ nastia in the soon-time after the big burn had scorched damn near everything in site - shoulda stuffed in one more lap for sure, but its early school season still and it takes the zap oughta me working for the man, so i slunk back home for salmon n' spades w/ the fam n' an early turn-in
9/6 - day 28 - laps 59-60, plus 6 CBI's for 8 runs - with 6 prime-bacon-wedder-weeks to go, i'm plumb astride last year's all-time record w/ nothing to hold me back but random rain n' the rude restrictions of this love-shackled life - end of a week left me blinking n' bruised n' senselessly tired, thus the start of a third too terrible to comprehend, so home i crawled n' passed out in the midst of pizza n' bill maher, wine-cup perched on chest - clearly this world needs a li'l leg room
9/7 - day 29 (5 CBIs for 6 runs) - roger morris reclamation day w/ lap 61 i say, my personal best n' for all i can imagine beacon's too, at least for a single year of solo laps - on the horn early w/ adam but we thought it fucked yet somehow separately we crawled to the wall n' didn't say shit when we saw each other, me 'specially w/ only a few minutes of fucking-around time cooked into the cookie - a three-some at tree ledge, the poor sheila below certain she had to do the hard-core-headwall - kincaid n' norman n' the normal nattering high above the hills, me nut-booby n' stupid - could it be that this is it for the simple set?
9/12 - day 30 - laps 62-63 n' 11 CBIs for 13 runs - the soon-come cloud-bursts of baleful fall crashed down last sunday, tornadoes sweeping the neighbors with their gin n' juice to the middle of the street to natter over armageddon on the wing - 2 days of swimming for my daily-fun 'cuz ducks don't care if its damp out, but it just ain't the same, my soul shackled a wee bit to the corpse of coming winter - a sudden return to summer this morning though revivified my resolutions and at 330 out the door i went - the one-true-kevbone n' arent on the warrior - steve on my tail a few minutes behind, sounds like he lassoed himself a solo golden sombrero today, not too often i get out-cornered... a whole herd of folks suddenly come tree ledge, i cruised on through though on a ninja-mission to score another lap n' bounce back right quick to fetch the crewing feller from lake vancouver's teeming shore - the cherry on top the new-finangled high-tech contraption i plucked from the most obscure of places - my biiiiirthday prezent came early this year
near-harvest-time-full-moon friday 13, day 31 - hops 64-65 - 6 CBIs for 8 runs, so sad... - 5% of the year in the can we crawl up n' encounter such lovely things - adam n' steve rooting around on rookie nookie - herds higher up - the sigh of september sidling away with wind n' cloud
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On 9/7/2019 at 11:02 PM, ivan said:
2018 saw 60 solo laps, a # beyond imagination, but possible by a weird combination of prime weather and a personal calendar no me gusta
7/20/19 - south side day 1 of the year, well after le grande opening i'll grant you as i sallied up n' down the coast courting more arduous adventures - swimming in the olympics, multi-day colonel bob bumblefuck, marriage counselor sheenagins n' regular ole climbing in leavenworth w/ the silvermans shit-talking each other at every turn, then near a week about mt whitney w/ the whiskey hooligans - 2 solo laps in the shade, every hold an old friend and unforgotten - geoff n' kyle n' larry the gnome at the top n' beers n' bullshitting at the base - managed 70 solo laps last summer, so that's 1/35 of the way to repeating that unbelievable total
7/21 - day 2 - laps 3-4 - hey, only 33 more days at this rate to top last year - foiled upon arrival at battle ground lake, i bounced off fallen leaf lake too n' resigned meself to clambering out at beacon - once again the rock all to myself, despite the weekend situation - a lap alone, then another w/ some folks thrashing their way up the original dods exit at the end - summer's halfway home n' i'm still all smiles
7/22 - day 3 - laps 5-7 - a hat trick on a hottish day, 2 in the sun and the third in the shade the hottest of all w/ numerous half-clad hotties along the way
7/23 - day 4 - lap 8 - swam a slow wetsuit-less mile in fallen leaf under cloudy n' cool skies, fetched the boy child from camp, then deposited him again before darting out to the bacon-wand for a single ascent before coming back camas-ways to peruse new houses and ultimately sup on delectable thai takeout
7/24 - day 5 - laps 9-10 - ten laps in five days not so shabby - nary a soul in sight on this sweatyish day, but steve in the parking lot - a week a paradise it would seem...
7/25 - another hat-trick makes it 13 laps in 6 days, a healthy clip - irish death's n' lovely crowds n' sun n' shade and all after a right-nice long swim continued a paradise-theme-of-a-summer so far...
7/26 - the end of my first summer beacon week and a productive one with 2 more laps to bring the total to 15, 1/4 of the way to last year's ludicrous total, but at a pace to bury it should that be my jealous jam on looking back (i've heard tale their no more nefarious thief than nostalgia though) - a mile swim in fallen leaf while the wulf-man paddled away on lake vancouver, then beacon just after noon in the brutal brightness - shed my black shirt in favor of royal blue - lovely pair of sheilas atop tree ledge on the first lap - sucked down my beer in a batch of shade in the gut under uprising, panting like a bitch - a horde of latinos on the way down, one fella w/ a pack to support the lot of them for a month if need be - the second lap lonely but bearably in the breeze, fat drops of sweat drip-dripping and sizzling away on the stone - then house-hunting and general real-world bummer concerns...
7/27 - summer beacon day 8 - the late morning meetup out near no'bo - adam n' claire n' naterring as we waited for ole'geoff to arrive w/ his prized n' feared jet-ski - beers n' bullshitting n' plan forming - claire drove us up near the dam and we flung ourselves into hamilton creek, expecting far more fun than the fickle world felt like paying out, stumbling mid-knee forever through the stream in wetsuits w/ stuff sacks full of beer - the main current at last and drifting down under the beacon face, admiring some hard-dudes dancing on the journey to the east above big ledge - many more bevies on the dock afterwards n' some soft-porn skinny-dipping by the masses, than back to the little road hold-out before cursing them fools n' cutting loose to clamber up the corner in the gloaming-dark before darting back to home for chicken salad n' discoursing over stranger things
7/28 - beacon day 9 - 2 more laps makes it 18, a tear beyond my tenous memory - wurst to drag adam's esposita up the corner at first, but she foreswore the morning heat and when adam got froggy on the immediate details i said fork-it n' went n' did a lap while he helped a timberline high-to-do set up a big kayak shuttle down to kalama- soggy as hell from sweat i returned as his business was concluded, having to concede another climb in the immediate future was fucked - we repaired to the river again then n' had a mort of swimming n' redneck shenanigans before i felt honor-bound to take advantage of the recent shade for another clambornation n' siddle on back home - plenty of folks casting about at the base, one even who recognized my nom de guerre n' threw a compliment my way that in hindsight i think i mighta thrown back a tad too heelish - perhaps if i spent more time on my people skills instead of scratching the Endless Itch?
7/29 - was supposed to be a beacon-less day but the beacon lords giveth n' they take away too - beacon day 10 (in a row!) at any rate, n' solo lap 19 - met the k19 near noon after carting the boy child to row-row-your-boating on lake vancouver and stuffing in a quick swim at fallen leaf lake - after dressing his sadly chapped hands i cast out camas-ways - the plan was the adventure swim to phoca rock from the washington side, a jam i've yet to even get wet for yet despite numerous attempts, and this one the same - nastia said she was illish and prefered a columbia crossing at hood river instead, so sure, why not? we both drove to set up a car shuttle and noticed near arrival that the wind was whipping, the waves white-capped and their swells nice n' rolling long - gave me the heebie-jeebies a bit, soul-scarred as i remain from the one and only trans-columbia transit i made a few years back w/ ole'pat when the gorge was freshly burnt and i was perhaps drunk by naval standards at our 10 am departure (holy jeebus, that incident still ranks high on my most-terrified ever list) - after setting up the shuttle though we gave her a go, me in my wetsuit and snorkel and boots and web-gloves and day-glo orange personal swimmer buoy (and sober besides, having learnt all kinds of lessons that chilly october morning) but the russkaya of course was just in her dainty 2-piece and rocking the doggy paddle stroke, true russian-berserker style and blazeningly loving it - not too far from shore the waves and winds announced their presence with authority and our humble tribe quailed at their querulousness, first she then me after starting a 2nd attempt alone - retiring to the oregon side once again to recover her car n' kick about the conversation-can we revolved the rubik's cube of future combinations and settled upon giving something/anything a chance someday soon, assuming we live that long
- a solo beacon lap on a wind-wracked n' shady south side sans shirt was my true reward for listening to the Little Voice Inside Me and chopped the voyage home neatly in half - all i have to worry about now is tomorrow...
7/30 - 11 back-to-back beatard days and i'm a bit drained - 2 more laps for 21 total on this still youngish summer - crater lake complications and house-swapping horseshit clouds everything, my spirits low - might it be that nothing ever really gets better?
8/1 - sou'side summer beacon day 12 of 2019 - solo laps 22-23 - early morning rising to house-hunt n' tidy up domestically, kinda lame really but we are rarely masters of our own destiny i reckon - the daughter-child to her amiga's skamania abide in the late afternoon left time for yours truly to scramble up the bacon wand twice before achieving apogee and getting sucked back west once again to stuff more things into the bursting garage before the photo man comes to record it all in the morning - the great crater lake creep south at sunrise, all mortal concerns cast aside in the gawdamned interest of aquatic glory
8/8 - day 13 - laps 24, 25, 26 - a sad week away from the bacon-stone, but well spent - a swim-trip to crater lake - cock-blocked by the feds, we found better refuge at waldo lake, which was much like taking the 2nd hottest girl at the party home - union bidness in mcminville and quite alright, though it brought the summer death-knell to the forefront of a keening mind - rain in the west, after hours the beaconwand cast its spell and the world was my oyster again - gnome the larry in the gloaming lot, then kyle n' company came crawling in - three laps passing through numerous parties - some-guy-named-steve earned his Hero of Beacon Rock w/ oak-leaf clusters - placid blood flowed freely as it should in the scraping places - kyle got the kid up though competent legal counsel would eagerly have urged him not
8/9 -estival beacon aeon 14 - laps 27-28 - a lazy friday summer sleep-in, the first in some time - warm coffee n' cold eggs w/ the wifey over steven colbert n' some orange-is-the-new-black - the kids like college students, slow to rise - afternoon i ambled out to beacon to meet old ben - beat him by an hour so got a lap in alone before he arrived with his boy asher, sullen n' silent, as a man should be in this shocking modern age - led them up the route sans belays, which i reckon counts as solo too, though a rope was technically tied round my ample beer-gut - a gaggle of elk gamboling about the meadows below the eastern train track, their worries little ones in this wonderous season - the drive home dominated by the sweet smell of summer rain n' the dying sun...
8/11 - day 15 - a rare reverse-golden-sombrero raises the lap count to 32 on the summer - the trip took weather-faith, for the rain fell throughout the gorge on the drive in, even in the lot itself a profound mist made its presence known - a fool's errand i thought, but took my shoes down to the base anyway to see if the stone was dry despite 2 days of storms and so it was, and with hordes of portlanders putting their dirty libturd-hands all over it in flagrant degradation too - kyle n' bill n' joe n' countless over fools all encountered and gavreeted with, and one parcel of folks i passed 4 times in total over the next few hours - the history of the world it would seem, and fitting that the soundtrack was 4 episodes of a podcast all about the ending of it
8/12 - day 16 - lap 33 - the smell of sudden fiery death roused me at 5 and an hour later i arose in protest at my prickly senses - after tea and trailer park boys i eased myself eastwards for a single lap in the sun - the stone alone, i savored my solitude, the drip-drip of sweat the only sense of time to contend with - afterwards car-chores and lake-swimming w/ many chilluns
8/13 - day 17 - laps 34-35 - the world waxes largish, so what exactly is the goal now? last year the improbable # of 60 made me think 61 is all any sane man might relish, or maybe just 62 to stick a fork in the eye of roger morris, but now something much bigger indeed seems possible - how about 74 to offer the proverbial bitch-slap to barry bonds? even if that is to be the improbable mark, such a tally looms already large in the wind-screen and is to be sought for - the hazy outlines of a plan for a phenomenal 14-in-a-day assault in september with a whole heap of fools to propel the thing to a frenetic conclusion - that's in the future though - tonight was sublime solitude and shade and space for easy contemplation - a podcast on theoretical physics' hapless potential to create an end of the world to keep me company - the peregrines on the scene after being rather silent this past month - stone throwing teenage tourists and a positive conversation on the merits of manslaughter - a road trip begins tomorrow w/ the family and maybe a giant swim in crescent lake at the conclusion - there's marrow still in the bone of summer boys, and meat on it to spare as well
8/19 - day 18 - laps 36-40 for the rare Reverse Platinum Sombrero - a near week at the beach w/ the fam - a crossing of quinault and an epic lake crescent thing - barely a week left in summer 2019 i awoke wicked sore but set out east anyways - the stone near alone for the first 4 laps, but then dave n' steve where there n' we cackled our way upwards together alone to mushroom ledge n' some serious meditation
8/24 - day 19 - laps 41, 42 n' 43 meant it was a douglas adams day (shamefully i must admit i forget my towel, but proudly i can say i did not panic) - 3 days in the alpine lakes wilderness didn't beat me down enough i guess, 'cuz the girl-child asked to get carted out to skamania for the afternoon to cavort w/ her polish friends and i rallied to run laps while letting her have her what-have-you - summer is doomed and so are you
8/25 - day 20 - laps 44-45 - 11 CBIs n' 13 runs (new stats, to keep things fun n' make a game of the mundane - every meat-popsicle lapped is a Climber Batted In - runs are laps plus CBIs - good lord, the record couldn't be higher than 50 runs in a day could it?) - the coast guard earns its gold from yuppie scum along the banks of the rude columbia - nastia n' her main-squeeze set to scramble up blown-out in the blistering shade under the heavy hail of tourist stone, our beers n' smokes n' smalltalk cut savage short - the experiment to substitute a cordelette in lieu of a bolted anchor at the top an abject failure within 24 hours, though kinda an apollo 13 one since i got the cord returned as requested - 2 cruiser laps in the autumnally-building breeze with the crowds abounding, summer's done been set on a goddamn gibbet
8/26 - blackjack day - laps 46-7 make me prime again - 4 CBIs for 6 runs - a soft slumber ended in the gentlest fashion - the damned dentist - the dmv denied - summer slams into the brickwall while i straighten out the classroom - a big breeze builds as we stumble eastwards - the first lap looms into the time-traveler and his canadian dame, well over her head on the second pitch, so i stayed to help her suss out the sitch and sacrificed a hat trick - beers and the inevitable bullshiting - the world careens and carries us along in its endless crapulous fucking fashion
8/27 - summer beacon day double-deuce - laps 48-9 make me prime n' prone to wine - 96 degrees n' a big-breeze in the parking lot - the first day back to the what-have-you and the bullshite-factory appears to have been working overtime in my absence - cryptic runes n' rude cynosures, thank-fuck their clutches are so fleeting - a lap alone in the wild wind, and then another, all to seek and find the freek
8/28 - day 23, laps 50-51 - another hot day, minus the breeze - the mechanisms continue to rumble up to speed on the work machine, the corporate speak as thick as cancer but only half as deadly - hit beacon in a hurry w/ familialial functions to attend to in the soon-time - 26 minutes car to car on the first lap, but a bit more mellow on the second - a curtailed conversation on retro-bolting an anchor on the corner down in the parking lot, sadly one that seems to have concluded with them deciding to add yet another scar to the recently patched rock in question - i guess we'll see if they go through with it... - lovely thai dinner after back-to-school night at least and so it goes and goes
8/29 - day 24, laps 52-53 - awoke to the crack of thunder and the cold iron sound of roiling rain in the early hours - such wondrous slumber in a dry place, the wicked world just an open window away - the final pre-season day before the Big Show, the crest of bullshit surmounted and now we ride the flood tide to a preternatural future, knowing what is to come merely from a fleeting look back - work over, i walked out the door to doom-streaked clouds and rain but bounded east on enthusiasm alone, sure that the universe intended me to climb today or never again at all and not caring which it was to be - the deep funk of strange humidity on the trail down - mama deer and baby deer surprised me at close quarters on the trail and gave me a sudden sharp stab of quicksilver-fear, a sensation too rarely felt in this saccharine world where tomorrow is always assured and death is a landlord easily dispensed with - new friends re-encountered on the warrior path, lovely souls i'll never see again and that's a shame - ruminations atop the ridgeline, soaked in sweat and soon to get heading west, tower-bound yet pleasantly besotted with the present...surely someday this will all make sense?
8/30 - 7 days in a row at the fabulous beacon-wand summer-sweet spot makes it 25 total so far - corner laps 54-56, plus 11 CBIs for 14 runs on the day, the greatest since gestating the concept - the final friday before the big plunge - easy rising - dishes n' breakfast - the grey-gloom of many summer mornings that inevitably yields to glory soon after noon - adam's afterwards in the shade and breeze was total bliss - felt a bit frazzled n' forlorn before the end of the laps really, maybe a sign i need to sit my ass down for a few days, which would make some sorta sense i reckon given i can't remember a day i devoted to just lying around for a long while - that said it's a tower rock approach n' set-up tomorrow w/ a huge sunday afterwards, so maybe labor day will equal its lamentations and i'll rest then?
9/3 - day 26 - 1 lap (#57), 2 CBIs - opening day of the 19-20 campaign, the 22nd of my career - old enough now that i'm teaching my daughter's friends, apparently she talks to them so i can actually find out some things about her from them
- only time for one lap before fetching the boy-child from crewing out there on the big lake - for the best really, i'm wicked whooped still from the trial of tower rock
9/4 - day 27 - lap 58 n' 2 CBIs -bill n' ujhan n' the prodigal-son-come-home adam in the parking lot - bill scooped up my dropped hook from tower rock's base yesterday along w/ plenty of other debris left over from my fellow floggers, yet he nay managed to bring it with him (no matter, we know he's good for it) - chris b' n company coming down from the party ledge, near the 2 year anniversary i reckon since i first made his acquaintance, busted badly at the base w/ nastia in the soon-time after the big burn had scorched damn near everything in site - shoulda stuffed in one more lap for sure, but its early school season still and it takes the zap oughta me working for the man, so i slunk back home for salmon n' spades w/ the fam n' an early turn-in
9/6 - day 28 - laps 59-60, plus 6 CBI's for 8 runs - with 6 prime-bacon-wedder-weeks to go, i'm plumb astride last year's all-time record w/ nothing to hold me back but random rain n' the rude restrictions of this love-shackled life - end of a week left me blinking n' bruised n' senselessly tired, thus the start of a third too terrible to comprehend, so home i crawled n' passed out in the midst of pizza n' bill maher, wine-cup perched on chest - clearly this world needs a li'l leg room
9/7 - day 29 (5 CBIs for 6 runs) - roger morris reclamation day w/ lap 61 i say, my personal best n' for all i can imagine beacon's too, at least for a single year of solo laps - on the horn early w/ adam but we thought it fucked yet somehow separately we crawled to the wall n' didn't say shit when we saw each other, me 'specially w/ only a few minutes of fucking-around time cooked into the cookie - a three-some at tree ledge, the poor sheila below certain she had to do the hard-core-headwall - kincaid n' norman n' the normal nattering high above the hills, me nut-booby n' stupid - could it be that this is it for the simple set?
9/12 - day 30 - laps 62-63 n' 11 CBIs for 13 runs - the soon-come cloud-bursts of baleful fall crashed down last sunday, tornadoes sweeping the neighbors with their gin n' juice to the middle of the street to natter over armageddon on the wing - 2 days of swimming for my daily-fun 'cuz ducks don't care if its damp out, but it just ain't the same, my soul shackled a wee bit to the corpse of coming winter - a sudden return to summer this morning though revivified my resolutions and at 330 out the door i went - the one-true-kevbone n' arent on the warrior - steve on my tail a few minutes behind, sounds like he lassoed himself a solo golden sombrero today, not too often i get out-cornered... a whole herd of folks suddenly come tree ledge, i cruised on through though on a ninja-mission to score another lap n' bounce back right quick to fetch the crewing feller from lake vancouver's teeming shore - the cherry on top the new-finangled high-tech contraption i plucked from the most obscure of places - my biiiiirthday prezent came early this year
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On 9/5/2019 at 2:30 PM, iceguy said:
Longing for the good old days.
these must have happened during one of my blackouts?
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23 hours ago, ivan said:
2018 saw 60 solo laps, a # beyond imagination, but possible by a weird combination of prime weather and a personal calendar no me gusta
7/20/19 - south side day 1 of the year, well after le grande opening i'll grant you as i sallied up n' down the coast courting more arduous adventures - swimming in the olympics, multi-day colonel bob bumblefuck, marriage counselor sheenagins n' regular ole climbing in leavenworth w/ the silvermans shit-talking each other at every turn, then near a week about mt whitney w/ the whiskey hooligans - 2 solo laps in the shade, every hold an old friend and unforgotten - geoff n' kyle n' larry the gnome at the top n' beers n' bullshitting at the base - managed 70 solo laps last summer, so that's 1/35 of the way to repeating that unbelievable total
7/21 - day 2 - laps 3-4 - hey, only 33 more days at this rate to top last year - foiled upon arrival at battle ground lake, i bounced off fallen leaf lake too n' resigned meself to clambering out at beacon - once again the rock all to myself, despite the weekend situation - a lap alone, then another w/ some folks thrashing their way up the original dods exit at the end - summer's halfway home n' i'm still all smiles
7/22 - day 3 - laps 5-7 - a hat trick on a hottish day, 2 in the sun and the third in the shade the hottest of all w/ numerous half-clad hotties along the way
7/23 - day 4 - lap 8 - swam a slow wetsuit-less mile in fallen leaf under cloudy n' cool skies, fetched the boy child from camp, then deposited him again before darting out to the bacon-wand for a single ascent before coming back camas-ways to peruse new houses and ultimately sup on delectable thai takeout
7/24 - day 5 - laps 9-10 - ten laps in five days not so shabby - nary a soul in sight on this sweatyish day, but steve in the parking lot - a week a paradise it would seem...
7/25 - another hat-trick makes it 13 laps in 6 days, a healthy clip - irish death's n' lovely crowds n' sun n' shade and all after a right-nice long swim continued a paradise-theme-of-a-summer so far...
7/26 - the end of my first summer beacon week and a productive one with 2 more laps to bring the total to 15, 1/4 of the way to last year's ludicrous total, but at a pace to bury it should that be my jealous jam on looking back (i've heard tale their no more nefarious thief than nostalgia though) - a mile swim in fallen leaf while the wulf-man paddled away on lake vancouver, then beacon just after noon in the brutal brightness - shed my black shirt in favor of royal blue - lovely pair of sheilas atop tree ledge on the first lap - sucked down my beer in a batch of shade in the gut under uprising, panting like a bitch - a horde of latinos on the way down, one fella w/ a pack to support the lot of them for a month if need be - the second lap lonely but bearably in the breeze, fat drops of sweat drip-dripping and sizzling away on the stone - then house-hunting and general real-world bummer concerns...
7/27 - summer beacon day 8 - the late morning meetup out near no'bo - adam n' claire n' naterring as we waited for ole'geoff to arrive w/ his prized n' feared jet-ski - beers n' bullshitting n' plan forming - claire drove us up near the dam and we flung ourselves into hamilton creek, expecting far more fun than the fickle world felt like paying out, stumbling mid-knee forever through the stream in wetsuits w/ stuff sacks full of beer - the main current at last and drifting down under the beacon face, admiring some hard-dudes dancing on the journey to the east above big ledge - many more bevies on the dock afterwards n' some soft-porn skinny-dipping by the masses, than back to the little road hold-out before cursing them fools n' cutting loose to clamber up the corner in the gloaming-dark before darting back to home for chicken salad n' discoursing over stranger things
7/28 - beacon day 9 - 2 more laps makes it 18, a tear beyond my tenous memory - wurst to drag adam's esposita up the corner at first, but she foreswore the morning heat and when adam got froggy on the immediate details i said fork-it n' went n' did a lap while he helped a timberline high-to-do set up a big kayak shuttle down to kalama- soggy as hell from sweat i returned as his business was concluded, having to concede another climb in the immediate future was fucked - we repaired to the river again then n' had a mort of swimming n' redneck shenanigans before i felt honor-bound to take advantage of the recent shade for another clambornation n' siddle on back home - plenty of folks casting about at the base, one even who recognized my nom de guerre n' threw a compliment my way that in hindsight i think i mighta thrown back a tad too heelish - perhaps if i spent more time on my people skills instead of scratching the Endless Itch?
7/29 - was supposed to be a beacon-less day but the beacon lords giveth n' they take away too - beacon day 10 (in a row!) at any rate, n' solo lap 19 - met the k19 near noon after carting the boy child to row-row-your-boating on lake vancouver and stuffing in a quick swim at fallen leaf lake - after dressing his sadly chapped hands i cast out camas-ways - the plan was the adventure swim to phoca rock from the washington side, a jam i've yet to even get wet for yet despite numerous attempts, and this one the same - nastia said she was illish and prefered a columbia crossing at hood river instead, so sure, why not? we both drove to set up a car shuttle and noticed near arrival that the wind was whipping, the waves white-capped and their swells nice n' rolling long - gave me the heebie-jeebies a bit, soul-scarred as i remain from the one and only trans-columbia transit i made a few years back w/ ole'pat when the gorge was freshly burnt and i was perhaps drunk by naval standards at our 10 am departure (holy jeebus, that incident still ranks high on my most-terrified ever list) - after setting up the shuttle though we gave her a go, me in my wetsuit and snorkel and boots and web-gloves and day-glo orange personal swimmer buoy (and sober besides, having learnt all kinds of lessons that chilly october morning) but the russkaya of course was just in her dainty 2-piece and rocking the doggy paddle stroke, true russian-berserker style and blazeningly loving it - not too far from shore the waves and winds announced their presence with authority and our humble tribe quailed at their querulousness, first she then me after starting a 2nd attempt alone - retiring to the oregon side once again to recover her car n' kick about the conversation-can we revolved the rubik's cube of future combinations and settled upon giving something/anything a chance someday soon, assuming we live that long
- a solo beacon lap on a wind-wracked n' shady south side sans shirt was my true reward for listening to the Little Voice Inside Me and chopped the voyage home neatly in half - all i have to worry about now is tomorrow...
