Beacon

[ivan]

19 hours ago, ivan said:

2018 saw 60 solo laps, a # beyond imagination, but possible by a weird combination of prime weather and a personal calendar no me gusta 

7/20/19 - south side day 1 of the year, well after le grande opening i'll grant you as i sallied up n' down the coast courting more arduous adventures - swimming in the olympics, multi-day colonel bob bumblefuck, marriage counselor sheenagins n' regular ole climbing in leavenworth w/ the silvermans shit-talking each other at every turn, then near a week about mt whitney w/ the whiskey hooligans - 2 solo laps in the shade, every hold an old friend and unforgotten - geoff n' kyle n' larry the gnome at the top n' beers n' bullshitting at the base - managed 70 solo laps last summer, so that's 1/35 of the way to repeating that unbelievable total 

7/21 - day 2 - laps 3-4 - hey, only 33 more days at this rate to top last year - foiled upon arrival at battle ground lake, i bounced off fallen leaf lake too n' resigned meself to clambering out at beacon - once again the rock all to myself, despite the weekend situation - a lap alone, then another w/ some folks thrashing their way up the original dods exit at the end - summer's halfway home n' i'm still all smiles 

7/22 - day 3 - laps 5-7 - a hat trick on a hottish day, 2 in the sun and the third in the shade the hottest of all w/ numerous half-clad hotties along the way

7/23 - day 4 - lap 8 - swam a slow wetsuit-less mile in fallen leaf under cloudy n' cool skies, fetched the boy child from camp, then deposited him again before darting out to the bacon-wand for a single ascent before coming back camas-ways to peruse new houses and ultimately sup on delectable thai takeout

7/24 - day 5 - laps 9-10 - ten laps in five days not so shabby - nary a soul in sight on this sweatyish day, but steve in the parking lot - a week a paradise it would seem... 

7/25 - another hat-trick makes it 13 laps in 6 days, a healthy clip - irish death's n' lovely crowds n' sun n' shade and all after a right-nice long swim continued a paradise-theme-of-a-summer so far...

7/26 - the end of my first summer beacon week and a productive one with 2 more laps to bring the total to 15, 1/4 of the way to last year's ludicrous total, but at a pace to bury it should that be my jealous jam on looking back (i've heard tale their no more nefarious thief than nostalgia though) - a mile swim in fallen leaf while the wulf-man paddled away on lake vancouver, then beacon just after noon in the brutal brightness - shed my black shirt in favor of royal blue - lovely pair of sheilas atop tree ledge on the first lap - sucked down my beer in a batch of shade in the gut under uprising, panting like a bitch - a horde of latinos on the way down, one fella w/ a pack to support the lot of them for a month if need be - the second lap lonely but bearably in the breeze, fat drops of sweat drip-dripping and sizzling away on the stone - then house-hunting and general real-world bummer concerns...

7/27 - summer beacon day 8 - the late morning meetup out near no'bo - adam n' claire n' naterring as we waited for ole'geoff to arrive w/ his prized n' feared jet-ski - beers n' bullshitting n' plan forming - claire drove us up near the dam and we flung ourselves into hamilton creek, expecting far more fun than the fickle world felt like paying out, stumbling mid-knee forever through the stream in wetsuits w/ stuff sacks full of beer - the main current at last and drifting down under the beacon face, admiring some hard-dudes dancing on the journey to the east above big ledge - many more bevies on the dock afterwards n' some soft-porn skinny-dipping by the masses, than back to the little road hold-out before cursing them fools n' cutting loose to clamber up the corner in the gloaming-dark before darting back to home for chicken salad n' discoursing over stranger things

7/28 - beacon day 9 - 2 more laps makes it 18, a tear beyond my tenous memory - wurst to drag adam's esposita up the corner at first, but she foreswore the morning heat and when adam got froggy on the immediate details i said fork-it n' went n' did a lap while he helped a timberline high-to-do set up a big kayak shuttle down to kalama- soggy as hell from sweat i returned as his business was concluded, having to concede another climb in the immediate future was fucked - we repaired to the river again then n' had a mort of swimming n' redneck shenanigans before i felt honor-bound to take advantage of the recent shade for another clambornation n' siddle on back home - plenty of folks casting about at the base, one even who recognized my nom de guerre n' threw a compliment my way that in hindsight i think i mighta thrown back a tad too heelish - perhaps if i spent more time on my people skills instead of scratching the Endless Itch?  

Edited July 29, 2019 by ivan

[ivan]

On 7/28/2019 at 6:01 PM, ivan said:

2018 saw 60 solo laps, a # beyond imagination, but possible by a weird combination of prime weather and a personal calendar no me gusta 

7/20/19 - south side day 1 of the year, well after le grande opening i'll grant you as i sallied up n' down the coast courting more arduous adventures - swimming in the olympics, multi-day colonel bob bumblefuck, marriage counselor sheenagins n' regular ole climbing in leavenworth w/ the silvermans shit-talking each other at every turn, then near a week about mt whitney w/ the whiskey hooligans - 2 solo laps in the shade, every hold an old friend and unforgotten - geoff n' kyle n' larry the gnome at the top n' beers n' bullshitting at the base - managed 70 solo laps last summer, so that's 1/35 of the way to repeating that unbelievable total 

7/21 - day 2 - laps 3-4 - hey, only 33 more days at this rate to top last year - foiled upon arrival at battle ground lake, i bounced off fallen leaf lake too n' resigned meself to clambering out at beacon - once again the rock all to myself, despite the weekend situation - a lap alone, then another w/ some folks thrashing their way up the original dods exit at the end - summer's halfway home n' i'm still all smiles 

7/22 - day 3 - laps 5-7 - a hat trick on a hottish day, 2 in the sun and the third in the shade the hottest of all w/ numerous half-clad hotties along the way

7/23 - day 4 - lap 8 - swam a slow wetsuit-less mile in fallen leaf under cloudy n' cool skies, fetched the boy child from camp, then deposited him again before darting out to the bacon-wand for a single ascent before coming back camas-ways to peruse new houses and ultimately sup on delectable thai takeout

7/24 - day 5 - laps 9-10 - ten laps in five days not so shabby - nary a soul in sight on this sweatyish day, but steve in the parking lot - a week a paradise it would seem... 

7/25 - another hat-trick makes it 13 laps in 6 days, a healthy clip - irish death's n' lovely crowds n' sun n' shade and all after a right-nice long swim continued a paradise-theme-of-a-summer so far...

7/26 - the end of my first summer beacon week and a productive one with 2 more laps to bring the total to 15, 1/4 of the way to last year's ludicrous total, but at a pace to bury it should that be my jealous jam on looking back (i've heard tale their no more nefarious thief than nostalgia though) - a mile swim in fallen leaf while the wulf-man paddled away on lake vancouver, then beacon just after noon in the brutal brightness - shed my black shirt in favor of royal blue - lovely pair of sheilas atop tree ledge on the first lap - sucked down my beer in a batch of shade in the gut under uprising, panting like a bitch - a horde of latinos on the way down, one fella w/ a pack to support the lot of them for a month if need be - the second lap lonely but bearably in the breeze, fat drops of sweat drip-dripping and sizzling away on the stone - then house-hunting and general real-world bummer concerns...

7/27 - summer beacon day 8 - the late morning meetup out near no'bo - adam n' claire n' naterring as we waited for ole'geoff to arrive w/ his prized n' feared jet-ski - beers n' bullshitting n' plan forming - claire drove us up near the dam and we flung ourselves into hamilton creek, expecting far more fun than the fickle world felt like paying out, stumbling mid-knee forever through the stream in wetsuits w/ stuff sacks full of beer - the main current at last and drifting down under the beacon face, admiring some hard-dudes dancing on the journey to the east above big ledge - many more bevies on the dock afterwards n' some soft-porn skinny-dipping by the masses, than back to the little road hold-out before cursing them fools n' cutting loose to clamber up the corner in the gloaming-dark before darting back to home for chicken salad n' discoursing over stranger things 

7/28 - beacon day 9 - 2 more laps makes it 18, a tear beyond my tenous memory - wurst to drag adam's esposita up the corner at first, but she foreswore the morning heat and when adam got froggy on the immediate details i said fork-it n' went n' did a lap while he helped a timberline high-to-do set up a big kayak shuttle down to kalama- soggy as hell from sweat i returned as his business was concluded, having to concede another climb in the immediate future was fucked - we repaired to the river again then n' had a mort of swimming n' redneck shenanigans before i felt honor-bound to take advantage of the recent shade for another clambornation n' siddle on back home - plenty of folks casting about at the base, one even who recognized my nom de guerre n' threw a compliment my way that in hindsight i think i mighta thrown back a tad too heelish - perhaps if i spent more time on my people skills instead of scratching the Endless Itch?  

7/29 - was supposed to be a beacon-less day but the beacon lords giveth n' they take away too - beacon day 10 (in a row!) at any rate, n' solo lap 19 - met the k19 near noon after carting the boy child to row-row-your-boating on lake vancouver and stuffing in a quick swim at fallen leaf lake - after dressing his sadly chapped hands i cast out camas-ways - the plan was the adventure swim to phoca rock from the washington side, a jam i've yet to even get wet for yet despite numerous attempts, and this one the same - nastia said she was illish and prefered a columbia crossing at hood river instead, so sure, why not?  we both drove to set up a car shuttle and noticed near arrival that the wind was whipping, the waves white-capped and their swells nice n' rolling long - gave me the heebie-jeebies a bit, soul-scarred as i remain from the one and only trans-columbia transit i made a few years back w/ ole'pat when the gorge was freshly burnt and i was perhaps drunk by naval standards at our 10 am departure (holy jeebus, that incident still ranks high on my most-terrified ever list) - after setting up the shuttle though we gave her a go, me in my wetsuit and snorkel and boots and web-gloves and day-glo orange personal swimmer buoy (and sober besides, having learnt all kinds of lessons that chilly october morning) but the russkaya of course was just in her dainty 2-piece and rocking the doggy paddle stroke, true russian-berserker style and blazeningly loving it - not too far from shore the waves and winds announced their presence with authority and our humble tribe quailed at their querulousness, first she then me after starting a 2nd attempt alone - retiring to the oregon side once again to recover her car n' kick about the conversation-can we revolved the rubik's cube of future combinations and settled upon giving something/anything a chance someday soon, assuming we live that long - a solo beacon lap on a wind-wracked n' shady south side sans shirt was my true reward for listening to the Little Voice Inside Me and chopped the voyage home neatly in half - all i have to worry about now is tomorrow...

[ivan]

On 7/29/2019 at 8:14 PM, ivan said:

2018 saw 60 solo laps, a # beyond imagination, but possible by a weird combination of prime weather and a personal calendar no me gusta 

7/20/19 - south side day 1 of the year, well after le grande opening i'll grant you as i sallied up n' down the coast courting more arduous adventures - swimming in the olympics, multi-day colonel bob bumblefuck, marriage counselor sheenagins n' regular ole climbing in leavenworth w/ the silvermans shit-talking each other at every turn, then near a week about mt whitney w/ the whiskey hooligans - 2 solo laps in the shade, every hold an old friend and unforgotten - geoff n' kyle n' larry the gnome at the top n' beers n' bullshitting at the base - managed 70 solo laps last summer, so that's 1/35 of the way to repeating that unbelievable total 

7/21 - day 2 - laps 3-4 - hey, only 33 more days at this rate to top last year - foiled upon arrival at battle ground lake, i bounced off fallen leaf lake too n' resigned meself to clambering out at beacon - once again the rock all to myself, despite the weekend situation - a lap alone, then another w/ some folks thrashing their way up the original dods exit at the end - summer's halfway home n' i'm still all smiles 

7/22 - day 3 - laps 5-7 - a hat trick on a hottish day, 2 in the sun and the third in the shade the hottest of all w/ numerous half-clad hotties along the way

7/23 - day 4 - lap 8 - swam a slow wetsuit-less mile in fallen leaf under cloudy n' cool skies, fetched the boy child from camp, then deposited him again before darting out to the bacon-wand for a single ascent before coming back camas-ways to peruse new houses and ultimately sup on delectable thai takeout

7/24 - day 5 - laps 9-10 - ten laps in five days not so shabby - nary a soul in sight on this sweatyish day, but steve in the parking lot - a week a paradise it would seem... 

7/25 - another hat-trick makes it 13 laps in 6 days, a healthy clip - irish death's n' lovely crowds n' sun n' shade and all after a right-nice long swim continued a paradise-theme-of-a-summer so far...

7/26 - the end of my first summer beacon week and a productive one with 2 more laps to bring the total to 15, 1/4 of the way to last year's ludicrous total, but at a pace to bury it should that be my jealous jam on looking back (i've heard tale their no more nefarious thief than nostalgia though) - a mile swim in fallen leaf while the wulf-man paddled away on lake vancouver, then beacon just after noon in the brutal brightness - shed my black shirt in favor of royal blue - lovely pair of sheilas atop tree ledge on the first lap - sucked down my beer in a batch of shade in the gut under uprising, panting like a bitch - a horde of latinos on the way down, one fella w/ a pack to support the lot of them for a month if need be - the second lap lonely but bearably in the breeze, fat drops of sweat drip-dripping and sizzling away on the stone - then house-hunting and general real-world bummer concerns...

7/27 - summer beacon day 8 - the late morning meetup out near no'bo - adam n' claire n' naterring as we waited for ole'geoff to arrive w/ his prized n' feared jet-ski - beers n' bullshitting n' plan forming - claire drove us up near the dam and we flung ourselves into hamilton creek, expecting far more fun than the fickle world felt like paying out, stumbling mid-knee forever through the stream in wetsuits w/ stuff sacks full of beer - the main current at last and drifting down under the beacon face, admiring some hard-dudes dancing on the journey to the east above big ledge - many more bevies on the dock afterwards n' some soft-porn skinny-dipping by the masses, than back to the little road hold-out before cursing them fools n' cutting loose to clamber up the corner in the gloaming-dark before darting back to home for chicken salad n' discoursing over stranger things 

7/28 - beacon day 9 - 2 more laps makes it 18, a tear beyond my tenous memory - wurst to drag adam's esposita up the corner at first, but she foreswore the morning heat and when adam got froggy on the immediate details i said fork-it n' went n' did a lap while he helped a timberline high-to-do set up a big kayak shuttle down to kalama- soggy as hell from sweat i returned as his business was concluded, having to concede another climb in the immediate future was fucked - we repaired to the river again then n' had a mort of swimming n' redneck shenanigans before i felt honor-bound to take advantage of the recent shade for another clambornation n' siddle on back home - plenty of folks casting about at the base, one even who recognized my nom de guerre n' threw a compliment my way that in hindsight i think i mighta thrown back a tad too heelish - perhaps if i spent more time on my people skills instead of scratching the Endless Itch?  

7/29 - was supposed to be a beacon-less day but the beacon lords giveth n' they take away too - beacon day 10 (in a row!) at any rate, n' solo lap 19 - met the k19 near noon after carting the boy child to row-row-your-boating on lake vancouver and stuffing in a quick swim at fallen leaf lake - after dressing his sadly chapped hands i cast out camas-ways - the plan was the adventure swim to phoca rock from the washington side, a jam i've yet to even get wet for yet despite numerous attempts, and this one the same - nastia said she was illish and prefered a columbia crossing at hood river instead, so sure, why not?  we both drove to set up a car shuttle and noticed near arrival that the wind was whipping, the waves white-capped and their swells nice n' rolling long - gave me the heebie-jeebies a bit, soul-scarred as i remain from the one and only trans-columbia transit i made a few years back w/ ole'pat when the gorge was freshly burnt and i was perhaps drunk by naval standards at our 10 am departure (holy jeebus, that incident still ranks high on my most-terrified ever list) - after setting up the shuttle though we gave her a go, me in my wetsuit and snorkel and boots and web-gloves and day-glo orange personal swimmer buoy (and sober besides, having learnt all kinds of lessons that chilly october morning) but the russkaya of course was just in her dainty 2-piece and rocking the doggy paddle stroke, true russian-berserker style and blazeningly loving it - not too far from shore the waves and winds announced their presence with authority and our humble tribe quailed at their querulousness, first she then me after starting a 2nd attempt alone - retiring to the oregon side once again to recover her car n' kick about the conversation-can we revolved the rubik's cube of future combinations and settled upon giving something/anything a chance someday soon, assuming we live that long - a solo beacon lap on a wind-wracked n' shady south side sans shirt was my true reward for listening to the Little Voice Inside Me and chopped the voyage home neatly in half - all i have to worry about now is tomorrow...

7/30 - 11 back-to-back beatard days and i'm a bit drained - 2 more laps for 21 total on this still youngish summer - crater lake complications and house-swapping horseshit clouds everything, my spirits low - might it be that nothing ever really gets better?

[ivan]

On 7/30/2019 at 9:59 PM, ivan said:

2018 saw 60 solo laps, a # beyond imagination, but possible by a weird combination of prime weather and a personal calendar no me gusta 

7/20/19 - south side day 1 of the year, well after le grande opening i'll grant you as i sallied up n' down the coast courting more arduous adventures - swimming in the olympics, multi-day colonel bob bumblefuck, marriage counselor sheenagins n' regular ole climbing in leavenworth w/ the silvermans shit-talking each other at every turn, then near a week about mt whitney w/ the whiskey hooligans - 2 solo laps in the shade, every hold an old friend and unforgotten - geoff n' kyle n' larry the gnome at the top n' beers n' bullshitting at the base - managed 70 solo laps last summer, so that's 1/35 of the way to repeating that unbelievable total 

7/21 - day 2 - laps 3-4 - hey, only 33 more days at this rate to top last year - foiled upon arrival at battle ground lake, i bounced off fallen leaf lake too n' resigned meself to clambering out at beacon - once again the rock all to myself, despite the weekend situation - a lap alone, then another w/ some folks thrashing their way up the original dods exit at the end - summer's halfway home n' i'm still all smiles 

7/22 - day 3 - laps 5-7 - a hat trick on a hottish day, 2 in the sun and the third in the shade the hottest of all w/ numerous half-clad hotties along the way

7/23 - day 4 - lap 8 - swam a slow wetsuit-less mile in fallen leaf under cloudy n' cool skies, fetched the boy child from camp, then deposited him again before darting out to the bacon-wand for a single ascent before coming back camas-ways to peruse new houses and ultimately sup on delectable thai takeout

7/24 - day 5 - laps 9-10 - ten laps in five days not so shabby - nary a soul in sight on this sweatyish day, but steve in the parking lot - a week a paradise it would seem... 

7/25 - another hat-trick makes it 13 laps in 6 days, a healthy clip - irish death's n' lovely crowds n' sun n' shade and all after a right-nice long swim continued a paradise-theme-of-a-summer so far...

7/26 - the end of my first summer beacon week and a productive one with 2 more laps to bring the total to 15, 1/4 of the way to last year's ludicrous total, but at a pace to bury it should that be my jealous jam on looking back (i've heard tale their no more nefarious thief than nostalgia though) - a mile swim in fallen leaf while the wulf-man paddled away on lake vancouver, then beacon just after noon in the brutal brightness - shed my black shirt in favor of royal blue - lovely pair of sheilas atop tree ledge on the first lap - sucked down my beer in a batch of shade in the gut under uprising, panting like a bitch - a horde of latinos on the way down, one fella w/ a pack to support the lot of them for a month if need be - the second lap lonely but bearably in the breeze, fat drops of sweat drip-dripping and sizzling away on the stone - then house-hunting and general real-world bummer concerns...

7/27 - summer beacon day 8 - the late morning meetup out near no'bo - adam n' claire n' naterring as we waited for ole'geoff to arrive w/ his prized n' feared jet-ski - beers n' bullshitting n' plan forming - claire drove us up near the dam and we flung ourselves into hamilton creek, expecting far more fun than the fickle world felt like paying out, stumbling mid-knee forever through the stream in wetsuits w/ stuff sacks full of beer - the main current at last and drifting down under the beacon face, admiring some hard-dudes dancing on the journey to the east above big ledge - many more bevies on the dock afterwards n' some soft-porn skinny-dipping by the masses, than back to the little road hold-out before cursing them fools n' cutting loose to clamber up the corner in the gloaming-dark before darting back to home for chicken salad n' discoursing over stranger things 

7/28 - beacon day 9 - 2 more laps makes it 18, a tear beyond my tenous memory - wurst to drag adam's esposita up the corner at first, but she foreswore the morning heat and when adam got froggy on the immediate details i said fork-it n' went n' did a lap while he helped a timberline high-to-do set up a big kayak shuttle down to kalama- soggy as hell from sweat i returned as his business was concluded, having to concede another climb in the immediate future was fucked - we repaired to the river again then n' had a mort of swimming n' redneck shenanigans before i felt honor-bound to take advantage of the recent shade for another clambornation n' siddle on back home - plenty of folks casting about at the base, one even who recognized my nom de guerre n' threw a compliment my way that in hindsight i think i mighta thrown back a tad too heelish - perhaps if i spent more time on my people skills instead of scratching the Endless Itch?  

7/29 - was supposed to be a beacon-less day but the beacon lords giveth n' they take away too - beacon day 10 (in a row!) at any rate, n' solo lap 19 - met the k19 near noon after carting the boy child to row-row-your-boating on lake vancouver and stuffing in a quick swim at fallen leaf lake - after dressing his sadly chapped hands i cast out camas-ways - the plan was the adventure swim to phoca rock from the washington side, a jam i've yet to even get wet for yet despite numerous attempts, and this one the same - nastia said she was illish and prefered a columbia crossing at hood river instead, so sure, why not?  we both drove to set up a car shuttle and noticed near arrival that the wind was whipping, the waves white-capped and their swells nice n' rolling long - gave me the heebie-jeebies a bit, soul-scarred as i remain from the one and only trans-columbia transit i made a few years back w/ ole'pat when the gorge was freshly burnt and i was perhaps drunk by naval standards at our 10 am departure (holy jeebus, that incident still ranks high on my most-terrified ever list) - after setting up the shuttle though we gave her a go, me in my wetsuit and snorkel and boots and web-gloves and day-glo orange personal swimmer buoy (and sober besides, having learnt all kinds of lessons that chilly october morning) but the russkaya of course was just in her dainty 2-piece and rocking the doggy paddle stroke, true russian-berserker style and blazeningly loving it - not too far from shore the waves and winds announced their presence with authority and our humble tribe quailed at their querulousness, first she then me after starting a 2nd attempt alone - retiring to the oregon side once again to recover her car n' kick about the conversation-can we revolved the rubik's cube of future combinations and settled upon giving something/anything a chance someday soon, assuming we live that long  - a solo beacon lap on a wind-wracked n' shady south side sans shirt was my true reward for listening to the Little Voice Inside Me and chopped the voyage home neatly in half - all i have to worry about now is tomorrow...

7/30 - 11 back-to-back beatard days and i'm a bit drained - 2 more laps for 21 total on this still youngish summer - crater lake complications and house-swapping horseshit clouds everything, my spirits low - might it be that nothing ever really gets better?

8/1 - sou'side summer beacon day 12 of 2019 - solo laps 22-23 - early morning rising to house-hunt n' tidy up domestically, kinda lame really but we are rarely masters of our own destiny i reckon - the daughter-child to her amiga's skamania abide in the late afternoon left time for yours truly to scramble up the bacon wand twice before achieving apogee and getting sucked back west once again to stuff more things into the bursting garage before the photo man comes to record it all in the morning - the great crater lake creep south at sunrise, all mortal concerns cast aside in the gawdamned interest of aquatic glory

[ivan]

On 8/1/2019 at 9:23 PM, ivan said:

2018 saw 60 solo laps, a # beyond imagination, but possible by a weird combination of prime weather and a personal calendar no me gusta 

7/20/19 - south side day 1 of the year, well after le grande opening i'll grant you as i sallied up n' down the coast courting more arduous adventures - swimming in the olympics, multi-day colonel bob bumblefuck, marriage counselor sheenagins n' regular ole climbing in leavenworth w/ the silvermans shit-talking each other at every turn, then near a week about mt whitney w/ the whiskey hooligans - 2 solo laps in the shade, every hold an old friend and unforgotten - geoff n' kyle n' larry the gnome at the top n' beers n' bullshitting at the base - managed 70 solo laps last summer, so that's 1/35 of the way to repeating that unbelievable total 

7/21 - day 2 - laps 3-4 - hey, only 33 more days at this rate to top last year - foiled upon arrival at battle ground lake, i bounced off fallen leaf lake too n' resigned meself to clambering out at beacon - once again the rock all to myself, despite the weekend situation - a lap alone, then another w/ some folks thrashing their way up the original dods exit at the end - summer's halfway home n' i'm still all smiles 

7/22 - day 3 - laps 5-7 - a hat trick on a hottish day, 2 in the sun and the third in the shade the hottest of all w/ numerous half-clad hotties along the way

7/23 - day 4 - lap 8 - swam a slow wetsuit-less mile in fallen leaf under cloudy n' cool skies, fetched the boy child from camp, then deposited him again before darting out to the bacon-wand for a single ascent before coming back camas-ways to peruse new houses and ultimately sup on delectable thai takeout

7/24 - day 5 - laps 9-10 - ten laps in five days not so shabby - nary a soul in sight on this sweatyish day, but steve in the parking lot - a week a paradise it would seem... 

