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Dude, he's an anonymous guy with a sharp stick in the spray forum, so don't show him your balloons already.

Thanks for the reminder Chris, that story is brilliant.

The secret formula of Amazing Co. Diet Gu finally revealed!

Or perhaps that overconsumption of Olestra as brought up in some thread or other...

Yup, inside the meter box, flush to the ground and usually in front of your house. Often the valve is hidden in dirt that has humped inside the meter box. Top of the valve is usually a straight bar, and while there is a special tool to turn it, you can usually get away with a basin wrench (another plumbing tool) or a couple wrenches: one to grip the bar, and the other to grip and turn the first wrench. Channel locks, vise grips, crescent wrenches, I've used 'em all. Water water everywhere sucks so bad, I feel for your friends. Another tip: if you're going to put in a shut off valve at the house (a good idea), use a ball valve instead of a gate valve. Gate valve ususally has a wheel shaped knob on top, and moves a gate up and down in the valve body. It's more prone to age related leakage, corrosion, and outright failure.

Okay, this thread ends here, and I've shipped the last bit to Spray, where you're free to wallow as you see fit.

No shit, Sherlock. Are you ready for Spray Season?

Good point Bug, and I'll freely agree that the colorful and realistic bit is quite traditional in the climbing world. I too have been in a similar place, on the same mountain no less. I might have been stoned, but I certainly was young. I learned my lessons though, since I've only been benighted 3 or 4 times since.

Justin: I'm not familiar with your encounter, so I can't comment on it. As I recall, the "no flaming on trip reports" policy came about as a way to encourage TR's around here, since often people would post a TR and get a raft of shit about how someone else soloed it, did it faster, or how the TR poster was a newbie piece of shit. Trip Reports are one of the widely appreciated aspects of this board, and the moderators and administrators wanted to encourage them, so both the TR format was changed, and the civility aspect was enforced. As a result, I think we've seen a lot more reports of a wide range of routes and grades, and that this is a good thing. I do agree that this shouldn't be at the loss of important lessons to be learned from near-mishaps like this one. I think Spliffy had some excellent points about this trip, but referring to the posters as un-fucking-believable idiots is not going to help matters.

N. Cascades is not my forum, so I wasn't involved in the original thread or the decision to edit it, but I think Rad hit the nail on the head. Criticism is one thing, but if your goal is to try and make someone feel stupid, take it to Spray. Flaming is not considered acceptable outside the Spray forum, and that's not a new policy. If you don't like it, feel free to go somewhere else. Check out boldering.com for a fine example of the form. I'm serious, not making fun of anyone, that's some entertaining stuff, but it's not what we're doing here. Yeah, that ascent of Serpentine calls for some critique, and from what I read in the trip report, the party involved knows it. I also think the light-fast-in-a-day-car-to-car fashion that's so popular and widely touted on this site can lead folks to underestimate things, not understanding that lots of the people doing that stuff didn't start out that way. Just because Szy and Bobby Peru started Serpentine late on a one day outing and never even flaked their rope doesn't mean just anyone can emulate that style. Didn't Bobby Peru wear sandals on that outing? It is worth making some fuss over this close call ascent, so that this bit of information winds up with all the other stuff out there about Serpentine. A tennis shoe and sharp rock casual glissade in July is going to be really different in September, and not all climbers are created equal.

Yep, this is a combo of the lower part of the Gerber/Sink N Face route (starts down by the lowest point of the face) and the upper part of the Hidden Couloir route. Really really fun, and overall hugely superior to Serpentine.

I appreciated Sims' Don Quixoteish fixation on tax reform, because I agree that it's a problem in this state, and I like Jay_B's suggestion. I also agree that Gregoire is sort of scary, she certainly rubs me the wrong way, and scuttlebutt from her office is that she's one of those "take credit for someone else's work" types who makes sure that someone else's head rolls when things go wrong. Rossi however is staunchly opposed to legalized abortion. I'm not happy with my choices in this race, but I'm not surprised either.