7/30 - 11 back-to-back beatard days and i'm a bit drained - 2 more laps for 21 total on this still youngish summer - crater lake complications and house-swapping horseshit clouds everything, my spirits low - might it be that nothing ever really gets better?
8/1 - sou'side summer beacon day 12 of 2019 - solo laps 22-23 - early morning rising to house-hunt n' tidy up domestically, kinda lame really but we are rarely masters of our own destiny i reckon - the daughter-child to her amiga's skamania abide in the late afternoon left time for yours truly to scramble up the bacon wand twice before achieving apogee and getting sucked back west once again to stuff more things into the bursting garage before the photo man comes to record it all in the morning - the great crater lake creep south at sunrise, all mortal concerns cast aside in the gawdamned interest of aquatic glory
8/8 - day 13 - laps 24, 25, 26 - a sad week away from the bacon-stone, but well spent - a swim-trip to crater lake - cock-blocked by the feds, we found better refuge at waldo lake, which was much like taking the 2nd hottest girl at the party home - union bidness in mcminville and quite alright, though it brought the summer death-knell to the forefront of a keening mind - rain in the west, after hours the beaconwand cast its spell and the world was my oyster again - gnome the larry in the gloaming lot, then kyle n' company came crawling in - three laps passing through numerous parties - some-guy-named-steve earned his Hero of Beacon Rock w/ oak-leaf clusters - placid blood flowed freely as it should in the scraping places - kyle got the kid up though competent legal counsel would eagerly have urged him not
8/9 -estival beacon aeon 14 - laps 27-28 - a lazy friday summer sleep-in, the first in some time - warm coffee n' cold eggs w/ the wifey over steven colbert n' some orange-is-the-new-black - the kids like college students, slow to rise - afternoon i ambled out to beacon to meet old ben - beat him by an hour so got a lap in alone before he arrived with his boy asher, sullen n' silent, as a man should be in this shocking modern age - led them up the route sans belays, which i reckon counts as solo too, though a rope was technically tied round my ample beer-gut - a gaggle of elk gamboling about the meadows below the eastern train track, their worries little ones in this wonderous season - the drive home dominated by the sweet smell of summer rain n' the dying sun...
8/11 - day 15 - a rare reverse-golden-sombrero raises the lap count to 32 on the summer - the trip took weather-faith, for the rain fell throughout the gorge on the drive in, even in the lot itself a profound mist made its presence known - a fool's errand i thought, but took my shoes down to the base anyway to see if the stone was dry despite 2 days of storms and so it was, and with hordes of portlanders putting their dirty libturd-hands all over it in flagrant degradation too - kyle n' bill n' joe n' countless over fools all encountered and gavreeted with, and one parcel of folks i passed 4 times in total over the next few hours - the history of the world it would seem, and fitting that the soundtrack was 4 episodes of a podcast all about the ending of it
8/12 - day 16 - lap 33 - the smell of sudden fiery death roused me at 5 and an hour later i arose in protest at my prickly senses - after tea and trailer park boys i eased myself eastwards for a single lap in the sun - the stone alone, i savored my solitude, the drip-drip of sweat the only sense of time to contend with - afterwards car-chores and lake-swimming w/ many chilluns
8/13 - day 17 - laps 34-35 - the world waxes largish, so what exactly is the goal now? last year the improbable # of 60 made me think 61 is all any sane man might relish, or maybe just 62 to stick a fork in the eye of roger morris, but now something much bigger indeed seems possible - how about 74 to offer the proverbial bitch-slap to barry bonds? even if that is to be the improbable mark, such a tally looms already large in the wind-screen and is to be sought for - the hazy outlines of a plan for a phenomenal 14-in-a-day assault in september with a whole heap of fools to propel the thing to a frenetic conclusion - that's in the future though - tonight was sublime solitude and shade and space for easy contemplation - a podcast on theoretical physics' hapless potential to create an end of the world to keep me company - the peregrines on the scene after being rather silent this past month - stone throwing teenage tourists and a positive conversation on the merits of manslaughter - a road trip begins tomorrow w/ the family and maybe a giant swim in crescent lake at the conclusion - there's marrow still in the bone of summer boys, and meat on it to spare as well
8/19 - day 18 - laps 36-40 for the rare Reverse Platinum Sombrero - a near week at the beach w/ the fam - a crossing of quinault and an epic lake crescent thing - barely a week left in summer 2019 i awoke wicked sore but set out east anyways - the stone near alone for the first 4 laps, but then dave n' steve where there n' we cackled our way upwards together alone to mushroom ledge n' some serious meditation
8/24 - day 19 - laps 41, 42 n' 43 meant it was a douglas adams day (shamefully i must admit i forget my towel, but proudly i can say i did not panic) - 3 days in the alpine lakes wilderness didn't beat me down enough i guess, 'cuz the girl-child asked to get carted out to skamania for the afternoon to cavort w/ her polish friends and i rallied to run laps while letting her have her what-have-you - summer is doomed and so are you
8/25 - day 20 - laps 44-45 - 11 CBIs n' 13 runs (new stats, to keep things fun n' make a game of the mundane - every meat-popsicle lapped is a Climber Batted In - runs are laps plus CBIs - good lord, the record couldn't be higher than 50 runs in a day could it?) - the coast guard earns its gold from yuppie scum along the banks of the rude columbia - nastia n' her main-squeeze set to scramble up blown-out in the blistering shade under the heavy hail of tourist stone, our beers n' smokes n' smalltalk cut savage short - the experiment to substitute a cordelette in lieu of a bolted anchor at the top an abject failure within 24 hours, though kinda an apollo 13 one since i got the cord returned as requested - 2 cruiser laps in the autumnally-building breeze with the crowds abounding, summer's done been set on a goddamn gibbet
8/26 - blackjack day - laps 46-7 make me prime again - 4 CBIs for 6 runs - a soft slumber ended in the gentlest fashion - the damned dentist - the dmv denied - summer slams into the brickwall while i straighten out the classroom - a big breeze builds as we stumble eastwards - the first lap looms into the time-traveler and his canadian dame, well over her head on the second pitch, so i stayed to help her suss out the sitch and sacrificed a hat trick - beers and the inevitable bullshiting - the world careens and carries us along in its endless crapulous fucking fashion
8/27 - summer beacon day double-deuce - laps 48-9 make me prime n' prone to wine - 96 degrees n' a big-breeze in the parking lot - the first day back to the what-have-you and the bullshite-factory appears to have been working overtime in my absence - cryptic runes n' rude cynosures, thank-fuck their clutches are so fleeting - a lap alone in the wild wind, and then another, all to seek and find the freek
8/28 - day 23, laps 50-51 - another hot day, minus the breeze - the mechanisms continue to rumble up to speed on the work machine, the corporate speak as thick as cancer but only half as deadly - hit beacon in a hurry w/ familialial functions to attend to in the soon-time - 26 minutes car to car on the first lap, but a bit more mellow on the second - a curtailed conversation on retro-bolting an anchor on the corner down in the parking lot, sadly one that seems to have concluded with them deciding to add yet another scar to the recently patched rock in question - i guess we'll see if they go through with it... - lovely thai dinner after back-to-school night at least and so it goes and goes
8/29 - day 24, laps 52-53 - awoke to the crack of thunder and the cold iron sound of roiling rain in the early hours - such wondrous slumber in a dry place, the wicked world just an open window away - the final pre-season day before the Big Show, the crest of bullshit surmounted and now we ride the flood tide to a preternatural future, knowing what is to come merely from a fleeting look back - work over, i walked out the door to doom-streaked clouds and rain but bounded east on enthusiasm alone, sure that the universe intended me to climb today or never again at all and not caring which it was to be - the deep funk of strange humidity on the trail down - mama deer and baby deer surprised me at close quarters on the trail and gave me a sudden sharp stab of quicksilver-fear, a sensation too rarely felt in this saccharine world where tomorrow is always assured and death is a landlord easily dispensed with - new friends re-encountered on the warrior path, lovely souls i'll never see again and that's a shame - ruminations atop the ridgeline, soaked in sweat and soon to get heading west, tower-bound yet pleasantly besotted with the present...surely someday this will all make sense?
8/30 - 7 days in a row at the fabulous beacon-wand summer-sweet spot makes it 25 total so far - corner laps 54-56, plus 11 CBIs for 14 runs on the day, the greatest since gestating the concept - the final friday before the big plunge - easy rising - dishes n' breakfast - the grey-gloom of many summer mornings that inevitably yields to glory soon after noon - adam's afterwards in the shade and breeze was total bliss - felt a bit frazzled n' forlorn before the end of the laps really, maybe a sign i need to sit my ass down for a few days, which would make some sorta sense i reckon given i can't remember a day i devoted to just lying around for a long while - that said it's a tower rock approach n' set-up tomorrow w/ a huge sunday afterwards, so maybe labor day will equal its lamentations and i'll rest then?
9/3 - day 26 - 1 lap (#57), 2 CBIs - opening day of the 19-20 campaign, the 22nd of my career - old enough now that i'm teaching my daughter's friends, apparently she talks to them so i can actually find out some things about her from them
- only time for one lap before fetching the boy-child from crewing out there on the big lake - for the best really, i'm wicked whooped still from the trial of tower rock
9/4 - day 27 - lap 58 n' 2 CBIs -bill n' ujhan n' the prodigal-son-come-home adam in the parking lot - bill scooped up my dropped hook from tower rock's base yesterday along w/ plenty of other debris left over from my fellow floggers, yet he nay managed to bring it with him (no matter, we know he's good for it) - chris b' n company coming down from the party ledge, near the 2 year anniversary i reckon since i first made his acquaintance, busted badly at the base w/ nastia in the soon-time after the big burn had scorched damn near everything in site - shoulda stuffed in one more lap for sure, but its early school season still and it takes the zap oughta me working for the man, so i slunk back home for salmon n' spades w/ the fam n' an early turn-in
9/6 - day 28 - laps 59-60, plus 6 CBI's for 8 runs - with 6 prime-bacon-wedder-weeks to go, i'm plumb astride last year's all-time record w/ nothing to hold me back but random rain n' the rude restrictions of this love-shackled life - end of a week left me blinking n' bruised n' senselessly tired, thus the start of a third too terrible to comprehend, so home i crawled n' passed out in the midst of pizza n' bill maher, wine-cup perched on chest - clearly this world needs a li'l leg room
9/7 - day 29 (5 CBIs for 6 runs) - roger morris reclamation day w/ lap 61 i say, my personal best n' for all i can imagine beacon's too, at least for a single year of solo laps - on the horn early w/ adam but we thought it fucked yet somehow separately we crawled to the wall n' didn't say shit when we saw each other, me 'specially w/ only a few minutes of fucking-around time cooked into the cookie - a three-some at tree ledge, the poor sheila below certain she had to do the hard-core-headwall - kincaid n' norman n' the normal nattering high above the hills, me nut-booby n' stupid - could it be that this is it for the simple set?
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On 9/4/2019 at 9:31 PM, ivan said:
2018 saw 60 solo laps, a # beyond imagination, but possible by a weird combination of prime weather and a personal calendar no me gusta
7/20/19 - south side day 1 of the year, well after le grande opening i'll grant you as i sallied up n' down the coast courting more arduous adventures - swimming in the olympics, multi-day colonel bob bumblefuck, marriage counselor sheenagins n' regular ole climbing in leavenworth w/ the silvermans shit-talking each other at every turn, then near a week about mt whitney w/ the whiskey hooligans - 2 solo laps in the shade, every hold an old friend and unforgotten - geoff n' kyle n' larry the gnome at the top n' beers n' bullshitting at the base - managed 70 solo laps last summer, so that's 1/35 of the way to repeating that unbelievable total
7/21 - day 2 - laps 3-4 - hey, only 33 more days at this rate to top last year - foiled upon arrival at battle ground lake, i bounced off fallen leaf lake too n' resigned meself to clambering out at beacon - once again the rock all to myself, despite the weekend situation - a lap alone, then another w/ some folks thrashing their way up the original dods exit at the end - summer's halfway home n' i'm still all smiles
7/22 - day 3 - laps 5-7 - a hat trick on a hottish day, 2 in the sun and the third in the shade the hottest of all w/ numerous half-clad hotties along the way
7/23 - day 4 - lap 8 - swam a slow wetsuit-less mile in fallen leaf under cloudy n' cool skies, fetched the boy child from camp, then deposited him again before darting out to the bacon-wand for a single ascent before coming back camas-ways to peruse new houses and ultimately sup on delectable thai takeout
7/24 - day 5 - laps 9-10 - ten laps in five days not so shabby - nary a soul in sight on this sweatyish day, but steve in the parking lot - a week a paradise it would seem...
7/25 - another hat-trick makes it 13 laps in 6 days, a healthy clip - irish death's n' lovely crowds n' sun n' shade and all after a right-nice long swim continued a paradise-theme-of-a-summer so far...
7/26 - the end of my first summer beacon week and a productive one with 2 more laps to bring the total to 15, 1/4 of the way to last year's ludicrous total, but at a pace to bury it should that be my jealous jam on looking back (i've heard tale their no more nefarious thief than nostalgia though) - a mile swim in fallen leaf while the wulf-man paddled away on lake vancouver, then beacon just after noon in the brutal brightness - shed my black shirt in favor of royal blue - lovely pair of sheilas atop tree ledge on the first lap - sucked down my beer in a batch of shade in the gut under uprising, panting like a bitch - a horde of latinos on the way down, one fella w/ a pack to support the lot of them for a month if need be - the second lap lonely but bearably in the breeze, fat drops of sweat drip-dripping and sizzling away on the stone - then house-hunting and general real-world bummer concerns...
7/27 - summer beacon day 8 - the late morning meetup out near no'bo - adam n' claire n' naterring as we waited for ole'geoff to arrive w/ his prized n' feared jet-ski - beers n' bullshitting n' plan forming - claire drove us up near the dam and we flung ourselves into hamilton creek, expecting far more fun than the fickle world felt like paying out, stumbling mid-knee forever through the stream in wetsuits w/ stuff sacks full of beer - the main current at last and drifting down under the beacon face, admiring some hard-dudes dancing on the journey to the east above big ledge - many more bevies on the dock afterwards n' some soft-porn skinny-dipping by the masses, than back to the little road hold-out before cursing them fools n' cutting loose to clamber up the corner in the gloaming-dark before darting back to home for chicken salad n' discoursing over stranger things
7/28 - beacon day 9 - 2 more laps makes it 18, a tear beyond my tenous memory - wurst to drag adam's esposita up the corner at first, but she foreswore the morning heat and when adam got froggy on the immediate details i said fork-it n' went n' did a lap while he helped a timberline high-to-do set up a big kayak shuttle down to kalama- soggy as hell from sweat i returned as his business was concluded, having to concede another climb in the immediate future was fucked - we repaired to the river again then n' had a mort of swimming n' redneck shenanigans before i felt honor-bound to take advantage of the recent shade for another clambornation n' siddle on back home - plenty of folks casting about at the base, one even who recognized my nom de guerre n' threw a compliment my way that in hindsight i think i mighta thrown back a tad too heelish - perhaps if i spent more time on my people skills instead of scratching the Endless Itch?
7/29 - was supposed to be a beacon-less day but the beacon lords giveth n' they take away too - beacon day 10 (in a row!) at any rate, n' solo lap 19 - met the k19 near noon after carting the boy child to row-row-your-boating on lake vancouver and stuffing in a quick swim at fallen leaf lake - after dressing his sadly chapped hands i cast out camas-ways - the plan was the adventure swim to phoca rock from the washington side, a jam i've yet to even get wet for yet despite numerous attempts, and this one the same - nastia said she was illish and prefered a columbia crossing at hood river instead, so sure, why not? we both drove to set up a car shuttle and noticed near arrival that the wind was whipping, the waves white-capped and their swells nice n' rolling long - gave me the heebie-jeebies a bit, soul-scarred as i remain from the one and only trans-columbia transit i made a few years back w/ ole'pat when the gorge was freshly burnt and i was perhaps drunk by naval standards at our 10 am departure (holy jeebus, that incident still ranks high on my most-terrified ever list) - after setting up the shuttle though we gave her a go, me in my wetsuit and snorkel and boots and web-gloves and day-glo orange personal swimmer buoy (and sober besides, having learnt all kinds of lessons that chilly october morning) but the russkaya of course was just in her dainty 2-piece and rocking the doggy paddle stroke, true russian-berserker style and blazeningly loving it - not too far from shore the waves and winds announced their presence with authority and our humble tribe quailed at their querulousness, first she then me after starting a 2nd attempt alone - retiring to the oregon side once again to recover her car n' kick about the conversation-can we revolved the rubik's cube of future combinations and settled upon giving something/anything a chance someday soon, assuming we live that long
- a solo beacon lap on a wind-wracked n' shady south side sans shirt was my true reward for listening to the Little Voice Inside Me and chopped the voyage home neatly in half - all i have to worry about now is tomorrow...
7/30 - 11 back-to-back beatard days and i'm a bit drained - 2 more laps for 21 total on this still youngish summer - crater lake complications and house-swapping horseshit clouds everything, my spirits low - might it be that nothing ever really gets better?
8/1 - sou'side summer beacon day 12 of 2019 - solo laps 22-23 - early morning rising to house-hunt n' tidy up domestically, kinda lame really but we are rarely masters of our own destiny i reckon - the daughter-child to her amiga's skamania abide in the late afternoon left time for yours truly to scramble up the bacon wand twice before achieving apogee and getting sucked back west once again to stuff more things into the bursting garage before the photo man comes to record it all in the morning - the great crater lake creep south at sunrise, all mortal concerns cast aside in the gawdamned interest of aquatic glory
8/8 - day 13 - laps 24, 25, 26 - a sad week away from the bacon-stone, but well spent - a swim-trip to crater lake - cock-blocked by the feds, we found better refuge at waldo lake, which was much like taking the 2nd hottest girl at the party home - union bidness in mcminville and quite alright, though it brought the summer death-knell to the forefront of a keening mind - rain in the west, after hours the beaconwand cast its spell and the world was my oyster again - gnome the larry in the gloaming lot, then kyle n' company came crawling in - three laps passing through numerous parties - some-guy-named-steve earned his Hero of Beacon Rock w/ oak-leaf clusters - placid blood flowed freely as it should in the scraping places - kyle got the kid up though competent legal counsel would eagerly have urged him not
8/9 -estival beacon aeon 14 - laps 27-28 - a lazy friday summer sleep-in, the first in some time - warm coffee n' cold eggs w/ the wifey over steven colbert n' some orange-is-the-new-black - the kids like college students, slow to rise - afternoon i ambled out to beacon to meet old ben - beat him by an hour so got a lap in alone before he arrived with his boy asher, sullen n' silent, as a man should be in this shocking modern age - led them up the route sans belays, which i reckon counts as solo too, though a rope was technically tied round my ample beer-gut - a gaggle of elk gamboling about the meadows below the eastern train track, their worries little ones in this wonderous season - the drive home dominated by the sweet smell of summer rain n' the dying sun...
8/11 - day 15 - a rare reverse-golden-sombrero raises the lap count to 32 on the summer - the trip took weather-faith, for the rain fell throughout the gorge on the drive in, even in the lot itself a profound mist made its presence known - a fool's errand i thought, but took my shoes down to the base anyway to see if the stone was dry despite 2 days of storms and so it was, and with hordes of portlanders putting their dirty libturd-hands all over it in flagrant degradation too - kyle n' bill n' joe n' countless over fools all encountered and gavreeted with, and one parcel of folks i passed 4 times in total over the next few hours - the history of the world it would seem, and fitting that the soundtrack was 4 episodes of a podcast all about the ending of it
8/12 - day 16 - lap 33 - the smell of sudden fiery death roused me at 5 and an hour later i arose in protest at my prickly senses - after tea and trailer park boys i eased myself eastwards for a single lap in the sun - the stone alone, i savored my solitude, the drip-drip of sweat the only sense of time to contend with - afterwards car-chores and lake-swimming w/ many chilluns
8/13 - day 17 - laps 34-35 - the world waxes largish, so what exactly is the goal now? last year the improbable # of 60 made me think 61 is all any sane man might relish, or maybe just 62 to stick a fork in the eye of roger morris, but now something much bigger indeed seems possible - how about 74 to offer the proverbial bitch-slap to barry bonds? even if that is to be the improbable mark, such a tally looms already large in the wind-screen and is to be sought for - the hazy outlines of a plan for a phenomenal 14-in-a-day assault in september with a whole heap of fools to propel the thing to a frenetic conclusion - that's in the future though - tonight was sublime solitude and shade and space for easy contemplation - a podcast on theoretical physics' hapless potential to create an end of the world to keep me company - the peregrines on the scene after being rather silent this past month - stone throwing teenage tourists and a positive conversation on the merits of manslaughter - a road trip begins tomorrow w/ the family and maybe a giant swim in crescent lake at the conclusion - there's marrow still in the bone of summer boys, and meat on it to spare as well
8/19 - day 18 - laps 36-40 for the rare Reverse Platinum Sombrero - a near week at the beach w/ the fam - a crossing of quinault and an epic lake crescent thing - barely a week left in summer 2019 i awoke wicked sore but set out east anyways - the stone near alone for the first 4 laps, but then dave n' steve where there n' we cackled our way upwards together alone to mushroom ledge n' some serious meditation
8/24 - day 19 - laps 41, 42 n' 43 meant it was a douglas adams day (shamefully i must admit i forget my towel, but proudly i can say i did not panic) - 3 days in the alpine lakes wilderness didn't beat me down enough i guess, 'cuz the girl-child asked to get carted out to skamania for the afternoon to cavort w/ her polish friends and i rallied to run laps while letting her have her what-have-you - summer is doomed and so are you
8/25 - day 20 - laps 44-45 - 11 CBIs n' 13 runs (new stats, to keep things fun n' make a game of the mundane - every meat-popsicle lapped is a Climber Batted In - runs are laps plus CBIs - good lord, the record couldn't be higher than 50 runs in a day could it?) - the coast guard earns its gold from yuppie scum along the banks of the rude columbia - nastia n' her main-squeeze set to scramble up blown-out in the blistering shade under the heavy hail of tourist stone, our beers n' smokes n' smalltalk cut savage short - the experiment to substitute a cordelette in lieu of a bolted anchor at the top an abject failure within 24 hours, though kinda an apollo 13 one since i got the cord returned as requested - 2 cruiser laps in the autumnally-building breeze with the crowds abounding, summer's done been set on a goddamn gibbet
8/26 - blackjack day - laps 46-7 make me prime again - 4 CBIs for 6 runs - a soft slumber ended in the gentlest fashion - the damned dentist - the dmv denied - summer slams into the brickwall while i straighten out the classroom - a big breeze builds as we stumble eastwards - the first lap looms into the time-traveler and his canadian dame, well over her head on the second pitch, so i stayed to help her suss out the sitch and sacrificed a hat trick - beers and the inevitable bullshiting - the world careens and carries us along in its endless crapulous fucking fashion
8/27 - summer beacon day double-deuce - laps 48-9 make me prime n' prone to wine - 96 degrees n' a big-breeze in the parking lot - the first day back to the what-have-you and the bullshite-factory appears to have been working overtime in my absence - cryptic runes n' rude cynosures, thank-fuck their clutches are so fleeting - a lap alone in the wild wind, and then another, all to seek and find the freek
8/28 - day 23, laps 50-51 - another hot day, minus the breeze - the mechanisms continue to rumble up to speed on the work machine, the corporate speak as thick as cancer but only half as deadly - hit beacon in a hurry w/ familialial functions to attend to in the soon-time - 26 minutes car to car on the first lap, but a bit more mellow on the second - a curtailed conversation on retro-bolting an anchor on the corner down in the parking lot, sadly one that seems to have concluded with them deciding to add yet another scar to the recently patched rock in question - i guess we'll see if they go through with it... - lovely thai dinner after back-to-school night at least and so it goes and goes
8/29 - day 24, laps 52-53 - awoke to the crack of thunder and the cold iron sound of roiling rain in the early hours - such wondrous slumber in a dry place, the wicked world just an open window away - the final pre-season day before the Big Show, the crest of bullshit surmounted and now we ride the flood tide to a preternatural future, knowing what is to come merely from a fleeting look back - work over, i walked out the door to doom-streaked clouds and rain but bounded east on enthusiasm alone, sure that the universe intended me to climb today or never again at all and not caring which it was to be - the deep funk of strange humidity on the trail down - mama deer and baby deer surprised me at close quarters on the trail and gave me a sudden sharp stab of quicksilver-fear, a sensation too rarely felt in this saccharine world where tomorrow is always assured and death is a landlord easily dispensed with - new friends re-encountered on the warrior path, lovely souls i'll never see again and that's a shame - ruminations atop the ridgeline, soaked in sweat and soon to get heading west, tower-bound yet pleasantly besotted with the present...surely someday this will all make sense?