7/25 - another hat-trick makes it 13 laps in 6 days, a healthy clip - irish death's n' lovely crowds n' sun n' shade and all after a right-nice long swim continued a paradise-theme-of-a-summer so far...

7/26 - the end of my first summer beacon week and a productive one with 2 more laps to bring the total to 15, 1/4 of the way to last year's ludicrous total, but at a pace to bury it should that be my jealous jam on looking back (i've heard tale their no more nefarious thief than nostalgia though) - a mile swim in fallen leaf while the wulf-man paddled away on lake vancouver, then beacon just after noon in the brutal brightness - shed my black shirt in favor of royal blue - lovely pair of sheilas atop tree ledge on the first lap - sucked down my beer in a batch of shade in the gut under uprising, panting like a bitch - a horde of latinos on the way down, one fella w/ a pack to support the lot of them for a month if need be - the second lap lonely but bearably in the breeze, fat drops of sweat drip-dripping and sizzling away on the stone - then house-hunting and general real-world bummer concerns...

7/27 - summer beacon day 8 - the late morning meetup out near no'bo - adam n' claire n' naterring as we waited for ole'geoff to arrive w/ his prized n' feared jet-ski - beers n' bullshitting n' plan forming - claire drove us up near the dam and we flung ourselves into hamilton creek, expecting far more fun than the fickle world felt like paying out, stumbling mid-knee forever through the stream in wetsuits w/ stuff sacks full of beer - the main current at last and drifting down under the beacon face, admiring some hard-dudes dancing on the journey to the east above big ledge - many more bevies on the dock afterwards n' some soft-porn skinny-dipping by the masses, than back to the little road hold-out before cursing them fools n' cutting loose to clamber up the corner in the gloaming-dark before darting back to home for chicken salad n' discoursing over stranger things 

7/28 - beacon day 9 - 2 more laps makes it 18, a tear beyond my tenous memory - wurst to drag adam's esposita up the corner at first, but she foreswore the morning heat and when adam got froggy on the immediate details i said fork-it n' went n' did a lap while he helped a timberline high-to-do set up a big kayak shuttle down to kalama- soggy as hell from sweat i returned as his business was concluded, having to concede another climb in the immediate future was fucked - we repaired to the river again then n' had a mort of swimming n' redneck shenanigans before i felt honor-bound to take advantage of the recent shade for another clambornation n' siddle on back home - plenty of folks casting about at the base, one even who recognized my nom de guerre n' threw a compliment my way that in hindsight i think i mighta thrown back a tad too heelish - perhaps if i spent more time on my people skills instead of scratching the Endless Itch?  

7/29 - was supposed to be a beacon-less day but the beacon lords giveth n' they take away too - beacon day 10 (in a row!) at any rate, n' solo lap 19 - met the k19 near noon after carting the boy child to row-row-your-boating on lake vancouver and stuffing in a quick swim at fallen leaf lake - after dressing his sadly chapped hands i cast out camas-ways - the plan was the adventure swim to phoca rock from the washington side, a jam i've yet to even get wet for yet despite numerous attempts, and this one the same - nastia said she was illish and prefered a columbia crossing at hood river instead, so sure, why not?  we both drove to set up a car shuttle and noticed near arrival that the wind was whipping, the waves white-capped and their swells nice n' rolling long - gave me the heebie-jeebies a bit, soul-scarred as i remain from the one and only trans-columbia transit i made a few years back w/ ole'pat when the gorge was freshly burnt and i was perhaps drunk by naval standards at our 10 am departure (holy jeebus, that incident still ranks high on my most-terrified ever list) - after setting up the shuttle though we gave her a go, me in my wetsuit and snorkel and boots and web-gloves and day-glo orange personal swimmer buoy (and sober besides, having learnt all kinds of lessons that chilly october morning) but the russkaya of course was just in her dainty 2-piece and rocking the doggy paddle stroke, true russian-berserker style and blazeningly loving it - not too far from shore the waves and winds announced their presence with authority and our humble tribe quailed at their querulousness, first she then me after starting a 2nd attempt alone - retiring to the oregon side once again to recover her car n' kick about the conversation-can we revolved the rubik's cube of future combinations and settled upon giving something/anything a chance someday soon, assuming we live that long  - a solo beacon lap on a wind-wracked n' shady south side sans shirt was my true reward for listening to the Little Voice Inside Me and chopped the voyage home neatly in half - all i have to worry about now is tomorrow...

7/30 - 11 back-to-back beatard days and i'm a bit drained - 2 more laps for 21 total on this still youngish summer - crater lake complications and house-swapping horseshit clouds everything, my spirits low - might it be that nothing ever really gets better?

8/1 - sou'side summer beacon day 12 of 2019 - solo laps 22-23 - early morning rising to house-hunt n' tidy up domestically, kinda lame really but we are rarely masters of our own destiny i reckon - the daughter-child to her amiga's skamania abide in the late afternoon left time for yours truly to scramble up the bacon wand twice before achieving apogee and getting sucked back west once again to stuff more things into the bursting garage before the photo man comes to record it all in the morning - the great crater lake creep south at sunrise, all mortal concerns cast aside in the gawdamned interest of aquatic glory

8/8 - day 13 - laps 24, 25, 26 - a sad week away from the bacon-stone, but well spent - a swim-trip to crater lake - cock-blocked by the feds, we found better refuge at waldo lake, which was much like taking the 2nd hottest girl at the party home - union bidness in mcminville and quite alright, though it brought the summer death-knell to the forefront of a keening mind - rain in the west, after hours the beaconwand cast its spell and the world was my oyster again - gnome the larry in the gloaming lot, then kyle n' company came crawling in - three laps passing through numerous parties - some-guy-named-steve earned his Hero of Beacon Rock w/ oak-leaf clusters - placid blood flowed freely as it should in the scraping places - kyle got the kid up though competent legal counsel would eagerly have urged him not

[ivan]

23 hours ago, ivan said:

2018 saw 60 solo laps, a # beyond imagination, but possible by a weird combination of prime weather and a personal calendar no me gusta 

7/20/19 - south side day 1 of the year, well after le grande opening i'll grant you as i sallied up n' down the coast courting more arduous adventures - swimming in the olympics, multi-day colonel bob bumblefuck, marriage counselor sheenagins n' regular ole climbing in leavenworth w/ the silvermans shit-talking each other at every turn, then near a week about mt whitney w/ the whiskey hooligans - 2 solo laps in the shade, every hold an old friend and unforgotten - geoff n' kyle n' larry the gnome at the top n' beers n' bullshitting at the base - managed 70 solo laps last summer, so that's 1/35 of the way to repeating that unbelievable total 

7/21 - day 2 - laps 3-4 - hey, only 33 more days at this rate to top last year - foiled upon arrival at battle ground lake, i bounced off fallen leaf lake too n' resigned meself to clambering out at beacon - once again the rock all to myself, despite the weekend situation - a lap alone, then another w/ some folks thrashing their way up the original dods exit at the end - summer's halfway home n' i'm still all smiles 

7/22 - day 3 - laps 5-7 - a hat trick on a hottish day, 2 in the sun and the third in the shade the hottest of all w/ numerous half-clad hotties along the way

7/23 - day 4 - lap 8 - swam a slow wetsuit-less mile in fallen leaf under cloudy n' cool skies, fetched the boy child from camp, then deposited him again before darting out to the bacon-wand for a single ascent before coming back camas-ways to peruse new houses and ultimately sup on delectable thai takeout

7/24 - day 5 - laps 9-10 - ten laps in five days not so shabby - nary a soul in sight on this sweatyish day, but steve in the parking lot - a week a paradise it would seem... 

7/25 - another hat-trick makes it 13 laps in 6 days, a healthy clip - irish death's n' lovely crowds n' sun n' shade and all after a right-nice long swim continued a paradise-theme-of-a-summer so far...

7/26 - the end of my first summer beacon week and a productive one with 2 more laps to bring the total to 15, 1/4 of the way to last year's ludicrous total, but at a pace to bury it should that be my jealous jam on looking back (i've heard tale their no more nefarious thief than nostalgia though) - a mile swim in fallen leaf while the wulf-man paddled away on lake vancouver, then beacon just after noon in the brutal brightness - shed my black shirt in favor of royal blue - lovely pair of sheilas atop tree ledge on the first lap - sucked down my beer in a batch of shade in the gut under uprising, panting like a bitch - a horde of latinos on the way down, one fella w/ a pack to support the lot of them for a month if need be - the second lap lonely but bearably in the breeze, fat drops of sweat drip-dripping and sizzling away on the stone - then house-hunting and general real-world bummer concerns...

7/27 - summer beacon day 8 - the late morning meetup out near no'bo - adam n' claire n' naterring as we waited for ole'geoff to arrive w/ his prized n' feared jet-ski - beers n' bullshitting n' plan forming - claire drove us up near the dam and we flung ourselves into hamilton creek, expecting far more fun than the fickle world felt like paying out, stumbling mid-knee forever through the stream in wetsuits w/ stuff sacks full of beer - the main current at last and drifting down under the beacon face, admiring some hard-dudes dancing on the journey to the east above big ledge - many more bevies on the dock afterwards n' some soft-porn skinny-dipping by the masses, than back to the little road hold-out before cursing them fools n' cutting loose to clamber up the corner in the gloaming-dark before darting back to home for chicken salad n' discoursing over stranger things 

7/28 - beacon day 9 - 2 more laps makes it 18, a tear beyond my tenous memory - wurst to drag adam's esposita up the corner at first, but she foreswore the morning heat and when adam got froggy on the immediate details i said fork-it n' went n' did a lap while he helped a timberline high-to-do set up a big kayak shuttle down to kalama- soggy as hell from sweat i returned as his business was concluded, having to concede another climb in the immediate future was fucked - we repaired to the river again then n' had a mort of swimming n' redneck shenanigans before i felt honor-bound to take advantage of the recent shade for another clambornation n' siddle on back home - plenty of folks casting about at the base, one even who recognized my nom de guerre n' threw a compliment my way that in hindsight i think i mighta thrown back a tad too heelish - perhaps if i spent more time on my people skills instead of scratching the Endless Itch?  

7/29 - was supposed to be a beacon-less day but the beacon lords giveth n' they take away too - beacon day 10 (in a row!) at any rate, n' solo lap 19 - met the k19 near noon after carting the boy child to row-row-your-boating on lake vancouver and stuffing in a quick swim at fallen leaf lake - after dressing his sadly chapped hands i cast out camas-ways - the plan was the adventure swim to phoca rock from the washington side, a jam i've yet to even get wet for yet despite numerous attempts, and this one the same - nastia said she was illish and prefered a columbia crossing at hood river instead, so sure, why not?  we both drove to set up a car shuttle and noticed near arrival that the wind was whipping, the waves white-capped and their swells nice n' rolling long - gave me the heebie-jeebies a bit, soul-scarred as i remain from the one and only trans-columbia transit i made a few years back w/ ole'pat when the gorge was freshly burnt and i was perhaps drunk by naval standards at our 10 am departure (holy jeebus, that incident still ranks high on my most-terrified ever list) - after setting up the shuttle though we gave her a go, me in my wetsuit and snorkel and boots and web-gloves and day-glo orange personal swimmer buoy (and sober besides, having learnt all kinds of lessons that chilly october morning) but the russkaya of course was just in her dainty 2-piece and rocking the doggy paddle stroke, true russian-berserker style and blazeningly loving it - not too far from shore the waves and winds announced their presence with authority and our humble tribe quailed at their querulousness, first she then me after starting a 2nd attempt alone - retiring to the oregon side once again to recover her car n' kick about the conversation-can we revolved the rubik's cube of future combinations and settled upon giving something/anything a chance someday soon, assuming we live that long  - a solo beacon lap on a wind-wracked n' shady south side sans shirt was my true reward for listening to the Little Voice Inside Me and chopped the voyage home neatly in half - all i have to worry about now is tomorrow...

7/30 - 11 back-to-back beatard days and i'm a bit drained - 2 more laps for 21 total on this still youngish summer - crater lake complications and house-swapping horseshit clouds everything, my spirits low - might it be that nothing ever really gets better?

8/1 - sou'side summer beacon day 12 of 2019 - solo laps 22-23 - early morning rising to house-hunt n' tidy up domestically, kinda lame really but we are rarely masters of our own destiny i reckon - the daughter-child to her amiga's skamania abide in the late afternoon left time for yours truly to scramble up the bacon wand twice before achieving apogee and getting sucked back west once again to stuff more things into the bursting garage before the photo man comes to record it all in the morning - the great crater lake creep south at sunrise, all mortal concerns cast aside in the gawdamned interest of aquatic glory 

8/8 - day 13 - laps 24, 25, 26 - a sad week away from the bacon-stone, but well spent - a swim-trip to crater lake - cock-blocked by the feds, we found better refuge at waldo lake, which was much like taking the 2nd hottest girl at the party home - union bidness in mcminville and quite alright, though it brought the summer death-knell to the forefront of a keening mind - rain in the west, after hours the beaconwand cast its spell and the world was my oyster again - gnome the larry in the gloaming lot, then kyle n' company came crawling in - three laps passing through numerous parties - some-guy-named-steve earned his Hero of Beacon Rock w/ oak-leaf clusters - placid blood flowed freely as it should in the scraping places - kyle got the kid up though competent legal counsel would eagerly have urged him not

8/9 -estival beacon aeon 14 - laps 27-28 - a lazy friday summer sleep-in, the first in some time - warm coffee n' cold eggs w/ the wifey over steven colbert n' some orange-is-the-new-black - the kids like college students, slow to rise - afternoon i ambled out to beacon to meet old ben - beat him by an hour so got a lap in alone before he arrived with his boy asher, sullen n' silent, as a man should be in this shocking modern age - led them up the route sans belays, which i reckon counts as solo too, though a rope was technically tied round my ample beer-gut - a gaggle of elk gamboling about the meadows below the eastern train track, their worries little ones in this wonderous season - the drive home dominated by the sweet smell of summer rain n' the dying sun...

Edited August 10, 2019 by ivan

[ivan]

On 8/9/2019 at 9:17 PM, ivan said:

2018 saw 60 solo laps, a # beyond imagination, but possible by a weird combination of prime weather and a personal calendar no me gusta 

7/20/19 - south side day 1 of the year, well after le grande opening i'll grant you as i sallied up n' down the coast courting more arduous adventures - swimming in the olympics, multi-day colonel bob bumblefuck, marriage counselor sheenagins n' regular ole climbing in leavenworth w/ the silvermans shit-talking each other at every turn, then near a week about mt whitney w/ the whiskey hooligans - 2 solo laps in the shade, every hold an old friend and unforgotten - geoff n' kyle n' larry the gnome at the top n' beers n' bullshitting at the base - managed 70 solo laps last summer, so that's 1/35 of the way to repeating that unbelievable total 

7/21 - day 2 - laps 3-4 - hey, only 33 more days at this rate to top last year - foiled upon arrival at battle ground lake, i bounced off fallen leaf lake too n' resigned meself to clambering out at beacon - once again the rock all to myself, despite the weekend situation - a lap alone, then another w/ some folks thrashing their way up the original dods exit at the end - summer's halfway home n' i'm still all smiles 

7/22 - day 3 - laps 5-7 - a hat trick on a hottish day, 2 in the sun and the third in the shade the hottest of all w/ numerous half-clad hotties along the way

7/23 - day 4 - lap 8 - swam a slow wetsuit-less mile in fallen leaf under cloudy n' cool skies, fetched the boy child from camp, then deposited him again before darting out to the bacon-wand for a single ascent before coming back camas-ways to peruse new houses and ultimately sup on delectable thai takeout

7/24 - day 5 - laps 9-10 - ten laps in five days not so shabby - nary a soul in sight on this sweatyish day, but steve in the parking lot - a week a paradise it would seem... 

7/25 - another hat-trick makes it 13 laps in 6 days, a healthy clip - irish death's n' lovely crowds n' sun n' shade and all after a right-nice long swim continued a paradise-theme-of-a-summer so far...

7/26 - the end of my first summer beacon week and a productive one with 2 more laps to bring the total to 15, 1/4 of the way to last year's ludicrous total, but at a pace to bury it should that be my jealous jam on looking back (i've heard tale their no more nefarious thief than nostalgia though) - a mile swim in fallen leaf while the wulf-man paddled away on lake vancouver, then beacon just after noon in the brutal brightness - shed my black shirt in favor of royal blue - lovely pair of sheilas atop tree ledge on the first lap - sucked down my beer in a batch of shade in the gut under uprising, panting like a bitch - a horde of latinos on the way down, one fella w/ a pack to support the lot of them for a month if need be - the second lap lonely but bearably in the breeze, fat drops of sweat drip-dripping and sizzling away on the stone - then house-hunting and general real-world bummer concerns...

7/27 - summer beacon day 8 - the late morning meetup out near no'bo - adam n' claire n' naterring as we waited for ole'geoff to arrive w/ his prized n' feared jet-ski - beers n' bullshitting n' plan forming - claire drove us up near the dam and we flung ourselves into hamilton creek, expecting far more fun than the fickle world felt like paying out, stumbling mid-knee forever through the stream in wetsuits w/ stuff sacks full of beer - the main current at last and drifting down under the beacon face, admiring some hard-dudes dancing on the journey to the east above big ledge - many more bevies on the dock afterwards n' some soft-porn skinny-dipping by the masses, than back to the little road hold-out before cursing them fools n' cutting loose to clamber up the corner in the gloaming-dark before darting back to home for chicken salad n' discoursing over stranger things 

7/28 - beacon day 9 - 2 more laps makes it 18, a tear beyond my tenous memory - wurst to drag adam's esposita up the corner at first, but she foreswore the morning heat and when adam got froggy on the immediate details i said fork-it n' went n' did a lap while he helped a timberline high-to-do set up a big kayak shuttle down to kalama- soggy as hell from sweat i returned as his business was concluded, having to concede another climb in the immediate future was fucked - we repaired to the river again then n' had a mort of swimming n' redneck shenanigans before i felt honor-bound to take advantage of the recent shade for another clambornation n' siddle on back home - plenty of folks casting about at the base, one even who recognized my nom de guerre n' threw a compliment my way that in hindsight i think i mighta thrown back a tad too heelish - perhaps if i spent more time on my people skills instead of scratching the Endless Itch?  

7/29 - was supposed to be a beacon-less day but the beacon lords giveth n' they take away too - beacon day 10 (in a row!) at any rate, n' solo lap 19 - met the k19 near noon after carting the boy child to row-row-your-boating on lake vancouver and stuffing in a quick swim at fallen leaf lake - after dressing his sadly chapped hands i cast out camas-ways - the plan was the adventure swim to phoca rock from the washington side, a jam i've yet to even get wet for yet despite numerous attempts, and this one the same - nastia said she was illish and prefered a columbia crossing at hood river instead, so sure, why not?  we both drove to set up a car shuttle and noticed near arrival that the wind was whipping, the waves white-capped and their swells nice n' rolling long - gave me the heebie-jeebies a bit, soul-scarred as i remain from the one and only trans-columbia transit i made a few years back w/ ole'pat when the gorge was freshly burnt and i was perhaps drunk by naval standards at our 10 am departure (holy jeebus, that incident still ranks high on my most-terrified ever list) - after setting up the shuttle though we gave her a go, me in my wetsuit and snorkel and boots and web-gloves and day-glo orange personal swimmer buoy (and sober besides, having learnt all kinds of lessons that chilly october morning) but the russkaya of course was just in her dainty 2-piece and rocking the doggy paddle stroke, true russian-berserker style and blazeningly loving it - not too far from shore the waves and winds announced their presence with authority and our humble tribe quailed at their querulousness, first she then me after starting a 2nd attempt alone - retiring to the oregon side once again to recover her car n' kick about the conversation-can we revolved the rubik's cube of future combinations and settled upon giving something/anything a chance someday soon, assuming we live that long  - a solo beacon lap on a wind-wracked n' shady south side sans shirt was my true reward for listening to the Little Voice Inside Me and chopped the voyage home neatly in half - all i have to worry about now is tomorrow...

7/30 - 11 back-to-back beatard days and i'm a bit drained - 2 more laps for 21 total on this still youngish summer - crater lake complications and house-swapping horseshit clouds everything, my spirits low - might it be that nothing ever really gets better?

8/1 - sou'side summer beacon day 12 of 2019 - solo laps 22-23 - early morning rising to house-hunt n' tidy up domestically, kinda lame really but we are rarely masters of our own destiny i reckon - the daughter-child to her amiga's skamania abide in the late afternoon left time for yours truly to scramble up the bacon wand twice before achieving apogee and getting sucked back west once again to stuff more things into the bursting garage before the photo man comes to record it all in the morning - the great crater lake creep south at sunrise, all mortal concerns cast aside in the gawdamned interest of aquatic glory 

8/8 - day 13 - laps 24, 25, 26 - a sad week away from the bacon-stone, but well spent - a swim-trip to crater lake - cock-blocked by the feds, we found better refuge at waldo lake, which was much like taking the 2nd hottest girl at the party home - union bidness in mcminville and quite alright, though it brought the summer death-knell to the forefront of a keening mind - rain in the west, after hours the beaconwand cast its spell and the world was my oyster again - gnome the larry in the gloaming lot, then kyle n' company came crawling in - three laps passing through numerous parties - some-guy-named-steve earned his Hero of Beacon Rock w/ oak-leaf clusters - placid blood flowed freely as it should in the scraping places - kyle got the kid up though competent legal counsel would eagerly have urged him not 

8/9 -estival beacon aeon 14 - laps 27-28 - a lazy friday summer sleep-in, the first in some time - warm coffee n' cold eggs w/ the wifey over steven colbert n' some orange-is-the-new-black - the kids like college students, slow to rise - afternoon i ambled out to beacon to meet old ben - beat him by an hour so got a lap in alone before he arrived with his boy asher, sullen n' silent, as a man should be in this shocking modern age - led them up the route sans belays, which i reckon counts as solo too, though a rope was technically tied round my ample beer-gut - a gaggle of elk gamboling about the meadows below the eastern train track, their worries little ones in this wonderous season - the drive home dominated by the sweet smell of summer rain n' the dying sun...

8/11 - day 15 - a rare reverse-golden-sombrero raises the lap count to 32 on the summer - the trip took weather-faith, for the rain fell throughout the gorge on the drive in, even in the lot itself a profound mist made its presence known - a fool's errand i thought, but took my shoes down to the base anyway to see if the stone was dry despite 2 days of storms and so it was, and with hordes of portlanders putting their dirty libturd-hands all over it in flagrant degradation too - kyle n' bill n' joe n' countless over fools all encountered and gavreeted with, and one parcel of folks i passed 4 times in total over the next few hours - the history of the world it would seem, and fitting that the soundtrack was 4 episodes of a podcast all about the ending of it

[ivan]

On 8/11/2019 at 6:52 PM, ivan said:

2018 saw 60 solo laps, a # beyond imagination, but possible by a weird combination of prime weather and a personal calendar no me gusta 

7/20/19 - south side day 1 of the year, well after le grande opening i'll grant you as i sallied up n' down the coast courting more arduous adventures - swimming in the olympics, multi-day colonel bob bumblefuck, marriage counselor sheenagins n' regular ole climbing in leavenworth w/ the silvermans shit-talking each other at every turn, then near a week about mt whitney w/ the whiskey hooligans - 2 solo laps in the shade, every hold an old friend and unforgotten - geoff n' kyle n' larry the gnome at the top n' beers n' bullshitting at the base - managed 70 solo laps last summer, so that's 1/35 of the way to repeating that unbelievable total 

7/21 - day 2 - laps 3-4 - hey, only 33 more days at this rate to top last year - foiled upon arrival at battle ground lake, i bounced off fallen leaf lake too n' resigned meself to clambering out at beacon - once again the rock all to myself, despite the weekend situation - a lap alone, then another w/ some folks thrashing their way up the original dods exit at the end - summer's halfway home n' i'm still all smiles 

7/22 - day 3 - laps 5-7 - a hat trick on a hottish day, 2 in the sun and the third in the shade the hottest of all w/ numerous half-clad hotties along the way

7/23 - day 4 - lap 8 - swam a slow wetsuit-less mile in fallen leaf under cloudy n' cool skies, fetched the boy child from camp, then deposited him again before darting out to the bacon-wand for a single ascent before coming back camas-ways to peruse new houses and ultimately sup on delectable thai takeout

7/24 - day 5 - laps 9-10 - ten laps in five days not so shabby - nary a soul in sight on this sweatyish day, but steve in the parking lot - a week a paradise it would seem... 

