catbirdseat

My PM's are all messed up too. That sucks.

I managed to get the telescoping shaft stuck while playing with it in the shop. What would happen out in the mountains where there is dirt and ice? The fastening mechanism is VERY poorly designed.

Longer than you think.

Mr. Doolittle is waiting for someone to come to the conclusion that we should cut and run, but he doesn't want to come out and say it himself.

So Canada has no copy right laws? Does that mean you only need one copy of Microsoft Word for the entire country?

Build a fence around it, remove its occupants one by one until it is completely empty. Question them and determine who the insurgents are. Then remove every weapon and bomb material from every square inch. Imprison the troublemakers and let the innocent return to their homes.

With Daylight Savings Time comes Exit 32 Pub Club. Yeah!

I was thinking more of a blockade.

I remember it like it was yesterday, and it didn't seem like a joke at the time. Scott, you are not standing on firm ground.

Rather than cutting and running the way we did in Somalia, we should make them pay in spades.

The catbird will attempt to translate JayBese to cc.com-ese: It's Bush's fault because he is buying up oil for the Reserve. It's Bush's fault for promoting monopoly in oil refining by allowing rampant consolidation. It's Bush's fault for fostering terrorism by invading Iraq.

Dryad told me that Nepal is 15 minutes off from the time zone in which it belongs.

Surfing Darrington slabs.

That is a very good point. It is the total number of biners that causes the CF on single loop slings. If you rack multiple pieces per biner then you could probably have only half a dozen there. If you then rack all your slings tripled with two biners you are set when you pull the piece off your rack sans biner.

Forrest, I think Josh already knows where to "stick it"- his tent I mean.

I read in the newspaper yesterday that commute times have actually gone DOWN in the Seattle area over the past two years. We can thank Mr. Bush and Mr. Cheney. There is less traffic because fewer people are working.

Your post count jumped from 1 to 18, WTF?

Look up the route and offhandedly say to your partner who is about to lead it, "is that blood I see on the rock, there below the crux?"

Years ago, I was heading to my first day at a new job in Bellevue. It was raining. Because of my old job at Lower Queen Anne, I was used to taking the Express Lanes south to downtown for the Mercer Exit. I realized I needed to take I-90, but there is no way to get from the Express Lanes to I-90 since the system was designed by idiots. At the last minute, I got into the Pike Street exit, which is carpool only. It goes under the Convention Center before emerging on Cherry, I think. There is a stop light there. There were two cops on motorcycles picking off cars with only one occupant. Pulling in $$$ for the City of Seattle without having to be out in the wet. Lazy SOBs.

Chance of rain Thurs, but there are places one can go and stay dry.

Gamesmanship is the use in a sport or game of aggressive, often dubious tactics, such as psychological intimidation or disruption of concentration, to gain an advantage over one's opponent. Now, ordinarily, one would not consider ones climbing partner to be an opponent, but sometimes you just get a partner who's starts flipping you shit, or maybe you just get in an ornery mood yourself. Your partner is starting to rack up for the first lead and you come out with, "yep, she sure looks kind of wet today, be sure to watch out for the sandy spots". Or, you might say, "this is the very pitch where old Harry bought the farm. Pulled three cams on the way down. Cratered right where you are standing". Got any stories?

Don't look at me. Klenke and I both drive little POS beaters that get 35 mpg. We're sitting in the catbird seat.

I always rack on the right side. There are rare instances in which I have racked on the left side such as certain chimneys where I wanted to face right and have the gear on the inside. Lots of people prefer to rack on the harness. There are plenty of good reasons to do this, not the least of which is that the weight is lower and more centered. If you are really climbing hard and especially overhanging routes, this would be the preferred way because a sling would hang behind you and where you couldn't reach the gear. For weekend gapers like myself, I prefer the sling because I can just hand the whole thing to my partner, thus saving time. Racking on the harness would require that I hand the pieces one by one to my partner.

Yes, a more breathable and lighter bivy is the true answer.

A disadvantage of the die cut, that is, asymmetrical harnesses is that they are not reversible. If you partner up with a weird person who racks on his left instead of normal people who rack on their right side , then the symmetrical sling can be reversed to keep the small stuff in front and the big stuff in the back. Having said that, I like my asymmetrical Metolius harness with the four loops. I seldom use the fourth loop because it is hard to reach. I do use the auxilary sling on the left. It gets tricams and a few hexes. Main loop #1 gets nuts and microcams and the other two main loops get the rest of the cams.