8/30 - 7 days in a row at the fabulous beacon-wand summer-sweet spot makes it 25 total so far - corner laps 54-56, plus 11 CBIs for 14 runs on the day, the greatest since gestating the concept - the final friday before the big plunge - easy rising - dishes n' breakfast - the grey-gloom of many summer mornings that inevitably yields to glory soon after noon - adam's afterwards in the shade and breeze was total bliss - felt a bit frazzled n' forlorn before the end of the laps really, maybe a sign i need to sit my ass down for a few days, which would make some sorta sense i reckon given i can't remember a day i devoted to just lying around for a long while - that said it's a tower rock approach n' set-up tomorrow w/ a huge sunday afterwards, so maybe labor day will equal its lamentations and i'll rest then?
9/3 - day 26 - 1 lap (#57), 2 CBIs - opening day of the 19-20 campaign, the 22nd of my career - old enough now that i'm teaching my daughter's friends, apparently she talks to them so i can actually find out some things about her from them
- only time for one lap before fetching the boy-child from crewing out there on the big lake - for the best really, i'm wicked whooped still from the trial of tower rock
9/4 - day 27 - lap 58 n' 2 CBIs -bill n' ujhan n' the prodigal-son-come-home adam in the parking lot - bill scooped up my dropped hook from tower rock's base yesterday along w/ plenty of other debris left over from my fellow floggers, yet he nay managed to bring it with him (no matter, we know he's good for it) - chris b' n company coming down from the party ledge, near the 2 year anniversary i reckon since i first made his acquaintance, busted badly at the base w/ nastia in the soon-time after the big burn had scorched damn near everything in site - shoulda stuffed in one more lap for sure, but its early school season still and it takes the zap oughta me working for the man, so i slunk back home for salmon n' spades w/ the fam n' an early turn-in
9/6 - day 28 - laps 59-60, plus 6 CBI's for 8 runs - with 6 prime-bacon-wedder-weeks to go, i'm plumb astride last year's all-time record w/ nothing to hold me back but random rain n' the rude restrictions of this love-shackled life - end of a week left me blinking n' bruised n' senselessly tired, thus the start of a third too terrible to comprehend, so home i crawled n' passed out in the midst of pizza n' bill maher, wine-cup perched on chest - clearly this world needs a li'l leg room
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On 9/3/2019 at 7:43 PM, ivan said:
2018 saw 60 solo laps, a # beyond imagination, but possible by a weird combination of prime weather and a personal calendar no me gusta
7/20/19 - south side day 1 of the year, well after le grande opening i'll grant you as i sallied up n' down the coast courting more arduous adventures - swimming in the olympics, multi-day colonel bob bumblefuck, marriage counselor sheenagins n' regular ole climbing in leavenworth w/ the silvermans shit-talking each other at every turn, then near a week about mt whitney w/ the whiskey hooligans - 2 solo laps in the shade, every hold an old friend and unforgotten - geoff n' kyle n' larry the gnome at the top n' beers n' bullshitting at the base - managed 70 solo laps last summer, so that's 1/35 of the way to repeating that unbelievable total
7/21 - day 2 - laps 3-4 - hey, only 33 more days at this rate to top last year - foiled upon arrival at battle ground lake, i bounced off fallen leaf lake too n' resigned meself to clambering out at beacon - once again the rock all to myself, despite the weekend situation - a lap alone, then another w/ some folks thrashing their way up the original dods exit at the end - summer's halfway home n' i'm still all smiles
7/22 - day 3 - laps 5-7 - a hat trick on a hottish day, 2 in the sun and the third in the shade the hottest of all w/ numerous half-clad hotties along the way
7/23 - day 4 - lap 8 - swam a slow wetsuit-less mile in fallen leaf under cloudy n' cool skies, fetched the boy child from camp, then deposited him again before darting out to the bacon-wand for a single ascent before coming back camas-ways to peruse new houses and ultimately sup on delectable thai takeout
7/24 - day 5 - laps 9-10 - ten laps in five days not so shabby - nary a soul in sight on this sweatyish day, but steve in the parking lot - a week a paradise it would seem...
7/25 - another hat-trick makes it 13 laps in 6 days, a healthy clip - irish death's n' lovely crowds n' sun n' shade and all after a right-nice long swim continued a paradise-theme-of-a-summer so far...
7/26 - the end of my first summer beacon week and a productive one with 2 more laps to bring the total to 15, 1/4 of the way to last year's ludicrous total, but at a pace to bury it should that be my jealous jam on looking back (i've heard tale their no more nefarious thief than nostalgia though) - a mile swim in fallen leaf while the wulf-man paddled away on lake vancouver, then beacon just after noon in the brutal brightness - shed my black shirt in favor of royal blue - lovely pair of sheilas atop tree ledge on the first lap - sucked down my beer in a batch of shade in the gut under uprising, panting like a bitch - a horde of latinos on the way down, one fella w/ a pack to support the lot of them for a month if need be - the second lap lonely but bearably in the breeze, fat drops of sweat drip-dripping and sizzling away on the stone - then house-hunting and general real-world bummer concerns...
7/27 - summer beacon day 8 - the late morning meetup out near no'bo - adam n' claire n' naterring as we waited for ole'geoff to arrive w/ his prized n' feared jet-ski - beers n' bullshitting n' plan forming - claire drove us up near the dam and we flung ourselves into hamilton creek, expecting far more fun than the fickle world felt like paying out, stumbling mid-knee forever through the stream in wetsuits w/ stuff sacks full of beer - the main current at last and drifting down under the beacon face, admiring some hard-dudes dancing on the journey to the east above big ledge - many more bevies on the dock afterwards n' some soft-porn skinny-dipping by the masses, than back to the little road hold-out before cursing them fools n' cutting loose to clamber up the corner in the gloaming-dark before darting back to home for chicken salad n' discoursing over stranger things
7/28 - beacon day 9 - 2 more laps makes it 18, a tear beyond my tenous memory - wurst to drag adam's esposita up the corner at first, but she foreswore the morning heat and when adam got froggy on the immediate details i said fork-it n' went n' did a lap while he helped a timberline high-to-do set up a big kayak shuttle down to kalama- soggy as hell from sweat i returned as his business was concluded, having to concede another climb in the immediate future was fucked - we repaired to the river again then n' had a mort of swimming n' redneck shenanigans before i felt honor-bound to take advantage of the recent shade for another clambornation n' siddle on back home - plenty of folks casting about at the base, one even who recognized my nom de guerre n' threw a compliment my way that in hindsight i think i mighta thrown back a tad too heelish - perhaps if i spent more time on my people skills instead of scratching the Endless Itch?
7/29 - was supposed to be a beacon-less day but the beacon lords giveth n' they take away too - beacon day 10 (in a row!) at any rate, n' solo lap 19 - met the k19 near noon after carting the boy child to row-row-your-boating on lake vancouver and stuffing in a quick swim at fallen leaf lake - after dressing his sadly chapped hands i cast out camas-ways - the plan was the adventure swim to phoca rock from the washington side, a jam i've yet to even get wet for yet despite numerous attempts, and this one the same - nastia said she was illish and prefered a columbia crossing at hood river instead, so sure, why not? we both drove to set up a car shuttle and noticed near arrival that the wind was whipping, the waves white-capped and their swells nice n' rolling long - gave me the heebie-jeebies a bit, soul-scarred as i remain from the one and only trans-columbia transit i made a few years back w/ ole'pat when the gorge was freshly burnt and i was perhaps drunk by naval standards at our 10 am departure (holy jeebus, that incident still ranks high on my most-terrified ever list) - after setting up the shuttle though we gave her a go, me in my wetsuit and snorkel and boots and web-gloves and day-glo orange personal swimmer buoy (and sober besides, having learnt all kinds of lessons that chilly october morning) but the russkaya of course was just in her dainty 2-piece and rocking the doggy paddle stroke, true russian-berserker style and blazeningly loving it - not too far from shore the waves and winds announced their presence with authority and our humble tribe quailed at their querulousness, first she then me after starting a 2nd attempt alone - retiring to the oregon side once again to recover her car n' kick about the conversation-can we revolved the rubik's cube of future combinations and settled upon giving something/anything a chance someday soon, assuming we live that long
- a solo beacon lap on a wind-wracked n' shady south side sans shirt was my true reward for listening to the Little Voice Inside Me and chopped the voyage home neatly in half - all i have to worry about now is tomorrow...
7/30 - 11 back-to-back beatard days and i'm a bit drained - 2 more laps for 21 total on this still youngish summer - crater lake complications and house-swapping horseshit clouds everything, my spirits low - might it be that nothing ever really gets better?
8/1 - sou'side summer beacon day 12 of 2019 - solo laps 22-23 - early morning rising to house-hunt n' tidy up domestically, kinda lame really but we are rarely masters of our own destiny i reckon - the daughter-child to her amiga's skamania abide in the late afternoon left time for yours truly to scramble up the bacon wand twice before achieving apogee and getting sucked back west once again to stuff more things into the bursting garage before the photo man comes to record it all in the morning - the great crater lake creep south at sunrise, all mortal concerns cast aside in the gawdamned interest of aquatic glory
8/8 - day 13 - laps 24, 25, 26 - a sad week away from the bacon-stone, but well spent - a swim-trip to crater lake - cock-blocked by the feds, we found better refuge at waldo lake, which was much like taking the 2nd hottest girl at the party home - union bidness in mcminville and quite alright, though it brought the summer death-knell to the forefront of a keening mind - rain in the west, after hours the beaconwand cast its spell and the world was my oyster again - gnome the larry in the gloaming lot, then kyle n' company came crawling in - three laps passing through numerous parties - some-guy-named-steve earned his Hero of Beacon Rock w/ oak-leaf clusters - placid blood flowed freely as it should in the scraping places - kyle got the kid up though competent legal counsel would eagerly have urged him not
8/9 -estival beacon aeon 14 - laps 27-28 - a lazy friday summer sleep-in, the first in some time - warm coffee n' cold eggs w/ the wifey over steven colbert n' some orange-is-the-new-black - the kids like college students, slow to rise - afternoon i ambled out to beacon to meet old ben - beat him by an hour so got a lap in alone before he arrived with his boy asher, sullen n' silent, as a man should be in this shocking modern age - led them up the route sans belays, which i reckon counts as solo too, though a rope was technically tied round my ample beer-gut - a gaggle of elk gamboling about the meadows below the eastern train track, their worries little ones in this wonderous season - the drive home dominated by the sweet smell of summer rain n' the dying sun...
8/11 - day 15 - a rare reverse-golden-sombrero raises the lap count to 32 on the summer - the trip took weather-faith, for the rain fell throughout the gorge on the drive in, even in the lot itself a profound mist made its presence known - a fool's errand i thought, but took my shoes down to the base anyway to see if the stone was dry despite 2 days of storms and so it was, and with hordes of portlanders putting their dirty libturd-hands all over it in flagrant degradation too - kyle n' bill n' joe n' countless over fools all encountered and gavreeted with, and one parcel of folks i passed 4 times in total over the next few hours - the history of the world it would seem, and fitting that the soundtrack was 4 episodes of a podcast all about the ending of it
8/12 - day 16 - lap 33 - the smell of sudden fiery death roused me at 5 and an hour later i arose in protest at my prickly senses - after tea and trailer park boys i eased myself eastwards for a single lap in the sun - the stone alone, i savored my solitude, the drip-drip of sweat the only sense of time to contend with - afterwards car-chores and lake-swimming w/ many chilluns
8/13 - day 17 - laps 34-35 - the world waxes largish, so what exactly is the goal now? last year the improbable # of 60 made me think 61 is all any sane man might relish, or maybe just 62 to stick a fork in the eye of roger morris, but now something much bigger indeed seems possible - how about 74 to offer the proverbial bitch-slap to barry bonds? even if that is to be the improbable mark, such a tally looms already large in the wind-screen and is to be sought for - the hazy outlines of a plan for a phenomenal 14-in-a-day assault in september with a whole heap of fools to propel the thing to a frenetic conclusion - that's in the future though - tonight was sublime solitude and shade and space for easy contemplation - a podcast on theoretical physics' hapless potential to create an end of the world to keep me company - the peregrines on the scene after being rather silent this past month - stone throwing teenage tourists and a positive conversation on the merits of manslaughter - a road trip begins tomorrow w/ the family and maybe a giant swim in crescent lake at the conclusion - there's marrow still in the bone of summer boys, and meat on it to spare as well
8/19 - day 18 - laps 36-40 for the rare Reverse Platinum Sombrero - a near week at the beach w/ the fam - a crossing of quinault and an epic lake crescent thing - barely a week left in summer 2019 i awoke wicked sore but set out east anyways - the stone near alone for the first 4 laps, but then dave n' steve where there n' we cackled our way upwards together alone to mushroom ledge n' some serious meditation
8/24 - day 19 - laps 41, 42 n' 43 meant it was a douglas adams day (shamefully i must admit i forget my towel, but proudly i can say i did not panic) - 3 days in the alpine lakes wilderness didn't beat me down enough i guess, 'cuz the girl-child asked to get carted out to skamania for the afternoon to cavort w/ her polish friends and i rallied to run laps while letting her have her what-have-you - summer is doomed and so are you
8/25 - day 20 - laps 44-45 - 11 CBIs n' 13 runs (new stats, to keep things fun n' make a game of the mundane - every meat-popsicle lapped is a Climber Batted In - runs are laps plus CBIs - good lord, the record couldn't be higher than 50 runs in a day could it?) - the coast guard earns its gold from yuppie scum along the banks of the rude columbia - nastia n' her main-squeeze set to scramble up blown-out in the blistering shade under the heavy hail of tourist stone, our beers n' smokes n' smalltalk cut savage short - the experiment to substitute a cordelette in lieu of a bolted anchor at the top an abject failure within 24 hours, though kinda an apollo 13 one since i got the cord returned as requested - 2 cruiser laps in the autumnally-building breeze with the crowds abounding, summer's done been set on a goddamn gibbet
8/26 - blackjack day - laps 46-7 make me prime again - 4 CBIs for 6 runs - a soft slumber ended in the gentlest fashion - the damned dentist - the dmv denied - summer slams into the brickwall while i straighten out the classroom - a big breeze builds as we stumble eastwards - the first lap looms into the time-traveler and his canadian dame, well over her head on the second pitch, so i stayed to help her suss out the sitch and sacrificed a hat trick - beers and the inevitable bullshiting - the world careens and carries us along in its endless crapulous fucking fashion
8/27 - summer beacon day double-deuce - laps 48-9 make me prime n' prone to wine - 96 degrees n' a big-breeze in the parking lot - the first day back to the what-have-you and the bullshite-factory appears to have been working overtime in my absence - cryptic runes n' rude cynosures, thank-fuck their clutches are so fleeting - a lap alone in the wild wind, and then another, all to seek and find the freek
8/28 - day 23, laps 50-51 - another hot day, minus the breeze - the mechanisms continue to rumble up to speed on the work machine, the corporate speak as thick as cancer but only half as deadly - hit beacon in a hurry w/ familialial functions to attend to in the soon-time - 26 minutes car to car on the first lap, but a bit more mellow on the second - a curtailed conversation on retro-bolting an anchor on the corner down in the parking lot, sadly one that seems to have concluded with them deciding to add yet another scar to the recently patched rock in question - i guess we'll see if they go through with it... - lovely thai dinner after back-to-school night at least and so it goes and goes
8/29 - day 24, laps 52-53 - awoke to the crack of thunder and the cold iron sound of roiling rain in the early hours - such wondrous slumber in a dry place, the wicked world just an open window away - the final pre-season day before the Big Show, the crest of bullshit surmounted and now we ride the flood tide to a preternatural future, knowing what is to come merely from a fleeting look back - work over, i walked out the door to doom-streaked clouds and rain but bounded east on enthusiasm alone, sure that the universe intended me to climb today or never again at all and not caring which it was to be - the deep funk of strange humidity on the trail down - mama deer and baby deer surprised me at close quarters on the trail and gave me a sudden sharp stab of quicksilver-fear, a sensation too rarely felt in this saccharine world where tomorrow is always assured and death is a landlord easily dispensed with - new friends re-encountered on the warrior path, lovely souls i'll never see again and that's a shame - ruminations atop the ridgeline, soaked in sweat and soon to get heading west, tower-bound yet pleasantly besotted with the present...surely someday this will all make sense?
8/30 - 7 days in a row at the fabulous beacon-wand summer-sweet spot makes it 25 total so far - corner laps 54-56, plus 11 CBIs for 14 runs on the day, the greatest since gestating the concept - the final friday before the big plunge - easy rising - dishes n' breakfast - the grey-gloom of many summer mornings that inevitably yields to glory soon after noon - adam's afterwards in the shade and breeze was total bliss - felt a bit frazzled n' forlorn before the end of the laps really, maybe a sign i need to sit my ass down for a few days, which would make some sorta sense i reckon given i can't remember a day i devoted to just lying around for a long while - that said it's a tower rock approach n' set-up tomorrow w/ a huge sunday afterwards, so maybe labor day will equal its lamentations and i'll rest then?
9/3 - day 26 - 1 lap (#57), 2 CBIs - opening day of the 19-20 campaign, the 22nd of my career - old enough now that i'm teaching my daughter's friends, apparently she talks to them so i can actually find out some things about her from them
- only time for one lap before fetching the boy-child from crewing out there on the big lake - for the best really, i'm wicked whooped still from the trial of tower rock
9/4 - day 27 - lap 58 n' 2 CBIs -bill n' ujhan n' the prodigal-son-come-home adam in the parking lot - bill scooped up my dropped hook from tower rock's base yesterday along w/ plenty of other debris left over from my fellow floggers, yet he nay managed to bring it with him (no matter, we know he's good for it) - chris b' n company coming down from the party ledge, near the 2 year anniversary i reckon since i first made his acquaintance, busted badly at the base w/ nastia in the soon-time after the big burn had scorched damn near everything in site - shoulda stuffed in one more lap for sure, but its early school season still and it takes the zap oughta me working for the man, so i slunk back home for salmon n' spades w/ the fam n' an early turn-in
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On 8/30/2019 at 8:57 PM, ivan said:
2018 saw 60 solo laps, a # beyond imagination, but possible by a weird combination of prime weather and a personal calendar no me gusta
7/20/19 - south side day 1 of the year, well after le grande opening i'll grant you as i sallied up n' down the coast courting more arduous adventures - swimming in the olympics, multi-day colonel bob bumblefuck, marriage counselor sheenagins n' regular ole climbing in leavenworth w/ the silvermans shit-talking each other at every turn, then near a week about mt whitney w/ the whiskey hooligans - 2 solo laps in the shade, every hold an old friend and unforgotten - geoff n' kyle n' larry the gnome at the top n' beers n' bullshitting at the base - managed 70 solo laps last summer, so that's 1/35 of the way to repeating that unbelievable total
7/21 - day 2 - laps 3-4 - hey, only 33 more days at this rate to top last year - foiled upon arrival at battle ground lake, i bounced off fallen leaf lake too n' resigned meself to clambering out at beacon - once again the rock all to myself, despite the weekend situation - a lap alone, then another w/ some folks thrashing their way up the original dods exit at the end - summer's halfway home n' i'm still all smiles
7/22 - day 3 - laps 5-7 - a hat trick on a hottish day, 2 in the sun and the third in the shade the hottest of all w/ numerous half-clad hotties along the way
7/23 - day 4 - lap 8 - swam a slow wetsuit-less mile in fallen leaf under cloudy n' cool skies, fetched the boy child from camp, then deposited him again before darting out to the bacon-wand for a single ascent before coming back camas-ways to peruse new houses and ultimately sup on delectable thai takeout
7/24 - day 5 - laps 9-10 - ten laps in five days not so shabby - nary a soul in sight on this sweatyish day, but steve in the parking lot - a week a paradise it would seem...
7/25 - another hat-trick makes it 13 laps in 6 days, a healthy clip - irish death's n' lovely crowds n' sun n' shade and all after a right-nice long swim continued a paradise-theme-of-a-summer so far...
7/26 - the end of my first summer beacon week and a productive one with 2 more laps to bring the total to 15, 1/4 of the way to last year's ludicrous total, but at a pace to bury it should that be my jealous jam on looking back (i've heard tale their no more nefarious thief than nostalgia though) - a mile swim in fallen leaf while the wulf-man paddled away on lake vancouver, then beacon just after noon in the brutal brightness - shed my black shirt in favor of royal blue - lovely pair of sheilas atop tree ledge on the first lap - sucked down my beer in a batch of shade in the gut under uprising, panting like a bitch - a horde of latinos on the way down, one fella w/ a pack to support the lot of them for a month if need be - the second lap lonely but bearably in the breeze, fat drops of sweat drip-dripping and sizzling away on the stone - then house-hunting and general real-world bummer concerns...
7/27 - summer beacon day 8 - the late morning meetup out near no'bo - adam n' claire n' naterring as we waited for ole'geoff to arrive w/ his prized n' feared jet-ski - beers n' bullshitting n' plan forming - claire drove us up near the dam and we flung ourselves into hamilton creek, expecting far more fun than the fickle world felt like paying out, stumbling mid-knee forever through the stream in wetsuits w/ stuff sacks full of beer - the main current at last and drifting down under the beacon face, admiring some hard-dudes dancing on the journey to the east above big ledge - many more bevies on the dock afterwards n' some soft-porn skinny-dipping by the masses, than back to the little road hold-out before cursing them fools n' cutting loose to clamber up the corner in the gloaming-dark before darting back to home for chicken salad n' discoursing over stranger things
7/28 - beacon day 9 - 2 more laps makes it 18, a tear beyond my tenous memory - wurst to drag adam's esposita up the corner at first, but she foreswore the morning heat and when adam got froggy on the immediate details i said fork-it n' went n' did a lap while he helped a timberline high-to-do set up a big kayak shuttle down to kalama- soggy as hell from sweat i returned as his business was concluded, having to concede another climb in the immediate future was fucked - we repaired to the river again then n' had a mort of swimming n' redneck shenanigans before i felt honor-bound to take advantage of the recent shade for another clambornation n' siddle on back home - plenty of folks casting about at the base, one even who recognized my nom de guerre n' threw a compliment my way that in hindsight i think i mighta thrown back a tad too heelish - perhaps if i spent more time on my people skills instead of scratching the Endless Itch?
7/29 - was supposed to be a beacon-less day but the beacon lords giveth n' they take away too - beacon day 10 (in a row!) at any rate, n' solo lap 19 - met the k19 near noon after carting the boy child to row-row-your-boating on lake vancouver and stuffing in a quick swim at fallen leaf lake - after dressing his sadly chapped hands i cast out camas-ways - the plan was the adventure swim to phoca rock from the washington side, a jam i've yet to even get wet for yet despite numerous attempts, and this one the same - nastia said she was illish and prefered a columbia crossing at hood river instead, so sure, why not? we both drove to set up a car shuttle and noticed near arrival that the wind was whipping, the waves white-capped and their swells nice n' rolling long - gave me the heebie-jeebies a bit, soul-scarred as i remain from the one and only trans-columbia transit i made a few years back w/ ole'pat when the gorge was freshly burnt and i was perhaps drunk by naval standards at our 10 am departure (holy jeebus, that incident still ranks high on my most-terrified ever list) - after setting up the shuttle though we gave her a go, me in my wetsuit and snorkel and boots and web-gloves and day-glo orange personal swimmer buoy (and sober besides, having learnt all kinds of lessons that chilly october morning) but the russkaya of course was just in her dainty 2-piece and rocking the doggy paddle stroke, true russian-berserker style and blazeningly loving it - not too far from shore the waves and winds announced their presence with authority and our humble tribe quailed at their querulousness, first she then me after starting a 2nd attempt alone - retiring to the oregon side once again to recover her car n' kick about the conversation-can we revolved the rubik's cube of future combinations and settled upon giving something/anything a chance someday soon, assuming we live that long
- a solo beacon lap on a wind-wracked n' shady south side sans shirt was my true reward for listening to the Little Voice Inside Me and chopped the voyage home neatly in half - all i have to worry about now is tomorrow...
7/30 - 11 back-to-back beatard days and i'm a bit drained - 2 more laps for 21 total on this still youngish summer - crater lake complications and house-swapping horseshit clouds everything, my spirits low - might it be that nothing ever really gets better?
8/1 - sou'side summer beacon day 12 of 2019 - solo laps 22-23 - early morning rising to house-hunt n' tidy up domestically, kinda lame really but we are rarely masters of our own destiny i reckon - the daughter-child to her amiga's skamania abide in the late afternoon left time for yours truly to scramble up the bacon wand twice before achieving apogee and getting sucked back west once again to stuff more things into the bursting garage before the photo man comes to record it all in the morning - the great crater lake creep south at sunrise, all mortal concerns cast aside in the gawdamned interest of aquatic glory
8/8 - day 13 - laps 24, 25, 26 - a sad week away from the bacon-stone, but well spent - a swim-trip to crater lake - cock-blocked by the feds, we found better refuge at waldo lake, which was much like taking the 2nd hottest girl at the party home - union bidness in mcminville and quite alright, though it brought the summer death-knell to the forefront of a keening mind - rain in the west, after hours the beaconwand cast its spell and the world was my oyster again - gnome the larry in the gloaming lot, then kyle n' company came crawling in - three laps passing through numerous parties - some-guy-named-steve earned his Hero of Beacon Rock w/ oak-leaf clusters - placid blood flowed freely as it should in the scraping places - kyle got the kid up though competent legal counsel would eagerly have urged him not
8/9 -estival beacon aeon 14 - laps 27-28 - a lazy friday summer sleep-in, the first in some time - warm coffee n' cold eggs w/ the wifey over steven colbert n' some orange-is-the-new-black - the kids like college students, slow to rise - afternoon i ambled out to beacon to meet old ben - beat him by an hour so got a lap in alone before he arrived with his boy asher, sullen n' silent, as a man should be in this shocking modern age - led them up the route sans belays, which i reckon counts as solo too, though a rope was technically tied round my ample beer-gut - a gaggle of elk gamboling about the meadows below the eastern train track, their worries little ones in this wonderous season - the drive home dominated by the sweet smell of summer rain n' the dying sun...