7/25 - another hat-trick makes it 13 laps in 6 days, a healthy clip - irish death's n' lovely crowds n' sun n' shade and all after a right-nice long swim continued a paradise-theme-of-a-summer so far...

7/26 - the end of my first summer beacon week and a productive one with 2 more laps to bring the total to 15, 1/4 of the way to last year's ludicrous total, but at a pace to bury it should that be my jealous jam on looking back (i've heard tale their no more nefarious thief than nostalgia though) - a mile swim in fallen leaf while the wulf-man paddled away on lake vancouver, then beacon just after noon in the brutal brightness - shed my black shirt in favor of royal blue - lovely pair of sheilas atop tree ledge on the first lap - sucked down my beer in a batch of shade in the gut under uprising, panting like a bitch - a horde of latinos on the way down, one fella w/ a pack to support the lot of them for a month if need be - the second lap lonely but bearably in the breeze, fat drops of sweat drip-dripping and sizzling away on the stone - then house-hunting and general real-world bummer concerns...

7/27 - summer beacon day 8 - the late morning meetup out near no'bo - adam n' claire n' naterring as we waited for ole'geoff to arrive w/ his prized n' feared jet-ski - beers n' bullshitting n' plan forming - claire drove us up near the dam and we flung ourselves into hamilton creek, expecting far more fun than the fickle world felt like paying out, stumbling mid-knee forever through the stream in wetsuits w/ stuff sacks full of beer - the main current at last and drifting down under the beacon face, admiring some hard-dudes dancing on the journey to the east above big ledge - many more bevies on the dock afterwards n' some soft-porn skinny-dipping by the masses, than back to the little road hold-out before cursing them fools n' cutting loose to clamber up the corner in the gloaming-dark before darting back to home for chicken salad n' discoursing over stranger things 

7/28 - beacon day 9 - 2 more laps makes it 18, a tear beyond my tenous memory - wurst to drag adam's esposita up the corner at first, but she foreswore the morning heat and when adam got froggy on the immediate details i said fork-it n' went n' did a lap while he helped a timberline high-to-do set up a big kayak shuttle down to kalama- soggy as hell from sweat i returned as his business was concluded, having to concede another climb in the immediate future was fucked - we repaired to the river again then n' had a mort of swimming n' redneck shenanigans before i felt honor-bound to take advantage of the recent shade for another clambornation n' siddle on back home - plenty of folks casting about at the base, one even who recognized my nom de guerre n' threw a compliment my way that in hindsight i think i mighta thrown back a tad too heelish - perhaps if i spent more time on my people skills instead of scratching the Endless Itch?  

7/29 - was supposed to be a beacon-less day but the beacon lords giveth n' they take away too - beacon day 10 (in a row!) at any rate, n' solo lap 19 - met the k19 near noon after carting the boy child to row-row-your-boating on lake vancouver and stuffing in a quick swim at fallen leaf lake - after dressing his sadly chapped hands i cast out camas-ways - the plan was the adventure swim to phoca rock from the washington side, a jam i've yet to even get wet for yet despite numerous attempts, and this one the same - nastia said she was illish and prefered a columbia crossing at hood river instead, so sure, why not?  we both drove to set up a car shuttle and noticed near arrival that the wind was whipping, the waves white-capped and their swells nice n' rolling long - gave me the heebie-jeebies a bit, soul-scarred as i remain from the one and only trans-columbia transit i made a few years back w/ ole'pat when the gorge was freshly burnt and i was perhaps drunk by naval standards at our 10 am departure (holy jeebus, that incident still ranks high on my most-terrified ever list) - after setting up the shuttle though we gave her a go, me in my wetsuit and snorkel and boots and web-gloves and day-glo orange personal swimmer buoy (and sober besides, having learnt all kinds of lessons that chilly october morning) but the russkaya of course was just in her dainty 2-piece and rocking the doggy paddle stroke, true russian-berserker style and blazeningly loving it - not too far from shore the waves and winds announced their presence with authority and our humble tribe quailed at their querulousness, first she then me after starting a 2nd attempt alone - retiring to the oregon side once again to recover her car n' kick about the conversation-can we revolved the rubik's cube of future combinations and settled upon giving something/anything a chance someday soon, assuming we live that long  - a solo beacon lap on a wind-wracked n' shady south side sans shirt was my true reward for listening to the Little Voice Inside Me and chopped the voyage home neatly in half - all i have to worry about now is tomorrow...

7/30 - 11 back-to-back beatard days and i'm a bit drained - 2 more laps for 21 total on this still youngish summer - crater lake complications and house-swapping horseshit clouds everything, my spirits low - might it be that nothing ever really gets better?

8/1 - sou'side summer beacon day 12 of 2019 - solo laps 22-23 - early morning rising to house-hunt n' tidy up domestically, kinda lame really but we are rarely masters of our own destiny i reckon - the daughter-child to her amiga's skamania abide in the late afternoon left time for yours truly to scramble up the bacon wand twice before achieving apogee and getting sucked back west once again to stuff more things into the bursting garage before the photo man comes to record it all in the morning - the great crater lake creep south at sunrise, all mortal concerns cast aside in the gawdamned interest of aquatic glory 

8/8 - day 13 - laps 24, 25, 26 - a sad week away from the bacon-stone, but well spent - a swim-trip to crater lake - cock-blocked by the feds, we found better refuge at waldo lake, which was much like taking the 2nd hottest girl at the party home - union bidness in mcminville and quite alright, though it brought the summer death-knell to the forefront of a keening mind - rain in the west, after hours the beaconwand cast its spell and the world was my oyster again - gnome the larry in the gloaming lot, then kyle n' company came crawling in - three laps passing through numerous parties - some-guy-named-steve earned his Hero of Beacon Rock w/ oak-leaf clusters - placid blood flowed freely as it should in the scraping places - kyle got the kid up though competent legal counsel would eagerly have urged him not 

8/9 -estival beacon aeon 14 - laps 27-28 - a lazy friday summer sleep-in, the first in some time - warm coffee n' cold eggs w/ the wifey over steven colbert n' some orange-is-the-new-black - the kids like college students, slow to rise - afternoon i ambled out to beacon to meet old ben - beat him by an hour so got a lap in alone before he arrived with his boy asher, sullen n' silent, as a man should be in this shocking modern age - led them up the route sans belays, which i reckon counts as solo too, though a rope was technically tied round my ample beer-gut - a gaggle of elk gamboling about the meadows below the eastern train track, their worries little ones in this wonderous season - the drive home dominated by the sweet smell of summer rain n' the dying sun...

8/11 - day 15 - a rare reverse-golden-sombrero raises the lap count to 32 on the summer - the trip took weather-faith, for the rain fell throughout the gorge on the drive in, even in the lot itself a profound mist made its presence known - a fool's errand i thought, but took my shoes down to the base anyway to see if the stone was dry despite 2 days of storms and so it was, and with hordes of portlanders putting their dirty libturd-hands all over it in flagrant degradation too - kyle n' bill n' joe n' countless over fools all encountered and gavreeted with, and one parcel of folks i passed 4 times in total over the next few hours - the history of the world it would seem, and fitting that the soundtrack was 4 episodes of a podcast all about the ending of it

8/12 - day 16 - lap 33 - the smell of sudden fiery death roused me at 5 and an hour later i arose in protest at my prickly senses - after tea and trailer park boys i eased myself eastwards for a single lap in the sun - the stone alone, i savored my solitude, the drip-drip of sweat the only sense of time to contend with - afterwards car-chores and lake-swimming w/ many chilluns 

[ivan]

On 8/12/2019 at 7:41 PM, ivan said:

2018 saw 60 solo laps, a # beyond imagination, but possible by a weird combination of prime weather and a personal calendar no me gusta 

7/20/19 - south side day 1 of the year, well after le grande opening i'll grant you as i sallied up n' down the coast courting more arduous adventures - swimming in the olympics, multi-day colonel bob bumblefuck, marriage counselor sheenagins n' regular ole climbing in leavenworth w/ the silvermans shit-talking each other at every turn, then near a week about mt whitney w/ the whiskey hooligans - 2 solo laps in the shade, every hold an old friend and unforgotten - geoff n' kyle n' larry the gnome at the top n' beers n' bullshitting at the base - managed 70 solo laps last summer, so that's 1/35 of the way to repeating that unbelievable total 

7/21 - day 2 - laps 3-4 - hey, only 33 more days at this rate to top last year - foiled upon arrival at battle ground lake, i bounced off fallen leaf lake too n' resigned meself to clambering out at beacon - once again the rock all to myself, despite the weekend situation - a lap alone, then another w/ some folks thrashing their way up the original dods exit at the end - summer's halfway home n' i'm still all smiles 

7/22 - day 3 - laps 5-7 - a hat trick on a hottish day, 2 in the sun and the third in the shade the hottest of all w/ numerous half-clad hotties along the way

7/23 - day 4 - lap 8 - swam a slow wetsuit-less mile in fallen leaf under cloudy n' cool skies, fetched the boy child from camp, then deposited him again before darting out to the bacon-wand for a single ascent before coming back camas-ways to peruse new houses and ultimately sup on delectable thai takeout

7/24 - day 5 - laps 9-10 - ten laps in five days not so shabby - nary a soul in sight on this sweatyish day, but steve in the parking lot - a week a paradise it would seem... 

7/25 - another hat-trick makes it 13 laps in 6 days, a healthy clip - irish death's n' lovely crowds n' sun n' shade and all after a right-nice long swim continued a paradise-theme-of-a-summer so far...

7/26 - the end of my first summer beacon week and a productive one with 2 more laps to bring the total to 15, 1/4 of the way to last year's ludicrous total, but at a pace to bury it should that be my jealous jam on looking back (i've heard tale their no more nefarious thief than nostalgia though) - a mile swim in fallen leaf while the wulf-man paddled away on lake vancouver, then beacon just after noon in the brutal brightness - shed my black shirt in favor of royal blue - lovely pair of sheilas atop tree ledge on the first lap - sucked down my beer in a batch of shade in the gut under uprising, panting like a bitch - a horde of latinos on the way down, one fella w/ a pack to support the lot of them for a month if need be - the second lap lonely but bearably in the breeze, fat drops of sweat drip-dripping and sizzling away on the stone - then house-hunting and general real-world bummer concerns...

7/27 - summer beacon day 8 - the late morning meetup out near no'bo - adam n' claire n' naterring as we waited for ole'geoff to arrive w/ his prized n' feared jet-ski - beers n' bullshitting n' plan forming - claire drove us up near the dam and we flung ourselves into hamilton creek, expecting far more fun than the fickle world felt like paying out, stumbling mid-knee forever through the stream in wetsuits w/ stuff sacks full of beer - the main current at last and drifting down under the beacon face, admiring some hard-dudes dancing on the journey to the east above big ledge - many more bevies on the dock afterwards n' some soft-porn skinny-dipping by the masses, than back to the little road hold-out before cursing them fools n' cutting loose to clamber up the corner in the gloaming-dark before darting back to home for chicken salad n' discoursing over stranger things 

7/28 - beacon day 9 - 2 more laps makes it 18, a tear beyond my tenous memory - wurst to drag adam's esposita up the corner at first, but she foreswore the morning heat and when adam got froggy on the immediate details i said fork-it n' went n' did a lap while he helped a timberline high-to-do set up a big kayak shuttle down to kalama- soggy as hell from sweat i returned as his business was concluded, having to concede another climb in the immediate future was fucked - we repaired to the river again then n' had a mort of swimming n' redneck shenanigans before i felt honor-bound to take advantage of the recent shade for another clambornation n' siddle on back home - plenty of folks casting about at the base, one even who recognized my nom de guerre n' threw a compliment my way that in hindsight i think i mighta thrown back a tad too heelish - perhaps if i spent more time on my people skills instead of scratching the Endless Itch?  

7/29 - was supposed to be a beacon-less day but the beacon lords giveth n' they take away too - beacon day 10 (in a row!) at any rate, n' solo lap 19 - met the k19 near noon after carting the boy child to row-row-your-boating on lake vancouver and stuffing in a quick swim at fallen leaf lake - after dressing his sadly chapped hands i cast out camas-ways - the plan was the adventure swim to phoca rock from the washington side, a jam i've yet to even get wet for yet despite numerous attempts, and this one the same - nastia said she was illish and prefered a columbia crossing at hood river instead, so sure, why not?  we both drove to set up a car shuttle and noticed near arrival that the wind was whipping, the waves white-capped and their swells nice n' rolling long - gave me the heebie-jeebies a bit, soul-scarred as i remain from the one and only trans-columbia transit i made a few years back w/ ole'pat when the gorge was freshly burnt and i was perhaps drunk by naval standards at our 10 am departure (holy jeebus, that incident still ranks high on my most-terrified ever list) - after setting up the shuttle though we gave her a go, me in my wetsuit and snorkel and boots and web-gloves and day-glo orange personal swimmer buoy (and sober besides, having learnt all kinds of lessons that chilly october morning) but the russkaya of course was just in her dainty 2-piece and rocking the doggy paddle stroke, true russian-berserker style and blazeningly loving it - not too far from shore the waves and winds announced their presence with authority and our humble tribe quailed at their querulousness, first she then me after starting a 2nd attempt alone - retiring to the oregon side once again to recover her car n' kick about the conversation-can we revolved the rubik's cube of future combinations and settled upon giving something/anything a chance someday soon, assuming we live that long  - a solo beacon lap on a wind-wracked n' shady south side sans shirt was my true reward for listening to the Little Voice Inside Me and chopped the voyage home neatly in half - all i have to worry about now is tomorrow...

7/30 - 11 back-to-back beatard days and i'm a bit drained - 2 more laps for 21 total on this still youngish summer - crater lake complications and house-swapping horseshit clouds everything, my spirits low - might it be that nothing ever really gets better?

8/1 - sou'side summer beacon day 12 of 2019 - solo laps 22-23 - early morning rising to house-hunt n' tidy up domestically, kinda lame really but we are rarely masters of our own destiny i reckon - the daughter-child to her amiga's skamania abide in the late afternoon left time for yours truly to scramble up the bacon wand twice before achieving apogee and getting sucked back west once again to stuff more things into the bursting garage before the photo man comes to record it all in the morning - the great crater lake creep south at sunrise, all mortal concerns cast aside in the gawdamned interest of aquatic glory 

8/8 - day 13 - laps 24, 25, 26 - a sad week away from the bacon-stone, but well spent - a swim-trip to crater lake - cock-blocked by the feds, we found better refuge at waldo lake, which was much like taking the 2nd hottest girl at the party home - union bidness in mcminville and quite alright, though it brought the summer death-knell to the forefront of a keening mind - rain in the west, after hours the beaconwand cast its spell and the world was my oyster again - gnome the larry in the gloaming lot, then kyle n' company came crawling in - three laps passing through numerous parties - some-guy-named-steve earned his Hero of Beacon Rock w/ oak-leaf clusters - placid blood flowed freely as it should in the scraping places - kyle got the kid up though competent legal counsel would eagerly have urged him not 

8/9 -estival beacon aeon 14 - laps 27-28 - a lazy friday summer sleep-in, the first in some time - warm coffee n' cold eggs w/ the wifey over steven colbert n' some orange-is-the-new-black - the kids like college students, slow to rise - afternoon i ambled out to beacon to meet old ben - beat him by an hour so got a lap in alone before he arrived with his boy asher, sullen n' silent, as a man should be in this shocking modern age - led them up the route sans belays, which i reckon counts as solo too, though a rope was technically tied round my ample beer-gut - a gaggle of elk gamboling about the meadows below the eastern train track, their worries little ones in this wonderous season - the drive home dominated by the sweet smell of summer rain n' the dying sun...

8/11 - day 15 - a rare reverse-golden-sombrero raises the lap count to 32 on the summer - the trip took weather-faith, for the rain fell throughout the gorge on the drive in, even in the lot itself a profound mist made its presence known - a fool's errand i thought, but took my shoes down to the base anyway to see if the stone was dry despite 2 days of storms and so it was, and with hordes of portlanders putting their dirty libturd-hands all over it in flagrant degradation too - kyle n' bill n' joe n' countless over fools all encountered and gavreeted with, and one parcel of folks i passed 4 times in total over the next few hours - the history of the world it would seem, and fitting that the soundtrack was 4 episodes of a podcast all about the ending of it 

8/12 - day 16 - lap 33 - the smell of sudden fiery death roused me at 5 and an hour later i arose in protest at my prickly senses - after tea and trailer park boys i eased myself eastwards for a single lap in the sun - the stone alone, i savored my solitude, the drip-drip of sweat the only sense of time to contend with - afterwards car-chores and lake-swimming w/ many chilluns 

8/13 - day 17 - laps 34-35 - the world waxes largish, so what exactly is the goal now? last year the improbable # of 60 made me think 61 is all any sane man might relish, or maybe just 62 to stick a fork in the eye of roger morris, but now something much bigger indeed seems possible - how about 74 to offer the proverbial bitch-slap to barry bonds? even if that is to be the improbable mark, such a tally looms already large in the wind-screen and is to be sought for - the hazy outlines of a plan for a phenomenal 14-in-a-day assault in september with a whole heap of fools to propel the thing to a frenetic conclusion - that's in the future though - tonight was sublime solitude and shade and space for easy contemplation - a podcast on theoretical physics' hapless potential to create an end of the world to keep me company - the peregrines on the scene after being rather silent this past month - stone throwing teenage tourists and a positive conversation on the merits of manslaughter - a road trip begins tomorrow w/ the family and maybe a giant swim in crescent lake at the conclusion - there's marrow still in the bone of summer boys, and meat on it to spare as well 

Edited August 14, 2019 by ivan

[ivan]

On 8/13/2019 at 9:50 PM, ivan said:

2018 saw 60 solo laps, a # beyond imagination, but possible by a weird combination of prime weather and a personal calendar no me gusta 

7/20/19 - south side day 1 of the year, well after le grande opening i'll grant you as i sallied up n' down the coast courting more arduous adventures - swimming in the olympics, multi-day colonel bob bumblefuck, marriage counselor sheenagins n' regular ole climbing in leavenworth w/ the silvermans shit-talking each other at every turn, then near a week about mt whitney w/ the whiskey hooligans - 2 solo laps in the shade, every hold an old friend and unforgotten - geoff n' kyle n' larry the gnome at the top n' beers n' bullshitting at the base - managed 70 solo laps last summer, so that's 1/35 of the way to repeating that unbelievable total 

7/21 - day 2 - laps 3-4 - hey, only 33 more days at this rate to top last year - foiled upon arrival at battle ground lake, i bounced off fallen leaf lake too n' resigned meself to clambering out at beacon - once again the rock all to myself, despite the weekend situation - a lap alone, then another w/ some folks thrashing their way up the original dods exit at the end - summer's halfway home n' i'm still all smiles 

7/22 - day 3 - laps 5-7 - a hat trick on a hottish day, 2 in the sun and the third in the shade the hottest of all w/ numerous half-clad hotties along the way

7/23 - day 4 - lap 8 - swam a slow wetsuit-less mile in fallen leaf under cloudy n' cool skies, fetched the boy child from camp, then deposited him again before darting out to the bacon-wand for a single ascent before coming back camas-ways to peruse new houses and ultimately sup on delectable thai takeout

7/24 - day 5 - laps 9-10 - ten laps in five days not so shabby - nary a soul in sight on this sweatyish day, but steve in the parking lot - a week a paradise it would seem... 

7/25 - another hat-trick makes it 13 laps in 6 days, a healthy clip - irish death's n' lovely crowds n' sun n' shade and all after a right-nice long swim continued a paradise-theme-of-a-summer so far...

7/26 - the end of my first summer beacon week and a productive one with 2 more laps to bring the total to 15, 1/4 of the way to last year's ludicrous total, but at a pace to bury it should that be my jealous jam on looking back (i've heard tale their no more nefarious thief than nostalgia though) - a mile swim in fallen leaf while the wulf-man paddled away on lake vancouver, then beacon just after noon in the brutal brightness - shed my black shirt in favor of royal blue - lovely pair of sheilas atop tree ledge on the first lap - sucked down my beer in a batch of shade in the gut under uprising, panting like a bitch - a horde of latinos on the way down, one fella w/ a pack to support the lot of them for a month if need be - the second lap lonely but bearably in the breeze, fat drops of sweat drip-dripping and sizzling away on the stone - then house-hunting and general real-world bummer concerns...

7/27 - summer beacon day 8 - the late morning meetup out near no'bo - adam n' claire n' naterring as we waited for ole'geoff to arrive w/ his prized n' feared jet-ski - beers n' bullshitting n' plan forming - claire drove us up near the dam and we flung ourselves into hamilton creek, expecting far more fun than the fickle world felt like paying out, stumbling mid-knee forever through the stream in wetsuits w/ stuff sacks full of beer - the main current at last and drifting down under the beacon face, admiring some hard-dudes dancing on the journey to the east above big ledge - many more bevies on the dock afterwards n' some soft-porn skinny-dipping by the masses, than back to the little road hold-out before cursing them fools n' cutting loose to clamber up the corner in the gloaming-dark before darting back to home for chicken salad n' discoursing over stranger things 

7/28 - beacon day 9 - 2 more laps makes it 18, a tear beyond my tenous memory - wurst to drag adam's esposita up the corner at first, but she foreswore the morning heat and when adam got froggy on the immediate details i said fork-it n' went n' did a lap while he helped a timberline high-to-do set up a big kayak shuttle down to kalama- soggy as hell from sweat i returned as his business was concluded, having to concede another climb in the immediate future was fucked - we repaired to the river again then n' had a mort of swimming n' redneck shenanigans before i felt honor-bound to take advantage of the recent shade for another clambornation n' siddle on back home - plenty of folks casting about at the base, one even who recognized my nom de guerre n' threw a compliment my way that in hindsight i think i mighta thrown back a tad too heelish - perhaps if i spent more time on my people skills instead of scratching the Endless Itch?  

7/29 - was supposed to be a beacon-less day but the beacon lords giveth n' they take away too - beacon day 10 (in a row!) at any rate, n' solo lap 19 - met the k19 near noon after carting the boy child to row-row-your-boating on lake vancouver and stuffing in a quick swim at fallen leaf lake - after dressing his sadly chapped hands i cast out camas-ways - the plan was the adventure swim to phoca rock from the washington side, a jam i've yet to even get wet for yet despite numerous attempts, and this one the same - nastia said she was illish and prefered a columbia crossing at hood river instead, so sure, why not?  we both drove to set up a car shuttle and noticed near arrival that the wind was whipping, the waves white-capped and their swells nice n' rolling long - gave me the heebie-jeebies a bit, soul-scarred as i remain from the one and only trans-columbia transit i made a few years back w/ ole'pat when the gorge was freshly burnt and i was perhaps drunk by naval standards at our 10 am departure (holy jeebus, that incident still ranks high on my most-terrified ever list) - after setting up the shuttle though we gave her a go, me in my wetsuit and snorkel and boots and web-gloves and day-glo orange personal swimmer buoy (and sober besides, having learnt all kinds of lessons that chilly october morning) but the russkaya of course was just in her dainty 2-piece and rocking the doggy paddle stroke, true russian-berserker style and blazeningly loving it - not too far from shore the waves and winds announced their presence with authority and our humble tribe quailed at their querulousness, first she then me after starting a 2nd attempt alone - retiring to the oregon side once again to recover her car n' kick about the conversation-can we revolved the rubik's cube of future combinations and settled upon giving something/anything a chance someday soon, assuming we live that long  - a solo beacon lap on a wind-wracked n' shady south side sans shirt was my true reward for listening to the Little Voice Inside Me and chopped the voyage home neatly in half - all i have to worry about now is tomorrow...

