JosephH

After a week with Bud out at Beacon at 50, I had to decide between getting my shit together or finding a hypnotist who could make me forget I was ever a climber.

When I was 50 I hit 199.9 pounds like the day before I met Bud. Swimmingly fat for me.

Oh, and I should add that the ledge, Cascade books, and the big Terraplane pack came courtesy of one Bud Smith who donated them to help out with Beacon and I simply passed them on to you. Bud is the one who drug my fat ass up and down Beacon and thrashed me down in the Valley when I was 50 and about to bow out climbing for good. He's a wild man in his own right; bummer he lives in Mexico.

Tyler, my pleasure. You're the one going around doing all the big-time replacement work. After that exchange here about Wolf Rock and pins, I went down to the basement to sort through what I could ship you to help out on the pin side of things. But once down there it turned into going through everything (not that my everything really compares to some other people's everything ). I ended up thinking, I'm old, and how much of this shit am I really going to use at this point? And I don't have a son to pass it on to and my daughter isn't remotely interested. Past that, and knowing how much time, work and expense is involved, I just decided you should really be supported in what you're doing as much as possible; that, and Jim Anglin always said good things about you and your climbing. Enjoy, and I hope it all helps you out with both your anchor work and your climbing. Oh, we do need to hook up and get out together next season...

Verizon is who I'd like to dump and go back to AT&T, but only if they now have coverage. What about AT&T at Smith and in Bend? Back when I was on AT&T that used to cut out completely at the south end of Madras.

Don't you mean a committed local? We're all on the road to insanity out there.

If you en masse substitute TV for parenting and either religion or reason I'm pretty sure a lot of unconstrained encumbering of the worst sort is the result.

Yeah, that Palm Treo is still way down under the BSS anchor. It was in a hardened aluminum case and was ringing all that afternoon as I cleaned Flying Circus.

What's the word from any of you with an IPhone - can you get a clear signal out at Beacon like with Verizon?

I would say that the argument for god(s) always comes down to "you (we) don't know, so you can't rule it out". It's all about backfilling the void created by a question without an answer. As Tvash says, with that approach the Tooth Fairy is as valid a belief as any god mankind has ever bandied about. And, from my perspective, agnostics are either simply hedging their bets and / or intellectually lack conviction - either way they are still fearful, either of the human imagination in the face of unanswered questions (i.e. of the dark), or of the social stigma of not joining the group grope. I think the downside of our species' intellectual and creative capabilities is that we can generate all manner of fears as well - that nothing so frightens us as an unanswered, or unanswerable, question precisely because it unleashes all the horrors we are capable of imagining.

I always thought for 5.10bish that is was not super easy, that little spot above the tree is a bad for big hands, #1 size always feels like work for me. That is because it is 10.c It's like 5.6-7 on the lower Dods proper p1 which starts around the corner to the right from FFA and above or to the right of the third tunnel. I believe they intended to aid the upper pitch.

Government is a 'religion', Atheism is a 'religion' - what's next? Rationality and reason will no doubt become 'religions' as the religious desperately attempt to bring any competing modes of thought down to an imposed parity with their lowest common denominator - fear.

The windiest spot is at the base and first half of the final SE corner ridge ramp - I've been up there with it blowing a steady 60kts with higher gusts and been blown completely out of braced belay stances. So windy it makes what's usually a casual free solo into an utterly desperate three-points-on-the-rock, hug-and-wait-for-it, one-move-per-lull exercise. If you rope for it then you have to pro like mad or the rope will blow over the edge; but then when you belay, your second is almost being winched up by windpower on the rope, and you're hauling in the rope with about 120 lbs of wind pressure over its length. Pretty exciting either way. In those winter conditions, on FFA/Dods/Dastardly, I don't mind the wind, but the jams are just too damn frigid and painful for my digits after about half a pitch, even with the heater packs on my wrists and palms, but then I'm old.

Ah, that's a better context, though I have to confess to missing whatever date you had there on the first go - thought you were just out there and also thought it was weird because it hasn't seemed like really big east wind days lately.

LOL. You've got it all figured out allright - so much you have to resort to hallucinogenic drugs (your crutch) to make your pathetic life livable for you. That and playing god at your little climbing crag. Why thank you! When it comes to religion I definitely do have it completely figured out. And you have a grossly ignorant perception of the capabilities of the other three letter form of enlightenment. Crutch? Hardly. I like to think of it more as short term leasing and bio-integration of Quad GPUs on a Parallel Hyperbus w/ 512gb of GDDR5 memory - pretty good for figuring out tough problems. But, then again, YMMV and in your case I suspect it's best if you keep yourself at an arm's reach distance at a minimum.

Ha - it hasn't even begun to get cold and windy! It ain't over til the phat lady sings and she doesn't get the stage until 2/1/10. Between now and then we need to reclaim the classic lines left of Jensen's Ridge from the oak monsters.

Bejeebus - talk about self-induced hallucinations...! The body of christ? Dude! Not friggin' likely without an AIDS test...

KKK - yep, when it comes down to three-letter enlightenment, GOD is definitely not the way to go. In fact, I'd go so far as to say with GOD you have no idea where the ingredients came from or their quality. About all you can say is that the final tablets delivered a really bad trip mankind still hasn't recovered from.

Actually, I think god is a childish crutch for those afraid of the dark.

Touche.

Too much work and family business right now - trying to live vicariously through you guys at the moment.

So did no one get out in that sun yesterday?

I'm surprised none of you intrepid aidMen have set your sights on Double Dirty Overhang. I checked it out again the other day and it looks pretty damn classic. It's 'dirty' and somewhat overgrown, but it was reanchored and if anyone wants to clean it, either on rap or ground up, I have a set of cleaning tools which make the job a lot easier and anyone is welcome to borrow. And man, I hope someone is out getting some Bacon on a bonus day like today.

Always great to see my favorite partner with a big smile on her face even if she is climbing with her damn husband - the noive.

Is baseball still considered a sport?