8/11 - day 15 - a rare reverse-golden-sombrero raises the lap count to 32 on the summer - the trip took weather-faith, for the rain fell throughout the gorge on the drive in, even in the lot itself a profound mist made its presence known - a fool's errand i thought, but took my shoes down to the base anyway to see if the stone was dry despite 2 days of storms and so it was, and with hordes of portlanders putting their dirty libturd-hands all over it in flagrant degradation too - kyle n' bill n' joe n' countless over fools all encountered and gavreeted with, and one parcel of folks i passed 4 times in total over the next few hours - the history of the world it would seem, and fitting that the soundtrack was 4 episodes of a podcast all about the ending of it
8/12 - day 16 - lap 33 - the smell of sudden fiery death roused me at 5 and an hour later i arose in protest at my prickly senses - after tea and trailer park boys i eased myself eastwards for a single lap in the sun - the stone alone, i savored my solitude, the drip-drip of sweat the only sense of time to contend with - afterwards car-chores and lake-swimming w/ many chilluns
8/13 - day 17 - laps 34-35 - the world waxes largish, so what exactly is the goal now? last year the improbable # of 60 made me think 61 is all any sane man might relish, or maybe just 62 to stick a fork in the eye of roger morris, but now something much bigger indeed seems possible - how about 74 to offer the proverbial bitch-slap to barry bonds? even if that is to be the improbable mark, such a tally looms already large in the wind-screen and is to be sought for - the hazy outlines of a plan for a phenomenal 14-in-a-day assault in september with a whole heap of fools to propel the thing to a frenetic conclusion - that's in the future though - tonight was sublime solitude and shade and space for easy contemplation - a podcast on theoretical physics' hapless potential to create an end of the world to keep me company - the peregrines on the scene after being rather silent this past month - stone throwing teenage tourists and a positive conversation on the merits of manslaughter - a road trip begins tomorrow w/ the family and maybe a giant swim in crescent lake at the conclusion - there's marrow still in the bone of summer boys, and meat on it to spare as well
8/19 - day 18 - laps 36-40 for the rare Reverse Platinum Sombrero - a near week at the beach w/ the fam - a crossing of quinault and an epic lake crescent thing - barely a week left in summer 2019 i awoke wicked sore but set out east anyways - the stone near alone for the first 4 laps, but then dave n' steve where there n' we cackled our way upwards together alone to mushroom ledge n' some serious meditation
8/24 - day 19 - laps 41, 42 n' 43 meant it was a douglas adams day (shamefully i must admit i forget my towel, but proudly i can say i did not panic) - 3 days in the alpine lakes wilderness didn't beat me down enough i guess, 'cuz the girl-child asked to get carted out to skamania for the afternoon to cavort w/ her polish friends and i rallied to run laps while letting her have her what-have-you - summer is doomed and so are you
8/25 - day 20 - laps 44-45 - 11 CBIs n' 13 runs (new stats, to keep things fun n' make a game of the mundane - every meat-popsicle lapped is a Climber Batted In - runs are laps plus CBIs - good lord, the record couldn't be higher than 50 runs in a day could it?) - the coast guard earns its gold from yuppie scum along the banks of the rude columbia - nastia n' her main-squeeze set to scramble up blown-out in the blistering shade under the heavy hail of tourist stone, our beers n' smokes n' smalltalk cut savage short - the experiment to substitute a cordelette in lieu of a bolted anchor at the top an abject failure within 24 hours, though kinda an apollo 13 one since i got the cord returned as requested - 2 cruiser laps in the autumnally-building breeze with the crowds abounding, summer's done been set on a goddamn gibbet
8/26 - blackjack day - laps 46-7 make me prime again - 4 CBIs for 6 runs - a soft slumber ended in the gentlest fashion - the damned dentist - the dmv denied - summer slams into the brickwall while i straighten out the classroom - a big breeze builds as we stumble eastwards - the first lap looms into the time-traveler and his canadian dame, well over her head on the second pitch, so i stayed to help her suss out the sitch and sacrificed a hat trick - beers and the inevitable bullshiting - the world careens and carries us along in its endless crapulous fucking fashion
8/27 - summer beacon day double-deuce - laps 48-9 make me prime n' prone to wine - 96 degrees n' a big-breeze in the parking lot - the first day back to the what-have-you and the bullshite-factory appears to have been working overtime in my absence - cryptic runes n' rude cynosures, thank-fuck their clutches are so fleeting - a lap alone in the wild wind, and then another, all to seek and find the freek
8/28 - day 23, laps 50-51 - another hot day, minus the breeze - the mechanisms continue to rumble up to speed on the work machine, the corporate speak as thick as cancer but only half as deadly - hit beacon in a hurry w/ familialial functions to attend to in the soon-time - 26 minutes car to car on the first lap, but a bit more mellow on the second - a curtailed conversation on retro-bolting an anchor on the corner down in the parking lot, sadly one that seems to have concluded with them deciding to add yet another scar to the recently patched rock in question - i guess we'll see if they go through with it... - lovely thai dinner after back-to-school night at least and so it goes and goes
8/29 - day 24, laps 52-53 - awoke to the crack of thunder and the cold iron sound of roiling rain in the early hours - such wondrous slumber in a dry place, the wicked world just an open window away - the final pre-season day before the Big Show, the crest of bullshit surmounted and now we ride the flood tide to a preternatural future, knowing what is to come merely from a fleeting look back - work over, i walked out the door to doom-streaked clouds and rain but bounded east on enthusiasm alone, sure that the universe intended me to climb today or never again at all and not caring which it was to be - the deep funk of strange humidity on the trail down - mama deer and baby deer surprised me at close quarters on the trail and gave me a sudden sharp stab of quicksilver-fear, a sensation too rarely felt in this saccharine world where tomorrow is always assured and death is a landlord easily dispensed with - new friends re-encountered on the warrior path, lovely souls i'll never see again and that's a shame - ruminations atop the ridgeline, soaked in sweat and soon to get heading west, tower-bound yet pleasantly besotted with the present...surely someday this will all make sense?
8/30 - 7 days in a row at the fabulous beacon-wand summer-sweet spot makes it 25 total so far - corner laps 54-56, plus 11 CBIs for 14 runs on the day, the greatest since gestating the concept - the final friday before the big plunge - easy rising - dishes n' breakfast - the grey-gloom of many summer mornings that inevitably yields to glory soon after noon - adam's afterwards in the shade and breeze was total bliss - felt a bit frazzled n' forlorn before the end of the laps really, maybe a sign i need to sit my ass down for a few days, which would make some sorta sense i reckon given i can't remember a day i devoted to just lying around for a long while - that said it's a tower rock approach n' set-up tomorrow w/ a huge sunday afterwards, so maybe labor day will equal its lamentations and i'll rest then?
9/3 - day 26 - 1 lap (#57), 2 CBIs - opening day of the 19-20 campaign, the 22nd of my career - old enough now that i'm teaching my daughter's friends, apparently she talks to them so i can actually find out some things about her from them
- only time for one lap before fetching the boy-child from crewing out there on the big lake - for the best really, i'm wicked whooped still from the trial of tower rock
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trip 17 - 9/2/19 - tower rock in a day w/ geoff n' ben for the second ascent ever and the first one-day ascent (though barely so, 15 hrs from base to top) - the summer's been pumped empty, but there's a few ounces in the bottom still - we rally round my place n' spend time solving the tetris problem in the subaru - laughter n' bent space n' soon enough we're by the sighing shores of the cispus before the quiet evening could close in - sumptuous sandwiches n' nattering over the end of the world n' the glim-glamour of geoff's prime party lights - no time for nonsense, we dispense w/ fixing lines and wake at 4 a.m. instead, still half-drunk and full-empty of vim n' vigor - the trail now so proud and clear it can easily be followed in the dark, especially when you've bent your will to the fleeting wheel - wet w/ sweat in the humid air i begin our humble bound upwards by the headlight's glare, the overhanging summit obscured by fog - i do the first 4 pitches then yield to geoff, full ready for a break - the fixed rope near 5 years old now but in fine shape - geoff takes us to the dances with death and then we give ben a whirl where he whines much as you'd think he should - time crawls and it becomes clear we'll be on top after the day's died - a cluster-fuck of ropes getting to pitch 12 - geoff leads that wicked steepness and i follow it for the first time ever, experiencing the challenge of elementary physics - darkness creeps in as pain and frustration purchases our souls at cut rate prices - geoff tries to short-fix the final pitch but is flummoxed by the simple fact that the moss reclaimed the first bolt after only a few years - i draw the second-shortest straw and figure it out, summiting alone in the baleful wind amid the roar of meteors in the milky-way clear sky - the walk down the trail-less spongy forest something i promised myself i'd forget and so i promptly have - camp at last after 20 1/2 hours on the go, geoff collapses and causes concern, but beer and carrots and a lack of compassion brings him around finally - a profound sleep, so sore i dreamt of sleeping and could not be wakened by the creak of crows long after the sun noodled up over our heavily forested scene - a local ben scooted up and we bantered about his visions of us on the cliffside the day before, then it was the long voyage back and battening down the veritable hatches for the coming campaign
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trip #16 - july 21-22, 2017
rapunzel's back in rehab is now ready for whatever rude, idle-minded customers might care to come her way - she ain't particular and man, for a hillbilly woman all moss-covered and whiskey addled, she sure is purty
it took the metaphorical third shot to see her finished, but after a weapons-grade-retard attempt last cock-tober and another last month that went off the rails w/o warning, me, big bill, n' gentleman geoff finally managed to malinger our way through the 13 steps of rehab this weekend and can now confidently claim ourselves to be Redeemed Men
swimming in the shade w/ the fam on thursday turned into sangria in the backseat on the long voyage north afterwards, and then ended indignantly w/ me sharting myself upon arriving at the dark, dank forest trailhead - not the most auspicious of augors, but thank the sweet baby-back-rib jeebus i'd brought another pair of shorts...
not ones to turn in early, geoff n' i stayed up late howling at the moon and indulging in new-found muzak, swilling n' smoking n' what not and therefore needled poor bill the next morning with our torpor to rise n' get to the bidness, which he'd been chomping at the bit for since sunup
still, in the end, we eventually got our shit straight and wandered up the hill for the umpteenth time, me sweating like a purblind lesbian at pike's place on a sultry summer afternoon - a half-hour later we were at the base and i relaxed, letting them two boys tangle w/ the first 2 pitches while i debauched myself in regal splendour, watching the game unfold above me
i jugged up and did the dog-day-long p3 as geoff went back down to the ground, leaving bill to do the wild p4 and giving me the pleasure of following it for the first time - the work of the first day done, we then fixed back down to the ground and returned to camp
it was weird to be back and idle by the middle of the afternoon, but we made do, getting our vittles on and preparing for an early sleep in order to rise w/ the sun on saturday, swatting black flies and bull-shiting about days gone by
saturday's dawn came just after 430, and soon thereafter we Did the Necessaries n' noodled on up the track, me gut-weary and wondering if a half-frozen don miguel breakfast burrito was really what me wounded bowels wanted
the first 2 jugs are easy, but the 3rd was a horrible sweat-fest, partly b/c we didn't have a long enough static to use the midpoint anchor to break up the long jug (it's more or less exactly 60 meters from the top of p4 to the top of p2, and relentlessly overhanging, especially at the end) - the one thing in our favor was the marine layer of clouds that kept the sun off us as we each took the better part of an hour to thrutch up it
p5 is another long one, but i did it last month and so i volunteered for it on the basis i'd get us through it fastest, though i was already feeling a wee bit whupped
p6-7 we cruised through easily for reasons the 2nd ascent team will quickly appreciate, though not w/o incident as bill, despite endless warnings, accidentally kicked off a belayer-slayer atop p6 that nearly made the world a lawyer shorter as poor geoff was just below
excitement waxed john holmes large once we hit "the fault" and p8 - the summit now is close enough to look conceivable, and after all the incredible steepness of the lower wall, now it's a reasonable angle to get up to the base of the upper wall - bill shot across it w/o complaint
p9 is the "dances w/ death" pitch, and i was mortal concerned w/ how to rig it so that no one got kilt - geoff figured he'd rather lead it than sweat below, waiting for big blocks to plummet on him, so i hung at the bottom of the fault and watched the show while bill belayed - my fears proved pretty unwarranted, though geoff's eyes got big-around enough at what he'd wandered through that i at least felt vindicated in my caution - he made good time up the fresh and fearful steep way while bill n' i chuckled n' took in the scenery, hoping another f-15 eagle would come roaring through the valley below as it had the day before, just a football field or two away
bill and i each relead p9 on top-rope - we didn't jug the line b/c there are so many sharp edges and fresh blocks that either chopping the line or weighting a block such that it crashes down is all too imaginable for a fear-fucked modern mammal
once in the rotten notch we felt good n' giddy - the scary part done, we had a good bit of light left and were only 3 rope-lengths from the top - bill, whose shoulder ailments seemed to have all but disappeared after 2 years of constant complaint, linked p9&10, fixing a static 2/3 up such that i could reach him far faster than belayer geoff - i howled in pain after a small rock, dislodged by bill's rope, bounced down the gully n' peeled back the flesh of my thumb
p12 i lead in unorthodox style, on a static line as geoff was still coming up the leadline - i'd done it so many damn times i figured there was no fear of falling - what was aggravating was yet again my adjustable daisy had given up the ghost after holding my fat-ass in place too long, and the replacement i borrowed off bill promptly died too - 12 is so steep it's a bit of a nut-kicker trying to do it old school w/ just a fifi
the shadows were growing damn long, but we figured to link 13 & 14 and be on top w/ daylight left - geoff got the honor of bringing this pleasing project to its ultimate ejaculation, and up he went - amusingly, though he'd put this one up last summer, he'd forgotten he'd made something of a challenge out of it then, and thus conspired to short-cock himself, killing himself w/ drag and letting me do p14 (all 50-some-odd feet of it) and be the first to flop onto the dusty summit
i guess we should have had a good hullabaloo on top but the combination of weariness and worry at the prospect of the jungle-thrash downhill in the dusk left us with little more inclination than for a perfunctory handshake and a quick glance around at the alpen-glow
after ditching all our gear at the summit saddle (we figured we'd drop in the next day from above and pick it all up), we banged down like bob-sledders on fire, hoping to regain the base before total dark and just managed to pull it off - i sucked down my victory can of pbr as the stars started to rise, and then by headlamp we made the short trip back to camp, where low-n-behold ole'kyle was, thus solving the mystery of who'd been hooting up at us periodically through the day
our dreams fulfilled, we wallowed in sweet weariness n' got our party on, me too tired but to drink gatorade n' burgundy n' suck down smoke n' cackle at this chapter of life concluded - the sun rose the next day and once again we were only ordinary men
many more routes to manufacture up the teetering tower, should anyone have the taste for it - i fear these fellows may be shot of it now
i hope to remember these past 26 or so months of wandering back and forth with this parcel of fools fondly - ben, kyle, bryan, geoff and bill (the last 2 especially) all made their contributions, the usual result being a mixture of fear, elation and gut-laffs that doesn't appear to have a name that comes quick to mind
go get it people - i'll be very surprised if you don't find it worth your time - after all, how many grade V big wall climbs are there in washington, and all bolts to boot? throw in the close distance to portland/seattle and the relatively easy approach/descent, and i'd think this tawdry little lady's got a chance at classic status
topo
bill leading p8 to base of "dances with death"
bill on p10, leading out of the rotten notch
top of p12
me just below p13 anchor, a few feet below summit
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23 hours ago, ivan said:
2018 saw 60 solo laps, a # beyond imagination, but possible by a weird combination of prime weather and a personal calendar no me gusta
7/20/19 - south side day 1 of the year, well after le grande opening i'll grant you as i sallied up n' down the coast courting more arduous adventures - swimming in the olympics, multi-day colonel bob bumblefuck, marriage counselor sheenagins n' regular ole climbing in leavenworth w/ the silvermans shit-talking each other at every turn, then near a week about mt whitney w/ the whiskey hooligans - 2 solo laps in the shade, every hold an old friend and unforgotten - geoff n' kyle n' larry the gnome at the top n' beers n' bullshitting at the base - managed 70 solo laps last summer, so that's 1/35 of the way to repeating that unbelievable total
7/21 - day 2 - laps 3-4 - hey, only 33 more days at this rate to top last year - foiled upon arrival at battle ground lake, i bounced off fallen leaf lake too n' resigned meself to clambering out at beacon - once again the rock all to myself, despite the weekend situation - a lap alone, then another w/ some folks thrashing their way up the original dods exit at the end - summer's halfway home n' i'm still all smiles
7/22 - day 3 - laps 5-7 - a hat trick on a hottish day, 2 in the sun and the third in the shade the hottest of all w/ numerous half-clad hotties along the way
7/23 - day 4 - lap 8 - swam a slow wetsuit-less mile in fallen leaf under cloudy n' cool skies, fetched the boy child from camp, then deposited him again before darting out to the bacon-wand for a single ascent before coming back camas-ways to peruse new houses and ultimately sup on delectable thai takeout
7/24 - day 5 - laps 9-10 - ten laps in five days not so shabby - nary a soul in sight on this sweatyish day, but steve in the parking lot - a week a paradise it would seem...
7/25 - another hat-trick makes it 13 laps in 6 days, a healthy clip - irish death's n' lovely crowds n' sun n' shade and all after a right-nice long swim continued a paradise-theme-of-a-summer so far...
7/26 - the end of my first summer beacon week and a productive one with 2 more laps to bring the total to 15, 1/4 of the way to last year's ludicrous total, but at a pace to bury it should that be my jealous jam on looking back (i've heard tale their no more nefarious thief than nostalgia though) - a mile swim in fallen leaf while the wulf-man paddled away on lake vancouver, then beacon just after noon in the brutal brightness - shed my black shirt in favor of royal blue - lovely pair of sheilas atop tree ledge on the first lap - sucked down my beer in a batch of shade in the gut under uprising, panting like a bitch - a horde of latinos on the way down, one fella w/ a pack to support the lot of them for a month if need be - the second lap lonely but bearably in the breeze, fat drops of sweat drip-dripping and sizzling away on the stone - then house-hunting and general real-world bummer concerns...
7/27 - summer beacon day 8 - the late morning meetup out near no'bo - adam n' claire n' naterring as we waited for ole'geoff to arrive w/ his prized n' feared jet-ski - beers n' bullshitting n' plan forming - claire drove us up near the dam and we flung ourselves into hamilton creek, expecting far more fun than the fickle world felt like paying out, stumbling mid-knee forever through the stream in wetsuits w/ stuff sacks full of beer - the main current at last and drifting down under the beacon face, admiring some hard-dudes dancing on the journey to the east above big ledge - many more bevies on the dock afterwards n' some soft-porn skinny-dipping by the masses, than back to the little road hold-out before cursing them fools n' cutting loose to clamber up the corner in the gloaming-dark before darting back to home for chicken salad n' discoursing over stranger things
7/28 - beacon day 9 - 2 more laps makes it 18, a tear beyond my tenous memory - wurst to drag adam's esposita up the corner at first, but she foreswore the morning heat and when adam got froggy on the immediate details i said fork-it n' went n' did a lap while he helped a timberline high-to-do set up a big kayak shuttle down to kalama- soggy as hell from sweat i returned as his business was concluded, having to concede another climb in the immediate future was fucked - we repaired to the river again then n' had a mort of swimming n' redneck shenanigans before i felt honor-bound to take advantage of the recent shade for another clambornation n' siddle on back home - plenty of folks casting about at the base, one even who recognized my nom de guerre n' threw a compliment my way that in hindsight i think i mighta thrown back a tad too heelish - perhaps if i spent more time on my people skills instead of scratching the Endless Itch?
7/29 - was supposed to be a beacon-less day but the beacon lords giveth n' they take away too - beacon day 10 (in a row!) at any rate, n' solo lap 19 - met the k19 near noon after carting the boy child to row-row-your-boating on lake vancouver and stuffing in a quick swim at fallen leaf lake - after dressing his sadly chapped hands i cast out camas-ways - the plan was the adventure swim to phoca rock from the washington side, a jam i've yet to even get wet for yet despite numerous attempts, and this one the same - nastia said she was illish and prefered a columbia crossing at hood river instead, so sure, why not? we both drove to set up a car shuttle and noticed near arrival that the wind was whipping, the waves white-capped and their swells nice n' rolling long - gave me the heebie-jeebies a bit, soul-scarred as i remain from the one and only trans-columbia transit i made a few years back w/ ole'pat when the gorge was freshly burnt and i was perhaps drunk by naval standards at our 10 am departure (holy jeebus, that incident still ranks high on my most-terrified ever list) - after setting up the shuttle though we gave her a go, me in my wetsuit and snorkel and boots and web-gloves and day-glo orange personal swimmer buoy (and sober besides, having learnt all kinds of lessons that chilly october morning) but the russkaya of course was just in her dainty 2-piece and rocking the doggy paddle stroke, true russian-berserker style and blazeningly loving it - not too far from shore the waves and winds announced their presence with authority and our humble tribe quailed at their querulousness, first she then me after starting a 2nd attempt alone - retiring to the oregon side once again to recover her car n' kick about the conversation-can we revolved the rubik's cube of future combinations and settled upon giving something/anything a chance someday soon, assuming we live that long
- a solo beacon lap on a wind-wracked n' shady south side sans shirt was my true reward for listening to the Little Voice Inside Me and chopped the voyage home neatly in half - all i have to worry about now is tomorrow...
7/30 - 11 back-to-back beatard days and i'm a bit drained - 2 more laps for 21 total on this still youngish summer - crater lake complications and house-swapping horseshit clouds everything, my spirits low - might it be that nothing ever really gets better?
8/1 - sou'side summer beacon day 12 of 2019 - solo laps 22-23 - early morning rising to house-hunt n' tidy up domestically, kinda lame really but we are rarely masters of our own destiny i reckon - the daughter-child to her amiga's skamania abide in the late afternoon left time for yours truly to scramble up the bacon wand twice before achieving apogee and getting sucked back west once again to stuff more things into the bursting garage before the photo man comes to record it all in the morning - the great crater lake creep south at sunrise, all mortal concerns cast aside in the gawdamned interest of aquatic glory
8/8 - day 13 - laps 24, 25, 26 - a sad week away from the bacon-stone, but well spent - a swim-trip to crater lake - cock-blocked by the feds, we found better refuge at waldo lake, which was much like taking the 2nd hottest girl at the party home - union bidness in mcminville and quite alright, though it brought the summer death-knell to the forefront of a keening mind - rain in the west, after hours the beaconwand cast its spell and the world was my oyster again - gnome the larry in the gloaming lot, then kyle n' company came crawling in - three laps passing through numerous parties - some-guy-named-steve earned his Hero of Beacon Rock w/ oak-leaf clusters - placid blood flowed freely as it should in the scraping places - kyle got the kid up though competent legal counsel would eagerly have urged him not
8/9 -estival beacon aeon 14 - laps 27-28 - a lazy friday summer sleep-in, the first in some time - warm coffee n' cold eggs w/ the wifey over steven colbert n' some orange-is-the-new-black - the kids like college students, slow to rise - afternoon i ambled out to beacon to meet old ben - beat him by an hour so got a lap in alone before he arrived with his boy asher, sullen n' silent, as a man should be in this shocking modern age - led them up the route sans belays, which i reckon counts as solo too, though a rope was technically tied round my ample beer-gut - a gaggle of elk gamboling about the meadows below the eastern train track, their worries little ones in this wonderous season - the drive home dominated by the sweet smell of summer rain n' the dying sun...