7/30 - 11 back-to-back beatard days and i'm a bit drained - 2 more laps for 21 total on this still youngish summer - crater lake complications and house-swapping horseshit clouds everything, my spirits low - might it be that nothing ever really gets better?

8/1 - sou'side summer beacon day 12 of 2019 - solo laps 22-23 - early morning rising to house-hunt n' tidy up domestically, kinda lame really but we are rarely masters of our own destiny i reckon - the daughter-child to her amiga's skamania abide in the late afternoon left time for yours truly to scramble up the bacon wand twice before achieving apogee and getting sucked back west once again to stuff more things into the bursting garage before the photo man comes to record it all in the morning - the great crater lake creep south at sunrise, all mortal concerns cast aside in the gawdamned interest of aquatic glory 

8/8 - day 13 - laps 24, 25, 26 - a sad week away from the bacon-stone, but well spent - a swim-trip to crater lake - cock-blocked by the feds, we found better refuge at waldo lake, which was much like taking the 2nd hottest girl at the party home - union bidness in mcminville and quite alright, though it brought the summer death-knell to the forefront of a keening mind - rain in the west, after hours the beaconwand cast its spell and the world was my oyster again - gnome the larry in the gloaming lot, then kyle n' company came crawling in - three laps passing through numerous parties - some-guy-named-steve earned his Hero of Beacon Rock w/ oak-leaf clusters - placid blood flowed freely as it should in the scraping places - kyle got the kid up though competent legal counsel would eagerly have urged him not 

8/9 -estival beacon aeon 14 - laps 27-28 - a lazy friday summer sleep-in, the first in some time - warm coffee n' cold eggs w/ the wifey over steven colbert n' some orange-is-the-new-black - the kids like college students, slow to rise - afternoon i ambled out to beacon to meet old ben - beat him by an hour so got a lap in alone before he arrived with his boy asher, sullen n' silent, as a man should be in this shocking modern age - led them up the route sans belays, which i reckon counts as solo too, though a rope was technically tied round my ample beer-gut - a gaggle of elk gamboling about the meadows below the eastern train track, their worries little ones in this wonderous season - the drive home dominated by the sweet smell of summer rain n' the dying sun...

8/11 - day 15 - a rare reverse-golden-sombrero raises the lap count to 32 on the summer - the trip took weather-faith, for the rain fell throughout the gorge on the drive in, even in the lot itself a profound mist made its presence known - a fool's errand i thought, but took my shoes down to the base anyway to see if the stone was dry despite 2 days of storms and so it was, and with hordes of portlanders putting their dirty libturd-hands all over it in flagrant degradation too - kyle n' bill n' joe n' countless over fools all encountered and gavreeted with, and one parcel of folks i passed 4 times in total over the next few hours - the history of the world it would seem, and fitting that the soundtrack was 4 episodes of a podcast all about the ending of it 

8/12 - day 16 - lap 33 - the smell of sudden fiery death roused me at 5 and an hour later i arose in protest at my prickly senses - after tea and trailer park boys i eased myself eastwards for a single lap in the sun - the stone alone, i savored my solitude, the drip-drip of sweat the only sense of time to contend with - afterwards car-chores and lake-swimming w/ many chilluns 

8/13 - day 17 - laps 34-35 - the world waxes largish, so what exactly is the goal now? last year the improbable # of 60 made me think 61 is all any sane man might relish, or maybe just 62 to stick a fork in the eye of roger morris, but now something much bigger indeed seems possible - how about 74 to offer the proverbial bitch-slap to barry bonds? even if that is to be the improbable mark, such a tally looms already large in the wind-screen and is to be sought for - the hazy outlines of a plan for a phenomenal 14-in-a-day assault in september with a whole heap of fools to propel the thing to a frenetic conclusion - that's in the future though - tonight was sublime solitude and shade and space for easy contemplation - a podcast on theoretical physics' hapless potential to create an end of the world to keep me company - the peregrines on the scene after being rather silent this past month - stone throwing teenage tourists and a positive conversation on the merits of manslaughter - a road trip begins tomorrow w/ the family and maybe a giant swim in crescent lake at the conclusion - there's marrow still in the bone of summer boys, and meat on it to spare as well 

8/19 - day 18 - laps 36-40 for the rare Reverse Platinum Sombrero - a near week at the beach w/ the fam - a crossing of quinault and an epic lake crescent thing - barely a week left in summer 2019 i awoke wicked sore but set out east anyways - the stone near alone for the first 4 laps, but then dave n' steve where there n' we cackled our way upwards together alone to mushroom ledge n' some serious meditation

[ivan]

On 8/19/2019 at 9:48 PM, ivan said:

2018 saw 60 solo laps, a # beyond imagination, but possible by a weird combination of prime weather and a personal calendar no me gusta 

7/20/19 - south side day 1 of the year, well after le grande opening i'll grant you as i sallied up n' down the coast courting more arduous adventures - swimming in the olympics, multi-day colonel bob bumblefuck, marriage counselor sheenagins n' regular ole climbing in leavenworth w/ the silvermans shit-talking each other at every turn, then near a week about mt whitney w/ the whiskey hooligans - 2 solo laps in the shade, every hold an old friend and unforgotten - geoff n' kyle n' larry the gnome at the top n' beers n' bullshitting at the base - managed 70 solo laps last summer, so that's 1/35 of the way to repeating that unbelievable total 

7/21 - day 2 - laps 3-4 - hey, only 33 more days at this rate to top last year - foiled upon arrival at battle ground lake, i bounced off fallen leaf lake too n' resigned meself to clambering out at beacon - once again the rock all to myself, despite the weekend situation - a lap alone, then another w/ some folks thrashing their way up the original dods exit at the end - summer's halfway home n' i'm still all smiles 

7/22 - day 3 - laps 5-7 - a hat trick on a hottish day, 2 in the sun and the third in the shade the hottest of all w/ numerous half-clad hotties along the way

7/23 - day 4 - lap 8 - swam a slow wetsuit-less mile in fallen leaf under cloudy n' cool skies, fetched the boy child from camp, then deposited him again before darting out to the bacon-wand for a single ascent before coming back camas-ways to peruse new houses and ultimately sup on delectable thai takeout

7/24 - day 5 - laps 9-10 - ten laps in five days not so shabby - nary a soul in sight on this sweatyish day, but steve in the parking lot - a week a paradise it would seem... 

7/25 - another hat-trick makes it 13 laps in 6 days, a healthy clip - irish death's n' lovely crowds n' sun n' shade and all after a right-nice long swim continued a paradise-theme-of-a-summer so far...

7/26 - the end of my first summer beacon week and a productive one with 2 more laps to bring the total to 15, 1/4 of the way to last year's ludicrous total, but at a pace to bury it should that be my jealous jam on looking back (i've heard tale their no more nefarious thief than nostalgia though) - a mile swim in fallen leaf while the wulf-man paddled away on lake vancouver, then beacon just after noon in the brutal brightness - shed my black shirt in favor of royal blue - lovely pair of sheilas atop tree ledge on the first lap - sucked down my beer in a batch of shade in the gut under uprising, panting like a bitch - a horde of latinos on the way down, one fella w/ a pack to support the lot of them for a month if need be - the second lap lonely but bearably in the breeze, fat drops of sweat drip-dripping and sizzling away on the stone - then house-hunting and general real-world bummer concerns...

7/27 - summer beacon day 8 - the late morning meetup out near no'bo - adam n' claire n' naterring as we waited for ole'geoff to arrive w/ his prized n' feared jet-ski - beers n' bullshitting n' plan forming - claire drove us up near the dam and we flung ourselves into hamilton creek, expecting far more fun than the fickle world felt like paying out, stumbling mid-knee forever through the stream in wetsuits w/ stuff sacks full of beer - the main current at last and drifting down under the beacon face, admiring some hard-dudes dancing on the journey to the east above big ledge - many more bevies on the dock afterwards n' some soft-porn skinny-dipping by the masses, than back to the little road hold-out before cursing them fools n' cutting loose to clamber up the corner in the gloaming-dark before darting back to home for chicken salad n' discoursing over stranger things 

7/28 - beacon day 9 - 2 more laps makes it 18, a tear beyond my tenous memory - wurst to drag adam's esposita up the corner at first, but she foreswore the morning heat and when adam got froggy on the immediate details i said fork-it n' went n' did a lap while he helped a timberline high-to-do set up a big kayak shuttle down to kalama- soggy as hell from sweat i returned as his business was concluded, having to concede another climb in the immediate future was fucked - we repaired to the river again then n' had a mort of swimming n' redneck shenanigans before i felt honor-bound to take advantage of the recent shade for another clambornation n' siddle on back home - plenty of folks casting about at the base, one even who recognized my nom de guerre n' threw a compliment my way that in hindsight i think i mighta thrown back a tad too heelish - perhaps if i spent more time on my people skills instead of scratching the Endless Itch?  

7/29 - was supposed to be a beacon-less day but the beacon lords giveth n' they take away too - beacon day 10 (in a row!) at any rate, n' solo lap 19 - met the k19 near noon after carting the boy child to row-row-your-boating on lake vancouver and stuffing in a quick swim at fallen leaf lake - after dressing his sadly chapped hands i cast out camas-ways - the plan was the adventure swim to phoca rock from the washington side, a jam i've yet to even get wet for yet despite numerous attempts, and this one the same - nastia said she was illish and prefered a columbia crossing at hood river instead, so sure, why not?  we both drove to set up a car shuttle and noticed near arrival that the wind was whipping, the waves white-capped and their swells nice n' rolling long - gave me the heebie-jeebies a bit, soul-scarred as i remain from the one and only trans-columbia transit i made a few years back w/ ole'pat when the gorge was freshly burnt and i was perhaps drunk by naval standards at our 10 am departure (holy jeebus, that incident still ranks high on my most-terrified ever list) - after setting up the shuttle though we gave her a go, me in my wetsuit and snorkel and boots and web-gloves and day-glo orange personal swimmer buoy (and sober besides, having learnt all kinds of lessons that chilly october morning) but the russkaya of course was just in her dainty 2-piece and rocking the doggy paddle stroke, true russian-berserker style and blazeningly loving it - not too far from shore the waves and winds announced their presence with authority and our humble tribe quailed at their querulousness, first she then me after starting a 2nd attempt alone - retiring to the oregon side once again to recover her car n' kick about the conversation-can we revolved the rubik's cube of future combinations and settled upon giving something/anything a chance someday soon, assuming we live that long  - a solo beacon lap on a wind-wracked n' shady south side sans shirt was my true reward for listening to the Little Voice Inside Me and chopped the voyage home neatly in half - all i have to worry about now is tomorrow...

7/30 - 11 back-to-back beatard days and i'm a bit drained - 2 more laps for 21 total on this still youngish summer - crater lake complications and house-swapping horseshit clouds everything, my spirits low - might it be that nothing ever really gets better?

8/1 - sou'side summer beacon day 12 of 2019 - solo laps 22-23 - early morning rising to house-hunt n' tidy up domestically, kinda lame really but we are rarely masters of our own destiny i reckon - the daughter-child to her amiga's skamania abide in the late afternoon left time for yours truly to scramble up the bacon wand twice before achieving apogee and getting sucked back west once again to stuff more things into the bursting garage before the photo man comes to record it all in the morning - the great crater lake creep south at sunrise, all mortal concerns cast aside in the gawdamned interest of aquatic glory 

8/8 - day 13 - laps 24, 25, 26 - a sad week away from the bacon-stone, but well spent - a swim-trip to crater lake - cock-blocked by the feds, we found better refuge at waldo lake, which was much like taking the 2nd hottest girl at the party home - union bidness in mcminville and quite alright, though it brought the summer death-knell to the forefront of a keening mind - rain in the west, after hours the beaconwand cast its spell and the world was my oyster again - gnome the larry in the gloaming lot, then kyle n' company came crawling in - three laps passing through numerous parties - some-guy-named-steve earned his Hero of Beacon Rock w/ oak-leaf clusters - placid blood flowed freely as it should in the scraping places - kyle got the kid up though competent legal counsel would eagerly have urged him not 

8/9 -estival beacon aeon 14 - laps 27-28 - a lazy friday summer sleep-in, the first in some time - warm coffee n' cold eggs w/ the wifey over steven colbert n' some orange-is-the-new-black - the kids like college students, slow to rise - afternoon i ambled out to beacon to meet old ben - beat him by an hour so got a lap in alone before he arrived with his boy asher, sullen n' silent, as a man should be in this shocking modern age - led them up the route sans belays, which i reckon counts as solo too, though a rope was technically tied round my ample beer-gut - a gaggle of elk gamboling about the meadows below the eastern train track, their worries little ones in this wonderous season - the drive home dominated by the sweet smell of summer rain n' the dying sun...

8/11 - day 15 - a rare reverse-golden-sombrero raises the lap count to 32 on the summer - the trip took weather-faith, for the rain fell throughout the gorge on the drive in, even in the lot itself a profound mist made its presence known - a fool's errand i thought, but took my shoes down to the base anyway to see if the stone was dry despite 2 days of storms and so it was, and with hordes of portlanders putting their dirty libturd-hands all over it in flagrant degradation too - kyle n' bill n' joe n' countless over fools all encountered and gavreeted with, and one parcel of folks i passed 4 times in total over the next few hours - the history of the world it would seem, and fitting that the soundtrack was 4 episodes of a podcast all about the ending of it 

8/12 - day 16 - lap 33 - the smell of sudden fiery death roused me at 5 and an hour later i arose in protest at my prickly senses - after tea and trailer park boys i eased myself eastwards for a single lap in the sun - the stone alone, i savored my solitude, the drip-drip of sweat the only sense of time to contend with - afterwards car-chores and lake-swimming w/ many chilluns 

8/13 - day 17 - laps 34-35 - the world waxes largish, so what exactly is the goal now? last year the improbable # of 60 made me think 61 is all any sane man might relish, or maybe just 62 to stick a fork in the eye of roger morris, but now something much bigger indeed seems possible - how about 74 to offer the proverbial bitch-slap to barry bonds? even if that is to be the improbable mark, such a tally looms already large in the wind-screen and is to be sought for - the hazy outlines of a plan for a phenomenal 14-in-a-day assault in september with a whole heap of fools to propel the thing to a frenetic conclusion - that's in the future though - tonight was sublime solitude and shade and space for easy contemplation - a podcast on theoretical physics' hapless potential to create an end of the world to keep me company - the peregrines on the scene after being rather silent this past month - stone throwing teenage tourists and a positive conversation on the merits of manslaughter - a road trip begins tomorrow w/ the family and maybe a giant swim in crescent lake at the conclusion - there's marrow still in the bone of summer boys, and meat on it to spare as well 

8/19 - day 18 - laps 36-40 for the rare Reverse Platinum Sombrero - a near week at the beach w/ the fam - a crossing of quinault and an epic lake crescent thing - barely a week left in summer 2019 i awoke wicked sore but set out east anyways - the stone near alone for the first 4 laps, but then dave n' steve where there n' we cackled our way upwards together alone to mushroom ledge n' some serious meditation

8/24 - day 19 - laps 41, 42 n' 43 meant it was a douglas adams day (shamefully i must admit i forget my towel, but proudly i can say i did not panic) - 3 days in the alpine lakes wilderness didn't beat me down enough i guess, 'cuz the girl-child asked to get carted out to skamania for the afternoon to cavort w/ her polish friends and i rallied to run laps while letting her have her what-have-you - summer is doomed and so are you

[ivan]

22 hours ago, ivan said:

2018 saw 60 solo laps, a # beyond imagination, but possible by a weird combination of prime weather and a personal calendar no me gusta 

7/20/19 - south side day 1 of the year, well after le grande opening i'll grant you as i sallied up n' down the coast courting more arduous adventures - swimming in the olympics, multi-day colonel bob bumblefuck, marriage counselor sheenagins n' regular ole climbing in leavenworth w/ the silvermans shit-talking each other at every turn, then near a week about mt whitney w/ the whiskey hooligans - 2 solo laps in the shade, every hold an old friend and unforgotten - geoff n' kyle n' larry the gnome at the top n' beers n' bullshitting at the base - managed 70 solo laps last summer, so that's 1/35 of the way to repeating that unbelievable total 

7/21 - day 2 - laps 3-4 - hey, only 33 more days at this rate to top last year - foiled upon arrival at battle ground lake, i bounced off fallen leaf lake too n' resigned meself to clambering out at beacon - once again the rock all to myself, despite the weekend situation - a lap alone, then another w/ some folks thrashing their way up the original dods exit at the end - summer's halfway home n' i'm still all smiles 

7/22 - day 3 - laps 5-7 - a hat trick on a hottish day, 2 in the sun and the third in the shade the hottest of all w/ numerous half-clad hotties along the way

7/23 - day 4 - lap 8 - swam a slow wetsuit-less mile in fallen leaf under cloudy n' cool skies, fetched the boy child from camp, then deposited him again before darting out to the bacon-wand for a single ascent before coming back camas-ways to peruse new houses and ultimately sup on delectable thai takeout

7/24 - day 5 - laps 9-10 - ten laps in five days not so shabby - nary a soul in sight on this sweatyish day, but steve in the parking lot - a week a paradise it would seem... 

7/25 - another hat-trick makes it 13 laps in 6 days, a healthy clip - irish death's n' lovely crowds n' sun n' shade and all after a right-nice long swim continued a paradise-theme-of-a-summer so far...

7/26 - the end of my first summer beacon week and a productive one with 2 more laps to bring the total to 15, 1/4 of the way to last year's ludicrous total, but at a pace to bury it should that be my jealous jam on looking back (i've heard tale their no more nefarious thief than nostalgia though) - a mile swim in fallen leaf while the wulf-man paddled away on lake vancouver, then beacon just after noon in the brutal brightness - shed my black shirt in favor of royal blue - lovely pair of sheilas atop tree ledge on the first lap - sucked down my beer in a batch of shade in the gut under uprising, panting like a bitch - a horde of latinos on the way down, one fella w/ a pack to support the lot of them for a month if need be - the second lap lonely but bearably in the breeze, fat drops of sweat drip-dripping and sizzling away on the stone - then house-hunting and general real-world bummer concerns...

7/27 - summer beacon day 8 - the late morning meetup out near no'bo - adam n' claire n' naterring as we waited for ole'geoff to arrive w/ his prized n' feared jet-ski - beers n' bullshitting n' plan forming - claire drove us up near the dam and we flung ourselves into hamilton creek, expecting far more fun than the fickle world felt like paying out, stumbling mid-knee forever through the stream in wetsuits w/ stuff sacks full of beer - the main current at last and drifting down under the beacon face, admiring some hard-dudes dancing on the journey to the east above big ledge - many more bevies on the dock afterwards n' some soft-porn skinny-dipping by the masses, than back to the little road hold-out before cursing them fools n' cutting loose to clamber up the corner in the gloaming-dark before darting back to home for chicken salad n' discoursing over stranger things 

7/28 - beacon day 9 - 2 more laps makes it 18, a tear beyond my tenous memory - wurst to drag adam's esposita up the corner at first, but she foreswore the morning heat and when adam got froggy on the immediate details i said fork-it n' went n' did a lap while he helped a timberline high-to-do set up a big kayak shuttle down to kalama- soggy as hell from sweat i returned as his business was concluded, having to concede another climb in the immediate future was fucked - we repaired to the river again then n' had a mort of swimming n' redneck shenanigans before i felt honor-bound to take advantage of the recent shade for another clambornation n' siddle on back home - plenty of folks casting about at the base, one even who recognized my nom de guerre n' threw a compliment my way that in hindsight i think i mighta thrown back a tad too heelish - perhaps if i spent more time on my people skills instead of scratching the Endless Itch?  

7/29 - was supposed to be a beacon-less day but the beacon lords giveth n' they take away too - beacon day 10 (in a row!) at any rate, n' solo lap 19 - met the k19 near noon after carting the boy child to row-row-your-boating on lake vancouver and stuffing in a quick swim at fallen leaf lake - after dressing his sadly chapped hands i cast out camas-ways - the plan was the adventure swim to phoca rock from the washington side, a jam i've yet to even get wet for yet despite numerous attempts, and this one the same - nastia said she was illish and prefered a columbia crossing at hood river instead, so sure, why not?  we both drove to set up a car shuttle and noticed near arrival that the wind was whipping, the waves white-capped and their swells nice n' rolling long - gave me the heebie-jeebies a bit, soul-scarred as i remain from the one and only trans-columbia transit i made a few years back w/ ole'pat when the gorge was freshly burnt and i was perhaps drunk by naval standards at our 10 am departure (holy jeebus, that incident still ranks high on my most-terrified ever list) - after setting up the shuttle though we gave her a go, me in my wetsuit and snorkel and boots and web-gloves and day-glo orange personal swimmer buoy (and sober besides, having learnt all kinds of lessons that chilly october morning) but the russkaya of course was just in her dainty 2-piece and rocking the doggy paddle stroke, true russian-berserker style and blazeningly loving it - not too far from shore the waves and winds announced their presence with authority and our humble tribe quailed at their querulousness, first she then me after starting a 2nd attempt alone - retiring to the oregon side once again to recover her car n' kick about the conversation-can we revolved the rubik's cube of future combinations and settled upon giving something/anything a chance someday soon, assuming we live that long  - a solo beacon lap on a wind-wracked n' shady south side sans shirt was my true reward for listening to the Little Voice Inside Me and chopped the voyage home neatly in half - all i have to worry about now is tomorrow...

7/30 - 11 back-to-back beatard days and i'm a bit drained - 2 more laps for 21 total on this still youngish summer - crater lake complications and house-swapping horseshit clouds everything, my spirits low - might it be that nothing ever really gets better?

8/1 - sou'side summer beacon day 12 of 2019 - solo laps 22-23 - early morning rising to house-hunt n' tidy up domestically, kinda lame really but we are rarely masters of our own destiny i reckon - the daughter-child to her amiga's skamania abide in the late afternoon left time for yours truly to scramble up the bacon wand twice before achieving apogee and getting sucked back west once again to stuff more things into the bursting garage before the photo man comes to record it all in the morning - the great crater lake creep south at sunrise, all mortal concerns cast aside in the gawdamned interest of aquatic glory 

8/8 - day 13 - laps 24, 25, 26 - a sad week away from the bacon-stone, but well spent - a swim-trip to crater lake - cock-blocked by the feds, we found better refuge at waldo lake, which was much like taking the 2nd hottest girl at the party home - union bidness in mcminville and quite alright, though it brought the summer death-knell to the forefront of a keening mind - rain in the west, after hours the beaconwand cast its spell and the world was my oyster again - gnome the larry in the gloaming lot, then kyle n' company came crawling in - three laps passing through numerous parties - some-guy-named-steve earned his Hero of Beacon Rock w/ oak-leaf clusters - placid blood flowed freely as it should in the scraping places - kyle got the kid up though competent legal counsel would eagerly have urged him not 

8/9 -estival beacon aeon 14 - laps 27-28 - a lazy friday summer sleep-in, the first in some time - warm coffee n' cold eggs w/ the wifey over steven colbert n' some orange-is-the-new-black - the kids like college students, slow to rise - afternoon i ambled out to beacon to meet old ben - beat him by an hour so got a lap in alone before he arrived with his boy asher, sullen n' silent, as a man should be in this shocking modern age - led them up the route sans belays, which i reckon counts as solo too, though a rope was technically tied round my ample beer-gut - a gaggle of elk gamboling about the meadows below the eastern train track, their worries little ones in this wonderous season - the drive home dominated by the sweet smell of summer rain n' the dying sun...

