catbirdseat

I agree with iceguy. If the knot stopped you once, it should continue to hold as you descend. Of course, if you rapped from just a sling, you would have to do the figure eight loop thing. And I suppose if you were only 10 feet short of the ground you could just lower on the sling anyway. If it breaks the sling, its only 10 ft.

The trick was to design an axle that was strong enough to take 20kN, but would still rotate freely and not be too heavy. From the diagram, it appears that the bottom of the sheave is cradled by the bottom of the biner, so that if the axle should deform, the sheave is supported. Of course this would stop it from spinning freely, in which case it would be no worse than a conventional carabiner.

I'm not a metallurgist, but I believe that an aluminum carabiner would recover very quickly, unlike a rope. Ropes get their springiness by both the elasticicity of the individual stands as well as from the weave. By forcing the strands to bend around one another, more elongation is possible when stress causes a straightening of the individual strands. There is a certain amount of slippage that must occur between strands during relaxation and this is what takes time, I would surmise.

I assume that if you were running 6 mm you would use the Reversisimo, and if you were using dental floss, you would use the Reversisisimo.

Someone asked who "they" were. THEY are The Horrible Emerald Yonkers. At least that is what my high school physics teacher would say if anyone asked who "they" were.

The recent Frenchman's Coulee accident report got me thinking. Maybe I do too much of that, but I can't help it. Supposing you were careless in setting up a single rope rappel, and the ends were not even so that they both did not reach the ground. You did happen to tie knots in the ends, though. You rappel and don't notice the end coming up and one of the knots hits your device (if the device is a figure eight, you die- if an ATC you live). So now you are hanging there wondering what to do. You could prusik back up the rope, which would take quite a bit of time if you were almost all of the way down. What I would probably do is the following. I'd put a couple prusiks on the rope and climb up about three feet. I'd then untie the knot in the end and remove that strand only from my ATC. I would then tie it into my harness. I would transfer the weight to the single strand still going through my ATC, then remove the prusiks and continue rappelling in a "counterweight" rappel. Here are the caveats. The rope must be able to slip through the anchor up top. It must be either through chains or a rap ring, biner, etc and not just through slings. Does this idea make any sense? If the rope was directly through the slings, then you'd have to either prusik up or tie the end to a figure eight loop on the single strand you are rapping on. Your partner up top would then have to pull the rope up and remove the knots.

Orange shag carpet? Shagadelic, man.

Can you say Bubonic Plague?

There are plenty of mature climbing websites with nothing but useful beta. We don't need any more of those. We come here for the Spray!

Do any of you know what Irwindale looks like? I used to work there. It's the armpit of the San Gabriel Valley. About the only good thing you can say about it is that it is near West Covina.

I am assuming you mean that in the most innocent way...

Um, it is called sarcasm, I think.

Although it had a humble and inauspicious start, this thread is starting to take flight.

When I took high school chemistry, I learned, "Do as you otter, add the acid to the water".