8/11 - day 15 - a rare reverse-golden-sombrero raises the lap count to 32 on the summer - the trip took weather-faith, for the rain fell throughout the gorge on the drive in, even in the lot itself a profound mist made its presence known - a fool's errand i thought, but took my shoes down to the base anyway to see if the stone was dry despite 2 days of storms and so it was, and with hordes of portlanders putting their dirty libturd-hands all over it in flagrant degradation too - kyle n' bill n' joe n' countless over fools all encountered and gavreeted with, and one parcel of folks i passed 4 times in total over the next few hours - the history of the world it would seem, and fitting that the soundtrack was 4 episodes of a podcast all about the ending of it
8/12 - day 16 - lap 33 - the smell of sudden fiery death roused me at 5 and an hour later i arose in protest at my prickly senses - after tea and trailer park boys i eased myself eastwards for a single lap in the sun - the stone alone, i savored my solitude, the drip-drip of sweat the only sense of time to contend with - afterwards car-chores and lake-swimming w/ many chilluns
8/13 - day 17 - laps 34-35 - the world waxes largish, so what exactly is the goal now? last year the improbable # of 60 made me think 61 is all any sane man might relish, or maybe just 62 to stick a fork in the eye of roger morris, but now something much bigger indeed seems possible - how about 74 to offer the proverbial bitch-slap to barry bonds? even if that is to be the improbable mark, such a tally looms already large in the wind-screen and is to be sought for - the hazy outlines of a plan for a phenomenal 14-in-a-day assault in september with a whole heap of fools to propel the thing to a frenetic conclusion - that's in the future though - tonight was sublime solitude and shade and space for easy contemplation - a podcast on theoretical physics' hapless potential to create an end of the world to keep me company - the peregrines on the scene after being rather silent this past month - stone throwing teenage tourists and a positive conversation on the merits of manslaughter - a road trip begins tomorrow w/ the family and maybe a giant swim in crescent lake at the conclusion - there's marrow still in the bone of summer boys, and meat on it to spare as well
8/19 - day 18 - laps 36-40 for the rare Reverse Platinum Sombrero - a near week at the beach w/ the fam - a crossing of quinault and an epic lake crescent thing - barely a week left in summer 2019 i awoke wicked sore but set out east anyways - the stone near alone for the first 4 laps, but then dave n' steve where there n' we cackled our way upwards together alone to mushroom ledge n' some serious meditation
8/24 - day 19 - laps 41, 42 n' 43 meant it was a douglas adams day (shamefully i must admit i forget my towel, but proudly i can say i did not panic) - 3 days in the alpine lakes wilderness didn't beat me down enough i guess, 'cuz the girl-child asked to get carted out to skamania for the afternoon to cavort w/ her polish friends and i rallied to run laps while letting her have her what-have-you - summer is doomed and so are you
8/25 - day 20 - laps 44-45 - 11 CBIs n' 13 runs (new stats, to keep things fun n' make a game of the mundane - every meat-popsicle lapped is a Climber Batted In - runs are laps plus CBIs - good lord, the record couldn't be higher than 50 runs in a day could it?) - the coast guard earns its gold from yuppie scum along the banks of the rude columbia - nastia n' her main-squeeze set to scramble up blown-out in the blistering shade under the heavy hail of tourist stone, our beers n' smokes n' smalltalk cut savage short - the experiment to substitute a cordelette in lieu of a bolted anchor at the top an abject failure within 24 hours, though kinda an apollo 13 one since i got the cord returned as requested - 2 cruiser laps in the autumnally-building breeze with the crowds abounding, summer's done been set on a goddamn gibbet
8/26 - blackjack day - laps 46-7 make me prime again - 4 CBIs for 6 runs - a soft slumber ended in the gentlest fashion - the damned dentist - the dmv denied - summer slams into the brickwall while i straighten out the classroom - a big breeze builds as we stumble eastwards - the first lap looms into the time-traveler and his canadian dame, well over her head on the second pitch, so i stayed to help her suss out the sitch and sacrificed a hat trick - beers and the inevitable bullshiting - the world careens and carries us along in its endless crapulous fucking fashion
8/27 - summer beacon day double-deuce - laps 48-9 make me prime n' prone to wine - 96 degrees n' a big-breeze in the parking lot - the first day back to the what-have-you and the bullshite-factory appears to have been working overtime in my absence - cryptic runes n' rude cynosures, thank-fuck their clutches are so fleeting - a lap alone in the wild wind, and then another, all to seek and find the freek
8/28 - day 23, laps 50-51 - another hot day, minus the breeze - the mechanisms continue to rumble up to speed on the work machine, the corporate speak as thick as cancer but only half as deadly - hit beacon in a hurry w/ familialial functions to attend to in the soon-time - 26 minutes car to car on the first lap, but a bit more mellow on the second - a curtailed conversation on retro-bolting an anchor on the corner down in the parking lot, sadly one that seems to have concluded with them deciding to add yet another scar to the recently patched rock in question - i guess we'll see if they go through with it... - lovely thai dinner after back-to-school night at least and so it goes and goes
8/29 - day 24, laps 52-53 - awoke to the crack of thunder and the cold iron sound of roiling rain in the early hours - such wondrous slumber in a dry place, the wicked world just an open window away - the final pre-season day before the Big Show, the crest of bullshit surmounted and now we ride the flood tide to a preternatural future, knowing what is to come merely from a fleeting look back - work over, i walked out the door to doom-streaked clouds and rain but bounded east on enthusiasm alone, sure that the universe intended me to climb today or never again at all and not caring which it was to be - the deep funk of strange humidity on the trail down - mama deer and baby deer surprised me at close quarters on the trail and gave me a sudden sharp stab of quicksilver-fear, a sensation too rarely felt in this saccharine world where tomorrow is always assured and death is a landlord easily dispensed with - new friends re-encountered on the warrior path, lovely souls i'll never see again and that's a shame - ruminations atop the ridgeline, soaked in sweat and soon to get heading west, tower-bound yet pleasantly besotted with the present...surely someday this will all make sense?
8/30 - 7 days in a row at the fabulous beacon-wand summer-sweet spot makes it 25 total so far - corner laps 54-56, plus 11 CBIs for 14 runs on the day, the greatest since gestating the concept - the final friday before the big plunge - easy rising - dishes n' breakfast - the grey-gloom of many summer mornings that inevitably yields to glory soon after noon - adam's afterwards in the shade and breeze was total bliss - felt a bit frazzled n' forlorn before the end of the laps really, maybe a sign i need to sit my ass down for a few days, which would make some sorta sense i reckon given i can't remember a day i devoted to just lying around for a long while - that said it's a tower rock approach n' set-up tomorrow w/ a huge sunday afterwards, so maybe labor day will equal its lamentations and i'll rest then?
-
22 hours ago, ivan said:
2018 saw 60 solo laps, a # beyond imagination, but possible by a weird combination of prime weather and a personal calendar no me gusta
7/20/19 - south side day 1 of the year, well after le grande opening i'll grant you as i sallied up n' down the coast courting more arduous adventures - swimming in the olympics, multi-day colonel bob bumblefuck, marriage counselor sheenagins n' regular ole climbing in leavenworth w/ the silvermans shit-talking each other at every turn, then near a week about mt whitney w/ the whiskey hooligans - 2 solo laps in the shade, every hold an old friend and unforgotten - geoff n' kyle n' larry the gnome at the top n' beers n' bullshitting at the base - managed 70 solo laps last summer, so that's 1/35 of the way to repeating that unbelievable total
7/21 - day 2 - laps 3-4 - hey, only 33 more days at this rate to top last year - foiled upon arrival at battle ground lake, i bounced off fallen leaf lake too n' resigned meself to clambering out at beacon - once again the rock all to myself, despite the weekend situation - a lap alone, then another w/ some folks thrashing their way up the original dods exit at the end - summer's halfway home n' i'm still all smiles
7/22 - day 3 - laps 5-7 - a hat trick on a hottish day, 2 in the sun and the third in the shade the hottest of all w/ numerous half-clad hotties along the way
7/23 - day 4 - lap 8 - swam a slow wetsuit-less mile in fallen leaf under cloudy n' cool skies, fetched the boy child from camp, then deposited him again before darting out to the bacon-wand for a single ascent before coming back camas-ways to peruse new houses and ultimately sup on delectable thai takeout
7/24 - day 5 - laps 9-10 - ten laps in five days not so shabby - nary a soul in sight on this sweatyish day, but steve in the parking lot - a week a paradise it would seem...
7/25 - another hat-trick makes it 13 laps in 6 days, a healthy clip - irish death's n' lovely crowds n' sun n' shade and all after a right-nice long swim continued a paradise-theme-of-a-summer so far...
7/26 - the end of my first summer beacon week and a productive one with 2 more laps to bring the total to 15, 1/4 of the way to last year's ludicrous total, but at a pace to bury it should that be my jealous jam on looking back (i've heard tale their no more nefarious thief than nostalgia though) - a mile swim in fallen leaf while the wulf-man paddled away on lake vancouver, then beacon just after noon in the brutal brightness - shed my black shirt in favor of royal blue - lovely pair of sheilas atop tree ledge on the first lap - sucked down my beer in a batch of shade in the gut under uprising, panting like a bitch - a horde of latinos on the way down, one fella w/ a pack to support the lot of them for a month if need be - the second lap lonely but bearably in the breeze, fat drops of sweat drip-dripping and sizzling away on the stone - then house-hunting and general real-world bummer concerns...
7/27 - summer beacon day 8 - the late morning meetup out near no'bo - adam n' claire n' naterring as we waited for ole'geoff to arrive w/ his prized n' feared jet-ski - beers n' bullshitting n' plan forming - claire drove us up near the dam and we flung ourselves into hamilton creek, expecting far more fun than the fickle world felt like paying out, stumbling mid-knee forever through the stream in wetsuits w/ stuff sacks full of beer - the main current at last and drifting down under the beacon face, admiring some hard-dudes dancing on the journey to the east above big ledge - many more bevies on the dock afterwards n' some soft-porn skinny-dipping by the masses, than back to the little road hold-out before cursing them fools n' cutting loose to clamber up the corner in the gloaming-dark before darting back to home for chicken salad n' discoursing over stranger things
7/28 - beacon day 9 - 2 more laps makes it 18, a tear beyond my tenous memory - wurst to drag adam's esposita up the corner at first, but she foreswore the morning heat and when adam got froggy on the immediate details i said fork-it n' went n' did a lap while he helped a timberline high-to-do set up a big kayak shuttle down to kalama- soggy as hell from sweat i returned as his business was concluded, having to concede another climb in the immediate future was fucked - we repaired to the river again then n' had a mort of swimming n' redneck shenanigans before i felt honor-bound to take advantage of the recent shade for another clambornation n' siddle on back home - plenty of folks casting about at the base, one even who recognized my nom de guerre n' threw a compliment my way that in hindsight i think i mighta thrown back a tad too heelish - perhaps if i spent more time on my people skills instead of scratching the Endless Itch?
7/29 - was supposed to be a beacon-less day but the beacon lords giveth n' they take away too - beacon day 10 (in a row!) at any rate, n' solo lap 19 - met the k19 near noon after carting the boy child to row-row-your-boating on lake vancouver and stuffing in a quick swim at fallen leaf lake - after dressing his sadly chapped hands i cast out camas-ways - the plan was the adventure swim to phoca rock from the washington side, a jam i've yet to even get wet for yet despite numerous attempts, and this one the same - nastia said she was illish and prefered a columbia crossing at hood river instead, so sure, why not? we both drove to set up a car shuttle and noticed near arrival that the wind was whipping, the waves white-capped and their swells nice n' rolling long - gave me the heebie-jeebies a bit, soul-scarred as i remain from the one and only trans-columbia transit i made a few years back w/ ole'pat when the gorge was freshly burnt and i was perhaps drunk by naval standards at our 10 am departure (holy jeebus, that incident still ranks high on my most-terrified ever list) - after setting up the shuttle though we gave her a go, me in my wetsuit and snorkel and boots and web-gloves and day-glo orange personal swimmer buoy (and sober besides, having learnt all kinds of lessons that chilly october morning) but the russkaya of course was just in her dainty 2-piece and rocking the doggy paddle stroke, true russian-berserker style and blazeningly loving it - not too far from shore the waves and winds announced their presence with authority and our humble tribe quailed at their querulousness, first she then me after starting a 2nd attempt alone - retiring to the oregon side once again to recover her car n' kick about the conversation-can we revolved the rubik's cube of future combinations and settled upon giving something/anything a chance someday soon, assuming we live that long
- a solo beacon lap on a wind-wracked n' shady south side sans shirt was my true reward for listening to the Little Voice Inside Me and chopped the voyage home neatly in half - all i have to worry about now is tomorrow...
7/30 - 11 back-to-back beatard days and i'm a bit drained - 2 more laps for 21 total on this still youngish summer - crater lake complications and house-swapping horseshit clouds everything, my spirits low - might it be that nothing ever really gets better?
8/1 - sou'side summer beacon day 12 of 2019 - solo laps 22-23 - early morning rising to house-hunt n' tidy up domestically, kinda lame really but we are rarely masters of our own destiny i reckon - the daughter-child to her amiga's skamania abide in the late afternoon left time for yours truly to scramble up the bacon wand twice before achieving apogee and getting sucked back west once again to stuff more things into the bursting garage before the photo man comes to record it all in the morning - the great crater lake creep south at sunrise, all mortal concerns cast aside in the gawdamned interest of aquatic glory
8/8 - day 13 - laps 24, 25, 26 - a sad week away from the bacon-stone, but well spent - a swim-trip to crater lake - cock-blocked by the feds, we found better refuge at waldo lake, which was much like taking the 2nd hottest girl at the party home - union bidness in mcminville and quite alright, though it brought the summer death-knell to the forefront of a keening mind - rain in the west, after hours the beaconwand cast its spell and the world was my oyster again - gnome the larry in the gloaming lot, then kyle n' company came crawling in - three laps passing through numerous parties - some-guy-named-steve earned his Hero of Beacon Rock w/ oak-leaf clusters - placid blood flowed freely as it should in the scraping places - kyle got the kid up though competent legal counsel would eagerly have urged him not
8/9 -estival beacon aeon 14 - laps 27-28 - a lazy friday summer sleep-in, the first in some time - warm coffee n' cold eggs w/ the wifey over steven colbert n' some orange-is-the-new-black - the kids like college students, slow to rise - afternoon i ambled out to beacon to meet old ben - beat him by an hour so got a lap in alone before he arrived with his boy asher, sullen n' silent, as a man should be in this shocking modern age - led them up the route sans belays, which i reckon counts as solo too, though a rope was technically tied round my ample beer-gut - a gaggle of elk gamboling about the meadows below the eastern train track, their worries little ones in this wonderous season - the drive home dominated by the sweet smell of summer rain n' the dying sun...
8/11 - day 15 - a rare reverse-golden-sombrero raises the lap count to 32 on the summer - the trip took weather-faith, for the rain fell throughout the gorge on the drive in, even in the lot itself a profound mist made its presence known - a fool's errand i thought, but took my shoes down to the base anyway to see if the stone was dry despite 2 days of storms and so it was, and with hordes of portlanders putting their dirty libturd-hands all over it in flagrant degradation too - kyle n' bill n' joe n' countless over fools all encountered and gavreeted with, and one parcel of folks i passed 4 times in total over the next few hours - the history of the world it would seem, and fitting that the soundtrack was 4 episodes of a podcast all about the ending of it
8/12 - day 16 - lap 33 - the smell of sudden fiery death roused me at 5 and an hour later i arose in protest at my prickly senses - after tea and trailer park boys i eased myself eastwards for a single lap in the sun - the stone alone, i savored my solitude, the drip-drip of sweat the only sense of time to contend with - afterwards car-chores and lake-swimming w/ many chilluns
8/13 - day 17 - laps 34-35 - the world waxes largish, so what exactly is the goal now? last year the improbable # of 60 made me think 61 is all any sane man might relish, or maybe just 62 to stick a fork in the eye of roger morris, but now something much bigger indeed seems possible - how about 74 to offer the proverbial bitch-slap to barry bonds? even if that is to be the improbable mark, such a tally looms already large in the wind-screen and is to be sought for - the hazy outlines of a plan for a phenomenal 14-in-a-day assault in september with a whole heap of fools to propel the thing to a frenetic conclusion - that's in the future though - tonight was sublime solitude and shade and space for easy contemplation - a podcast on theoretical physics' hapless potential to create an end of the world to keep me company - the peregrines on the scene after being rather silent this past month - stone throwing teenage tourists and a positive conversation on the merits of manslaughter - a road trip begins tomorrow w/ the family and maybe a giant swim in crescent lake at the conclusion - there's marrow still in the bone of summer boys, and meat on it to spare as well
8/19 - day 18 - laps 36-40 for the rare Reverse Platinum Sombrero - a near week at the beach w/ the fam - a crossing of quinault and an epic lake crescent thing - barely a week left in summer 2019 i awoke wicked sore but set out east anyways - the stone near alone for the first 4 laps, but then dave n' steve where there n' we cackled our way upwards together alone to mushroom ledge n' some serious meditation
8/24 - day 19 - laps 41, 42 n' 43 meant it was a douglas adams day (shamefully i must admit i forget my towel, but proudly i can say i did not panic) - 3 days in the alpine lakes wilderness didn't beat me down enough i guess, 'cuz the girl-child asked to get carted out to skamania for the afternoon to cavort w/ her polish friends and i rallied to run laps while letting her have her what-have-you - summer is doomed and so are you
8/25 - day 20 - laps 44-45 - 11 CBIs n' 13 runs (new stats, to keep things fun n' make a game of the mundane - every meat-popsicle lapped is a Climber Batted In - runs are laps plus CBIs - good lord, the record couldn't be higher than 50 runs in a day could it?) - the coast guard earns its gold from yuppie scum along the banks of the rude columbia - nastia n' her main-squeeze set to scramble up blown-out in the blistering shade under the heavy hail of tourist stone, our beers n' smokes n' smalltalk cut savage short - the experiment to substitute a cordelette in lieu of a bolted anchor at the top an abject failure within 24 hours, though kinda an apollo 13 one since i got the cord returned as requested - 2 cruiser laps in the autumnally-building breeze with the crowds abounding, summer's done been set on a goddamn gibbet
8/26 - blackjack day - laps 46-7 make me prime again - 4 CBIs for 6 runs - a soft slumber ended in the gentlest fashion - the damned dentist - the dmv denied - summer slams into the brickwall while i straighten out the classroom - a big breeze builds as we stumble eastwards - the first lap looms into the time-traveler and his canadian dame, well over her head on the second pitch, so i stayed to help her suss out the sitch and sacrificed a hat trick - beers and the inevitable bullshiting - the world careens and carries us along in its endless crapulous fucking fashion
8/27 - summer beacon day double-deuce - laps 48-9 make me prime n' prone to wine - 96 degrees n' a big-breeze in the parking lot - the first day back to the what-have-you and the bullshite-factory appears to have been working overtime in my absence - cryptic runes n' rude cynosures, thank-fuck their clutches are so fleeting - a lap alone in the wild wind, and then another, all to seek and find the freek
8/28 - day 23, laps 50-51 - another hot day, minus the breeze - the mechanisms continue to rumble up to speed on the work machine, the corporate speak as thick as cancer but only half as deadly - hit beacon in a hurry w/ familialial functions to attend to in the soon-time - 26 minutes car to car on the first lap, but a bit more mellow on the second - a curtailed conversation on retro-bolting an anchor on the corner down in the parking lot, sadly one that seems to have concluded with them deciding to add yet another scar to the recently patched rock in question - i guess we'll see if they go through with it... - lovely thai dinner after back-to-school night at least and so it goes and goes
8/29 - day 24, laps 52-53 - awoke to the crack of thunder and the cold iron sound of roiling rain in the early hours - such wondrous slumber in a dry place, the wicked world just an open window away - the final pre-season day before the Big Show, the crest of bullshit surmounted and now we ride the flood tide to a preternatural future, knowing what is to come merely from a fleeting look back - work over, i walked out the door to doom-streaked clouds and rain but bounded east on enthusiasm alone, sure that the universe intended me to climb today or never again at all and not caring which it was to be - the deep funk of strange humidity on the trail down - mama deer and baby deer surprised me at close quarters on the trail and gave me a sudden sharp stab of quicksilver-fear, a sensation too rarely felt in this saccharine world where tomorrow is always assured and death is a landlord easily dispensed with - new friends re-encountered on the warrior path, lovely souls i'll never see again and that's a shame - ruminations atop the ridgeline, soaked in sweat and soon to get heading west, tower-bound yet pleasantly besotted with the present...surely someday this will all make sense?
-
On 8/27/2019 at 8:02 PM, ivan said:
2018 saw 60 solo laps, a # beyond imagination, but possible by a weird combination of prime weather and a personal calendar no me gusta
7/20/19 - south side day 1 of the year, well after le grande opening i'll grant you as i sallied up n' down the coast courting more arduous adventures - swimming in the olympics, multi-day colonel bob bumblefuck, marriage counselor sheenagins n' regular ole climbing in leavenworth w/ the silvermans shit-talking each other at every turn, then near a week about mt whitney w/ the whiskey hooligans - 2 solo laps in the shade, every hold an old friend and unforgotten - geoff n' kyle n' larry the gnome at the top n' beers n' bullshitting at the base - managed 70 solo laps last summer, so that's 1/35 of the way to repeating that unbelievable total
7/21 - day 2 - laps 3-4 - hey, only 33 more days at this rate to top last year - foiled upon arrival at battle ground lake, i bounced off fallen leaf lake too n' resigned meself to clambering out at beacon - once again the rock all to myself, despite the weekend situation - a lap alone, then another w/ some folks thrashing their way up the original dods exit at the end - summer's halfway home n' i'm still all smiles
7/22 - day 3 - laps 5-7 - a hat trick on a hottish day, 2 in the sun and the third in the shade the hottest of all w/ numerous half-clad hotties along the way
7/23 - day 4 - lap 8 - swam a slow wetsuit-less mile in fallen leaf under cloudy n' cool skies, fetched the boy child from camp, then deposited him again before darting out to the bacon-wand for a single ascent before coming back camas-ways to peruse new houses and ultimately sup on delectable thai takeout
7/24 - day 5 - laps 9-10 - ten laps in five days not so shabby - nary a soul in sight on this sweatyish day, but steve in the parking lot - a week a paradise it would seem...
7/25 - another hat-trick makes it 13 laps in 6 days, a healthy clip - irish death's n' lovely crowds n' sun n' shade and all after a right-nice long swim continued a paradise-theme-of-a-summer so far...
7/26 - the end of my first summer beacon week and a productive one with 2 more laps to bring the total to 15, 1/4 of the way to last year's ludicrous total, but at a pace to bury it should that be my jealous jam on looking back (i've heard tale their no more nefarious thief than nostalgia though) - a mile swim in fallen leaf while the wulf-man paddled away on lake vancouver, then beacon just after noon in the brutal brightness - shed my black shirt in favor of royal blue - lovely pair of sheilas atop tree ledge on the first lap - sucked down my beer in a batch of shade in the gut under uprising, panting like a bitch - a horde of latinos on the way down, one fella w/ a pack to support the lot of them for a month if need be - the second lap lonely but bearably in the breeze, fat drops of sweat drip-dripping and sizzling away on the stone - then house-hunting and general real-world bummer concerns...
7/27 - summer beacon day 8 - the late morning meetup out near no'bo - adam n' claire n' naterring as we waited for ole'geoff to arrive w/ his prized n' feared jet-ski - beers n' bullshitting n' plan forming - claire drove us up near the dam and we flung ourselves into hamilton creek, expecting far more fun than the fickle world felt like paying out, stumbling mid-knee forever through the stream in wetsuits w/ stuff sacks full of beer - the main current at last and drifting down under the beacon face, admiring some hard-dudes dancing on the journey to the east above big ledge - many more bevies on the dock afterwards n' some soft-porn skinny-dipping by the masses, than back to the little road hold-out before cursing them fools n' cutting loose to clamber up the corner in the gloaming-dark before darting back to home for chicken salad n' discoursing over stranger things
7/28 - beacon day 9 - 2 more laps makes it 18, a tear beyond my tenous memory - wurst to drag adam's esposita up the corner at first, but she foreswore the morning heat and when adam got froggy on the immediate details i said fork-it n' went n' did a lap while he helped a timberline high-to-do set up a big kayak shuttle down to kalama- soggy as hell from sweat i returned as his business was concluded, having to concede another climb in the immediate future was fucked - we repaired to the river again then n' had a mort of swimming n' redneck shenanigans before i felt honor-bound to take advantage of the recent shade for another clambornation n' siddle on back home - plenty of folks casting about at the base, one even who recognized my nom de guerre n' threw a compliment my way that in hindsight i think i mighta thrown back a tad too heelish - perhaps if i spent more time on my people skills instead of scratching the Endless Itch?
7/29 - was supposed to be a beacon-less day but the beacon lords giveth n' they take away too - beacon day 10 (in a row!) at any rate, n' solo lap 19 - met the k19 near noon after carting the boy child to row-row-your-boating on lake vancouver and stuffing in a quick swim at fallen leaf lake - after dressing his sadly chapped hands i cast out camas-ways - the plan was the adventure swim to phoca rock from the washington side, a jam i've yet to even get wet for yet despite numerous attempts, and this one the same - nastia said she was illish and prefered a columbia crossing at hood river instead, so sure, why not? we both drove to set up a car shuttle and noticed near arrival that the wind was whipping, the waves white-capped and their swells nice n' rolling long - gave me the heebie-jeebies a bit, soul-scarred as i remain from the one and only trans-columbia transit i made a few years back w/ ole'pat when the gorge was freshly burnt and i was perhaps drunk by naval standards at our 10 am departure (holy jeebus, that incident still ranks high on my most-terrified ever list) - after setting up the shuttle though we gave her a go, me in my wetsuit and snorkel and boots and web-gloves and day-glo orange personal swimmer buoy (and sober besides, having learnt all kinds of lessons that chilly october morning) but the russkaya of course was just in her dainty 2-piece and rocking the doggy paddle stroke, true russian-berserker style and blazeningly loving it - not too far from shore the waves and winds announced their presence with authority and our humble tribe quailed at their querulousness, first she then me after starting a 2nd attempt alone - retiring to the oregon side once again to recover her car n' kick about the conversation-can we revolved the rubik's cube of future combinations and settled upon giving something/anything a chance someday soon, assuming we live that long
- a solo beacon lap on a wind-wracked n' shady south side sans shirt was my true reward for listening to the Little Voice Inside Me and chopped the voyage home neatly in half - all i have to worry about now is tomorrow...
7/30 - 11 back-to-back beatard days and i'm a bit drained - 2 more laps for 21 total on this still youngish summer - crater lake complications and house-swapping horseshit clouds everything, my spirits low - might it be that nothing ever really gets better?