8/11 - day 15 - a rare reverse-golden-sombrero raises the lap count to 32 on the summer - the trip took weather-faith, for the rain fell throughout the gorge on the drive in, even in the lot itself a profound mist made its presence known - a fool's errand i thought, but took my shoes down to the base anyway to see if the stone was dry despite 2 days of storms and so it was, and with hordes of portlanders putting their dirty libturd-hands all over it in flagrant degradation too - kyle n' bill n' joe n' countless over fools all encountered and gavreeted with, and one parcel of folks i passed 4 times in total over the next few hours - the history of the world it would seem, and fitting that the soundtrack was 4 episodes of a podcast all about the ending of it 

8/12 - day 16 - lap 33 - the smell of sudden fiery death roused me at 5 and an hour later i arose in protest at my prickly senses - after tea and trailer park boys i eased myself eastwards for a single lap in the sun - the stone alone, i savored my solitude, the drip-drip of sweat the only sense of time to contend with - afterwards car-chores and lake-swimming w/ many chilluns 

8/13 - day 17 - laps 34-35 - the world waxes largish, so what exactly is the goal now? last year the improbable # of 60 made me think 61 is all any sane man might relish, or maybe just 62 to stick a fork in the eye of roger morris, but now something much bigger indeed seems possible - how about 74 to offer the proverbial bitch-slap to barry bonds? even if that is to be the improbable mark, such a tally looms already large in the wind-screen and is to be sought for - the hazy outlines of a plan for a phenomenal 14-in-a-day assault in september with a whole heap of fools to propel the thing to a frenetic conclusion - that's in the future though - tonight was sublime solitude and shade and space for easy contemplation - a podcast on theoretical physics' hapless potential to create an end of the world to keep me company - the peregrines on the scene after being rather silent this past month - stone throwing teenage tourists and a positive conversation on the merits of manslaughter - a road trip begins tomorrow w/ the family and maybe a giant swim in crescent lake at the conclusion - there's marrow still in the bone of summer boys, and meat on it to spare as well 

8/19 - day 18 - laps 36-40 for the rare Reverse Platinum Sombrero - a near week at the beach w/ the fam - a crossing of quinault and an epic lake crescent thing - barely a week left in summer 2019 i awoke wicked sore but set out east anyways - the stone near alone for the first 4 laps, but then dave n' steve where there n' we cackled our way upwards together alone to mushroom ledge n' some serious meditation 

8/24 - day 19 - laps 41, 42 n' 43 meant it was a douglas adams day (shamefully i must admit i forget my towel, but proudly i can say i did not panic) - 3 days in the alpine lakes wilderness didn't beat me down enough i guess, 'cuz the girl-child asked to get carted out to skamania for the afternoon to cavort w/ her polish friends and i rallied to run laps while letting her have her what-have-you - summer is doomed and so are you

8/25 - day 20 - laps 44-45 - 11 CBIs n' 13 runs (new stats, to keep things fun n' make a game of the mundane - every meat-popsicle lapped is a Climber Batted In - runs are laps plus CBIs - good lord, the record couldn't be higher than 50 runs in a day could it?) - the coast guard earns its gold from yuppie scum along the banks of the rude columbia - nastia n' her main-squeeze set to scramble up blown-out in the blistering shade under the heavy hail of tourist stone, our beers n' smokes n' smalltalk cut savage short - the experiment to substitute a cordelette in lieu of a bolted anchor at the top an abject failure within 24 hours, though kinda an apollo 13 one since i got the cord returned as requested - 2 cruiser laps in the autumnally-building breeze with the crowds abounding, summer's done been set on a goddamn gibbet  

Edited August 26, 2019 by ivan

[ivan]

On 8/25/2019 at 8:47 PM, ivan said:

2018 saw 60 solo laps, a # beyond imagination, but possible by a weird combination of prime weather and a personal calendar no me gusta 

7/20/19 - south side day 1 of the year, well after le grande opening i'll grant you as i sallied up n' down the coast courting more arduous adventures - swimming in the olympics, multi-day colonel bob bumblefuck, marriage counselor sheenagins n' regular ole climbing in leavenworth w/ the silvermans shit-talking each other at every turn, then near a week about mt whitney w/ the whiskey hooligans - 2 solo laps in the shade, every hold an old friend and unforgotten - geoff n' kyle n' larry the gnome at the top n' beers n' bullshitting at the base - managed 70 solo laps last summer, so that's 1/35 of the way to repeating that unbelievable total 

7/21 - day 2 - laps 3-4 - hey, only 33 more days at this rate to top last year - foiled upon arrival at battle ground lake, i bounced off fallen leaf lake too n' resigned meself to clambering out at beacon - once again the rock all to myself, despite the weekend situation - a lap alone, then another w/ some folks thrashing their way up the original dods exit at the end - summer's halfway home n' i'm still all smiles 

7/22 - day 3 - laps 5-7 - a hat trick on a hottish day, 2 in the sun and the third in the shade the hottest of all w/ numerous half-clad hotties along the way

7/23 - day 4 - lap 8 - swam a slow wetsuit-less mile in fallen leaf under cloudy n' cool skies, fetched the boy child from camp, then deposited him again before darting out to the bacon-wand for a single ascent before coming back camas-ways to peruse new houses and ultimately sup on delectable thai takeout

7/24 - day 5 - laps 9-10 - ten laps in five days not so shabby - nary a soul in sight on this sweatyish day, but steve in the parking lot - a week a paradise it would seem... 

7/25 - another hat-trick makes it 13 laps in 6 days, a healthy clip - irish death's n' lovely crowds n' sun n' shade and all after a right-nice long swim continued a paradise-theme-of-a-summer so far...

7/26 - the end of my first summer beacon week and a productive one with 2 more laps to bring the total to 15, 1/4 of the way to last year's ludicrous total, but at a pace to bury it should that be my jealous jam on looking back (i've heard tale their no more nefarious thief than nostalgia though) - a mile swim in fallen leaf while the wulf-man paddled away on lake vancouver, then beacon just after noon in the brutal brightness - shed my black shirt in favor of royal blue - lovely pair of sheilas atop tree ledge on the first lap - sucked down my beer in a batch of shade in the gut under uprising, panting like a bitch - a horde of latinos on the way down, one fella w/ a pack to support the lot of them for a month if need be - the second lap lonely but bearably in the breeze, fat drops of sweat drip-dripping and sizzling away on the stone - then house-hunting and general real-world bummer concerns...

7/27 - summer beacon day 8 - the late morning meetup out near no'bo - adam n' claire n' naterring as we waited for ole'geoff to arrive w/ his prized n' feared jet-ski - beers n' bullshitting n' plan forming - claire drove us up near the dam and we flung ourselves into hamilton creek, expecting far more fun than the fickle world felt like paying out, stumbling mid-knee forever through the stream in wetsuits w/ stuff sacks full of beer - the main current at last and drifting down under the beacon face, admiring some hard-dudes dancing on the journey to the east above big ledge - many more bevies on the dock afterwards n' some soft-porn skinny-dipping by the masses, than back to the little road hold-out before cursing them fools n' cutting loose to clamber up the corner in the gloaming-dark before darting back to home for chicken salad n' discoursing over stranger things 

7/28 - beacon day 9 - 2 more laps makes it 18, a tear beyond my tenous memory - wurst to drag adam's esposita up the corner at first, but she foreswore the morning heat and when adam got froggy on the immediate details i said fork-it n' went n' did a lap while he helped a timberline high-to-do set up a big kayak shuttle down to kalama- soggy as hell from sweat i returned as his business was concluded, having to concede another climb in the immediate future was fucked - we repaired to the river again then n' had a mort of swimming n' redneck shenanigans before i felt honor-bound to take advantage of the recent shade for another clambornation n' siddle on back home - plenty of folks casting about at the base, one even who recognized my nom de guerre n' threw a compliment my way that in hindsight i think i mighta thrown back a tad too heelish - perhaps if i spent more time on my people skills instead of scratching the Endless Itch?  

7/29 - was supposed to be a beacon-less day but the beacon lords giveth n' they take away too - beacon day 10 (in a row!) at any rate, n' solo lap 19 - met the k19 near noon after carting the boy child to row-row-your-boating on lake vancouver and stuffing in a quick swim at fallen leaf lake - after dressing his sadly chapped hands i cast out camas-ways - the plan was the adventure swim to phoca rock from the washington side, a jam i've yet to even get wet for yet despite numerous attempts, and this one the same - nastia said she was illish and prefered a columbia crossing at hood river instead, so sure, why not?  we both drove to set up a car shuttle and noticed near arrival that the wind was whipping, the waves white-capped and their swells nice n' rolling long - gave me the heebie-jeebies a bit, soul-scarred as i remain from the one and only trans-columbia transit i made a few years back w/ ole'pat when the gorge was freshly burnt and i was perhaps drunk by naval standards at our 10 am departure (holy jeebus, that incident still ranks high on my most-terrified ever list) - after setting up the shuttle though we gave her a go, me in my wetsuit and snorkel and boots and web-gloves and day-glo orange personal swimmer buoy (and sober besides, having learnt all kinds of lessons that chilly october morning) but the russkaya of course was just in her dainty 2-piece and rocking the doggy paddle stroke, true russian-berserker style and blazeningly loving it - not too far from shore the waves and winds announced their presence with authority and our humble tribe quailed at their querulousness, first she then me after starting a 2nd attempt alone - retiring to the oregon side once again to recover her car n' kick about the conversation-can we revolved the rubik's cube of future combinations and settled upon giving something/anything a chance someday soon, assuming we live that long  - a solo beacon lap on a wind-wracked n' shady south side sans shirt was my true reward for listening to the Little Voice Inside Me and chopped the voyage home neatly in half - all i have to worry about now is tomorrow...

7/30 - 11 back-to-back beatard days and i'm a bit drained - 2 more laps for 21 total on this still youngish summer - crater lake complications and house-swapping horseshit clouds everything, my spirits low - might it be that nothing ever really gets better?

8/1 - sou'side summer beacon day 12 of 2019 - solo laps 22-23 - early morning rising to house-hunt n' tidy up domestically, kinda lame really but we are rarely masters of our own destiny i reckon - the daughter-child to her amiga's skamania abide in the late afternoon left time for yours truly to scramble up the bacon wand twice before achieving apogee and getting sucked back west once again to stuff more things into the bursting garage before the photo man comes to record it all in the morning - the great crater lake creep south at sunrise, all mortal concerns cast aside in the gawdamned interest of aquatic glory 

8/8 - day 13 - laps 24, 25, 26 - a sad week away from the bacon-stone, but well spent - a swim-trip to crater lake - cock-blocked by the feds, we found better refuge at waldo lake, which was much like taking the 2nd hottest girl at the party home - union bidness in mcminville and quite alright, though it brought the summer death-knell to the forefront of a keening mind - rain in the west, after hours the beaconwand cast its spell and the world was my oyster again - gnome the larry in the gloaming lot, then kyle n' company came crawling in - three laps passing through numerous parties - some-guy-named-steve earned his Hero of Beacon Rock w/ oak-leaf clusters - placid blood flowed freely as it should in the scraping places - kyle got the kid up though competent legal counsel would eagerly have urged him not 

8/9 -estival beacon aeon 14 - laps 27-28 - a lazy friday summer sleep-in, the first in some time - warm coffee n' cold eggs w/ the wifey over steven colbert n' some orange-is-the-new-black - the kids like college students, slow to rise - afternoon i ambled out to beacon to meet old ben - beat him by an hour so got a lap in alone before he arrived with his boy asher, sullen n' silent, as a man should be in this shocking modern age - led them up the route sans belays, which i reckon counts as solo too, though a rope was technically tied round my ample beer-gut - a gaggle of elk gamboling about the meadows below the eastern train track, their worries little ones in this wonderous season - the drive home dominated by the sweet smell of summer rain n' the dying sun...

8/11 - day 15 - a rare reverse-golden-sombrero raises the lap count to 32 on the summer - the trip took weather-faith, for the rain fell throughout the gorge on the drive in, even in the lot itself a profound mist made its presence known - a fool's errand i thought, but took my shoes down to the base anyway to see if the stone was dry despite 2 days of storms and so it was, and with hordes of portlanders putting their dirty libturd-hands all over it in flagrant degradation too - kyle n' bill n' joe n' countless over fools all encountered and gavreeted with, and one parcel of folks i passed 4 times in total over the next few hours - the history of the world it would seem, and fitting that the soundtrack was 4 episodes of a podcast all about the ending of it 

8/12 - day 16 - lap 33 - the smell of sudden fiery death roused me at 5 and an hour later i arose in protest at my prickly senses - after tea and trailer park boys i eased myself eastwards for a single lap in the sun - the stone alone, i savored my solitude, the drip-drip of sweat the only sense of time to contend with - afterwards car-chores and lake-swimming w/ many chilluns 

8/13 - day 17 - laps 34-35 - the world waxes largish, so what exactly is the goal now? last year the improbable # of 60 made me think 61 is all any sane man might relish, or maybe just 62 to stick a fork in the eye of roger morris, but now something much bigger indeed seems possible - how about 74 to offer the proverbial bitch-slap to barry bonds? even if that is to be the improbable mark, such a tally looms already large in the wind-screen and is to be sought for - the hazy outlines of a plan for a phenomenal 14-in-a-day assault in september with a whole heap of fools to propel the thing to a frenetic conclusion - that's in the future though - tonight was sublime solitude and shade and space for easy contemplation - a podcast on theoretical physics' hapless potential to create an end of the world to keep me company - the peregrines on the scene after being rather silent this past month - stone throwing teenage tourists and a positive conversation on the merits of manslaughter - a road trip begins tomorrow w/ the family and maybe a giant swim in crescent lake at the conclusion - there's marrow still in the bone of summer boys, and meat on it to spare as well 

8/19 - day 18 - laps 36-40 for the rare Reverse Platinum Sombrero - a near week at the beach w/ the fam - a crossing of quinault and an epic lake crescent thing - barely a week left in summer 2019 i awoke wicked sore but set out east anyways - the stone near alone for the first 4 laps, but then dave n' steve where there n' we cackled our way upwards together alone to mushroom ledge n' some serious meditation 

8/24 - day 19 - laps 41, 42 n' 43 meant it was a douglas adams day (shamefully i must admit i forget my towel, but proudly i can say i did not panic) - 3 days in the alpine lakes wilderness didn't beat me down enough i guess, 'cuz the girl-child asked to get carted out to skamania for the afternoon to cavort w/ her polish friends and i rallied to run laps while letting her have her what-have-you - summer is doomed and so are you 

8/25 - day 20 - laps 44-45 - 11 CBIs n' 13 runs (new stats, to keep things fun n' make a game of the mundane - every meat-popsicle lapped is a Climber Batted In - runs are laps plus CBIs - good lord, the record couldn't be higher than 50 runs in a day could it?) - the coast guard earns its gold from yuppie scum along the banks of the rude columbia - nastia n' her main-squeeze set to scramble up blown-out in the blistering shade under the heavy hail of tourist stone, our beers n' smokes n' smalltalk cut savage short - the experiment to substitute a cordelette in lieu of a bolted anchor at the top an abject failure within 24 hours, though kinda an apollo 13 one since i got the cord returned as requested - 2 cruiser laps in the autumnally-building breeze with the crowds abounding, summer's done been set on a goddamn gibbet  

8/26 - blackjack day - laps 46-7 make me prime again - 4 CBIs for 6 runs - a soft slumber ended in the gentlest fashion - the damned dentist - the dmv denied - summer slams into the brickwall while i straighten out the classroom - a big breeze builds as we stumble eastwards - the first lap looms into the time-traveler and his canadian dame, well over her head on the second pitch, so i stayed to help her suss out the sitch and sacrificed a hat trick - beers and the inevitable bullshiting - the world careens and carries us along in its endless crapulous fucking fashion

[ivan]

22 hours ago, ivan said:

2018 saw 60 solo laps, a # beyond imagination, but possible by a weird combination of prime weather and a personal calendar no me gusta 

7/20/19 - south side day 1 of the year, well after le grande opening i'll grant you as i sallied up n' down the coast courting more arduous adventures - swimming in the olympics, multi-day colonel bob bumblefuck, marriage counselor sheenagins n' regular ole climbing in leavenworth w/ the silvermans shit-talking each other at every turn, then near a week about mt whitney w/ the whiskey hooligans - 2 solo laps in the shade, every hold an old friend and unforgotten - geoff n' kyle n' larry the gnome at the top n' beers n' bullshitting at the base - managed 70 solo laps last summer, so that's 1/35 of the way to repeating that unbelievable total 

7/21 - day 2 - laps 3-4 - hey, only 33 more days at this rate to top last year - foiled upon arrival at battle ground lake, i bounced off fallen leaf lake too n' resigned meself to clambering out at beacon - once again the rock all to myself, despite the weekend situation - a lap alone, then another w/ some folks thrashing their way up the original dods exit at the end - summer's halfway home n' i'm still all smiles 

7/22 - day 3 - laps 5-7 - a hat trick on a hottish day, 2 in the sun and the third in the shade the hottest of all w/ numerous half-clad hotties along the way

7/23 - day 4 - lap 8 - swam a slow wetsuit-less mile in fallen leaf under cloudy n' cool skies, fetched the boy child from camp, then deposited him again before darting out to the bacon-wand for a single ascent before coming back camas-ways to peruse new houses and ultimately sup on delectable thai takeout

7/24 - day 5 - laps 9-10 - ten laps in five days not so shabby - nary a soul in sight on this sweatyish day, but steve in the parking lot - a week a paradise it would seem... 

7/25 - another hat-trick makes it 13 laps in 6 days, a healthy clip - irish death's n' lovely crowds n' sun n' shade and all after a right-nice long swim continued a paradise-theme-of-a-summer so far...

7/26 - the end of my first summer beacon week and a productive one with 2 more laps to bring the total to 15, 1/4 of the way to last year's ludicrous total, but at a pace to bury it should that be my jealous jam on looking back (i've heard tale their no more nefarious thief than nostalgia though) - a mile swim in fallen leaf while the wulf-man paddled away on lake vancouver, then beacon just after noon in the brutal brightness - shed my black shirt in favor of royal blue - lovely pair of sheilas atop tree ledge on the first lap - sucked down my beer in a batch of shade in the gut under uprising, panting like a bitch - a horde of latinos on the way down, one fella w/ a pack to support the lot of them for a month if need be - the second lap lonely but bearably in the breeze, fat drops of sweat drip-dripping and sizzling away on the stone - then house-hunting and general real-world bummer concerns...

7/27 - summer beacon day 8 - the late morning meetup out near no'bo - adam n' claire n' naterring as we waited for ole'geoff to arrive w/ his prized n' feared jet-ski - beers n' bullshitting n' plan forming - claire drove us up near the dam and we flung ourselves into hamilton creek, expecting far more fun than the fickle world felt like paying out, stumbling mid-knee forever through the stream in wetsuits w/ stuff sacks full of beer - the main current at last and drifting down under the beacon face, admiring some hard-dudes dancing on the journey to the east above big ledge - many more bevies on the dock afterwards n' some soft-porn skinny-dipping by the masses, than back to the little road hold-out before cursing them fools n' cutting loose to clamber up the corner in the gloaming-dark before darting back to home for chicken salad n' discoursing over stranger things 

7/28 - beacon day 9 - 2 more laps makes it 18, a tear beyond my tenous memory - wurst to drag adam's esposita up the corner at first, but she foreswore the morning heat and when adam got froggy on the immediate details i said fork-it n' went n' did a lap while he helped a timberline high-to-do set up a big kayak shuttle down to kalama- soggy as hell from sweat i returned as his business was concluded, having to concede another climb in the immediate future was fucked - we repaired to the river again then n' had a mort of swimming n' redneck shenanigans before i felt honor-bound to take advantage of the recent shade for another clambornation n' siddle on back home - plenty of folks casting about at the base, one even who recognized my nom de guerre n' threw a compliment my way that in hindsight i think i mighta thrown back a tad too heelish - perhaps if i spent more time on my people skills instead of scratching the Endless Itch?  

7/29 - was supposed to be a beacon-less day but the beacon lords giveth n' they take away too - beacon day 10 (in a row!) at any rate, n' solo lap 19 - met the k19 near noon after carting the boy child to row-row-your-boating on lake vancouver and stuffing in a quick swim at fallen leaf lake - after dressing his sadly chapped hands i cast out camas-ways - the plan was the adventure swim to phoca rock from the washington side, a jam i've yet to even get wet for yet despite numerous attempts, and this one the same - nastia said she was illish and prefered a columbia crossing at hood river instead, so sure, why not?  we both drove to set up a car shuttle and noticed near arrival that the wind was whipping, the waves white-capped and their swells nice n' rolling long - gave me the heebie-jeebies a bit, soul-scarred as i remain from the one and only trans-columbia transit i made a few years back w/ ole'pat when the gorge was freshly burnt and i was perhaps drunk by naval standards at our 10 am departure (holy jeebus, that incident still ranks high on my most-terrified ever list) - after setting up the shuttle though we gave her a go, me in my wetsuit and snorkel and boots and web-gloves and day-glo orange personal swimmer buoy (and sober besides, having learnt all kinds of lessons that chilly october morning) but the russkaya of course was just in her dainty 2-piece and rocking the doggy paddle stroke, true russian-berserker style and blazeningly loving it - not too far from shore the waves and winds announced their presence with authority and our humble tribe quailed at their querulousness, first she then me after starting a 2nd attempt alone - retiring to the oregon side once again to recover her car n' kick about the conversation-can we revolved the rubik's cube of future combinations and settled upon giving something/anything a chance someday soon, assuming we live that long  - a solo beacon lap on a wind-wracked n' shady south side sans shirt was my true reward for listening to the Little Voice Inside Me and chopped the voyage home neatly in half - all i have to worry about now is tomorrow...

7/30 - 11 back-to-back beatard days and i'm a bit drained - 2 more laps for 21 total on this still youngish summer - crater lake complications and house-swapping horseshit clouds everything, my spirits low - might it be that nothing ever really gets better?

8/1 - sou'side summer beacon day 12 of 2019 - solo laps 22-23 - early morning rising to house-hunt n' tidy up domestically, kinda lame really but we are rarely masters of our own destiny i reckon - the daughter-child to her amiga's skamania abide in the late afternoon left time for yours truly to scramble up the bacon wand twice before achieving apogee and getting sucked back west once again to stuff more things into the bursting garage before the photo man comes to record it all in the morning - the great crater lake creep south at sunrise, all mortal concerns cast aside in the gawdamned interest of aquatic glory 

8/8 - day 13 - laps 24, 25, 26 - a sad week away from the bacon-stone, but well spent - a swim-trip to crater lake - cock-blocked by the feds, we found better refuge at waldo lake, which was much like taking the 2nd hottest girl at the party home - union bidness in mcminville and quite alright, though it brought the summer death-knell to the forefront of a keening mind - rain in the west, after hours the beaconwand cast its spell and the world was my oyster again - gnome the larry in the gloaming lot, then kyle n' company came crawling in - three laps passing through numerous parties - some-guy-named-steve earned his Hero of Beacon Rock w/ oak-leaf clusters - placid blood flowed freely as it should in the scraping places - kyle got the kid up though competent legal counsel would eagerly have urged him not 

8/9 -estival beacon aeon 14 - laps 27-28 - a lazy friday summer sleep-in, the first in some time - warm coffee n' cold eggs w/ the wifey over steven colbert n' some orange-is-the-new-black - the kids like college students, slow to rise - afternoon i ambled out to beacon to meet old ben - beat him by an hour so got a lap in alone before he arrived with his boy asher, sullen n' silent, as a man should be in this shocking modern age - led them up the route sans belays, which i reckon counts as solo too, though a rope was technically tied round my ample beer-gut - a gaggle of elk gamboling about the meadows below the eastern train track, their worries little ones in this wonderous season - the drive home dominated by the sweet smell of summer rain n' the dying sun...