This is flat out bullshit, and you know it. The only way I could go through anyone's inbox is if I change their password to something else, and then log in as them. I would not be able to change it back to their original password, since moderators ARE NOT privy to that information. It is not possible for me to read your PM's without you knowing about it. I'm with Minx, I don't get your reaction to that PM, it's far less insulting than things you post in public. That it came from a moderator is irrelevant, since from what you've shared it doesn't seem to be any different than what any poster who didn't know you might say, and the writer was not threatening any administrative action against you. Sometimes moderators are just other posters on this board.

But then again, we knew that!

No James, Slothrop was referring to the Zappa song that was the source of the route name. Pope, have you got the lyrics to Dynamo Hum filed away in your head?

Umm, I'll take your gear Lambone. Can I have the cell phone too?

So you'll never be a client TJD, big deal. Who exactly are you sneering at, people who work hard at trying to make a living doing what they love, or those who for whatever reasons (and Scott's right, there are a lot of different reasons) hire someone with the experience and training to help them do what they want? I've known a few guides, they've been people of great integrity and patience, and I've known a few folks who've been clients, and they're good people too. You, I don't know about.

I can easily imagine moments when I would greatly appreciate a hot pink hanger. I agree with Mattp that camoflage on an alpine route is not such an issue. The upgrade to 3/8 is a public service, and I can't see any reason not to do it NOLse.

I thought I'd heard others have everything combined on one ballot? I'm all aware of the "vote only for one party" business, and I'm not a fan of it.

I just voted down in Thurston County, and it was unbeliveably sucky, mostly due to ballot design (which happens on a county by county basis, odds are your experience will be better). We get handed a bundle that contains four (4!) ballots: one R, one D, one Libertarian, and a Non-Partisan in case all you want to vote on is levies and judges. You have to pick the one you want to use, put the others in a pile. Taking your punchcard, about 2-1/2" wide and 6" long, with 200 numbers and perforated tiny rectangles, you have read through the accordian folded multi-purpose ballot form, complete with free-floating your-precint-only insert, read the races, pick the number, find, say #174 on the card, punch it out while holding the ballot, scrape the hanging chad off the back, and move on to the next question. Given the design and multiple ballots, the old style slide-the-ballot-onto-the-pins machine, with integral ballot instructions, would not work. I thought is sucked green donkey dicks, and I couldn't imagine being an 82 year old guy with parkinsons and bad eyesight trying to punch out these tiny tabs. After turning in the correct ballot, you have to take the ones you didn't use and throw them away. On the plus side, maybe we'll get some of that great publicity Dade County, Florida got in 2000. It pissed me off, and I love to vote!

Gresham awaits you like a cold dog turd lurking at the foot of the stairs on dark morning, gather ye sunbeams while ye may. Bring back stories.

You should wear a pink carnation. Seriously though, it'd be nice to see a Tacoma Pub Club now and then again, I'd make the jaunt. You're also welcome to come down to Tenino one of these Wed nights Chirp, that is if it ever stops raining

No diss to Neil, who's actually rusting quite nicely, but I lost any sense of the romantic around a death in the mountains quite awhile ago. I know a lot of vibrant and active very old people, and I sincerely hope to become one of them. Climbing is great, but it's only one aspect of life (for me anyway), and a violent sudden bloody end, that may take my partner with me, doesn't have much allure. I think the "at least they died doing what they loved" bit is just one of the stories we tell ourselves to feel better. Untimely death sucks, and I'm sure my friend Guy who died at age 20 on the S Face of Aconcagua many years ago would agree if given half the chance.

NE Face of Fortress was pretty much a dud. Looked good in a fuzzy picture. A little 5.7 past the moat, few pitches of moderate rock, then a long slowly steepening snow slope that dumped out on a ridge quite aways from the summit. Not bad, but hardly the shit. Other lines to the right looked like choss. All the same, the moraine offered world class trundling onto the glacier below, we got a good sofa sized boulder rolling. Not an FA, but N Face on Booker was less than we'd hoped. A section of steep vertically stacked loose pie plates inspired us to bail. Alpinfox, I think you guys were in the wrong spot, probably due to bad and fuzzy beta on my part, I think you needed to be higher and to the left. Only granola on the route was incidental, a ledge about 7 pitches up.