8/1 - sou'side summer beacon day 12 of 2019 - solo laps 22-23 - early morning rising to house-hunt n' tidy up domestically, kinda lame really but we are rarely masters of our own destiny i reckon - the daughter-child to her amiga's skamania abide in the late afternoon left time for yours truly to scramble up the bacon wand twice before achieving apogee and getting sucked back west once again to stuff more things into the bursting garage before the photo man comes to record it all in the morning - the great crater lake creep south at sunrise, all mortal concerns cast aside in the gawdamned interest of aquatic glory
8/8 - day 13 - laps 24, 25, 26 - a sad week away from the bacon-stone, but well spent - a swim-trip to crater lake - cock-blocked by the feds, we found better refuge at waldo lake, which was much like taking the 2nd hottest girl at the party home - union bidness in mcminville and quite alright, though it brought the summer death-knell to the forefront of a keening mind - rain in the west, after hours the beaconwand cast its spell and the world was my oyster again - gnome the larry in the gloaming lot, then kyle n' company came crawling in - three laps passing through numerous parties - some-guy-named-steve earned his Hero of Beacon Rock w/ oak-leaf clusters - placid blood flowed freely as it should in the scraping places - kyle got the kid up though competent legal counsel would eagerly have urged him not
8/9 -estival beacon aeon 14 - laps 27-28 - a lazy friday summer sleep-in, the first in some time - warm coffee n' cold eggs w/ the wifey over steven colbert n' some orange-is-the-new-black - the kids like college students, slow to rise - afternoon i ambled out to beacon to meet old ben - beat him by an hour so got a lap in alone before he arrived with his boy asher, sullen n' silent, as a man should be in this shocking modern age - led them up the route sans belays, which i reckon counts as solo too, though a rope was technically tied round my ample beer-gut - a gaggle of elk gamboling about the meadows below the eastern train track, their worries little ones in this wonderous season - the drive home dominated by the sweet smell of summer rain n' the dying sun...
8/11 - day 15 - a rare reverse-golden-sombrero raises the lap count to 32 on the summer - the trip took weather-faith, for the rain fell throughout the gorge on the drive in, even in the lot itself a profound mist made its presence known - a fool's errand i thought, but took my shoes down to the base anyway to see if the stone was dry despite 2 days of storms and so it was, and with hordes of portlanders putting their dirty libturd-hands all over it in flagrant degradation too - kyle n' bill n' joe n' countless over fools all encountered and gavreeted with, and one parcel of folks i passed 4 times in total over the next few hours - the history of the world it would seem, and fitting that the soundtrack was 4 episodes of a podcast all about the ending of it
8/12 - day 16 - lap 33 - the smell of sudden fiery death roused me at 5 and an hour later i arose in protest at my prickly senses - after tea and trailer park boys i eased myself eastwards for a single lap in the sun - the stone alone, i savored my solitude, the drip-drip of sweat the only sense of time to contend with - afterwards car-chores and lake-swimming w/ many chilluns
8/13 - day 17 - laps 34-35 - the world waxes largish, so what exactly is the goal now? last year the improbable # of 60 made me think 61 is all any sane man might relish, or maybe just 62 to stick a fork in the eye of roger morris, but now something much bigger indeed seems possible - how about 74 to offer the proverbial bitch-slap to barry bonds? even if that is to be the improbable mark, such a tally looms already large in the wind-screen and is to be sought for - the hazy outlines of a plan for a phenomenal 14-in-a-day assault in september with a whole heap of fools to propel the thing to a frenetic conclusion - that's in the future though - tonight was sublime solitude and shade and space for easy contemplation - a podcast on theoretical physics' hapless potential to create an end of the world to keep me company - the peregrines on the scene after being rather silent this past month - stone throwing teenage tourists and a positive conversation on the merits of manslaughter - a road trip begins tomorrow w/ the family and maybe a giant swim in crescent lake at the conclusion - there's marrow still in the bone of summer boys, and meat on it to spare as well
8/19 - day 18 - laps 36-40 for the rare Reverse Platinum Sombrero - a near week at the beach w/ the fam - a crossing of quinault and an epic lake crescent thing - barely a week left in summer 2019 i awoke wicked sore but set out east anyways - the stone near alone for the first 4 laps, but then dave n' steve where there n' we cackled our way upwards together alone to mushroom ledge n' some serious meditation
8/24 - day 19 - laps 41, 42 n' 43 meant it was a douglas adams day (shamefully i must admit i forget my towel, but proudly i can say i did not panic) - 3 days in the alpine lakes wilderness didn't beat me down enough i guess, 'cuz the girl-child asked to get carted out to skamania for the afternoon to cavort w/ her polish friends and i rallied to run laps while letting her have her what-have-you - summer is doomed and so are you
8/25 - day 20 - laps 44-45 - 11 CBIs n' 13 runs (new stats, to keep things fun n' make a game of the mundane - every meat-popsicle lapped is a Climber Batted In - runs are laps plus CBIs - good lord, the record couldn't be higher than 50 runs in a day could it?) - the coast guard earns its gold from yuppie scum along the banks of the rude columbia - nastia n' her main-squeeze set to scramble up blown-out in the blistering shade under the heavy hail of tourist stone, our beers n' smokes n' smalltalk cut savage short - the experiment to substitute a cordelette in lieu of a bolted anchor at the top an abject failure within 24 hours, though kinda an apollo 13 one since i got the cord returned as requested - 2 cruiser laps in the autumnally-building breeze with the crowds abounding, summer's done been set on a goddamn gibbet
8/26 - blackjack day - laps 46-7 make me prime again - 4 CBIs for 6 runs - a soft slumber ended in the gentlest fashion - the damned dentist - the dmv denied - summer slams into the brickwall while i straighten out the classroom - a big breeze builds as we stumble eastwards - the first lap looms into the time-traveler and his canadian dame, well over her head on the second pitch, so i stayed to help her suss out the sitch and sacrificed a hat trick - beers and the inevitable bullshiting - the world careens and carries us along in its endless crapulous fucking fashion
8/27 - summer beacon day double-deuce - laps 48-9 make me prime n' prone to wine - 96 degrees n' a big-breeze in the parking lot - the first day back to the what-have-you and the bullshite-factory appears to have been working overtime in my absence - cryptic runes n' rude cynosures, thank-fuck their clutches are so fleeting - a lap alone in the wild wind, and then another, all to seek and find the freek
8/28 - day 23, laps 50-51 - another hot day, minus the breeze - the mechanisms continue to rumble up to speed on the work machine, the corporate speak as thick as cancer but only half as deadly - hit beacon in a hurry w/ familialial functions to attend to in the soon-time - 26 minutes car to car on the first lap, but a bit more mellow on the second - a curtailed conversation on retro-bolting an anchor on the corner down in the parking lot, sadly one that seems to have concluded with them deciding to add yet another scar to the recently patched rock in question - i guess we'll see if they go through with it... - lovely thai dinner after back-to-school night at least and so it goes and goes
-
22 hours ago, ivan said:
2018 saw 60 solo laps, a # beyond imagination, but possible by a weird combination of prime weather and a personal calendar no me gusta
7/20/19 - south side day 1 of the year, well after le grande opening i'll grant you as i sallied up n' down the coast courting more arduous adventures - swimming in the olympics, multi-day colonel bob bumblefuck, marriage counselor sheenagins n' regular ole climbing in leavenworth w/ the silvermans shit-talking each other at every turn, then near a week about mt whitney w/ the whiskey hooligans - 2 solo laps in the shade, every hold an old friend and unforgotten - geoff n' kyle n' larry the gnome at the top n' beers n' bullshitting at the base - managed 70 solo laps last summer, so that's 1/35 of the way to repeating that unbelievable total
7/21 - day 2 - laps 3-4 - hey, only 33 more days at this rate to top last year - foiled upon arrival at battle ground lake, i bounced off fallen leaf lake too n' resigned meself to clambering out at beacon - once again the rock all to myself, despite the weekend situation - a lap alone, then another w/ some folks thrashing their way up the original dods exit at the end - summer's halfway home n' i'm still all smiles
7/22 - day 3 - laps 5-7 - a hat trick on a hottish day, 2 in the sun and the third in the shade the hottest of all w/ numerous half-clad hotties along the way
7/23 - day 4 - lap 8 - swam a slow wetsuit-less mile in fallen leaf under cloudy n' cool skies, fetched the boy child from camp, then deposited him again before darting out to the bacon-wand for a single ascent before coming back camas-ways to peruse new houses and ultimately sup on delectable thai takeout
7/24 - day 5 - laps 9-10 - ten laps in five days not so shabby - nary a soul in sight on this sweatyish day, but steve in the parking lot - a week a paradise it would seem...
7/25 - another hat-trick makes it 13 laps in 6 days, a healthy clip - irish death's n' lovely crowds n' sun n' shade and all after a right-nice long swim continued a paradise-theme-of-a-summer so far...
7/26 - the end of my first summer beacon week and a productive one with 2 more laps to bring the total to 15, 1/4 of the way to last year's ludicrous total, but at a pace to bury it should that be my jealous jam on looking back (i've heard tale their no more nefarious thief than nostalgia though) - a mile swim in fallen leaf while the wulf-man paddled away on lake vancouver, then beacon just after noon in the brutal brightness - shed my black shirt in favor of royal blue - lovely pair of sheilas atop tree ledge on the first lap - sucked down my beer in a batch of shade in the gut under uprising, panting like a bitch - a horde of latinos on the way down, one fella w/ a pack to support the lot of them for a month if need be - the second lap lonely but bearably in the breeze, fat drops of sweat drip-dripping and sizzling away on the stone - then house-hunting and general real-world bummer concerns...
7/27 - summer beacon day 8 - the late morning meetup out near no'bo - adam n' claire n' naterring as we waited for ole'geoff to arrive w/ his prized n' feared jet-ski - beers n' bullshitting n' plan forming - claire drove us up near the dam and we flung ourselves into hamilton creek, expecting far more fun than the fickle world felt like paying out, stumbling mid-knee forever through the stream in wetsuits w/ stuff sacks full of beer - the main current at last and drifting down under the beacon face, admiring some hard-dudes dancing on the journey to the east above big ledge - many more bevies on the dock afterwards n' some soft-porn skinny-dipping by the masses, than back to the little road hold-out before cursing them fools n' cutting loose to clamber up the corner in the gloaming-dark before darting back to home for chicken salad n' discoursing over stranger things
7/28 - beacon day 9 - 2 more laps makes it 18, a tear beyond my tenous memory - wurst to drag adam's esposita up the corner at first, but she foreswore the morning heat and when adam got froggy on the immediate details i said fork-it n' went n' did a lap while he helped a timberline high-to-do set up a big kayak shuttle down to kalama- soggy as hell from sweat i returned as his business was concluded, having to concede another climb in the immediate future was fucked - we repaired to the river again then n' had a mort of swimming n' redneck shenanigans before i felt honor-bound to take advantage of the recent shade for another clambornation n' siddle on back home - plenty of folks casting about at the base, one even who recognized my nom de guerre n' threw a compliment my way that in hindsight i think i mighta thrown back a tad too heelish - perhaps if i spent more time on my people skills instead of scratching the Endless Itch?
7/29 - was supposed to be a beacon-less day but the beacon lords giveth n' they take away too - beacon day 10 (in a row!) at any rate, n' solo lap 19 - met the k19 near noon after carting the boy child to row-row-your-boating on lake vancouver and stuffing in a quick swim at fallen leaf lake - after dressing his sadly chapped hands i cast out camas-ways - the plan was the adventure swim to phoca rock from the washington side, a jam i've yet to even get wet for yet despite numerous attempts, and this one the same - nastia said she was illish and prefered a columbia crossing at hood river instead, so sure, why not? we both drove to set up a car shuttle and noticed near arrival that the wind was whipping, the waves white-capped and their swells nice n' rolling long - gave me the heebie-jeebies a bit, soul-scarred as i remain from the one and only trans-columbia transit i made a few years back w/ ole'pat when the gorge was freshly burnt and i was perhaps drunk by naval standards at our 10 am departure (holy jeebus, that incident still ranks high on my most-terrified ever list) - after setting up the shuttle though we gave her a go, me in my wetsuit and snorkel and boots and web-gloves and day-glo orange personal swimmer buoy (and sober besides, having learnt all kinds of lessons that chilly october morning) but the russkaya of course was just in her dainty 2-piece and rocking the doggy paddle stroke, true russian-berserker style and blazeningly loving it - not too far from shore the waves and winds announced their presence with authority and our humble tribe quailed at their querulousness, first she then me after starting a 2nd attempt alone - retiring to the oregon side once again to recover her car n' kick about the conversation-can we revolved the rubik's cube of future combinations and settled upon giving something/anything a chance someday soon, assuming we live that long
- a solo beacon lap on a wind-wracked n' shady south side sans shirt was my true reward for listening to the Little Voice Inside Me and chopped the voyage home neatly in half - all i have to worry about now is tomorrow...
7/30 - 11 back-to-back beatard days and i'm a bit drained - 2 more laps for 21 total on this still youngish summer - crater lake complications and house-swapping horseshit clouds everything, my spirits low - might it be that nothing ever really gets better?
8/1 - sou'side summer beacon day 12 of 2019 - solo laps 22-23 - early morning rising to house-hunt n' tidy up domestically, kinda lame really but we are rarely masters of our own destiny i reckon - the daughter-child to her amiga's skamania abide in the late afternoon left time for yours truly to scramble up the bacon wand twice before achieving apogee and getting sucked back west once again to stuff more things into the bursting garage before the photo man comes to record it all in the morning - the great crater lake creep south at sunrise, all mortal concerns cast aside in the gawdamned interest of aquatic glory
8/8 - day 13 - laps 24, 25, 26 - a sad week away from the bacon-stone, but well spent - a swim-trip to crater lake - cock-blocked by the feds, we found better refuge at waldo lake, which was much like taking the 2nd hottest girl at the party home - union bidness in mcminville and quite alright, though it brought the summer death-knell to the forefront of a keening mind - rain in the west, after hours the beaconwand cast its spell and the world was my oyster again - gnome the larry in the gloaming lot, then kyle n' company came crawling in - three laps passing through numerous parties - some-guy-named-steve earned his Hero of Beacon Rock w/ oak-leaf clusters - placid blood flowed freely as it should in the scraping places - kyle got the kid up though competent legal counsel would eagerly have urged him not
8/9 -estival beacon aeon 14 - laps 27-28 - a lazy friday summer sleep-in, the first in some time - warm coffee n' cold eggs w/ the wifey over steven colbert n' some orange-is-the-new-black - the kids like college students, slow to rise - afternoon i ambled out to beacon to meet old ben - beat him by an hour so got a lap in alone before he arrived with his boy asher, sullen n' silent, as a man should be in this shocking modern age - led them up the route sans belays, which i reckon counts as solo too, though a rope was technically tied round my ample beer-gut - a gaggle of elk gamboling about the meadows below the eastern train track, their worries little ones in this wonderous season - the drive home dominated by the sweet smell of summer rain n' the dying sun...
8/11 - day 15 - a rare reverse-golden-sombrero raises the lap count to 32 on the summer - the trip took weather-faith, for the rain fell throughout the gorge on the drive in, even in the lot itself a profound mist made its presence known - a fool's errand i thought, but took my shoes down to the base anyway to see if the stone was dry despite 2 days of storms and so it was, and with hordes of portlanders putting their dirty libturd-hands all over it in flagrant degradation too - kyle n' bill n' joe n' countless over fools all encountered and gavreeted with, and one parcel of folks i passed 4 times in total over the next few hours - the history of the world it would seem, and fitting that the soundtrack was 4 episodes of a podcast all about the ending of it
8/12 - day 16 - lap 33 - the smell of sudden fiery death roused me at 5 and an hour later i arose in protest at my prickly senses - after tea and trailer park boys i eased myself eastwards for a single lap in the sun - the stone alone, i savored my solitude, the drip-drip of sweat the only sense of time to contend with - afterwards car-chores and lake-swimming w/ many chilluns
8/13 - day 17 - laps 34-35 - the world waxes largish, so what exactly is the goal now? last year the improbable # of 60 made me think 61 is all any sane man might relish, or maybe just 62 to stick a fork in the eye of roger morris, but now something much bigger indeed seems possible - how about 74 to offer the proverbial bitch-slap to barry bonds? even if that is to be the improbable mark, such a tally looms already large in the wind-screen and is to be sought for - the hazy outlines of a plan for a phenomenal 14-in-a-day assault in september with a whole heap of fools to propel the thing to a frenetic conclusion - that's in the future though - tonight was sublime solitude and shade and space for easy contemplation - a podcast on theoretical physics' hapless potential to create an end of the world to keep me company - the peregrines on the scene after being rather silent this past month - stone throwing teenage tourists and a positive conversation on the merits of manslaughter - a road trip begins tomorrow w/ the family and maybe a giant swim in crescent lake at the conclusion - there's marrow still in the bone of summer boys, and meat on it to spare as well
8/19 - day 18 - laps 36-40 for the rare Reverse Platinum Sombrero - a near week at the beach w/ the fam - a crossing of quinault and an epic lake crescent thing - barely a week left in summer 2019 i awoke wicked sore but set out east anyways - the stone near alone for the first 4 laps, but then dave n' steve where there n' we cackled our way upwards together alone to mushroom ledge n' some serious meditation
8/24 - day 19 - laps 41, 42 n' 43 meant it was a douglas adams day (shamefully i must admit i forget my towel, but proudly i can say i did not panic) - 3 days in the alpine lakes wilderness didn't beat me down enough i guess, 'cuz the girl-child asked to get carted out to skamania for the afternoon to cavort w/ her polish friends and i rallied to run laps while letting her have her what-have-you - summer is doomed and so are you
8/25 - day 20 - laps 44-45 - 11 CBIs n' 13 runs (new stats, to keep things fun n' make a game of the mundane - every meat-popsicle lapped is a Climber Batted In - runs are laps plus CBIs - good lord, the record couldn't be higher than 50 runs in a day could it?) - the coast guard earns its gold from yuppie scum along the banks of the rude columbia - nastia n' her main-squeeze set to scramble up blown-out in the blistering shade under the heavy hail of tourist stone, our beers n' smokes n' smalltalk cut savage short - the experiment to substitute a cordelette in lieu of a bolted anchor at the top an abject failure within 24 hours, though kinda an apollo 13 one since i got the cord returned as requested - 2 cruiser laps in the autumnally-building breeze with the crowds abounding, summer's done been set on a goddamn gibbet
8/26 - blackjack day - laps 46-7 make me prime again - 4 CBIs for 6 runs - a soft slumber ended in the gentlest fashion - the damned dentist - the dmv denied - summer slams into the brickwall while i straighten out the classroom - a big breeze builds as we stumble eastwards - the first lap looms into the time-traveler and his canadian dame, well over her head on the second pitch, so i stayed to help her suss out the sitch and sacrificed a hat trick - beers and the inevitable bullshiting - the world careens and carries us along in its endless crapulous fucking fashion
8/27 - summer beacon day double-deuce - laps 48-9 make me prime n' prone to wine - 96 degrees n' a big-breeze in the parking lot - the first day back to the what-have-you and the bullshite-factory appears to have been working overtime in my absence - cryptic runes n' rude cynosures, thank-fuck their clutches are so fleeting - a lap alone in the wild wind, and then another, all to seek and find the freek
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of all the trip reports i've read, this is one of them!!!
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1 hour ago, LaMacheene said:
Nice random Beowulf toss into the mix @ivan.
This was Beowulf after Grendel’s mother kills Aeschere, right? Beowulf speaks of the grief as an “indulgence”, an inappropriate and ineffective way of responding to the death of a comrade. Beowulf reminds Hrothgar with this that vengeance is the real warrior’s response. Some of this line of thought involves the believing that only reputation will perpetuate a warrior’s existence after their death. Beowulf perceives life as a race to glory. To wit: “Let whoever can / win glory before death”.
I'm all for grief as an indulgence but not for embracing death for glory's sake.
Sorry. Spent all day ruminating alone in the mounatins. Shoudnt be near a keyboard. Ack!
Nice reference man
i used to hate superhero movies, then i realized the oldest surviving work in the english language was just that
and yes, that is beowulf speaking to hrothgar just after his right-hand man got the chop - the point being that, when we die, all that will matter is what we've done up to that point, which is, ya know, kinda fucking obvious, but kewl too
-
On 8/25/2019 at 8:47 PM, ivan said:
2018 saw 60 solo laps, a # beyond imagination, but possible by a weird combination of prime weather and a personal calendar no me gusta
7/20/19 - south side day 1 of the year, well after le grande opening i'll grant you as i sallied up n' down the coast courting more arduous adventures - swimming in the olympics, multi-day colonel bob bumblefuck, marriage counselor sheenagins n' regular ole climbing in leavenworth w/ the silvermans shit-talking each other at every turn, then near a week about mt whitney w/ the whiskey hooligans - 2 solo laps in the shade, every hold an old friend and unforgotten - geoff n' kyle n' larry the gnome at the top n' beers n' bullshitting at the base - managed 70 solo laps last summer, so that's 1/35 of the way to repeating that unbelievable total
7/21 - day 2 - laps 3-4 - hey, only 33 more days at this rate to top last year - foiled upon arrival at battle ground lake, i bounced off fallen leaf lake too n' resigned meself to clambering out at beacon - once again the rock all to myself, despite the weekend situation - a lap alone, then another w/ some folks thrashing their way up the original dods exit at the end - summer's halfway home n' i'm still all smiles
7/22 - day 3 - laps 5-7 - a hat trick on a hottish day, 2 in the sun and the third in the shade the hottest of all w/ numerous half-clad hotties along the way
7/23 - day 4 - lap 8 - swam a slow wetsuit-less mile in fallen leaf under cloudy n' cool skies, fetched the boy child from camp, then deposited him again before darting out to the bacon-wand for a single ascent before coming back camas-ways to peruse new houses and ultimately sup on delectable thai takeout
7/24 - day 5 - laps 9-10 - ten laps in five days not so shabby - nary a soul in sight on this sweatyish day, but steve in the parking lot - a week a paradise it would seem...
7/25 - another hat-trick makes it 13 laps in 6 days, a healthy clip - irish death's n' lovely crowds n' sun n' shade and all after a right-nice long swim continued a paradise-theme-of-a-summer so far...
7/26 - the end of my first summer beacon week and a productive one with 2 more laps to bring the total to 15, 1/4 of the way to last year's ludicrous total, but at a pace to bury it should that be my jealous jam on looking back (i've heard tale their no more nefarious thief than nostalgia though) - a mile swim in fallen leaf while the wulf-man paddled away on lake vancouver, then beacon just after noon in the brutal brightness - shed my black shirt in favor of royal blue - lovely pair of sheilas atop tree ledge on the first lap - sucked down my beer in a batch of shade in the gut under uprising, panting like a bitch - a horde of latinos on the way down, one fella w/ a pack to support the lot of them for a month if need be - the second lap lonely but bearably in the breeze, fat drops of sweat drip-dripping and sizzling away on the stone - then house-hunting and general real-world bummer concerns...
7/27 - summer beacon day 8 - the late morning meetup out near no'bo - adam n' claire n' naterring as we waited for ole'geoff to arrive w/ his prized n' feared jet-ski - beers n' bullshitting n' plan forming - claire drove us up near the dam and we flung ourselves into hamilton creek, expecting far more fun than the fickle world felt like paying out, stumbling mid-knee forever through the stream in wetsuits w/ stuff sacks full of beer - the main current at last and drifting down under the beacon face, admiring some hard-dudes dancing on the journey to the east above big ledge - many more bevies on the dock afterwards n' some soft-porn skinny-dipping by the masses, than back to the little road hold-out before cursing them fools n' cutting loose to clamber up the corner in the gloaming-dark before darting back to home for chicken salad n' discoursing over stranger things
7/28 - beacon day 9 - 2 more laps makes it 18, a tear beyond my tenous memory - wurst to drag adam's esposita up the corner at first, but she foreswore the morning heat and when adam got froggy on the immediate details i said fork-it n' went n' did a lap while he helped a timberline high-to-do set up a big kayak shuttle down to kalama- soggy as hell from sweat i returned as his business was concluded, having to concede another climb in the immediate future was fucked - we repaired to the river again then n' had a mort of swimming n' redneck shenanigans before i felt honor-bound to take advantage of the recent shade for another clambornation n' siddle on back home - plenty of folks casting about at the base, one even who recognized my nom de guerre n' threw a compliment my way that in hindsight i think i mighta thrown back a tad too heelish - perhaps if i spent more time on my people skills instead of scratching the Endless Itch?
7/29 - was supposed to be a beacon-less day but the beacon lords giveth n' they take away too - beacon day 10 (in a row!) at any rate, n' solo lap 19 - met the k19 near noon after carting the boy child to row-row-your-boating on lake vancouver and stuffing in a quick swim at fallen leaf lake - after dressing his sadly chapped hands i cast out camas-ways - the plan was the adventure swim to phoca rock from the washington side, a jam i've yet to even get wet for yet despite numerous attempts, and this one the same - nastia said she was illish and prefered a columbia crossing at hood river instead, so sure, why not? we both drove to set up a car shuttle and noticed near arrival that the wind was whipping, the waves white-capped and their swells nice n' rolling long - gave me the heebie-jeebies a bit, soul-scarred as i remain from the one and only trans-columbia transit i made a few years back w/ ole'pat when the gorge was freshly burnt and i was perhaps drunk by naval standards at our 10 am departure (holy jeebus, that incident still ranks high on my most-terrified ever list) - after setting up the shuttle though we gave her a go, me in my wetsuit and snorkel and boots and web-gloves and day-glo orange personal swimmer buoy (and sober besides, having learnt all kinds of lessons that chilly october morning) but the russkaya of course was just in her dainty 2-piece and rocking the doggy paddle stroke, true russian-berserker style and blazeningly loving it - not too far from shore the waves and winds announced their presence with authority and our humble tribe quailed at their querulousness, first she then me after starting a 2nd attempt alone - retiring to the oregon side once again to recover her car n' kick about the conversation-can we revolved the rubik's cube of future combinations and settled upon giving something/anything a chance someday soon, assuming we live that long
- a solo beacon lap on a wind-wracked n' shady south side sans shirt was my true reward for listening to the Little Voice Inside Me and chopped the voyage home neatly in half - all i have to worry about now is tomorrow...