8/11 - day 15 - a rare reverse-golden-sombrero raises the lap count to 32 on the summer - the trip took weather-faith, for the rain fell throughout the gorge on the drive in, even in the lot itself a profound mist made its presence known - a fool's errand i thought, but took my shoes down to the base anyway to see if the stone was dry despite 2 days of storms and so it was, and with hordes of portlanders putting their dirty libturd-hands all over it in flagrant degradation too - kyle n' bill n' joe n' countless over fools all encountered and gavreeted with, and one parcel of folks i passed 4 times in total over the next few hours - the history of the world it would seem, and fitting that the soundtrack was 4 episodes of a podcast all about the ending of it 

8/12 - day 16 - lap 33 - the smell of sudden fiery death roused me at 5 and an hour later i arose in protest at my prickly senses - after tea and trailer park boys i eased myself eastwards for a single lap in the sun - the stone alone, i savored my solitude, the drip-drip of sweat the only sense of time to contend with - afterwards car-chores and lake-swimming w/ many chilluns 

8/13 - day 17 - laps 34-35 - the world waxes largish, so what exactly is the goal now? last year the improbable # of 60 made me think 61 is all any sane man might relish, or maybe just 62 to stick a fork in the eye of roger morris, but now something much bigger indeed seems possible - how about 74 to offer the proverbial bitch-slap to barry bonds? even if that is to be the improbable mark, such a tally looms already large in the wind-screen and is to be sought for - the hazy outlines of a plan for a phenomenal 14-in-a-day assault in september with a whole heap of fools to propel the thing to a frenetic conclusion - that's in the future though - tonight was sublime solitude and shade and space for easy contemplation - a podcast on theoretical physics' hapless potential to create an end of the world to keep me company - the peregrines on the scene after being rather silent this past month - stone throwing teenage tourists and a positive conversation on the merits of manslaughter - a road trip begins tomorrow w/ the family and maybe a giant swim in crescent lake at the conclusion - there's marrow still in the bone of summer boys, and meat on it to spare as well 

8/19 - day 18 - laps 36-40 for the rare Reverse Platinum Sombrero - a near week at the beach w/ the fam - a crossing of quinault and an epic lake crescent thing - barely a week left in summer 2019 i awoke wicked sore but set out east anyways - the stone near alone for the first 4 laps, but then dave n' steve where there n' we cackled our way upwards together alone to mushroom ledge n' some serious meditation 

8/24 - day 19 - laps 41, 42 n' 43 meant it was a douglas adams day (shamefully i must admit i forget my towel, but proudly i can say i did not panic) - 3 days in the alpine lakes wilderness didn't beat me down enough i guess, 'cuz the girl-child asked to get carted out to skamania for the afternoon to cavort w/ her polish friends and i rallied to run laps while letting her have her what-have-you - summer is doomed and so are you 

8/25 - day 20 - laps 44-45 - 11 CBIs n' 13 runs (new stats, to keep things fun n' make a game of the mundane - every meat-popsicle lapped is a Climber Batted In - runs are laps plus CBIs - good lord, the record couldn't be higher than 50 runs in a day could it?) - the coast guard earns its gold from yuppie scum along the banks of the rude columbia - nastia n' her main-squeeze set to scramble up blown-out in the blistering shade under the heavy hail of tourist stone, our beers n' smokes n' smalltalk cut savage short - the experiment to substitute a cordelette in lieu of a bolted anchor at the top an abject failure within 24 hours, though kinda an apollo 13 one since i got the cord returned as requested - 2 cruiser laps in the autumnally-building breeze with the crowds abounding, summer's done been set on a goddamn gibbet  

8/26 - blackjack day - laps 46-7 make me prime again - 4 CBIs for 6 runs - a soft slumber ended in the gentlest fashion - the damned dentist - the dmv denied - summer slams into the brickwall while i straighten out the classroom - a big breeze builds as we stumble eastwards - the first lap looms into the time-traveler and his canadian dame, well over her head on the second pitch, so i stayed to help her suss out the sitch and sacrificed a hat trick - beers and the inevitable bullshiting - the world careens and carries us along in its endless crapulous fucking fashion

8/27 - summer beacon day double-deuce - laps 48-9 make me prime n' prone to wine - 96 degrees n' a big-breeze in the parking lot - the first day back to the what-have-you and the bullshite-factory appears to have been working overtime in my absence - cryptic runes n' rude cynosures, thank-fuck their clutches are so fleeting - a lap alone in the wild wind, and then another, all to seek and find the freek

[ivan]

On 8/27/2019 at 8:02 PM, ivan said:

2018 saw 60 solo laps, a # beyond imagination, but possible by a weird combination of prime weather and a personal calendar no me gusta 

7/20/19 - south side day 1 of the year, well after le grande opening i'll grant you as i sallied up n' down the coast courting more arduous adventures - swimming in the olympics, multi-day colonel bob bumblefuck, marriage counselor sheenagins n' regular ole climbing in leavenworth w/ the silvermans shit-talking each other at every turn, then near a week about mt whitney w/ the whiskey hooligans - 2 solo laps in the shade, every hold an old friend and unforgotten - geoff n' kyle n' larry the gnome at the top n' beers n' bullshitting at the base - managed 70 solo laps last summer, so that's 1/35 of the way to repeating that unbelievable total 

7/21 - day 2 - laps 3-4 - hey, only 33 more days at this rate to top last year - foiled upon arrival at battle ground lake, i bounced off fallen leaf lake too n' resigned meself to clambering out at beacon - once again the rock all to myself, despite the weekend situation - a lap alone, then another w/ some folks thrashing their way up the original dods exit at the end - summer's halfway home n' i'm still all smiles 

7/22 - day 3 - laps 5-7 - a hat trick on a hottish day, 2 in the sun and the third in the shade the hottest of all w/ numerous half-clad hotties along the way

7/23 - day 4 - lap 8 - swam a slow wetsuit-less mile in fallen leaf under cloudy n' cool skies, fetched the boy child from camp, then deposited him again before darting out to the bacon-wand for a single ascent before coming back camas-ways to peruse new houses and ultimately sup on delectable thai takeout

7/24 - day 5 - laps 9-10 - ten laps in five days not so shabby - nary a soul in sight on this sweatyish day, but steve in the parking lot - a week a paradise it would seem... 

7/25 - another hat-trick makes it 13 laps in 6 days, a healthy clip - irish death's n' lovely crowds n' sun n' shade and all after a right-nice long swim continued a paradise-theme-of-a-summer so far...

7/26 - the end of my first summer beacon week and a productive one with 2 more laps to bring the total to 15, 1/4 of the way to last year's ludicrous total, but at a pace to bury it should that be my jealous jam on looking back (i've heard tale their no more nefarious thief than nostalgia though) - a mile swim in fallen leaf while the wulf-man paddled away on lake vancouver, then beacon just after noon in the brutal brightness - shed my black shirt in favor of royal blue - lovely pair of sheilas atop tree ledge on the first lap - sucked down my beer in a batch of shade in the gut under uprising, panting like a bitch - a horde of latinos on the way down, one fella w/ a pack to support the lot of them for a month if need be - the second lap lonely but bearably in the breeze, fat drops of sweat drip-dripping and sizzling away on the stone - then house-hunting and general real-world bummer concerns...

7/27 - summer beacon day 8 - the late morning meetup out near no'bo - adam n' claire n' naterring as we waited for ole'geoff to arrive w/ his prized n' feared jet-ski - beers n' bullshitting n' plan forming - claire drove us up near the dam and we flung ourselves into hamilton creek, expecting far more fun than the fickle world felt like paying out, stumbling mid-knee forever through the stream in wetsuits w/ stuff sacks full of beer - the main current at last and drifting down under the beacon face, admiring some hard-dudes dancing on the journey to the east above big ledge - many more bevies on the dock afterwards n' some soft-porn skinny-dipping by the masses, than back to the little road hold-out before cursing them fools n' cutting loose to clamber up the corner in the gloaming-dark before darting back to home for chicken salad n' discoursing over stranger things 

7/28 - beacon day 9 - 2 more laps makes it 18, a tear beyond my tenous memory - wurst to drag adam's esposita up the corner at first, but she foreswore the morning heat and when adam got froggy on the immediate details i said fork-it n' went n' did a lap while he helped a timberline high-to-do set up a big kayak shuttle down to kalama- soggy as hell from sweat i returned as his business was concluded, having to concede another climb in the immediate future was fucked - we repaired to the river again then n' had a mort of swimming n' redneck shenanigans before i felt honor-bound to take advantage of the recent shade for another clambornation n' siddle on back home - plenty of folks casting about at the base, one even who recognized my nom de guerre n' threw a compliment my way that in hindsight i think i mighta thrown back a tad too heelish - perhaps if i spent more time on my people skills instead of scratching the Endless Itch?  

7/29 - was supposed to be a beacon-less day but the beacon lords giveth n' they take away too - beacon day 10 (in a row!) at any rate, n' solo lap 19 - met the k19 near noon after carting the boy child to row-row-your-boating on lake vancouver and stuffing in a quick swim at fallen leaf lake - after dressing his sadly chapped hands i cast out camas-ways - the plan was the adventure swim to phoca rock from the washington side, a jam i've yet to even get wet for yet despite numerous attempts, and this one the same - nastia said she was illish and prefered a columbia crossing at hood river instead, so sure, why not?  we both drove to set up a car shuttle and noticed near arrival that the wind was whipping, the waves white-capped and their swells nice n' rolling long - gave me the heebie-jeebies a bit, soul-scarred as i remain from the one and only trans-columbia transit i made a few years back w/ ole'pat when the gorge was freshly burnt and i was perhaps drunk by naval standards at our 10 am departure (holy jeebus, that incident still ranks high on my most-terrified ever list) - after setting up the shuttle though we gave her a go, me in my wetsuit and snorkel and boots and web-gloves and day-glo orange personal swimmer buoy (and sober besides, having learnt all kinds of lessons that chilly october morning) but the russkaya of course was just in her dainty 2-piece and rocking the doggy paddle stroke, true russian-berserker style and blazeningly loving it - not too far from shore the waves and winds announced their presence with authority and our humble tribe quailed at their querulousness, first she then me after starting a 2nd attempt alone - retiring to the oregon side once again to recover her car n' kick about the conversation-can we revolved the rubik's cube of future combinations and settled upon giving something/anything a chance someday soon, assuming we live that long  - a solo beacon lap on a wind-wracked n' shady south side sans shirt was my true reward for listening to the Little Voice Inside Me and chopped the voyage home neatly in half - all i have to worry about now is tomorrow...

7/30 - 11 back-to-back beatard days and i'm a bit drained - 2 more laps for 21 total on this still youngish summer - crater lake complications and house-swapping horseshit clouds everything, my spirits low - might it be that nothing ever really gets better?

8/1 - sou'side summer beacon day 12 of 2019 - solo laps 22-23 - early morning rising to house-hunt n' tidy up domestically, kinda lame really but we are rarely masters of our own destiny i reckon - the daughter-child to her amiga's skamania abide in the late afternoon left time for yours truly to scramble up the bacon wand twice before achieving apogee and getting sucked back west once again to stuff more things into the bursting garage before the photo man comes to record it all in the morning - the great crater lake creep south at sunrise, all mortal concerns cast aside in the gawdamned interest of aquatic glory 

8/8 - day 13 - laps 24, 25, 26 - a sad week away from the bacon-stone, but well spent - a swim-trip to crater lake - cock-blocked by the feds, we found better refuge at waldo lake, which was much like taking the 2nd hottest girl at the party home - union bidness in mcminville and quite alright, though it brought the summer death-knell to the forefront of a keening mind - rain in the west, after hours the beaconwand cast its spell and the world was my oyster again - gnome the larry in the gloaming lot, then kyle n' company came crawling in - three laps passing through numerous parties - some-guy-named-steve earned his Hero of Beacon Rock w/ oak-leaf clusters - placid blood flowed freely as it should in the scraping places - kyle got the kid up though competent legal counsel would eagerly have urged him not 

8/9 -estival beacon aeon 14 - laps 27-28 - a lazy friday summer sleep-in, the first in some time - warm coffee n' cold eggs w/ the wifey over steven colbert n' some orange-is-the-new-black - the kids like college students, slow to rise - afternoon i ambled out to beacon to meet old ben - beat him by an hour so got a lap in alone before he arrived with his boy asher, sullen n' silent, as a man should be in this shocking modern age - led them up the route sans belays, which i reckon counts as solo too, though a rope was technically tied round my ample beer-gut - a gaggle of elk gamboling about the meadows below the eastern train track, their worries little ones in this wonderous season - the drive home dominated by the sweet smell of summer rain n' the dying sun...

8/11 - day 15 - a rare reverse-golden-sombrero raises the lap count to 32 on the summer - the trip took weather-faith, for the rain fell throughout the gorge on the drive in, even in the lot itself a profound mist made its presence known - a fool's errand i thought, but took my shoes down to the base anyway to see if the stone was dry despite 2 days of storms and so it was, and with hordes of portlanders putting their dirty libturd-hands all over it in flagrant degradation too - kyle n' bill n' joe n' countless over fools all encountered and gavreeted with, and one parcel of folks i passed 4 times in total over the next few hours - the history of the world it would seem, and fitting that the soundtrack was 4 episodes of a podcast all about the ending of it 

8/12 - day 16 - lap 33 - the smell of sudden fiery death roused me at 5 and an hour later i arose in protest at my prickly senses - after tea and trailer park boys i eased myself eastwards for a single lap in the sun - the stone alone, i savored my solitude, the drip-drip of sweat the only sense of time to contend with - afterwards car-chores and lake-swimming w/ many chilluns 

8/13 - day 17 - laps 34-35 - the world waxes largish, so what exactly is the goal now? last year the improbable # of 60 made me think 61 is all any sane man might relish, or maybe just 62 to stick a fork in the eye of roger morris, but now something much bigger indeed seems possible - how about 74 to offer the proverbial bitch-slap to barry bonds? even if that is to be the improbable mark, such a tally looms already large in the wind-screen and is to be sought for - the hazy outlines of a plan for a phenomenal 14-in-a-day assault in september with a whole heap of fools to propel the thing to a frenetic conclusion - that's in the future though - tonight was sublime solitude and shade and space for easy contemplation - a podcast on theoretical physics' hapless potential to create an end of the world to keep me company - the peregrines on the scene after being rather silent this past month - stone throwing teenage tourists and a positive conversation on the merits of manslaughter - a road trip begins tomorrow w/ the family and maybe a giant swim in crescent lake at the conclusion - there's marrow still in the bone of summer boys, and meat on it to spare as well 

8/19 - day 18 - laps 36-40 for the rare Reverse Platinum Sombrero - a near week at the beach w/ the fam - a crossing of quinault and an epic lake crescent thing - barely a week left in summer 2019 i awoke wicked sore but set out east anyways - the stone near alone for the first 4 laps, but then dave n' steve where there n' we cackled our way upwards together alone to mushroom ledge n' some serious meditation 

8/24 - day 19 - laps 41, 42 n' 43 meant it was a douglas adams day (shamefully i must admit i forget my towel, but proudly i can say i did not panic) - 3 days in the alpine lakes wilderness didn't beat me down enough i guess, 'cuz the girl-child asked to get carted out to skamania for the afternoon to cavort w/ her polish friends and i rallied to run laps while letting her have her what-have-you - summer is doomed and so are you 

8/25 - day 20 - laps 44-45 - 11 CBIs n' 13 runs (new stats, to keep things fun n' make a game of the mundane - every meat-popsicle lapped is a Climber Batted In - runs are laps plus CBIs - good lord, the record couldn't be higher than 50 runs in a day could it?) - the coast guard earns its gold from yuppie scum along the banks of the rude columbia - nastia n' her main-squeeze set to scramble up blown-out in the blistering shade under the heavy hail of tourist stone, our beers n' smokes n' smalltalk cut savage short - the experiment to substitute a cordelette in lieu of a bolted anchor at the top an abject failure within 24 hours, though kinda an apollo 13 one since i got the cord returned as requested - 2 cruiser laps in the autumnally-building breeze with the crowds abounding, summer's done been set on a goddamn gibbet  

8/26 - blackjack day - laps 46-7 make me prime again - 4 CBIs for 6 runs - a soft slumber ended in the gentlest fashion - the damned dentist - the dmv denied - summer slams into the brickwall while i straighten out the classroom - a big breeze builds as we stumble eastwards - the first lap looms into the time-traveler and his canadian dame, well over her head on the second pitch, so i stayed to help her suss out the sitch and sacrificed a hat trick - beers and the inevitable bullshiting - the world careens and carries us along in its endless crapulous fucking fashion 

8/27 - summer beacon day double-deuce - laps 48-9 make me prime n' prone to wine - 96 degrees n' a big-breeze in the parking lot - the first day back to the what-have-you and the bullshite-factory appears to have been working overtime in my absence - cryptic runes n' rude cynosures, thank-fuck their clutches are so fleeting - a lap alone in the wild wind, and then another, all to seek and find the freek

8/28 - day 23, laps 50-51 - another hot day, minus the breeze - the mechanisms continue to rumble up to speed on the work machine, the corporate speak as thick as cancer but only half as deadly - hit beacon in a hurry w/ familialial functions to attend to in the soon-time  - 26 minutes car to car on the first lap, but a bit more mellow on the second - a curtailed conversation on retro-bolting an anchor on the corner down in the parking lot, sadly one that seems to have concluded with them deciding to add yet another scar to the recently patched rock in question - i guess we'll see if they go through with it... - lovely thai dinner after back-to-school night at least and so it goes and goes

 

[ivan]

22 hours ago, ivan said:

2018 saw 60 solo laps, a # beyond imagination, but possible by a weird combination of prime weather and a personal calendar no me gusta 

7/20/19 - south side day 1 of the year, well after le grande opening i'll grant you as i sallied up n' down the coast courting more arduous adventures - swimming in the olympics, multi-day colonel bob bumblefuck, marriage counselor sheenagins n' regular ole climbing in leavenworth w/ the silvermans shit-talking each other at every turn, then near a week about mt whitney w/ the whiskey hooligans - 2 solo laps in the shade, every hold an old friend and unforgotten - geoff n' kyle n' larry the gnome at the top n' beers n' bullshitting at the base - managed 70 solo laps last summer, so that's 1/35 of the way to repeating that unbelievable total 

7/21 - day 2 - laps 3-4 - hey, only 33 more days at this rate to top last year - foiled upon arrival at battle ground lake, i bounced off fallen leaf lake too n' resigned meself to clambering out at beacon - once again the rock all to myself, despite the weekend situation - a lap alone, then another w/ some folks thrashing their way up the original dods exit at the end - summer's halfway home n' i'm still all smiles 

7/22 - day 3 - laps 5-7 - a hat trick on a hottish day, 2 in the sun and the third in the shade the hottest of all w/ numerous half-clad hotties along the way

7/23 - day 4 - lap 8 - swam a slow wetsuit-less mile in fallen leaf under cloudy n' cool skies, fetched the boy child from camp, then deposited him again before darting out to the bacon-wand for a single ascent before coming back camas-ways to peruse new houses and ultimately sup on delectable thai takeout

7/24 - day 5 - laps 9-10 - ten laps in five days not so shabby - nary a soul in sight on this sweatyish day, but steve in the parking lot - a week a paradise it would seem... 

7/25 - another hat-trick makes it 13 laps in 6 days, a healthy clip - irish death's n' lovely crowds n' sun n' shade and all after a right-nice long swim continued a paradise-theme-of-a-summer so far...

7/26 - the end of my first summer beacon week and a productive one with 2 more laps to bring the total to 15, 1/4 of the way to last year's ludicrous total, but at a pace to bury it should that be my jealous jam on looking back (i've heard tale their no more nefarious thief than nostalgia though) - a mile swim in fallen leaf while the wulf-man paddled away on lake vancouver, then beacon just after noon in the brutal brightness - shed my black shirt in favor of royal blue - lovely pair of sheilas atop tree ledge on the first lap - sucked down my beer in a batch of shade in the gut under uprising, panting like a bitch - a horde of latinos on the way down, one fella w/ a pack to support the lot of them for a month if need be - the second lap lonely but bearably in the breeze, fat drops of sweat drip-dripping and sizzling away on the stone - then house-hunting and general real-world bummer concerns...

7/27 - summer beacon day 8 - the late morning meetup out near no'bo - adam n' claire n' naterring as we waited for ole'geoff to arrive w/ his prized n' feared jet-ski - beers n' bullshitting n' plan forming - claire drove us up near the dam and we flung ourselves into hamilton creek, expecting far more fun than the fickle world felt like paying out, stumbling mid-knee forever through the stream in wetsuits w/ stuff sacks full of beer - the main current at last and drifting down under the beacon face, admiring some hard-dudes dancing on the journey to the east above big ledge - many more bevies on the dock afterwards n' some soft-porn skinny-dipping by the masses, than back to the little road hold-out before cursing them fools n' cutting loose to clamber up the corner in the gloaming-dark before darting back to home for chicken salad n' discoursing over stranger things 

7/28 - beacon day 9 - 2 more laps makes it 18, a tear beyond my tenous memory - wurst to drag adam's esposita up the corner at first, but she foreswore the morning heat and when adam got froggy on the immediate details i said fork-it n' went n' did a lap while he helped a timberline high-to-do set up a big kayak shuttle down to kalama- soggy as hell from sweat i returned as his business was concluded, having to concede another climb in the immediate future was fucked - we repaired to the river again then n' had a mort of swimming n' redneck shenanigans before i felt honor-bound to take advantage of the recent shade for another clambornation n' siddle on back home - plenty of folks casting about at the base, one even who recognized my nom de guerre n' threw a compliment my way that in hindsight i think i mighta thrown back a tad too heelish - perhaps if i spent more time on my people skills instead of scratching the Endless Itch?  

7/29 - was supposed to be a beacon-less day but the beacon lords giveth n' they take away too - beacon day 10 (in a row!) at any rate, n' solo lap 19 - met the k19 near noon after carting the boy child to row-row-your-boating on lake vancouver and stuffing in a quick swim at fallen leaf lake - after dressing his sadly chapped hands i cast out camas-ways - the plan was the adventure swim to phoca rock from the washington side, a jam i've yet to even get wet for yet despite numerous attempts, and this one the same - nastia said she was illish and prefered a columbia crossing at hood river instead, so sure, why not?  we both drove to set up a car shuttle and noticed near arrival that the wind was whipping, the waves white-capped and their swells nice n' rolling long - gave me the heebie-jeebies a bit, soul-scarred as i remain from the one and only trans-columbia transit i made a few years back w/ ole'pat when the gorge was freshly burnt and i was perhaps drunk by naval standards at our 10 am departure (holy jeebus, that incident still ranks high on my most-terrified ever list) - after setting up the shuttle though we gave her a go, me in my wetsuit and snorkel and boots and web-gloves and day-glo orange personal swimmer buoy (and sober besides, having learnt all kinds of lessons that chilly october morning) but the russkaya of course was just in her dainty 2-piece and rocking the doggy paddle stroke, true russian-berserker style and blazeningly loving it - not too far from shore the waves and winds announced their presence with authority and our humble tribe quailed at their querulousness, first she then me after starting a 2nd attempt alone - retiring to the oregon side once again to recover her car n' kick about the conversation-can we revolved the rubik's cube of future combinations and settled upon giving something/anything a chance someday soon, assuming we live that long  - a solo beacon lap on a wind-wracked n' shady south side sans shirt was my true reward for listening to the Little Voice Inside Me and chopped the voyage home neatly in half - all i have to worry about now is tomorrow...

7/30 - 11 back-to-back beatard days and i'm a bit drained - 2 more laps for 21 total on this still youngish summer - crater lake complications and house-swapping horseshit clouds everything, my spirits low - might it be that nothing ever really gets better?

8/1 - sou'side summer beacon day 12 of 2019 - solo laps 22-23 - early morning rising to house-hunt n' tidy up domestically, kinda lame really but we are rarely masters of our own destiny i reckon - the daughter-child to her amiga's skamania abide in the late afternoon left time for yours truly to scramble up the bacon wand twice before achieving apogee and getting sucked back west once again to stuff more things into the bursting garage before the photo man comes to record it all in the morning - the great crater lake creep south at sunrise, all mortal concerns cast aside in the gawdamned interest of aquatic glory 

8/8 - day 13 - laps 24, 25, 26 - a sad week away from the bacon-stone, but well spent - a swim-trip to crater lake - cock-blocked by the feds, we found better refuge at waldo lake, which was much like taking the 2nd hottest girl at the party home - union bidness in mcminville and quite alright, though it brought the summer death-knell to the forefront of a keening mind - rain in the west, after hours the beaconwand cast its spell and the world was my oyster again - gnome the larry in the gloaming lot, then kyle n' company came crawling in - three laps passing through numerous parties - some-guy-named-steve earned his Hero of Beacon Rock w/ oak-leaf clusters - placid blood flowed freely as it should in the scraping places - kyle got the kid up though competent legal counsel would eagerly have urged him not 

8/9 -estival beacon aeon 14 - laps 27-28 - a lazy friday summer sleep-in, the first in some time - warm coffee n' cold eggs w/ the wifey over steven colbert n' some orange-is-the-new-black - the kids like college students, slow to rise - afternoon i ambled out to beacon to meet old ben - beat him by an hour so got a lap in alone before he arrived with his boy asher, sullen n' silent, as a man should be in this shocking modern age - led them up the route sans belays, which i reckon counts as solo too, though a rope was technically tied round my ample beer-gut - a gaggle of elk gamboling about the meadows below the eastern train track, their worries little ones in this wonderous season - the drive home dominated by the sweet smell of summer rain n' the dying sun...

