knotzen

Sure, OK, Jack Lowenbrau--or is it Jack Schitt?

<Sniff, sniff> I smell a troll. Anyone else smell that?

Who are you calling a bitch, bitch?

Roskelly...despite the discomfort, and the fear he'd end up a cripple, climbed in his usual gangbusters style, telling himself, that "mountaineering is the process of finishing what one begins...."

Willi talks frankly about the hemorrhoids that afflict him when he climbs mountains, calling them his "Achilles' anus," and he reports that he enjoyed a great advantage over Hornbein on Everest because "I had an enormous bladder...[Tom] was just filling and emptying all night [while] I could go on an easy fourteen hours. We had a fancy French urinal [for use inside the tent at night]...it turned out my bladder was larger than the urinal. You have to devise a means, way down deep in your sleeping bag, of monitoring the flow exactly, and if you understimate, as I sometimes did..."

I hate REI because they make you walk all the way upstairs to make a return. Like we're mountain climbers or something.

Oh yeah, I forgot who I was talking to. But you probably read the Bif! Boom! Bam! I know I do.

Oh, you're just jealous because you're still reading comic books.

Dingman had expected to find Jerstad and Bishop, or their bodies; that Unsoeld and Hornbein were still alive, and on this side of the mountain, means that they've accomplished their monumental traverse of Everest. (In the ensuing forty years, no climbers have repeated this ascent, up the West Ridge and down the Southeast, despite continuous improvements in equipment and mountain technique.)

Nevertheless, situations arise in the useless enterprise of mountaineering that present people with choices, that make emotional and physical demands that few can meet.

I throw the rope down. It gets stuck in the damn crack. Rappelling is zen.

You are fucking nuts. But climb the mountain you will. Nuts climb mountains, too.

What am I doing? I could be at home drinking. Rock waits for no one.

What am I doing? I could be at home knitting. Rock waits for no one.

Are we almost there? Thousands of feet to go yet. Step, rest, step, rest, step.

Whoa, did I miscount? I majored in History. There was a reason.

Where's the magic hold That gets me past the crux move? Seek and ye shall find.

You ask why I climb? No, not because it is there. To see what is there. Harness doubled back, Figure eight with overhand. I am free to climb. Shit, I'm chicken shit Will my feet hold here, I say? One way to find out. Falling, I yell out. How well did I set that cam? It holds, a scraped knee. The laundry piles up, My family wants me at home. The mountains await.

He said, smilingly.

And the more bored I am? The dumber my jokes. Man, I hate that.

I'm bored again, too! Jeez, work. It sucks.

But I just grow it to feed it to my bird. The one on the left--that's what makes it fly. Honest.

OK, it was me. --Potzen

Me, too. I've heard it's really good, but couldn't get into it. Can't remember why...it's been a while.