7/30 - 11 back-to-back beatard days and i'm a bit drained - 2 more laps for 21 total on this still youngish summer - crater lake complications and house-swapping horseshit clouds everything, my spirits low - might it be that nothing ever really gets better?
8/1 - sou'side summer beacon day 12 of 2019 - solo laps 22-23 - early morning rising to house-hunt n' tidy up domestically, kinda lame really but we are rarely masters of our own destiny i reckon - the daughter-child to her amiga's skamania abide in the late afternoon left time for yours truly to scramble up the bacon wand twice before achieving apogee and getting sucked back west once again to stuff more things into the bursting garage before the photo man comes to record it all in the morning - the great crater lake creep south at sunrise, all mortal concerns cast aside in the gawdamned interest of aquatic glory
8/8 - day 13 - laps 24, 25, 26 - a sad week away from the bacon-stone, but well spent - a swim-trip to crater lake - cock-blocked by the feds, we found better refuge at waldo lake, which was much like taking the 2nd hottest girl at the party home - union bidness in mcminville and quite alright, though it brought the summer death-knell to the forefront of a keening mind - rain in the west, after hours the beaconwand cast its spell and the world was my oyster again - gnome the larry in the gloaming lot, then kyle n' company came crawling in - three laps passing through numerous parties - some-guy-named-steve earned his Hero of Beacon Rock w/ oak-leaf clusters - placid blood flowed freely as it should in the scraping places - kyle got the kid up though competent legal counsel would eagerly have urged him not
8/9 -estival beacon aeon 14 - laps 27-28 - a lazy friday summer sleep-in, the first in some time - warm coffee n' cold eggs w/ the wifey over steven colbert n' some orange-is-the-new-black - the kids like college students, slow to rise - afternoon i ambled out to beacon to meet old ben - beat him by an hour so got a lap in alone before he arrived with his boy asher, sullen n' silent, as a man should be in this shocking modern age - led them up the route sans belays, which i reckon counts as solo too, though a rope was technically tied round my ample beer-gut - a gaggle of elk gamboling about the meadows below the eastern train track, their worries little ones in this wonderous season - the drive home dominated by the sweet smell of summer rain n' the dying sun...
8/11 - day 15 - a rare reverse-golden-sombrero raises the lap count to 32 on the summer - the trip took weather-faith, for the rain fell throughout the gorge on the drive in, even in the lot itself a profound mist made its presence known - a fool's errand i thought, but took my shoes down to the base anyway to see if the stone was dry despite 2 days of storms and so it was, and with hordes of portlanders putting their dirty libturd-hands all over it in flagrant degradation too - kyle n' bill n' joe n' countless over fools all encountered and gavreeted with, and one parcel of folks i passed 4 times in total over the next few hours - the history of the world it would seem, and fitting that the soundtrack was 4 episodes of a podcast all about the ending of it
8/12 - day 16 - lap 33 - the smell of sudden fiery death roused me at 5 and an hour later i arose in protest at my prickly senses - after tea and trailer park boys i eased myself eastwards for a single lap in the sun - the stone alone, i savored my solitude, the drip-drip of sweat the only sense of time to contend with - afterwards car-chores and lake-swimming w/ many chilluns
8/13 - day 17 - laps 34-35 - the world waxes largish, so what exactly is the goal now? last year the improbable # of 60 made me think 61 is all any sane man might relish, or maybe just 62 to stick a fork in the eye of roger morris, but now something much bigger indeed seems possible - how about 74 to offer the proverbial bitch-slap to barry bonds? even if that is to be the improbable mark, such a tally looms already large in the wind-screen and is to be sought for - the hazy outlines of a plan for a phenomenal 14-in-a-day assault in september with a whole heap of fools to propel the thing to a frenetic conclusion - that's in the future though - tonight was sublime solitude and shade and space for easy contemplation - a podcast on theoretical physics' hapless potential to create an end of the world to keep me company - the peregrines on the scene after being rather silent this past month - stone throwing teenage tourists and a positive conversation on the merits of manslaughter - a road trip begins tomorrow w/ the family and maybe a giant swim in crescent lake at the conclusion - there's marrow still in the bone of summer boys, and meat on it to spare as well
8/19 - day 18 - laps 36-40 for the rare Reverse Platinum Sombrero - a near week at the beach w/ the fam - a crossing of quinault and an epic lake crescent thing - barely a week left in summer 2019 i awoke wicked sore but set out east anyways - the stone near alone for the first 4 laps, but then dave n' steve where there n' we cackled our way upwards together alone to mushroom ledge n' some serious meditation
8/24 - day 19 - laps 41, 42 n' 43 meant it was a douglas adams day (shamefully i must admit i forget my towel, but proudly i can say i did not panic) - 3 days in the alpine lakes wilderness didn't beat me down enough i guess, 'cuz the girl-child asked to get carted out to skamania for the afternoon to cavort w/ her polish friends and i rallied to run laps while letting her have her what-have-you - summer is doomed and so are you
8/25 - day 20 - laps 44-45 - 11 CBIs n' 13 runs (new stats, to keep things fun n' make a game of the mundane - every meat-popsicle lapped is a Climber Batted In - runs are laps plus CBIs - good lord, the record couldn't be higher than 50 runs in a day could it?) - the coast guard earns its gold from yuppie scum along the banks of the rude columbia - nastia n' her main-squeeze set to scramble up blown-out in the blistering shade under the heavy hail of tourist stone, our beers n' smokes n' smalltalk cut savage short - the experiment to substitute a cordelette in lieu of a bolted anchor at the top an abject failure within 24 hours, though kinda an apollo 13 one since i got the cord returned as requested - 2 cruiser laps in the autumnally-building breeze with the crowds abounding, summer's done been set on a goddamn gibbet
8/26 - blackjack day - laps 46-7 make me prime again - 4 CBIs for 6 runs - a soft slumber ended in the gentlest fashion - the damned dentist - the dmv denied - summer slams into the brickwall while i straighten out the classroom - a big breeze builds as we stumble eastwards - the first lap looms into the time-traveler and his canadian dame, well over her head on the second pitch, so i stayed to help her suss out the sitch and sacrificed a hat trick - beers and the inevitable bullshiting - the world careens and carries us along in its endless crapulous fucking fashion
-
hey, my boy was a fellow wahoo!
-
wise sir do not grieve
it is always better to avenge dear ones
than to indulge in mourning
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
-
22 hours ago, ivan said:
2018 saw 60 solo laps, a # beyond imagination, but possible by a weird combination of prime weather and a personal calendar no me gusta
7/20/19 - south side day 1 of the year, well after le grande opening i'll grant you as i sallied up n' down the coast courting more arduous adventures - swimming in the olympics, multi-day colonel bob bumblefuck, marriage counselor sheenagins n' regular ole climbing in leavenworth w/ the silvermans shit-talking each other at every turn, then near a week about mt whitney w/ the whiskey hooligans - 2 solo laps in the shade, every hold an old friend and unforgotten - geoff n' kyle n' larry the gnome at the top n' beers n' bullshitting at the base - managed 70 solo laps last summer, so that's 1/35 of the way to repeating that unbelievable total
7/21 - day 2 - laps 3-4 - hey, only 33 more days at this rate to top last year - foiled upon arrival at battle ground lake, i bounced off fallen leaf lake too n' resigned meself to clambering out at beacon - once again the rock all to myself, despite the weekend situation - a lap alone, then another w/ some folks thrashing their way up the original dods exit at the end - summer's halfway home n' i'm still all smiles
7/22 - day 3 - laps 5-7 - a hat trick on a hottish day, 2 in the sun and the third in the shade the hottest of all w/ numerous half-clad hotties along the way
7/23 - day 4 - lap 8 - swam a slow wetsuit-less mile in fallen leaf under cloudy n' cool skies, fetched the boy child from camp, then deposited him again before darting out to the bacon-wand for a single ascent before coming back camas-ways to peruse new houses and ultimately sup on delectable thai takeout
7/24 - day 5 - laps 9-10 - ten laps in five days not so shabby - nary a soul in sight on this sweatyish day, but steve in the parking lot - a week a paradise it would seem...
7/25 - another hat-trick makes it 13 laps in 6 days, a healthy clip - irish death's n' lovely crowds n' sun n' shade and all after a right-nice long swim continued a paradise-theme-of-a-summer so far...
7/26 - the end of my first summer beacon week and a productive one with 2 more laps to bring the total to 15, 1/4 of the way to last year's ludicrous total, but at a pace to bury it should that be my jealous jam on looking back (i've heard tale their no more nefarious thief than nostalgia though) - a mile swim in fallen leaf while the wulf-man paddled away on lake vancouver, then beacon just after noon in the brutal brightness - shed my black shirt in favor of royal blue - lovely pair of sheilas atop tree ledge on the first lap - sucked down my beer in a batch of shade in the gut under uprising, panting like a bitch - a horde of latinos on the way down, one fella w/ a pack to support the lot of them for a month if need be - the second lap lonely but bearably in the breeze, fat drops of sweat drip-dripping and sizzling away on the stone - then house-hunting and general real-world bummer concerns...
7/27 - summer beacon day 8 - the late morning meetup out near no'bo - adam n' claire n' naterring as we waited for ole'geoff to arrive w/ his prized n' feared jet-ski - beers n' bullshitting n' plan forming - claire drove us up near the dam and we flung ourselves into hamilton creek, expecting far more fun than the fickle world felt like paying out, stumbling mid-knee forever through the stream in wetsuits w/ stuff sacks full of beer - the main current at last and drifting down under the beacon face, admiring some hard-dudes dancing on the journey to the east above big ledge - many more bevies on the dock afterwards n' some soft-porn skinny-dipping by the masses, than back to the little road hold-out before cursing them fools n' cutting loose to clamber up the corner in the gloaming-dark before darting back to home for chicken salad n' discoursing over stranger things
7/28 - beacon day 9 - 2 more laps makes it 18, a tear beyond my tenous memory - wurst to drag adam's esposita up the corner at first, but she foreswore the morning heat and when adam got froggy on the immediate details i said fork-it n' went n' did a lap while he helped a timberline high-to-do set up a big kayak shuttle down to kalama- soggy as hell from sweat i returned as his business was concluded, having to concede another climb in the immediate future was fucked - we repaired to the river again then n' had a mort of swimming n' redneck shenanigans before i felt honor-bound to take advantage of the recent shade for another clambornation n' siddle on back home - plenty of folks casting about at the base, one even who recognized my nom de guerre n' threw a compliment my way that in hindsight i think i mighta thrown back a tad too heelish - perhaps if i spent more time on my people skills instead of scratching the Endless Itch?
7/29 - was supposed to be a beacon-less day but the beacon lords giveth n' they take away too - beacon day 10 (in a row!) at any rate, n' solo lap 19 - met the k19 near noon after carting the boy child to row-row-your-boating on lake vancouver and stuffing in a quick swim at fallen leaf lake - after dressing his sadly chapped hands i cast out camas-ways - the plan was the adventure swim to phoca rock from the washington side, a jam i've yet to even get wet for yet despite numerous attempts, and this one the same - nastia said she was illish and prefered a columbia crossing at hood river instead, so sure, why not? we both drove to set up a car shuttle and noticed near arrival that the wind was whipping, the waves white-capped and their swells nice n' rolling long - gave me the heebie-jeebies a bit, soul-scarred as i remain from the one and only trans-columbia transit i made a few years back w/ ole'pat when the gorge was freshly burnt and i was perhaps drunk by naval standards at our 10 am departure (holy jeebus, that incident still ranks high on my most-terrified ever list) - after setting up the shuttle though we gave her a go, me in my wetsuit and snorkel and boots and web-gloves and day-glo orange personal swimmer buoy (and sober besides, having learnt all kinds of lessons that chilly october morning) but the russkaya of course was just in her dainty 2-piece and rocking the doggy paddle stroke, true russian-berserker style and blazeningly loving it - not too far from shore the waves and winds announced their presence with authority and our humble tribe quailed at their querulousness, first she then me after starting a 2nd attempt alone - retiring to the oregon side once again to recover her car n' kick about the conversation-can we revolved the rubik's cube of future combinations and settled upon giving something/anything a chance someday soon, assuming we live that long
- a solo beacon lap on a wind-wracked n' shady south side sans shirt was my true reward for listening to the Little Voice Inside Me and chopped the voyage home neatly in half - all i have to worry about now is tomorrow...
7/30 - 11 back-to-back beatard days and i'm a bit drained - 2 more laps for 21 total on this still youngish summer - crater lake complications and house-swapping horseshit clouds everything, my spirits low - might it be that nothing ever really gets better?
8/1 - sou'side summer beacon day 12 of 2019 - solo laps 22-23 - early morning rising to house-hunt n' tidy up domestically, kinda lame really but we are rarely masters of our own destiny i reckon - the daughter-child to her amiga's skamania abide in the late afternoon left time for yours truly to scramble up the bacon wand twice before achieving apogee and getting sucked back west once again to stuff more things into the bursting garage before the photo man comes to record it all in the morning - the great crater lake creep south at sunrise, all mortal concerns cast aside in the gawdamned interest of aquatic glory
8/8 - day 13 - laps 24, 25, 26 - a sad week away from the bacon-stone, but well spent - a swim-trip to crater lake - cock-blocked by the feds, we found better refuge at waldo lake, which was much like taking the 2nd hottest girl at the party home - union bidness in mcminville and quite alright, though it brought the summer death-knell to the forefront of a keening mind - rain in the west, after hours the beaconwand cast its spell and the world was my oyster again - gnome the larry in the gloaming lot, then kyle n' company came crawling in - three laps passing through numerous parties - some-guy-named-steve earned his Hero of Beacon Rock w/ oak-leaf clusters - placid blood flowed freely as it should in the scraping places - kyle got the kid up though competent legal counsel would eagerly have urged him not
8/9 -estival beacon aeon 14 - laps 27-28 - a lazy friday summer sleep-in, the first in some time - warm coffee n' cold eggs w/ the wifey over steven colbert n' some orange-is-the-new-black - the kids like college students, slow to rise - afternoon i ambled out to beacon to meet old ben - beat him by an hour so got a lap in alone before he arrived with his boy asher, sullen n' silent, as a man should be in this shocking modern age - led them up the route sans belays, which i reckon counts as solo too, though a rope was technically tied round my ample beer-gut - a gaggle of elk gamboling about the meadows below the eastern train track, their worries little ones in this wonderous season - the drive home dominated by the sweet smell of summer rain n' the dying sun...
8/11 - day 15 - a rare reverse-golden-sombrero raises the lap count to 32 on the summer - the trip took weather-faith, for the rain fell throughout the gorge on the drive in, even in the lot itself a profound mist made its presence known - a fool's errand i thought, but took my shoes down to the base anyway to see if the stone was dry despite 2 days of storms and so it was, and with hordes of portlanders putting their dirty libturd-hands all over it in flagrant degradation too - kyle n' bill n' joe n' countless over fools all encountered and gavreeted with, and one parcel of folks i passed 4 times in total over the next few hours - the history of the world it would seem, and fitting that the soundtrack was 4 episodes of a podcast all about the ending of it
8/12 - day 16 - lap 33 - the smell of sudden fiery death roused me at 5 and an hour later i arose in protest at my prickly senses - after tea and trailer park boys i eased myself eastwards for a single lap in the sun - the stone alone, i savored my solitude, the drip-drip of sweat the only sense of time to contend with - afterwards car-chores and lake-swimming w/ many chilluns
8/13 - day 17 - laps 34-35 - the world waxes largish, so what exactly is the goal now? last year the improbable # of 60 made me think 61 is all any sane man might relish, or maybe just 62 to stick a fork in the eye of roger morris, but now something much bigger indeed seems possible - how about 74 to offer the proverbial bitch-slap to barry bonds? even if that is to be the improbable mark, such a tally looms already large in the wind-screen and is to be sought for - the hazy outlines of a plan for a phenomenal 14-in-a-day assault in september with a whole heap of fools to propel the thing to a frenetic conclusion - that's in the future though - tonight was sublime solitude and shade and space for easy contemplation - a podcast on theoretical physics' hapless potential to create an end of the world to keep me company - the peregrines on the scene after being rather silent this past month - stone throwing teenage tourists and a positive conversation on the merits of manslaughter - a road trip begins tomorrow w/ the family and maybe a giant swim in crescent lake at the conclusion - there's marrow still in the bone of summer boys, and meat on it to spare as well
8/19 - day 18 - laps 36-40 for the rare Reverse Platinum Sombrero - a near week at the beach w/ the fam - a crossing of quinault and an epic lake crescent thing - barely a week left in summer 2019 i awoke wicked sore but set out east anyways - the stone near alone for the first 4 laps, but then dave n' steve where there n' we cackled our way upwards together alone to mushroom ledge n' some serious meditation
8/24 - day 19 - laps 41, 42 n' 43 meant it was a douglas adams day (shamefully i must admit i forget my towel, but proudly i can say i did not panic) - 3 days in the alpine lakes wilderness didn't beat me down enough i guess, 'cuz the girl-child asked to get carted out to skamania for the afternoon to cavort w/ her polish friends and i rallied to run laps while letting her have her what-have-you - summer is doomed and so are you
8/25 - day 20 - laps 44-45 - 11 CBIs n' 13 runs (new stats, to keep things fun n' make a game of the mundane - every meat-popsicle lapped is a Climber Batted In - runs are laps plus CBIs - good lord, the record couldn't be higher than 50 runs in a day could it?) - the coast guard earns its gold from yuppie scum along the banks of the rude columbia - nastia n' her main-squeeze set to scramble up blown-out in the blistering shade under the heavy hail of tourist stone, our beers n' smokes n' smalltalk cut savage short - the experiment to substitute a cordelette in lieu of a bolted anchor at the top an abject failure within 24 hours, though kinda an apollo 13 one since i got the cord returned as requested - 2 cruiser laps in the autumnally-building breeze with the crowds abounding, summer's done been set on a goddamn gibbet
-
On 8/19/2019 at 9:48 PM, ivan said:
2018 saw 60 solo laps, a # beyond imagination, but possible by a weird combination of prime weather and a personal calendar no me gusta
7/20/19 - south side day 1 of the year, well after le grande opening i'll grant you as i sallied up n' down the coast courting more arduous adventures - swimming in the olympics, multi-day colonel bob bumblefuck, marriage counselor sheenagins n' regular ole climbing in leavenworth w/ the silvermans shit-talking each other at every turn, then near a week about mt whitney w/ the whiskey hooligans - 2 solo laps in the shade, every hold an old friend and unforgotten - geoff n' kyle n' larry the gnome at the top n' beers n' bullshitting at the base - managed 70 solo laps last summer, so that's 1/35 of the way to repeating that unbelievable total
7/21 - day 2 - laps 3-4 - hey, only 33 more days at this rate to top last year - foiled upon arrival at battle ground lake, i bounced off fallen leaf lake too n' resigned meself to clambering out at beacon - once again the rock all to myself, despite the weekend situation - a lap alone, then another w/ some folks thrashing their way up the original dods exit at the end - summer's halfway home n' i'm still all smiles
7/22 - day 3 - laps 5-7 - a hat trick on a hottish day, 2 in the sun and the third in the shade the hottest of all w/ numerous half-clad hotties along the way
7/23 - day 4 - lap 8 - swam a slow wetsuit-less mile in fallen leaf under cloudy n' cool skies, fetched the boy child from camp, then deposited him again before darting out to the bacon-wand for a single ascent before coming back camas-ways to peruse new houses and ultimately sup on delectable thai takeout
7/24 - day 5 - laps 9-10 - ten laps in five days not so shabby - nary a soul in sight on this sweatyish day, but steve in the parking lot - a week a paradise it would seem...
7/25 - another hat-trick makes it 13 laps in 6 days, a healthy clip - irish death's n' lovely crowds n' sun n' shade and all after a right-nice long swim continued a paradise-theme-of-a-summer so far...
7/26 - the end of my first summer beacon week and a productive one with 2 more laps to bring the total to 15, 1/4 of the way to last year's ludicrous total, but at a pace to bury it should that be my jealous jam on looking back (i've heard tale their no more nefarious thief than nostalgia though) - a mile swim in fallen leaf while the wulf-man paddled away on lake vancouver, then beacon just after noon in the brutal brightness - shed my black shirt in favor of royal blue - lovely pair of sheilas atop tree ledge on the first lap - sucked down my beer in a batch of shade in the gut under uprising, panting like a bitch - a horde of latinos on the way down, one fella w/ a pack to support the lot of them for a month if need be - the second lap lonely but bearably in the breeze, fat drops of sweat drip-dripping and sizzling away on the stone - then house-hunting and general real-world bummer concerns...
7/27 - summer beacon day 8 - the late morning meetup out near no'bo - adam n' claire n' naterring as we waited for ole'geoff to arrive w/ his prized n' feared jet-ski - beers n' bullshitting n' plan forming - claire drove us up near the dam and we flung ourselves into hamilton creek, expecting far more fun than the fickle world felt like paying out, stumbling mid-knee forever through the stream in wetsuits w/ stuff sacks full of beer - the main current at last and drifting down under the beacon face, admiring some hard-dudes dancing on the journey to the east above big ledge - many more bevies on the dock afterwards n' some soft-porn skinny-dipping by the masses, than back to the little road hold-out before cursing them fools n' cutting loose to clamber up the corner in the gloaming-dark before darting back to home for chicken salad n' discoursing over stranger things
7/28 - beacon day 9 - 2 more laps makes it 18, a tear beyond my tenous memory - wurst to drag adam's esposita up the corner at first, but she foreswore the morning heat and when adam got froggy on the immediate details i said fork-it n' went n' did a lap while he helped a timberline high-to-do set up a big kayak shuttle down to kalama- soggy as hell from sweat i returned as his business was concluded, having to concede another climb in the immediate future was fucked - we repaired to the river again then n' had a mort of swimming n' redneck shenanigans before i felt honor-bound to take advantage of the recent shade for another clambornation n' siddle on back home - plenty of folks casting about at the base, one even who recognized my nom de guerre n' threw a compliment my way that in hindsight i think i mighta thrown back a tad too heelish - perhaps if i spent more time on my people skills instead of scratching the Endless Itch?
7/29 - was supposed to be a beacon-less day but the beacon lords giveth n' they take away too - beacon day 10 (in a row!) at any rate, n' solo lap 19 - met the k19 near noon after carting the boy child to row-row-your-boating on lake vancouver and stuffing in a quick swim at fallen leaf lake - after dressing his sadly chapped hands i cast out camas-ways - the plan was the adventure swim to phoca rock from the washington side, a jam i've yet to even get wet for yet despite numerous attempts, and this one the same - nastia said she was illish and prefered a columbia crossing at hood river instead, so sure, why not? we both drove to set up a car shuttle and noticed near arrival that the wind was whipping, the waves white-capped and their swells nice n' rolling long - gave me the heebie-jeebies a bit, soul-scarred as i remain from the one and only trans-columbia transit i made a few years back w/ ole'pat when the gorge was freshly burnt and i was perhaps drunk by naval standards at our 10 am departure (holy jeebus, that incident still ranks high on my most-terrified ever list) - after setting up the shuttle though we gave her a go, me in my wetsuit and snorkel and boots and web-gloves and day-glo orange personal swimmer buoy (and sober besides, having learnt all kinds of lessons that chilly october morning) but the russkaya of course was just in her dainty 2-piece and rocking the doggy paddle stroke, true russian-berserker style and blazeningly loving it - not too far from shore the waves and winds announced their presence with authority and our humble tribe quailed at their querulousness, first she then me after starting a 2nd attempt alone - retiring to the oregon side once again to recover her car n' kick about the conversation-can we revolved the rubik's cube of future combinations and settled upon giving something/anything a chance someday soon, assuming we live that long
- a solo beacon lap on a wind-wracked n' shady south side sans shirt was my true reward for listening to the Little Voice Inside Me and chopped the voyage home neatly in half - all i have to worry about now is tomorrow...
7/30 - 11 back-to-back beatard days and i'm a bit drained - 2 more laps for 21 total on this still youngish summer - crater lake complications and house-swapping horseshit clouds everything, my spirits low - might it be that nothing ever really gets better?
8/1 - sou'side summer beacon day 12 of 2019 - solo laps 22-23 - early morning rising to house-hunt n' tidy up domestically, kinda lame really but we are rarely masters of our own destiny i reckon - the daughter-child to her amiga's skamania abide in the late afternoon left time for yours truly to scramble up the bacon wand twice before achieving apogee and getting sucked back west once again to stuff more things into the bursting garage before the photo man comes to record it all in the morning - the great crater lake creep south at sunrise, all mortal concerns cast aside in the gawdamned interest of aquatic glory
8/8 - day 13 - laps 24, 25, 26 - a sad week away from the bacon-stone, but well spent - a swim-trip to crater lake - cock-blocked by the feds, we found better refuge at waldo lake, which was much like taking the 2nd hottest girl at the party home - union bidness in mcminville and quite alright, though it brought the summer death-knell to the forefront of a keening mind - rain in the west, after hours the beaconwand cast its spell and the world was my oyster again - gnome the larry in the gloaming lot, then kyle n' company came crawling in - three laps passing through numerous parties - some-guy-named-steve earned his Hero of Beacon Rock w/ oak-leaf clusters - placid blood flowed freely as it should in the scraping places - kyle got the kid up though competent legal counsel would eagerly have urged him not
8/9 -estival beacon aeon 14 - laps 27-28 - a lazy friday summer sleep-in, the first in some time - warm coffee n' cold eggs w/ the wifey over steven colbert n' some orange-is-the-new-black - the kids like college students, slow to rise - afternoon i ambled out to beacon to meet old ben - beat him by an hour so got a lap in alone before he arrived with his boy asher, sullen n' silent, as a man should be in this shocking modern age - led them up the route sans belays, which i reckon counts as solo too, though a rope was technically tied round my ample beer-gut - a gaggle of elk gamboling about the meadows below the eastern train track, their worries little ones in this wonderous season - the drive home dominated by the sweet smell of summer rain n' the dying sun...