8/11 - day 15 - a rare reverse-golden-sombrero raises the lap count to 32 on the summer - the trip took weather-faith, for the rain fell throughout the gorge on the drive in, even in the lot itself a profound mist made its presence known - a fool's errand i thought, but took my shoes down to the base anyway to see if the stone was dry despite 2 days of storms and so it was, and with hordes of portlanders putting their dirty libturd-hands all over it in flagrant degradation too - kyle n' bill n' joe n' countless over fools all encountered and gavreeted with, and one parcel of folks i passed 4 times in total over the next few hours - the history of the world it would seem, and fitting that the soundtrack was 4 episodes of a podcast all about the ending of it 

8/12 - day 16 - lap 33 - the smell of sudden fiery death roused me at 5 and an hour later i arose in protest at my prickly senses - after tea and trailer park boys i eased myself eastwards for a single lap in the sun - the stone alone, i savored my solitude, the drip-drip of sweat the only sense of time to contend with - afterwards car-chores and lake-swimming w/ many chilluns 

8/13 - day 17 - laps 34-35 - the world waxes largish, so what exactly is the goal now? last year the improbable # of 60 made me think 61 is all any sane man might relish, or maybe just 62 to stick a fork in the eye of roger morris, but now something much bigger indeed seems possible - how about 74 to offer the proverbial bitch-slap to barry bonds? even if that is to be the improbable mark, such a tally looms already large in the wind-screen and is to be sought for - the hazy outlines of a plan for a phenomenal 14-in-a-day assault in september with a whole heap of fools to propel the thing to a frenetic conclusion - that's in the future though - tonight was sublime solitude and shade and space for easy contemplation - a podcast on theoretical physics' hapless potential to create an end of the world to keep me company - the peregrines on the scene after being rather silent this past month - stone throwing teenage tourists and a positive conversation on the merits of manslaughter - a road trip begins tomorrow w/ the family and maybe a giant swim in crescent lake at the conclusion - there's marrow still in the bone of summer boys, and meat on it to spare as well 

8/19 - day 18 - laps 36-40 for the rare Reverse Platinum Sombrero - a near week at the beach w/ the fam - a crossing of quinault and an epic lake crescent thing - barely a week left in summer 2019 i awoke wicked sore but set out east anyways - the stone near alone for the first 4 laps, but then dave n' steve where there n' we cackled our way upwards together alone to mushroom ledge n' some serious meditation 

8/24 - day 19 - laps 41, 42 n' 43 meant it was a douglas adams day (shamefully i must admit i forget my towel, but proudly i can say i did not panic) - 3 days in the alpine lakes wilderness didn't beat me down enough i guess, 'cuz the girl-child asked to get carted out to skamania for the afternoon to cavort w/ her polish friends and i rallied to run laps while letting her have her what-have-you - summer is doomed and so are you 

8/25 - day 20 - laps 44-45 - 11 CBIs n' 13 runs (new stats, to keep things fun n' make a game of the mundane - every meat-popsicle lapped is a Climber Batted In - runs are laps plus CBIs - good lord, the record couldn't be higher than 50 runs in a day could it?) - the coast guard earns its gold from yuppie scum along the banks of the rude columbia - nastia n' her main-squeeze set to scramble up blown-out in the blistering shade under the heavy hail of tourist stone, our beers n' smokes n' smalltalk cut savage short - the experiment to substitute a cordelette in lieu of a bolted anchor at the top an abject failure within 24 hours, though kinda an apollo 13 one since i got the cord returned as requested - 2 cruiser laps in the autumnally-building breeze with the crowds abounding, summer's done been set on a goddamn gibbet  

8/26 - blackjack day - laps 46-7 make me prime again - 4 CBIs for 6 runs - a soft slumber ended in the gentlest fashion - the damned dentist - the dmv denied - summer slams into the brickwall while i straighten out the classroom - a big breeze builds as we stumble eastwards - the first lap looms into the time-traveler and his canadian dame, well over her head on the second pitch, so i stayed to help her suss out the sitch and sacrificed a hat trick - beers and the inevitable bullshiting - the world careens and carries us along in its endless crapulous fucking fashion 

8/27 - summer beacon day double-deuce - laps 48-9 make me prime n' prone to wine - 96 degrees n' a big-breeze in the parking lot - the first day back to the what-have-you and the bullshite-factory appears to have been working overtime in my absence - cryptic runes n' rude cynosures, thank-fuck their clutches are so fleeting - a lap alone in the wild wind, and then another, all to seek and find the freek

8/28 - day 23, laps 50-51 - another hot day, minus the breeze - the mechanisms continue to rumble up to speed on the work machine, the corporate speak as thick as cancer but only half as deadly - hit beacon in a hurry w/ familialial functions to attend to in the soon-time  - 26 minutes car to car on the first lap, but a bit more mellow on the second - a curtailed conversation on retro-bolting an anchor on the corner down in the parking lot, sadly one that seems to have concluded with them deciding to add yet another scar to the recently patched rock in question - i guess we'll see if they go through with it... - lovely thai dinner after back-to-school night at least and so it goes and goes

 

8/29 - day 24, laps 52-53 - awoke to the crack of thunder and the cold iron sound of roiling rain in the early hours - such wondrous slumber in a dry place, the wicked world just an open window away - the final pre-season day before the Big Show, the crest of bullshit surmounted and now we ride the flood tide to a preternatural future, knowing what is to come merely from a fleeting look back  - work over, i walked out the door to doom-streaked clouds and rain but bounded east on enthusiasm alone, sure that the universe intended me to climb today or never again at all and not caring which it was to be - the deep funk of strange humidity on the trail down - mama deer and baby deer surprised me at close quarters on the trail and gave me a sudden sharp stab of quicksilver-fear, a sensation too rarely felt in this saccharine world where tomorrow is always assured and death is a landlord easily dispensed with - new friends re-encountered on the warrior path, lovely souls i'll never see again and that's a shame - ruminations atop the ridgeline, soaked in sweat and soon to get heading west, tower-bound yet pleasantly besotted with the present...surely someday this will all make sense?

[ivan]

23 hours ago, ivan said:

2018 saw 60 solo laps, a # beyond imagination, but possible by a weird combination of prime weather and a personal calendar no me gusta 

7/20/19 - south side day 1 of the year, well after le grande opening i'll grant you as i sallied up n' down the coast courting more arduous adventures - swimming in the olympics, multi-day colonel bob bumblefuck, marriage counselor sheenagins n' regular ole climbing in leavenworth w/ the silvermans shit-talking each other at every turn, then near a week about mt whitney w/ the whiskey hooligans - 2 solo laps in the shade, every hold an old friend and unforgotten - geoff n' kyle n' larry the gnome at the top n' beers n' bullshitting at the base - managed 70 solo laps last summer, so that's 1/35 of the way to repeating that unbelievable total 

7/21 - day 2 - laps 3-4 - hey, only 33 more days at this rate to top last year - foiled upon arrival at battle ground lake, i bounced off fallen leaf lake too n' resigned meself to clambering out at beacon - once again the rock all to myself, despite the weekend situation - a lap alone, then another w/ some folks thrashing their way up the original dods exit at the end - summer's halfway home n' i'm still all smiles 

7/22 - day 3 - laps 5-7 - a hat trick on a hottish day, 2 in the sun and the third in the shade the hottest of all w/ numerous half-clad hotties along the way

7/23 - day 4 - lap 8 - swam a slow wetsuit-less mile in fallen leaf under cloudy n' cool skies, fetched the boy child from camp, then deposited him again before darting out to the bacon-wand for a single ascent before coming back camas-ways to peruse new houses and ultimately sup on delectable thai takeout

7/24 - day 5 - laps 9-10 - ten laps in five days not so shabby - nary a soul in sight on this sweatyish day, but steve in the parking lot - a week a paradise it would seem... 

7/25 - another hat-trick makes it 13 laps in 6 days, a healthy clip - irish death's n' lovely crowds n' sun n' shade and all after a right-nice long swim continued a paradise-theme-of-a-summer so far...

7/26 - the end of my first summer beacon week and a productive one with 2 more laps to bring the total to 15, 1/4 of the way to last year's ludicrous total, but at a pace to bury it should that be my jealous jam on looking back (i've heard tale their no more nefarious thief than nostalgia though) - a mile swim in fallen leaf while the wulf-man paddled away on lake vancouver, then beacon just after noon in the brutal brightness - shed my black shirt in favor of royal blue - lovely pair of sheilas atop tree ledge on the first lap - sucked down my beer in a batch of shade in the gut under uprising, panting like a bitch - a horde of latinos on the way down, one fella w/ a pack to support the lot of them for a month if need be - the second lap lonely but bearably in the breeze, fat drops of sweat drip-dripping and sizzling away on the stone - then house-hunting and general real-world bummer concerns...

7/27 - summer beacon day 8 - the late morning meetup out near no'bo - adam n' claire n' naterring as we waited for ole'geoff to arrive w/ his prized n' feared jet-ski - beers n' bullshitting n' plan forming - claire drove us up near the dam and we flung ourselves into hamilton creek, expecting far more fun than the fickle world felt like paying out, stumbling mid-knee forever through the stream in wetsuits w/ stuff sacks full of beer - the main current at last and drifting down under the beacon face, admiring some hard-dudes dancing on the journey to the east above big ledge - many more bevies on the dock afterwards n' some soft-porn skinny-dipping by the masses, than back to the little road hold-out before cursing them fools n' cutting loose to clamber up the corner in the gloaming-dark before darting back to home for chicken salad n' discoursing over stranger things 

7/28 - beacon day 9 - 2 more laps makes it 18, a tear beyond my tenous memory - wurst to drag adam's esposita up the corner at first, but she foreswore the morning heat and when adam got froggy on the immediate details i said fork-it n' went n' did a lap while he helped a timberline high-to-do set up a big kayak shuttle down to kalama- soggy as hell from sweat i returned as his business was concluded, having to concede another climb in the immediate future was fucked - we repaired to the river again then n' had a mort of swimming n' redneck shenanigans before i felt honor-bound to take advantage of the recent shade for another clambornation n' siddle on back home - plenty of folks casting about at the base, one even who recognized my nom de guerre n' threw a compliment my way that in hindsight i think i mighta thrown back a tad too heelish - perhaps if i spent more time on my people skills instead of scratching the Endless Itch?  

7/29 - was supposed to be a beacon-less day but the beacon lords giveth n' they take away too - beacon day 10 (in a row!) at any rate, n' solo lap 19 - met the k19 near noon after carting the boy child to row-row-your-boating on lake vancouver and stuffing in a quick swim at fallen leaf lake - after dressing his sadly chapped hands i cast out camas-ways - the plan was the adventure swim to phoca rock from the washington side, a jam i've yet to even get wet for yet despite numerous attempts, and this one the same - nastia said she was illish and prefered a columbia crossing at hood river instead, so sure, why not?  we both drove to set up a car shuttle and noticed near arrival that the wind was whipping, the waves white-capped and their swells nice n' rolling long - gave me the heebie-jeebies a bit, soul-scarred as i remain from the one and only trans-columbia transit i made a few years back w/ ole'pat when the gorge was freshly burnt and i was perhaps drunk by naval standards at our 10 am departure (holy jeebus, that incident still ranks high on my most-terrified ever list) - after setting up the shuttle though we gave her a go, me in my wetsuit and snorkel and boots and web-gloves and day-glo orange personal swimmer buoy (and sober besides, having learnt all kinds of lessons that chilly october morning) but the russkaya of course was just in her dainty 2-piece and rocking the doggy paddle stroke, true russian-berserker style and blazeningly loving it - not too far from shore the waves and winds announced their presence with authority and our humble tribe quailed at their querulousness, first she then me after starting a 2nd attempt alone - retiring to the oregon side once again to recover her car n' kick about the conversation-can we revolved the rubik's cube of future combinations and settled upon giving something/anything a chance someday soon, assuming we live that long  - a solo beacon lap on a wind-wracked n' shady south side sans shirt was my true reward for listening to the Little Voice Inside Me and chopped the voyage home neatly in half - all i have to worry about now is tomorrow...

7/30 - 11 back-to-back beatard days and i'm a bit drained - 2 more laps for 21 total on this still youngish summer - crater lake complications and house-swapping horseshit clouds everything, my spirits low - might it be that nothing ever really gets better?

8/1 - sou'side summer beacon day 12 of 2019 - solo laps 22-23 - early morning rising to house-hunt n' tidy up domestically, kinda lame really but we are rarely masters of our own destiny i reckon - the daughter-child to her amiga's skamania abide in the late afternoon left time for yours truly to scramble up the bacon wand twice before achieving apogee and getting sucked back west once again to stuff more things into the bursting garage before the photo man comes to record it all in the morning - the great crater lake creep south at sunrise, all mortal concerns cast aside in the gawdamned interest of aquatic glory 

8/8 - day 13 - laps 24, 25, 26 - a sad week away from the bacon-stone, but well spent - a swim-trip to crater lake - cock-blocked by the feds, we found better refuge at waldo lake, which was much like taking the 2nd hottest girl at the party home - union bidness in mcminville and quite alright, though it brought the summer death-knell to the forefront of a keening mind - rain in the west, after hours the beaconwand cast its spell and the world was my oyster again - gnome the larry in the gloaming lot, then kyle n' company came crawling in - three laps passing through numerous parties - some-guy-named-steve earned his Hero of Beacon Rock w/ oak-leaf clusters - placid blood flowed freely as it should in the scraping places - kyle got the kid up though competent legal counsel would eagerly have urged him not 

8/9 -estival beacon aeon 14 - laps 27-28 - a lazy friday summer sleep-in, the first in some time - warm coffee n' cold eggs w/ the wifey over steven colbert n' some orange-is-the-new-black - the kids like college students, slow to rise - afternoon i ambled out to beacon to meet old ben - beat him by an hour so got a lap in alone before he arrived with his boy asher, sullen n' silent, as a man should be in this shocking modern age - led them up the route sans belays, which i reckon counts as solo too, though a rope was technically tied round my ample beer-gut - a gaggle of elk gamboling about the meadows below the eastern train track, their worries little ones in this wonderous season - the drive home dominated by the sweet smell of summer rain n' the dying sun...

8/11 - day 15 - a rare reverse-golden-sombrero raises the lap count to 32 on the summer - the trip took weather-faith, for the rain fell throughout the gorge on the drive in, even in the lot itself a profound mist made its presence known - a fool's errand i thought, but took my shoes down to the base anyway to see if the stone was dry despite 2 days of storms and so it was, and with hordes of portlanders putting their dirty libturd-hands all over it in flagrant degradation too - kyle n' bill n' joe n' countless over fools all encountered and gavreeted with, and one parcel of folks i passed 4 times in total over the next few hours - the history of the world it would seem, and fitting that the soundtrack was 4 episodes of a podcast all about the ending of it 

8/12 - day 16 - lap 33 - the smell of sudden fiery death roused me at 5 and an hour later i arose in protest at my prickly senses - after tea and trailer park boys i eased myself eastwards for a single lap in the sun - the stone alone, i savored my solitude, the drip-drip of sweat the only sense of time to contend with - afterwards car-chores and lake-swimming w/ many chilluns 

8/13 - day 17 - laps 34-35 - the world waxes largish, so what exactly is the goal now? last year the improbable # of 60 made me think 61 is all any sane man might relish, or maybe just 62 to stick a fork in the eye of roger morris, but now something much bigger indeed seems possible - how about 74 to offer the proverbial bitch-slap to barry bonds? even if that is to be the improbable mark, such a tally looms already large in the wind-screen and is to be sought for - the hazy outlines of a plan for a phenomenal 14-in-a-day assault in september with a whole heap of fools to propel the thing to a frenetic conclusion - that's in the future though - tonight was sublime solitude and shade and space for easy contemplation - a podcast on theoretical physics' hapless potential to create an end of the world to keep me company - the peregrines on the scene after being rather silent this past month - stone throwing teenage tourists and a positive conversation on the merits of manslaughter - a road trip begins tomorrow w/ the family and maybe a giant swim in crescent lake at the conclusion - there's marrow still in the bone of summer boys, and meat on it to spare as well 

8/19 - day 18 - laps 36-40 for the rare Reverse Platinum Sombrero - a near week at the beach w/ the fam - a crossing of quinault and an epic lake crescent thing - barely a week left in summer 2019 i awoke wicked sore but set out east anyways - the stone near alone for the first 4 laps, but then dave n' steve where there n' we cackled our way upwards together alone to mushroom ledge n' some serious meditation 

8/24 - day 19 - laps 41, 42 n' 43 meant it was a douglas adams day (shamefully i must admit i forget my towel, but proudly i can say i did not panic) - 3 days in the alpine lakes wilderness didn't beat me down enough i guess, 'cuz the girl-child asked to get carted out to skamania for the afternoon to cavort w/ her polish friends and i rallied to run laps while letting her have her what-have-you - summer is doomed and so are you 

8/25 - day 20 - laps 44-45 - 11 CBIs n' 13 runs (new stats, to keep things fun n' make a game of the mundane - every meat-popsicle lapped is a Climber Batted In - runs are laps plus CBIs - good lord, the record couldn't be higher than 50 runs in a day could it?) - the coast guard earns its gold from yuppie scum along the banks of the rude columbia - nastia n' her main-squeeze set to scramble up blown-out in the blistering shade under the heavy hail of tourist stone, our beers n' smokes n' smalltalk cut savage short - the experiment to substitute a cordelette in lieu of a bolted anchor at the top an abject failure within 24 hours, though kinda an apollo 13 one since i got the cord returned as requested - 2 cruiser laps in the autumnally-building breeze with the crowds abounding, summer's done been set on a goddamn gibbet  

8/26 - blackjack day - laps 46-7 make me prime again - 4 CBIs for 6 runs - a soft slumber ended in the gentlest fashion - the damned dentist - the dmv denied - summer slams into the brickwall while i straighten out the classroom - a big breeze builds as we stumble eastwards - the first lap looms into the time-traveler and his canadian dame, well over her head on the second pitch, so i stayed to help her suss out the sitch and sacrificed a hat trick - beers and the inevitable bullshiting - the world careens and carries us along in its endless crapulous fucking fashion 

8/27 - summer beacon day double-deuce - laps 48-9 make me prime n' prone to wine - 96 degrees n' a big-breeze in the parking lot - the first day back to the what-have-you and the bullshite-factory appears to have been working overtime in my absence - cryptic runes n' rude cynosures, thank-fuck their clutches are so fleeting - a lap alone in the wild wind, and then another, all to seek and find the freek

8/28 - day 23, laps 50-51 - another hot day, minus the breeze - the mechanisms continue to rumble up to speed on the work machine, the corporate speak as thick as cancer but only half as deadly - hit beacon in a hurry w/ familialial functions to attend to in the soon-time  - 26 minutes car to car on the first lap, but a bit more mellow on the second - a curtailed conversation on retro-bolting an anchor on the corner down in the parking lot, sadly one that seems to have concluded with them deciding to add yet another scar to the recently patched rock in question - i guess we'll see if they go through with it... - lovely thai dinner after back-to-school night at least and so it goes and goes 

8/29 - day 24, laps 52-53 - awoke to the crack of thunder and the cold iron sound of roiling rain in the early hours - such wondrous slumber in a dry place, the wicked world just an open window away - the final pre-season day before the Big Show, the crest of bullshit surmounted and now we ride the flood tide to a preternatural future, knowing what is to come merely from a fleeting look back  - work over, i walked out the door to doom-streaked clouds and rain but bounded east on enthusiasm alone, sure that the universe intended me to climb today or never again at all and not caring which it was to be - the deep funk of strange humidity on the trail down - mama deer and baby deer surprised me at close quarters on the trail and gave me a sudden sharp stab of quicksilver-fear, a sensation too rarely felt in this saccharine world where tomorrow is always assured and death is a landlord easily dispensed with - new friends re-encountered on the warrior path, lovely souls i'll never see again and that's a shame - ruminations atop the ridgeline, soaked in sweat and soon to get heading west, tower-bound yet pleasantly besotted with the present...surely someday this will all make sense?

8/30 - 7 days in a row at the fabulous beacon-wand summer-sweet spot makes it 25 total so far - corner laps 54-56, plus 11 CBIs for 14 runs on the day, the greatest since gestating the concept - the final friday before the big plunge - easy rising - dishes n' breakfast - the grey-gloom of many summer mornings that inevitably yields to glory soon after noon - adam's afterwards in the shade and breeze was total bliss - felt a bit frazzled n' forlorn before the end of the laps really, maybe a sign i need to sit my ass down for a few days, which would make some sorta sense i reckon given i can't remember a day i devoted to just lying around for a long while - that said it's a tower rock approach n' set-up tomorrow w/ a huge sunday afterwards, so maybe labor day will equal its lamentations and i'll rest then?

[ivan]

On 8/30/2019 at 8:57 PM, ivan said:

2018 saw 60 solo laps, a # beyond imagination, but possible by a weird combination of prime weather and a personal calendar no me gusta 

7/20/19 - south side day 1 of the year, well after le grande opening i'll grant you as i sallied up n' down the coast courting more arduous adventures - swimming in the olympics, multi-day colonel bob bumblefuck, marriage counselor sheenagins n' regular ole climbing in leavenworth w/ the silvermans shit-talking each other at every turn, then near a week about mt whitney w/ the whiskey hooligans - 2 solo laps in the shade, every hold an old friend and unforgotten - geoff n' kyle n' larry the gnome at the top n' beers n' bullshitting at the base - managed 70 solo laps last summer, so that's 1/35 of the way to repeating that unbelievable total 

7/21 - day 2 - laps 3-4 - hey, only 33 more days at this rate to top last year - foiled upon arrival at battle ground lake, i bounced off fallen leaf lake too n' resigned meself to clambering out at beacon - once again the rock all to myself, despite the weekend situation - a lap alone, then another w/ some folks thrashing their way up the original dods exit at the end - summer's halfway home n' i'm still all smiles 

7/22 - day 3 - laps 5-7 - a hat trick on a hottish day, 2 in the sun and the third in the shade the hottest of all w/ numerous half-clad hotties along the way

7/23 - day 4 - lap 8 - swam a slow wetsuit-less mile in fallen leaf under cloudy n' cool skies, fetched the boy child from camp, then deposited him again before darting out to the bacon-wand for a single ascent before coming back camas-ways to peruse new houses and ultimately sup on delectable thai takeout

7/24 - day 5 - laps 9-10 - ten laps in five days not so shabby - nary a soul in sight on this sweatyish day, but steve in the parking lot - a week a paradise it would seem... 

7/25 - another hat-trick makes it 13 laps in 6 days, a healthy clip - irish death's n' lovely crowds n' sun n' shade and all after a right-nice long swim continued a paradise-theme-of-a-summer so far...

7/26 - the end of my first summer beacon week and a productive one with 2 more laps to bring the total to 15, 1/4 of the way to last year's ludicrous total, but at a pace to bury it should that be my jealous jam on looking back (i've heard tale their no more nefarious thief than nostalgia though) - a mile swim in fallen leaf while the wulf-man paddled away on lake vancouver, then beacon just after noon in the brutal brightness - shed my black shirt in favor of royal blue - lovely pair of sheilas atop tree ledge on the first lap - sucked down my beer in a batch of shade in the gut under uprising, panting like a bitch - a horde of latinos on the way down, one fella w/ a pack to support the lot of them for a month if need be - the second lap lonely but bearably in the breeze, fat drops of sweat drip-dripping and sizzling away on the stone - then house-hunting and general real-world bummer concerns...

7/27 - summer beacon day 8 - the late morning meetup out near no'bo - adam n' claire n' naterring as we waited for ole'geoff to arrive w/ his prized n' feared jet-ski - beers n' bullshitting n' plan forming - claire drove us up near the dam and we flung ourselves into hamilton creek, expecting far more fun than the fickle world felt like paying out, stumbling mid-knee forever through the stream in wetsuits w/ stuff sacks full of beer - the main current at last and drifting down under the beacon face, admiring some hard-dudes dancing on the journey to the east above big ledge - many more bevies on the dock afterwards n' some soft-porn skinny-dipping by the masses, than back to the little road hold-out before cursing them fools n' cutting loose to clamber up the corner in the gloaming-dark before darting back to home for chicken salad n' discoursing over stranger things 

7/28 - beacon day 9 - 2 more laps makes it 18, a tear beyond my tenous memory - wurst to drag adam's esposita up the corner at first, but she foreswore the morning heat and when adam got froggy on the immediate details i said fork-it n' went n' did a lap while he helped a timberline high-to-do set up a big kayak shuttle down to kalama- soggy as hell from sweat i returned as his business was concluded, having to concede another climb in the immediate future was fucked - we repaired to the river again then n' had a mort of swimming n' redneck shenanigans before i felt honor-bound to take advantage of the recent shade for another clambornation n' siddle on back home - plenty of folks casting about at the base, one even who recognized my nom de guerre n' threw a compliment my way that in hindsight i think i mighta thrown back a tad too heelish - perhaps if i spent more time on my people skills instead of scratching the Endless Itch?  

