catbirdseat

The question is who is it that has a hold on the cord attached to the nipple ring?

DFA, reach high on the shelf and get down the jar containing your balls (where you put them when you got married) and spray HARDER. We hardly know you are even there anymore. You can do better!

Chimblies Like in "Chimchimbly, chimchimbly, chimchim sheree a sweep is as lucky as lucky can be..."

I've never been to a high school reunion before. My 25th is coming up next year. I should go to see all the fat guys and gals and see if I can recognize anyone. I'm not at all the same person I was in high school.

Sphinx, you are such a sporto. Alpine climbers don't get three nice big bolts from which to rappel. They have to trust some rock or manky tree they can't possibly know is 100% safe, unless it is on a very popular route (where it's still not 100% safe). The sane and the rational have reason to be concerned. Downclimbing is often the preferred alternative. By the way, the "rappel" in the photo is just an arm rappel or a hand line used only for low angle descents in mossy or wet gullies. The scramblers don't call themselves climbers and never do vertical rappels.

Dwayner, someday you will make a post that doesn't have the word "bolt" in it and I am going to pass out. Beck, what this crowd wants to hear is that you told the LT that your climber friends really, really don't like Fee Demo. They want to hear you tell him they really, really dislike having to pay $5 every time they go to Exit 38 or any other State Park. They'd all rally around you if you told them that.

I'm sure no one would be surprised to know that I was one of them.

That pic brings back memories. My wife used to teach first grade. I brought in some of my climbing gear to show. We had the kids "rope up" for a trip across the play ground. They thought it was great. They had this enormous pile of wood chips on which they pretended to be mountain climbers. It was so cute.

One of the instructors is wearing black and if you look closely, you'll see she is in uniform.

The place is across the street from Eightmile Campground, and the event appears to be the Mountaineers Alpine Scrambling Course, which I took in 1997. The instructor's name is Bonnie. The students are usually total novices, as was I at the time. They actually learn a lot at this field trip.

I am reading the new Franken book right now and I'm enjoying it. However, it makes me mad at what the media did to Gore. They just decided they didn't like him and all jumped on the bandwagon. After a while they just cited yesterday's stories without checking the facts. They said he made exaggerated statements. He did not. He was taken out of context and misquoted delibrately by right wing sources. The bit about Gore claiming to have "invented" the Internet. He never used that word. What he said was that he had helped CREATE the Internet by making sure it received the necessary funding while he was a congressman. Once he was misquoted people figured he was passing himself off as having written the PASCAL code or something. Then the bit about Love Canal. Gore was on the commision. He gives credit to a teenage girl for calling attention to the pollution, then gets misquoted. He said, he "called for a congressional investigation and a hearing...I looked around the country for other sites like that. I found a little place in upstate New York called Love Canal. Had the first hearing on that issue, and Toone, Tennessee-- that was the one you didn't hear of. But that was the one that started it all." Both the Washington Post and the New York Times misquoted him as saying I was the on that started it all". Then the Rupublican National committee changed it to "I was the one who started it all." And it all went down hill from there. Wrote Frankan, "Chris Matthews joined the gang bang, accusing Gore of claiming to have 'discovered' or even 'invented' Love Canal." Some liberal media bias. Right.

We'll take two for the Rope Up please. We'll slaughter them on site as the Mountaineers used to do. Freshest meat you can get.

Oooo, Erik. You must figure he is just lurking. To call a Scotsman Irish, that's harsh. Watch your back laddie.

I spoke with JGowans by phone today. It seems that he did not climb Elbrus because his climbing gear never made it to Berlin and they wouldn't forward it to Russia on the grounds that it was too dangerous in the particular region. You'll never guess which airline it was responsible. Okay, I'll tell you- Air France. You can count on the French.

You can ride with me on Thursday, provided I haven't taken a job by then. Would you believe, I actually have a job interview on Friday?

But his computer is broken.

AlpineK, many of those jokes first saw life as pollock jokes way back when. Probably Italian before that, or Irish. Some are new. My personal favorite: Q: How does a republican commit suicide? A: He gathers his hate into a pile and jumps off.

Alpine = "adventure" I rather like Necro's definition , but rephrased. "In Alpine, no one can hear you scream".

While it is true that I do have way too much time on my hands, I didn't have a choice on the slings. All my climbing gear is stored in the house (we have no garage). My wife would complain of the smell if I didn't take care of it.

Agreed. You can't go wrong climbing with girls. Well... maybe you could, but what the hell.

No luck thus far. My daughter had to go down to the police station to file a report. They won't even come by anymore as they did when my van was stolen in 1990. It looks as though she will become the new owner of the old Acura that was tiding me over until I could get my truck inspected and licensed, which will be tomorrow.

I like whatever kind of climbing I happen to be interested in at the moment. It's all good.

Words are cheap, aren't they?

I'd say this thread has just about played out, especially considering that I don't have anything original to add to it.

That's right, babnik, divert attention from a national issue of great importance to one of only local and minor importance involving a polical figure, a classic tactic of the Right. We're going to pay for this failure to control invasive species for a long time to come. It may be that the cat is already out of the bag, so to speak.