8/11 - day 15 - a rare reverse-golden-sombrero raises the lap count to 32 on the summer - the trip took weather-faith, for the rain fell throughout the gorge on the drive in, even in the lot itself a profound mist made its presence known - a fool's errand i thought, but took my shoes down to the base anyway to see if the stone was dry despite 2 days of storms and so it was, and with hordes of portlanders putting their dirty libturd-hands all over it in flagrant degradation too - kyle n' bill n' joe n' countless over fools all encountered and gavreeted with, and one parcel of folks i passed 4 times in total over the next few hours - the history of the world it would seem, and fitting that the soundtrack was 4 episodes of a podcast all about the ending of it
8/12 - day 16 - lap 33 - the smell of sudden fiery death roused me at 5 and an hour later i arose in protest at my prickly senses - after tea and trailer park boys i eased myself eastwards for a single lap in the sun - the stone alone, i savored my solitude, the drip-drip of sweat the only sense of time to contend with - afterwards car-chores and lake-swimming w/ many chilluns
8/13 - day 17 - laps 34-35 - the world waxes largish, so what exactly is the goal now? last year the improbable # of 60 made me think 61 is all any sane man might relish, or maybe just 62 to stick a fork in the eye of roger morris, but now something much bigger indeed seems possible - how about 74 to offer the proverbial bitch-slap to barry bonds? even if that is to be the improbable mark, such a tally looms already large in the wind-screen and is to be sought for - the hazy outlines of a plan for a phenomenal 14-in-a-day assault in september with a whole heap of fools to propel the thing to a frenetic conclusion - that's in the future though - tonight was sublime solitude and shade and space for easy contemplation - a podcast on theoretical physics' hapless potential to create an end of the world to keep me company - the peregrines on the scene after being rather silent this past month - stone throwing teenage tourists and a positive conversation on the merits of manslaughter - a road trip begins tomorrow w/ the family and maybe a giant swim in crescent lake at the conclusion - there's marrow still in the bone of summer boys, and meat on it to spare as well
8/19 - day 18 - laps 36-40 for the rare Reverse Platinum Sombrero - a near week at the beach w/ the fam - a crossing of quinault and an epic lake crescent thing - barely a week left in summer 2019 i awoke wicked sore but set out east anyways - the stone near alone for the first 4 laps, but then dave n' steve where there n' we cackled our way upwards together alone to mushroom ledge n' some serious meditation
8/24 - day 19 - laps 41, 42 n' 43 meant it was a douglas adams day (shamefully i must admit i forget my towel, but proudly i can say i did not panic) - 3 days in the alpine lakes wilderness didn't beat me down enough i guess, 'cuz the girl-child asked to get carted out to skamania for the afternoon to cavort w/ her polish friends and i rallied to run laps while letting her have her what-have-you - summer is doomed and so are you
-
the first rule of talking to cops is...?
the top of the corner does not need a bolted anchor
-
On 8/13/2019 at 9:50 PM, ivan said:
2018 saw 60 solo laps, a # beyond imagination, but possible by a weird combination of prime weather and a personal calendar no me gusta
7/20/19 - south side day 1 of the year, well after le grande opening i'll grant you as i sallied up n' down the coast courting more arduous adventures - swimming in the olympics, multi-day colonel bob bumblefuck, marriage counselor sheenagins n' regular ole climbing in leavenworth w/ the silvermans shit-talking each other at every turn, then near a week about mt whitney w/ the whiskey hooligans - 2 solo laps in the shade, every hold an old friend and unforgotten - geoff n' kyle n' larry the gnome at the top n' beers n' bullshitting at the base - managed 70 solo laps last summer, so that's 1/35 of the way to repeating that unbelievable total
7/21 - day 2 - laps 3-4 - hey, only 33 more days at this rate to top last year - foiled upon arrival at battle ground lake, i bounced off fallen leaf lake too n' resigned meself to clambering out at beacon - once again the rock all to myself, despite the weekend situation - a lap alone, then another w/ some folks thrashing their way up the original dods exit at the end - summer's halfway home n' i'm still all smiles
7/22 - day 3 - laps 5-7 - a hat trick on a hottish day, 2 in the sun and the third in the shade the hottest of all w/ numerous half-clad hotties along the way
7/23 - day 4 - lap 8 - swam a slow wetsuit-less mile in fallen leaf under cloudy n' cool skies, fetched the boy child from camp, then deposited him again before darting out to the bacon-wand for a single ascent before coming back camas-ways to peruse new houses and ultimately sup on delectable thai takeout
7/24 - day 5 - laps 9-10 - ten laps in five days not so shabby - nary a soul in sight on this sweatyish day, but steve in the parking lot - a week a paradise it would seem...
7/25 - another hat-trick makes it 13 laps in 6 days, a healthy clip - irish death's n' lovely crowds n' sun n' shade and all after a right-nice long swim continued a paradise-theme-of-a-summer so far...
7/26 - the end of my first summer beacon week and a productive one with 2 more laps to bring the total to 15, 1/4 of the way to last year's ludicrous total, but at a pace to bury it should that be my jealous jam on looking back (i've heard tale their no more nefarious thief than nostalgia though) - a mile swim in fallen leaf while the wulf-man paddled away on lake vancouver, then beacon just after noon in the brutal brightness - shed my black shirt in favor of royal blue - lovely pair of sheilas atop tree ledge on the first lap - sucked down my beer in a batch of shade in the gut under uprising, panting like a bitch - a horde of latinos on the way down, one fella w/ a pack to support the lot of them for a month if need be - the second lap lonely but bearably in the breeze, fat drops of sweat drip-dripping and sizzling away on the stone - then house-hunting and general real-world bummer concerns...
7/27 - summer beacon day 8 - the late morning meetup out near no'bo - adam n' claire n' naterring as we waited for ole'geoff to arrive w/ his prized n' feared jet-ski - beers n' bullshitting n' plan forming - claire drove us up near the dam and we flung ourselves into hamilton creek, expecting far more fun than the fickle world felt like paying out, stumbling mid-knee forever through the stream in wetsuits w/ stuff sacks full of beer - the main current at last and drifting down under the beacon face, admiring some hard-dudes dancing on the journey to the east above big ledge - many more bevies on the dock afterwards n' some soft-porn skinny-dipping by the masses, than back to the little road hold-out before cursing them fools n' cutting loose to clamber up the corner in the gloaming-dark before darting back to home for chicken salad n' discoursing over stranger things
7/28 - beacon day 9 - 2 more laps makes it 18, a tear beyond my tenous memory - wurst to drag adam's esposita up the corner at first, but she foreswore the morning heat and when adam got froggy on the immediate details i said fork-it n' went n' did a lap while he helped a timberline high-to-do set up a big kayak shuttle down to kalama- soggy as hell from sweat i returned as his business was concluded, having to concede another climb in the immediate future was fucked - we repaired to the river again then n' had a mort of swimming n' redneck shenanigans before i felt honor-bound to take advantage of the recent shade for another clambornation n' siddle on back home - plenty of folks casting about at the base, one even who recognized my nom de guerre n' threw a compliment my way that in hindsight i think i mighta thrown back a tad too heelish - perhaps if i spent more time on my people skills instead of scratching the Endless Itch?
7/29 - was supposed to be a beacon-less day but the beacon lords giveth n' they take away too - beacon day 10 (in a row!) at any rate, n' solo lap 19 - met the k19 near noon after carting the boy child to row-row-your-boating on lake vancouver and stuffing in a quick swim at fallen leaf lake - after dressing his sadly chapped hands i cast out camas-ways - the plan was the adventure swim to phoca rock from the washington side, a jam i've yet to even get wet for yet despite numerous attempts, and this one the same - nastia said she was illish and prefered a columbia crossing at hood river instead, so sure, why not? we both drove to set up a car shuttle and noticed near arrival that the wind was whipping, the waves white-capped and their swells nice n' rolling long - gave me the heebie-jeebies a bit, soul-scarred as i remain from the one and only trans-columbia transit i made a few years back w/ ole'pat when the gorge was freshly burnt and i was perhaps drunk by naval standards at our 10 am departure (holy jeebus, that incident still ranks high on my most-terrified ever list) - after setting up the shuttle though we gave her a go, me in my wetsuit and snorkel and boots and web-gloves and day-glo orange personal swimmer buoy (and sober besides, having learnt all kinds of lessons that chilly october morning) but the russkaya of course was just in her dainty 2-piece and rocking the doggy paddle stroke, true russian-berserker style and blazeningly loving it - not too far from shore the waves and winds announced their presence with authority and our humble tribe quailed at their querulousness, first she then me after starting a 2nd attempt alone - retiring to the oregon side once again to recover her car n' kick about the conversation-can we revolved the rubik's cube of future combinations and settled upon giving something/anything a chance someday soon, assuming we live that long
- a solo beacon lap on a wind-wracked n' shady south side sans shirt was my true reward for listening to the Little Voice Inside Me and chopped the voyage home neatly in half - all i have to worry about now is tomorrow...
7/30 - 11 back-to-back beatard days and i'm a bit drained - 2 more laps for 21 total on this still youngish summer - crater lake complications and house-swapping horseshit clouds everything, my spirits low - might it be that nothing ever really gets better?
8/1 - sou'side summer beacon day 12 of 2019 - solo laps 22-23 - early morning rising to house-hunt n' tidy up domestically, kinda lame really but we are rarely masters of our own destiny i reckon - the daughter-child to her amiga's skamania abide in the late afternoon left time for yours truly to scramble up the bacon wand twice before achieving apogee and getting sucked back west once again to stuff more things into the bursting garage before the photo man comes to record it all in the morning - the great crater lake creep south at sunrise, all mortal concerns cast aside in the gawdamned interest of aquatic glory
8/8 - day 13 - laps 24, 25, 26 - a sad week away from the bacon-stone, but well spent - a swim-trip to crater lake - cock-blocked by the feds, we found better refuge at waldo lake, which was much like taking the 2nd hottest girl at the party home - union bidness in mcminville and quite alright, though it brought the summer death-knell to the forefront of a keening mind - rain in the west, after hours the beaconwand cast its spell and the world was my oyster again - gnome the larry in the gloaming lot, then kyle n' company came crawling in - three laps passing through numerous parties - some-guy-named-steve earned his Hero of Beacon Rock w/ oak-leaf clusters - placid blood flowed freely as it should in the scraping places - kyle got the kid up though competent legal counsel would eagerly have urged him not
8/9 -estival beacon aeon 14 - laps 27-28 - a lazy friday summer sleep-in, the first in some time - warm coffee n' cold eggs w/ the wifey over steven colbert n' some orange-is-the-new-black - the kids like college students, slow to rise - afternoon i ambled out to beacon to meet old ben - beat him by an hour so got a lap in alone before he arrived with his boy asher, sullen n' silent, as a man should be in this shocking modern age - led them up the route sans belays, which i reckon counts as solo too, though a rope was technically tied round my ample beer-gut - a gaggle of elk gamboling about the meadows below the eastern train track, their worries little ones in this wonderous season - the drive home dominated by the sweet smell of summer rain n' the dying sun...
8/11 - day 15 - a rare reverse-golden-sombrero raises the lap count to 32 on the summer - the trip took weather-faith, for the rain fell throughout the gorge on the drive in, even in the lot itself a profound mist made its presence known - a fool's errand i thought, but took my shoes down to the base anyway to see if the stone was dry despite 2 days of storms and so it was, and with hordes of portlanders putting their dirty libturd-hands all over it in flagrant degradation too - kyle n' bill n' joe n' countless over fools all encountered and gavreeted with, and one parcel of folks i passed 4 times in total over the next few hours - the history of the world it would seem, and fitting that the soundtrack was 4 episodes of a podcast all about the ending of it
8/12 - day 16 - lap 33 - the smell of sudden fiery death roused me at 5 and an hour later i arose in protest at my prickly senses - after tea and trailer park boys i eased myself eastwards for a single lap in the sun - the stone alone, i savored my solitude, the drip-drip of sweat the only sense of time to contend with - afterwards car-chores and lake-swimming w/ many chilluns
8/13 - day 17 - laps 34-35 - the world waxes largish, so what exactly is the goal now? last year the improbable # of 60 made me think 61 is all any sane man might relish, or maybe just 62 to stick a fork in the eye of roger morris, but now something much bigger indeed seems possible - how about 74 to offer the proverbial bitch-slap to barry bonds? even if that is to be the improbable mark, such a tally looms already large in the wind-screen and is to be sought for - the hazy outlines of a plan for a phenomenal 14-in-a-day assault in september with a whole heap of fools to propel the thing to a frenetic conclusion - that's in the future though - tonight was sublime solitude and shade and space for easy contemplation - a podcast on theoretical physics' hapless potential to create an end of the world to keep me company - the peregrines on the scene after being rather silent this past month - stone throwing teenage tourists and a positive conversation on the merits of manslaughter - a road trip begins tomorrow w/ the family and maybe a giant swim in crescent lake at the conclusion - there's marrow still in the bone of summer boys, and meat on it to spare as well
8/19 - day 18 - laps 36-40 for the rare Reverse Platinum Sombrero - a near week at the beach w/ the fam - a crossing of quinault and an epic lake crescent thing - barely a week left in summer 2019 i awoke wicked sore but set out east anyways - the stone near alone for the first 4 laps, but then dave n' steve where there n' we cackled our way upwards together alone to mushroom ledge n' some serious meditation
-
On 8/12/2019 at 7:41 PM, ivan said:
2018 saw 60 solo laps, a # beyond imagination, but possible by a weird combination of prime weather and a personal calendar no me gusta
7/20/19 - south side day 1 of the year, well after le grande opening i'll grant you as i sallied up n' down the coast courting more arduous adventures - swimming in the olympics, multi-day colonel bob bumblefuck, marriage counselor sheenagins n' regular ole climbing in leavenworth w/ the silvermans shit-talking each other at every turn, then near a week about mt whitney w/ the whiskey hooligans - 2 solo laps in the shade, every hold an old friend and unforgotten - geoff n' kyle n' larry the gnome at the top n' beers n' bullshitting at the base - managed 70 solo laps last summer, so that's 1/35 of the way to repeating that unbelievable total
7/21 - day 2 - laps 3-4 - hey, only 33 more days at this rate to top last year - foiled upon arrival at battle ground lake, i bounced off fallen leaf lake too n' resigned meself to clambering out at beacon - once again the rock all to myself, despite the weekend situation - a lap alone, then another w/ some folks thrashing their way up the original dods exit at the end - summer's halfway home n' i'm still all smiles
7/22 - day 3 - laps 5-7 - a hat trick on a hottish day, 2 in the sun and the third in the shade the hottest of all w/ numerous half-clad hotties along the way
7/23 - day 4 - lap 8 - swam a slow wetsuit-less mile in fallen leaf under cloudy n' cool skies, fetched the boy child from camp, then deposited him again before darting out to the bacon-wand for a single ascent before coming back camas-ways to peruse new houses and ultimately sup on delectable thai takeout
7/24 - day 5 - laps 9-10 - ten laps in five days not so shabby - nary a soul in sight on this sweatyish day, but steve in the parking lot - a week a paradise it would seem...
7/25 - another hat-trick makes it 13 laps in 6 days, a healthy clip - irish death's n' lovely crowds n' sun n' shade and all after a right-nice long swim continued a paradise-theme-of-a-summer so far...
7/26 - the end of my first summer beacon week and a productive one with 2 more laps to bring the total to 15, 1/4 of the way to last year's ludicrous total, but at a pace to bury it should that be my jealous jam on looking back (i've heard tale their no more nefarious thief than nostalgia though) - a mile swim in fallen leaf while the wulf-man paddled away on lake vancouver, then beacon just after noon in the brutal brightness - shed my black shirt in favor of royal blue - lovely pair of sheilas atop tree ledge on the first lap - sucked down my beer in a batch of shade in the gut under uprising, panting like a bitch - a horde of latinos on the way down, one fella w/ a pack to support the lot of them for a month if need be - the second lap lonely but bearably in the breeze, fat drops of sweat drip-dripping and sizzling away on the stone - then house-hunting and general real-world bummer concerns...
7/27 - summer beacon day 8 - the late morning meetup out near no'bo - adam n' claire n' naterring as we waited for ole'geoff to arrive w/ his prized n' feared jet-ski - beers n' bullshitting n' plan forming - claire drove us up near the dam and we flung ourselves into hamilton creek, expecting far more fun than the fickle world felt like paying out, stumbling mid-knee forever through the stream in wetsuits w/ stuff sacks full of beer - the main current at last and drifting down under the beacon face, admiring some hard-dudes dancing on the journey to the east above big ledge - many more bevies on the dock afterwards n' some soft-porn skinny-dipping by the masses, than back to the little road hold-out before cursing them fools n' cutting loose to clamber up the corner in the gloaming-dark before darting back to home for chicken salad n' discoursing over stranger things
7/28 - beacon day 9 - 2 more laps makes it 18, a tear beyond my tenous memory - wurst to drag adam's esposita up the corner at first, but she foreswore the morning heat and when adam got froggy on the immediate details i said fork-it n' went n' did a lap while he helped a timberline high-to-do set up a big kayak shuttle down to kalama- soggy as hell from sweat i returned as his business was concluded, having to concede another climb in the immediate future was fucked - we repaired to the river again then n' had a mort of swimming n' redneck shenanigans before i felt honor-bound to take advantage of the recent shade for another clambornation n' siddle on back home - plenty of folks casting about at the base, one even who recognized my nom de guerre n' threw a compliment my way that in hindsight i think i mighta thrown back a tad too heelish - perhaps if i spent more time on my people skills instead of scratching the Endless Itch?
7/29 - was supposed to be a beacon-less day but the beacon lords giveth n' they take away too - beacon day 10 (in a row!) at any rate, n' solo lap 19 - met the k19 near noon after carting the boy child to row-row-your-boating on lake vancouver and stuffing in a quick swim at fallen leaf lake - after dressing his sadly chapped hands i cast out camas-ways - the plan was the adventure swim to phoca rock from the washington side, a jam i've yet to even get wet for yet despite numerous attempts, and this one the same - nastia said she was illish and prefered a columbia crossing at hood river instead, so sure, why not? we both drove to set up a car shuttle and noticed near arrival that the wind was whipping, the waves white-capped and their swells nice n' rolling long - gave me the heebie-jeebies a bit, soul-scarred as i remain from the one and only trans-columbia transit i made a few years back w/ ole'pat when the gorge was freshly burnt and i was perhaps drunk by naval standards at our 10 am departure (holy jeebus, that incident still ranks high on my most-terrified ever list) - after setting up the shuttle though we gave her a go, me in my wetsuit and snorkel and boots and web-gloves and day-glo orange personal swimmer buoy (and sober besides, having learnt all kinds of lessons that chilly october morning) but the russkaya of course was just in her dainty 2-piece and rocking the doggy paddle stroke, true russian-berserker style and blazeningly loving it - not too far from shore the waves and winds announced their presence with authority and our humble tribe quailed at their querulousness, first she then me after starting a 2nd attempt alone - retiring to the oregon side once again to recover her car n' kick about the conversation-can we revolved the rubik's cube of future combinations and settled upon giving something/anything a chance someday soon, assuming we live that long
- a solo beacon lap on a wind-wracked n' shady south side sans shirt was my true reward for listening to the Little Voice Inside Me and chopped the voyage home neatly in half - all i have to worry about now is tomorrow...
7/30 - 11 back-to-back beatard days and i'm a bit drained - 2 more laps for 21 total on this still youngish summer - crater lake complications and house-swapping horseshit clouds everything, my spirits low - might it be that nothing ever really gets better?
8/1 - sou'side summer beacon day 12 of 2019 - solo laps 22-23 - early morning rising to house-hunt n' tidy up domestically, kinda lame really but we are rarely masters of our own destiny i reckon - the daughter-child to her amiga's skamania abide in the late afternoon left time for yours truly to scramble up the bacon wand twice before achieving apogee and getting sucked back west once again to stuff more things into the bursting garage before the photo man comes to record it all in the morning - the great crater lake creep south at sunrise, all mortal concerns cast aside in the gawdamned interest of aquatic glory
8/8 - day 13 - laps 24, 25, 26 - a sad week away from the bacon-stone, but well spent - a swim-trip to crater lake - cock-blocked by the feds, we found better refuge at waldo lake, which was much like taking the 2nd hottest girl at the party home - union bidness in mcminville and quite alright, though it brought the summer death-knell to the forefront of a keening mind - rain in the west, after hours the beaconwand cast its spell and the world was my oyster again - gnome the larry in the gloaming lot, then kyle n' company came crawling in - three laps passing through numerous parties - some-guy-named-steve earned his Hero of Beacon Rock w/ oak-leaf clusters - placid blood flowed freely as it should in the scraping places - kyle got the kid up though competent legal counsel would eagerly have urged him not
8/9 -estival beacon aeon 14 - laps 27-28 - a lazy friday summer sleep-in, the first in some time - warm coffee n' cold eggs w/ the wifey over steven colbert n' some orange-is-the-new-black - the kids like college students, slow to rise - afternoon i ambled out to beacon to meet old ben - beat him by an hour so got a lap in alone before he arrived with his boy asher, sullen n' silent, as a man should be in this shocking modern age - led them up the route sans belays, which i reckon counts as solo too, though a rope was technically tied round my ample beer-gut - a gaggle of elk gamboling about the meadows below the eastern train track, their worries little ones in this wonderous season - the drive home dominated by the sweet smell of summer rain n' the dying sun...
8/11 - day 15 - a rare reverse-golden-sombrero raises the lap count to 32 on the summer - the trip took weather-faith, for the rain fell throughout the gorge on the drive in, even in the lot itself a profound mist made its presence known - a fool's errand i thought, but took my shoes down to the base anyway to see if the stone was dry despite 2 days of storms and so it was, and with hordes of portlanders putting their dirty libturd-hands all over it in flagrant degradation too - kyle n' bill n' joe n' countless over fools all encountered and gavreeted with, and one parcel of folks i passed 4 times in total over the next few hours - the history of the world it would seem, and fitting that the soundtrack was 4 episodes of a podcast all about the ending of it
8/12 - day 16 - lap 33 - the smell of sudden fiery death roused me at 5 and an hour later i arose in protest at my prickly senses - after tea and trailer park boys i eased myself eastwards for a single lap in the sun - the stone alone, i savored my solitude, the drip-drip of sweat the only sense of time to contend with - afterwards car-chores and lake-swimming w/ many chilluns
8/13 - day 17 - laps 34-35 - the world waxes largish, so what exactly is the goal now? last year the improbable # of 60 made me think 61 is all any sane man might relish, or maybe just 62 to stick a fork in the eye of roger morris, but now something much bigger indeed seems possible - how about 74 to offer the proverbial bitch-slap to barry bonds? even if that is to be the improbable mark, such a tally looms already large in the wind-screen and is to be sought for - the hazy outlines of a plan for a phenomenal 14-in-a-day assault in september with a whole heap of fools to propel the thing to a frenetic conclusion - that's in the future though - tonight was sublime solitude and shade and space for easy contemplation - a podcast on theoretical physics' hapless potential to create an end of the world to keep me company - the peregrines on the scene after being rather silent this past month - stone throwing teenage tourists and a positive conversation on the merits of manslaughter - a road trip begins tomorrow w/ the family and maybe a giant swim in crescent lake at the conclusion - there's marrow still in the bone of summer boys, and meat on it to spare as well
Beacon
in Columbia River Gorge
Posted · Edited by ivan
9/14 - beacon day 32 since the summer broke open - a Big Day - laps 66, 67, 68, 69, 70, 71, 72 (respectively referred to as the single, double, hat trick, reverse golden sombrero, reverse platinum sombrero, farmer's daughter, and El Cap laps - next will be the shelob's sugar-titties, the nirvana of nazguls, the elizabeth hurley and then the alexandra daddario - after that might need to go back to the well for some creativity, but i've found the increasing adlemindness that accompanies each lap is wicked good in that regard) - unconscious by nine the night before, i still didn't manage to rouse out at 4 a.m. like i'd thunk of a few weeks earlier before the weather got all weird, but woke instead w/ the first twinges of a back-to-school head-cold at 7 and settled for bacon n' eggs n' coffee n' kombucha n' rewatching the bill maher i'd slumbered through earlier, yet somehow still remembered the odd line of - beacon by 10 though, and 8:59:37 later completed the 7th lap, putting me just one shy of tying barry bonds record (sure, he was on the juice, but i doubt i'd pass muster w/ the ioc either at the moment, so will say no more on the matter n' just motor on through 2 more laps n' claim the record fair n' square ) - a kaleidoscope of climbers, some nimble, some not, some titillating, some hawt - 37 (!) cbi's, for a total of 44(!) runs on the day - coulda squeezed more in for certain but spent a few hours sucking down cervezas n' nattering n' guffawing with ole adam keller, a goddamn old man now n' camas grad from the year five, when the world was young n' my gut was tighter...thinking there's at least one more big day left in me before this season siddles over the hill n' my body fails me and out goes the will