Arlen, you might be interested in this article. It was in todays New York Times about Asperger's Syndrome. Autism is starting to be regarded as a continuum with Asperger's somewhere in the middle between frank autism and normalcy. Here's the first page for those of you without accounts: Answer, but No Cure, for a Social Disorder That Isolates Many By AMY HARMON Published: April 29, 2004 ast July, Steven Miller, a university librarian, came across an article about a set of neurological conditions he had never heard of called autistic spectrum disorders. By the time he finished reading, his face was wet with tears. "This is me," Mr. Miller remembers thinking in the minutes and months of eager research that followed. "To read about it and feel that I'm not the only one, that maybe it's O.K., maybe it's just a human difference, was extremely emotional. In a way it has changed everything, even though nothing has changed." Advertisement Mr. Miller, 49, who excels at his job but finds the art of small talk impossible to master, has since been given a diagnosis of Asperger's syndrome, an autistic disorder notable for the often vast discrepancy between the intellectual and social abilities of those who have it. Because Asperger's was not widely identified until recently, thousands of adults like Mr. Miller — people who have never fit in socially — are only now stumbling across a neurological explanation for their lifelong struggles with ordinary human contact. As Mr. Miller learned from the article, autism is now believed to encompass a wide spectrum of impairment and intelligence, from the classically unreachable child to people with Asperger's and a similar condition called high-functioning autism, who have normal intelligence and often superior skills in a given area. But they all share a defining trait: They are what autism researchers call "mind blind." Lacking the ability to read cues like body language to intuit what other people are thinking, they have profound difficulty navigating basic social interactions. The diagnosis is reordering their lives. Some have become newly determined to learn how to compensate. They are filling up scarce classes that teach skills like how close to stand next to someone at a party, or how to tell when people are angry even when they are smiling. Others, like Mr. Miller, have decided to disclose their diagnosis, hoping to deflect the often-hostile responses their odd manners and miscues provoke. In some cases, it has helped. In others, it seemed only to elicit one more rejection. This new wave of discovery among Aspies, as many call themselves, is also sending ripples through the lives of their families, soothing tension among some married couples, prompting others to call it quits. Parents who saw their adult children as lost causes or black sheep are fumbling for ways to help them, suddenly realizing that they are disabled, not stubborn or lazy. For both Aspies and their families, relief that their difficulties are not a result of bad parenting or a fundamental character flaw is often coupled with acute disappointment at the news that there is no cure for the disorder and no drug to treat it. "We are with Asperger's where we were 20 years ago with mental illness," said Lynda Geller, director of community services at the Cody Center for Autism in Stony Brook, N.Y. "It is thought to be your fault, you should just shape up, work harder, be nicer. The fact that your brain actually works differently so you can't is not universally appreciated." Some Aspies interviewed asked to remain anonymous for fear of being stigmatized. But with the knowledge that their dysfunction is rooted in biology, many say remaining silent to pass as normal has become an even greater strain. "I would like nothing better than to shout it out to everyone," a pastor in California whose Asperger's was just diagnosed wrote in an e-mail message. "But there is so much explanation and education that needs to happen that I risk being judged incompetent." Some are finding solace in support groups where they are meeting others like themselves for the first time. And a growing number are beginning to celebrate their own unique way of seeing the world. They question the superiority of people they call "neurotypicals" or "N.T.'s"and challenge them to adopt a more enlightened, gentle outlook toward social eccentricities. Asks the tag line of one online Asperger support group: "Is ANYONE really `normal?' " Discovery: Finding Reason for Social Gaffes

"deaseased" = either diseased or deceased They both sort of work.

I (gulp!) agree with you Greg. This legislation is clearly unconstitutional as it restricts free speech. As long as the ads are paid for at market rates and are not obscene, the transit authority cannot restrict the ads.

I was crewing on a 50 ft sailboat and we were underweigh for the starting line on the way out of Los Alamitos Bay. There was a guy on a park bench facing the water, and astride him was this chick with her dress hiked up and they were going at it. The whole crew cheered. On hearing this the fellow pumped his fist in the air in a victory salute.

Notice that the seat is wrapped.

Hey, this is kind of fun. Here's an example: Topic: Corporate Responsibility Speaker: Bush, George - President Date: 3/7/2002 Quote/Claim: "America is ushering in a responsibility era...and this new culture must include a renewed sense of corporate responsibility. If you lead a corporation, you have a responsibility to serve your shareholders, to be honest with your employees." Fact: After Enron and other corporate scandals rose corporate governance to the forefront of the national policy debate "O'Neill and Greenspan devised a plan to make CEOs accountable." But, O'Neill reports, "Bush went with a more modest plan because 'the corporate crowd' complained loudly and Bush could not buck that constituency." - Time Magazine, 1/11/04

I wonder how long it would take that fellow to shred a sofa?

To summarize: Cyclic Load Range [kN], Average Cycles to Failure 8, 10939 10, 5533 12, 2959 14, 1556 16, 1182 18, 751 20, 263 While I would suppose that it is possible for someone to take 263 falls of 20 kN on on the same carabiner, I think it is unlikely anyone will approach that number. They claim a person weighing 200 lbs and falling 3 m will generate this force (20 kN), without specifying a fall factor.

Considering the presence of the face on the face, a more compelling name than the Yellow Cave could be invented.

MisterE, we all knew it was inevitable.

Someone already posted this topic.