7/29 - was supposed to be a beacon-less day but the beacon lords giveth n' they take away too - beacon day 10 (in a row!) at any rate, n' solo lap 19 - met the k19 near noon after carting the boy child to row-row-your-boating on lake vancouver and stuffing in a quick swim at fallen leaf lake - after dressing his sadly chapped hands i cast out camas-ways - the plan was the adventure swim to phoca rock from the washington side, a jam i've yet to even get wet for yet despite numerous attempts, and this one the same - nastia said she was illish and prefered a columbia crossing at hood river instead, so sure, why not?  we both drove to set up a car shuttle and noticed near arrival that the wind was whipping, the waves white-capped and their swells nice n' rolling long - gave me the heebie-jeebies a bit, soul-scarred as i remain from the one and only trans-columbia transit i made a few years back w/ ole'pat when the gorge was freshly burnt and i was perhaps drunk by naval standards at our 10 am departure (holy jeebus, that incident still ranks high on my most-terrified ever list) - after setting up the shuttle though we gave her a go, me in my wetsuit and snorkel and boots and web-gloves and day-glo orange personal swimmer buoy (and sober besides, having learnt all kinds of lessons that chilly october morning) but the russkaya of course was just in her dainty 2-piece and rocking the doggy paddle stroke, true russian-berserker style and blazeningly loving it - not too far from shore the waves and winds announced their presence with authority and our humble tribe quailed at their querulousness, first she then me after starting a 2nd attempt alone - retiring to the oregon side once again to recover her car n' kick about the conversation-can we revolved the rubik's cube of future combinations and settled upon giving something/anything a chance someday soon, assuming we live that long  - a solo beacon lap on a wind-wracked n' shady south side sans shirt was my true reward for listening to the Little Voice Inside Me and chopped the voyage home neatly in half - all i have to worry about now is tomorrow...

7/30 - 11 back-to-back beatard days and i'm a bit drained - 2 more laps for 21 total on this still youngish summer - crater lake complications and house-swapping horseshit clouds everything, my spirits low - might it be that nothing ever really gets better?

8/1 - sou'side summer beacon day 12 of 2019 - solo laps 22-23 - early morning rising to house-hunt n' tidy up domestically, kinda lame really but we are rarely masters of our own destiny i reckon - the daughter-child to her amiga's skamania abide in the late afternoon left time for yours truly to scramble up the bacon wand twice before achieving apogee and getting sucked back west once again to stuff more things into the bursting garage before the photo man comes to record it all in the morning - the great crater lake creep south at sunrise, all mortal concerns cast aside in the gawdamned interest of aquatic glory 

8/8 - day 13 - laps 24, 25, 26 - a sad week away from the bacon-stone, but well spent - a swim-trip to crater lake - cock-blocked by the feds, we found better refuge at waldo lake, which was much like taking the 2nd hottest girl at the party home - union bidness in mcminville and quite alright, though it brought the summer death-knell to the forefront of a keening mind - rain in the west, after hours the beaconwand cast its spell and the world was my oyster again - gnome the larry in the gloaming lot, then kyle n' company came crawling in - three laps passing through numerous parties - some-guy-named-steve earned his Hero of Beacon Rock w/ oak-leaf clusters - placid blood flowed freely as it should in the scraping places - kyle got the kid up though competent legal counsel would eagerly have urged him not 

8/9 -estival beacon aeon 14 - laps 27-28 - a lazy friday summer sleep-in, the first in some time - warm coffee n' cold eggs w/ the wifey over steven colbert n' some orange-is-the-new-black - the kids like college students, slow to rise - afternoon i ambled out to beacon to meet old ben - beat him by an hour so got a lap in alone before he arrived with his boy asher, sullen n' silent, as a man should be in this shocking modern age - led them up the route sans belays, which i reckon counts as solo too, though a rope was technically tied round my ample beer-gut - a gaggle of elk gamboling about the meadows below the eastern train track, their worries little ones in this wonderous season - the drive home dominated by the sweet smell of summer rain n' the dying sun...

8/11 - day 15 - a rare reverse-golden-sombrero raises the lap count to 32 on the summer - the trip took weather-faith, for the rain fell throughout the gorge on the drive in, even in the lot itself a profound mist made its presence known - a fool's errand i thought, but took my shoes down to the base anyway to see if the stone was dry despite 2 days of storms and so it was, and with hordes of portlanders putting their dirty libturd-hands all over it in flagrant degradation too - kyle n' bill n' joe n' countless over fools all encountered and gavreeted with, and one parcel of folks i passed 4 times in total over the next few hours - the history of the world it would seem, and fitting that the soundtrack was 4 episodes of a podcast all about the ending of it 

8/12 - day 16 - lap 33 - the smell of sudden fiery death roused me at 5 and an hour later i arose in protest at my prickly senses - after tea and trailer park boys i eased myself eastwards for a single lap in the sun - the stone alone, i savored my solitude, the drip-drip of sweat the only sense of time to contend with - afterwards car-chores and lake-swimming w/ many chilluns 

8/13 - day 17 - laps 34-35 - the world waxes largish, so what exactly is the goal now? last year the improbable # of 60 made me think 61 is all any sane man might relish, or maybe just 62 to stick a fork in the eye of roger morris, but now something much bigger indeed seems possible - how about 74 to offer the proverbial bitch-slap to barry bonds? even if that is to be the improbable mark, such a tally looms already large in the wind-screen and is to be sought for - the hazy outlines of a plan for a phenomenal 14-in-a-day assault in september with a whole heap of fools to propel the thing to a frenetic conclusion - that's in the future though - tonight was sublime solitude and shade and space for easy contemplation - a podcast on theoretical physics' hapless potential to create an end of the world to keep me company - the peregrines on the scene after being rather silent this past month - stone throwing teenage tourists and a positive conversation on the merits of manslaughter - a road trip begins tomorrow w/ the family and maybe a giant swim in crescent lake at the conclusion - there's marrow still in the bone of summer boys, and meat on it to spare as well 

8/19 - day 18 - laps 36-40 for the rare Reverse Platinum Sombrero - a near week at the beach w/ the fam - a crossing of quinault and an epic lake crescent thing - barely a week left in summer 2019 i awoke wicked sore but set out east anyways - the stone near alone for the first 4 laps, but then dave n' steve where there n' we cackled our way upwards together alone to mushroom ledge n' some serious meditation 

8/24 - day 19 - laps 41, 42 n' 43 meant it was a douglas adams day (shamefully i must admit i forget my towel, but proudly i can say i did not panic) - 3 days in the alpine lakes wilderness didn't beat me down enough i guess, 'cuz the girl-child asked to get carted out to skamania for the afternoon to cavort w/ her polish friends and i rallied to run laps while letting her have her what-have-you - summer is doomed and so are you 

8/25 - day 20 - laps 44-45 - 11 CBIs n' 13 runs (new stats, to keep things fun n' make a game of the mundane - every meat-popsicle lapped is a Climber Batted In - runs are laps plus CBIs - good lord, the record couldn't be higher than 50 runs in a day could it?) - the coast guard earns its gold from yuppie scum along the banks of the rude columbia - nastia n' her main-squeeze set to scramble up blown-out in the blistering shade under the heavy hail of tourist stone, our beers n' smokes n' smalltalk cut savage short - the experiment to substitute a cordelette in lieu of a bolted anchor at the top an abject failure within 24 hours, though kinda an apollo 13 one since i got the cord returned as requested - 2 cruiser laps in the autumnally-building breeze with the crowds abounding, summer's done been set on a goddamn gibbet  

8/26 - blackjack day - laps 46-7 make me prime again - 4 CBIs for 6 runs - a soft slumber ended in the gentlest fashion - the damned dentist - the dmv denied - summer slams into the brickwall while i straighten out the classroom - a big breeze builds as we stumble eastwards - the first lap looms into the time-traveler and his canadian dame, well over her head on the second pitch, so i stayed to help her suss out the sitch and sacrificed a hat trick - beers and the inevitable bullshiting - the world careens and carries us along in its endless crapulous fucking fashion 

8/27 - summer beacon day double-deuce - laps 48-9 make me prime n' prone to wine - 96 degrees n' a big-breeze in the parking lot - the first day back to the what-have-you and the bullshite-factory appears to have been working overtime in my absence - cryptic runes n' rude cynosures, thank-fuck their clutches are so fleeting - a lap alone in the wild wind, and then another, all to seek and find the freek

8/28 - day 23, laps 50-51 - another hot day, minus the breeze - the mechanisms continue to rumble up to speed on the work machine, the corporate speak as thick as cancer but only half as deadly - hit beacon in a hurry w/ familialial functions to attend to in the soon-time  - 26 minutes car to car on the first lap, but a bit more mellow on the second - a curtailed conversation on retro-bolting an anchor on the corner down in the parking lot, sadly one that seems to have concluded with them deciding to add yet another scar to the recently patched rock in question - i guess we'll see if they go through with it... - lovely thai dinner after back-to-school night at least and so it goes and goes 

8/29 - day 24, laps 52-53 - awoke to the crack of thunder and the cold iron sound of roiling rain in the early hours - such wondrous slumber in a dry place, the wicked world just an open window away - the final pre-season day before the Big Show, the crest of bullshit surmounted and now we ride the flood tide to a preternatural future, knowing what is to come merely from a fleeting look back  - work over, i walked out the door to doom-streaked clouds and rain but bounded east on enthusiasm alone, sure that the universe intended me to climb today or never again at all and not caring which it was to be - the deep funk of strange humidity on the trail down - mama deer and baby deer surprised me at close quarters on the trail and gave me a sudden sharp stab of quicksilver-fear, a sensation too rarely felt in this saccharine world where tomorrow is always assured and death is a landlord easily dispensed with - new friends re-encountered on the warrior path, lovely souls i'll never see again and that's a shame - ruminations atop the ridgeline, soaked in sweat and soon to get heading west, tower-bound yet pleasantly besotted with the present...surely someday this will all make sense? 

8/30 - 7 days in a row at the fabulous beacon-wand summer-sweet spot makes it 25 total so far - corner laps 54-56, plus 11 CBIs for 14 runs on the day, the greatest since gestating the concept - the final friday before the big plunge - easy rising - dishes n' breakfast - the grey-gloom of many summer mornings that inevitably yields to glory soon after noon - adam's afterwards in the shade and breeze was total bliss - felt a bit frazzled n' forlorn before the end of the laps really, maybe a sign i need to sit my ass down for a few days, which would make some sorta sense i reckon given i can't remember a day i devoted to just lying around for a long while - that said it's a tower rock approach n' set-up tomorrow w/ a huge sunday afterwards, so maybe labor day will equal its lamentations and i'll rest then?

9/3 - day 26 - 1 lap (#57), 2 CBIs - opening day of the 19-20 campaign, the 22nd of my career - old enough now that i'm teaching my daughter's friends, apparently she talks to them so i can actually find out some things about her from them  - only time for one lap before fetching the boy-child from crewing out there on the big lake - for the best really, i'm wicked whooped still from the trial of tower rock

[ivan]

On 9/3/2019 at 7:43 PM, ivan said:

2018 saw 60 solo laps, a # beyond imagination, but possible by a weird combination of prime weather and a personal calendar no me gusta 

7/20/19 - south side day 1 of the year, well after le grande opening i'll grant you as i sallied up n' down the coast courting more arduous adventures - swimming in the olympics, multi-day colonel bob bumblefuck, marriage counselor sheenagins n' regular ole climbing in leavenworth w/ the silvermans shit-talking each other at every turn, then near a week about mt whitney w/ the whiskey hooligans - 2 solo laps in the shade, every hold an old friend and unforgotten - geoff n' kyle n' larry the gnome at the top n' beers n' bullshitting at the base - managed 70 solo laps last summer, so that's 1/35 of the way to repeating that unbelievable total 

7/21 - day 2 - laps 3-4 - hey, only 33 more days at this rate to top last year - foiled upon arrival at battle ground lake, i bounced off fallen leaf lake too n' resigned meself to clambering out at beacon - once again the rock all to myself, despite the weekend situation - a lap alone, then another w/ some folks thrashing their way up the original dods exit at the end - summer's halfway home n' i'm still all smiles 

7/22 - day 3 - laps 5-7 - a hat trick on a hottish day, 2 in the sun and the third in the shade the hottest of all w/ numerous half-clad hotties along the way

7/23 - day 4 - lap 8 - swam a slow wetsuit-less mile in fallen leaf under cloudy n' cool skies, fetched the boy child from camp, then deposited him again before darting out to the bacon-wand for a single ascent before coming back camas-ways to peruse new houses and ultimately sup on delectable thai takeout

7/24 - day 5 - laps 9-10 - ten laps in five days not so shabby - nary a soul in sight on this sweatyish day, but steve in the parking lot - a week a paradise it would seem... 

7/25 - another hat-trick makes it 13 laps in 6 days, a healthy clip - irish death's n' lovely crowds n' sun n' shade and all after a right-nice long swim continued a paradise-theme-of-a-summer so far...

7/26 - the end of my first summer beacon week and a productive one with 2 more laps to bring the total to 15, 1/4 of the way to last year's ludicrous total, but at a pace to bury it should that be my jealous jam on looking back (i've heard tale their no more nefarious thief than nostalgia though) - a mile swim in fallen leaf while the wulf-man paddled away on lake vancouver, then beacon just after noon in the brutal brightness - shed my black shirt in favor of royal blue - lovely pair of sheilas atop tree ledge on the first lap - sucked down my beer in a batch of shade in the gut under uprising, panting like a bitch - a horde of latinos on the way down, one fella w/ a pack to support the lot of them for a month if need be - the second lap lonely but bearably in the breeze, fat drops of sweat drip-dripping and sizzling away on the stone - then house-hunting and general real-world bummer concerns...

7/27 - summer beacon day 8 - the late morning meetup out near no'bo - adam n' claire n' naterring as we waited for ole'geoff to arrive w/ his prized n' feared jet-ski - beers n' bullshitting n' plan forming - claire drove us up near the dam and we flung ourselves into hamilton creek, expecting far more fun than the fickle world felt like paying out, stumbling mid-knee forever through the stream in wetsuits w/ stuff sacks full of beer - the main current at last and drifting down under the beacon face, admiring some hard-dudes dancing on the journey to the east above big ledge - many more bevies on the dock afterwards n' some soft-porn skinny-dipping by the masses, than back to the little road hold-out before cursing them fools n' cutting loose to clamber up the corner in the gloaming-dark before darting back to home for chicken salad n' discoursing over stranger things 

7/28 - beacon day 9 - 2 more laps makes it 18, a tear beyond my tenous memory - wurst to drag adam's esposita up the corner at first, but she foreswore the morning heat and when adam got froggy on the immediate details i said fork-it n' went n' did a lap while he helped a timberline high-to-do set up a big kayak shuttle down to kalama- soggy as hell from sweat i returned as his business was concluded, having to concede another climb in the immediate future was fucked - we repaired to the river again then n' had a mort of swimming n' redneck shenanigans before i felt honor-bound to take advantage of the recent shade for another clambornation n' siddle on back home - plenty of folks casting about at the base, one even who recognized my nom de guerre n' threw a compliment my way that in hindsight i think i mighta thrown back a tad too heelish - perhaps if i spent more time on my people skills instead of scratching the Endless Itch?  

7/29 - was supposed to be a beacon-less day but the beacon lords giveth n' they take away too - beacon day 10 (in a row!) at any rate, n' solo lap 19 - met the k19 near noon after carting the boy child to row-row-your-boating on lake vancouver and stuffing in a quick swim at fallen leaf lake - after dressing his sadly chapped hands i cast out camas-ways - the plan was the adventure swim to phoca rock from the washington side, a jam i've yet to even get wet for yet despite numerous attempts, and this one the same - nastia said she was illish and prefered a columbia crossing at hood river instead, so sure, why not?  we both drove to set up a car shuttle and noticed near arrival that the wind was whipping, the waves white-capped and their swells nice n' rolling long - gave me the heebie-jeebies a bit, soul-scarred as i remain from the one and only trans-columbia transit i made a few years back w/ ole'pat when the gorge was freshly burnt and i was perhaps drunk by naval standards at our 10 am departure (holy jeebus, that incident still ranks high on my most-terrified ever list) - after setting up the shuttle though we gave her a go, me in my wetsuit and snorkel and boots and web-gloves and day-glo orange personal swimmer buoy (and sober besides, having learnt all kinds of lessons that chilly october morning) but the russkaya of course was just in her dainty 2-piece and rocking the doggy paddle stroke, true russian-berserker style and blazeningly loving it - not too far from shore the waves and winds announced their presence with authority and our humble tribe quailed at their querulousness, first she then me after starting a 2nd attempt alone - retiring to the oregon side once again to recover her car n' kick about the conversation-can we revolved the rubik's cube of future combinations and settled upon giving something/anything a chance someday soon, assuming we live that long  - a solo beacon lap on a wind-wracked n' shady south side sans shirt was my true reward for listening to the Little Voice Inside Me and chopped the voyage home neatly in half - all i have to worry about now is tomorrow...

7/30 - 11 back-to-back beatard days and i'm a bit drained - 2 more laps for 21 total on this still youngish summer - crater lake complications and house-swapping horseshit clouds everything, my spirits low - might it be that nothing ever really gets better?

8/1 - sou'side summer beacon day 12 of 2019 - solo laps 22-23 - early morning rising to house-hunt n' tidy up domestically, kinda lame really but we are rarely masters of our own destiny i reckon - the daughter-child to her amiga's skamania abide in the late afternoon left time for yours truly to scramble up the bacon wand twice before achieving apogee and getting sucked back west once again to stuff more things into the bursting garage before the photo man comes to record it all in the morning - the great crater lake creep south at sunrise, all mortal concerns cast aside in the gawdamned interest of aquatic glory 

8/8 - day 13 - laps 24, 25, 26 - a sad week away from the bacon-stone, but well spent - a swim-trip to crater lake - cock-blocked by the feds, we found better refuge at waldo lake, which was much like taking the 2nd hottest girl at the party home - union bidness in mcminville and quite alright, though it brought the summer death-knell to the forefront of a keening mind - rain in the west, after hours the beaconwand cast its spell and the world was my oyster again - gnome the larry in the gloaming lot, then kyle n' company came crawling in - three laps passing through numerous parties - some-guy-named-steve earned his Hero of Beacon Rock w/ oak-leaf clusters - placid blood flowed freely as it should in the scraping places - kyle got the kid up though competent legal counsel would eagerly have urged him not 

8/9 -estival beacon aeon 14 - laps 27-28 - a lazy friday summer sleep-in, the first in some time - warm coffee n' cold eggs w/ the wifey over steven colbert n' some orange-is-the-new-black - the kids like college students, slow to rise - afternoon i ambled out to beacon to meet old ben - beat him by an hour so got a lap in alone before he arrived with his boy asher, sullen n' silent, as a man should be in this shocking modern age - led them up the route sans belays, which i reckon counts as solo too, though a rope was technically tied round my ample beer-gut - a gaggle of elk gamboling about the meadows below the eastern train track, their worries little ones in this wonderous season - the drive home dominated by the sweet smell of summer rain n' the dying sun...

8/11 - day 15 - a rare reverse-golden-sombrero raises the lap count to 32 on the summer - the trip took weather-faith, for the rain fell throughout the gorge on the drive in, even in the lot itself a profound mist made its presence known - a fool's errand i thought, but took my shoes down to the base anyway to see if the stone was dry despite 2 days of storms and so it was, and with hordes of portlanders putting their dirty libturd-hands all over it in flagrant degradation too - kyle n' bill n' joe n' countless over fools all encountered and gavreeted with, and one parcel of folks i passed 4 times in total over the next few hours - the history of the world it would seem, and fitting that the soundtrack was 4 episodes of a podcast all about the ending of it 

8/12 - day 16 - lap 33 - the smell of sudden fiery death roused me at 5 and an hour later i arose in protest at my prickly senses - after tea and trailer park boys i eased myself eastwards for a single lap in the sun - the stone alone, i savored my solitude, the drip-drip of sweat the only sense of time to contend with - afterwards car-chores and lake-swimming w/ many chilluns 

8/13 - day 17 - laps 34-35 - the world waxes largish, so what exactly is the goal now? last year the improbable # of 60 made me think 61 is all any sane man might relish, or maybe just 62 to stick a fork in the eye of roger morris, but now something much bigger indeed seems possible - how about 74 to offer the proverbial bitch-slap to barry bonds? even if that is to be the improbable mark, such a tally looms already large in the wind-screen and is to be sought for - the hazy outlines of a plan for a phenomenal 14-in-a-day assault in september with a whole heap of fools to propel the thing to a frenetic conclusion - that's in the future though - tonight was sublime solitude and shade and space for easy contemplation - a podcast on theoretical physics' hapless potential to create an end of the world to keep me company - the peregrines on the scene after being rather silent this past month - stone throwing teenage tourists and a positive conversation on the merits of manslaughter - a road trip begins tomorrow w/ the family and maybe a giant swim in crescent lake at the conclusion - there's marrow still in the bone of summer boys, and meat on it to spare as well 

8/19 - day 18 - laps 36-40 for the rare Reverse Platinum Sombrero - a near week at the beach w/ the fam - a crossing of quinault and an epic lake crescent thing - barely a week left in summer 2019 i awoke wicked sore but set out east anyways - the stone near alone for the first 4 laps, but then dave n' steve where there n' we cackled our way upwards together alone to mushroom ledge n' some serious meditation 

8/24 - day 19 - laps 41, 42 n' 43 meant it was a douglas adams day (shamefully i must admit i forget my towel, but proudly i can say i did not panic) - 3 days in the alpine lakes wilderness didn't beat me down enough i guess, 'cuz the girl-child asked to get carted out to skamania for the afternoon to cavort w/ her polish friends and i rallied to run laps while letting her have her what-have-you - summer is doomed and so are you 

8/25 - day 20 - laps 44-45 - 11 CBIs n' 13 runs (new stats, to keep things fun n' make a game of the mundane - every meat-popsicle lapped is a Climber Batted In - runs are laps plus CBIs - good lord, the record couldn't be higher than 50 runs in a day could it?) - the coast guard earns its gold from yuppie scum along the banks of the rude columbia - nastia n' her main-squeeze set to scramble up blown-out in the blistering shade under the heavy hail of tourist stone, our beers n' smokes n' smalltalk cut savage short - the experiment to substitute a cordelette in lieu of a bolted anchor at the top an abject failure within 24 hours, though kinda an apollo 13 one since i got the cord returned as requested - 2 cruiser laps in the autumnally-building breeze with the crowds abounding, summer's done been set on a goddamn gibbet  

8/26 - blackjack day - laps 46-7 make me prime again - 4 CBIs for 6 runs - a soft slumber ended in the gentlest fashion - the damned dentist - the dmv denied - summer slams into the brickwall while i straighten out the classroom - a big breeze builds as we stumble eastwards - the first lap looms into the time-traveler and his canadian dame, well over her head on the second pitch, so i stayed to help her suss out the sitch and sacrificed a hat trick - beers and the inevitable bullshiting - the world careens and carries us along in its endless crapulous fucking fashion 

8/27 - summer beacon day double-deuce - laps 48-9 make me prime n' prone to wine - 96 degrees n' a big-breeze in the parking lot - the first day back to the what-have-you and the bullshite-factory appears to have been working overtime in my absence - cryptic runes n' rude cynosures, thank-fuck their clutches are so fleeting - a lap alone in the wild wind, and then another, all to seek and find the freek

8/28 - day 23, laps 50-51 - another hot day, minus the breeze - the mechanisms continue to rumble up to speed on the work machine, the corporate speak as thick as cancer but only half as deadly - hit beacon in a hurry w/ familialial functions to attend to in the soon-time  - 26 minutes car to car on the first lap, but a bit more mellow on the second - a curtailed conversation on retro-bolting an anchor on the corner down in the parking lot, sadly one that seems to have concluded with them deciding to add yet another scar to the recently patched rock in question - i guess we'll see if they go through with it... - lovely thai dinner after back-to-school night at least and so it goes and goes 

8/29 - day 24, laps 52-53 - awoke to the crack of thunder and the cold iron sound of roiling rain in the early hours - such wondrous slumber in a dry place, the wicked world just an open window away - the final pre-season day before the Big Show, the crest of bullshit surmounted and now we ride the flood tide to a preternatural future, knowing what is to come merely from a fleeting look back  - work over, i walked out the door to doom-streaked clouds and rain but bounded east on enthusiasm alone, sure that the universe intended me to climb today or never again at all and not caring which it was to be - the deep funk of strange humidity on the trail down - mama deer and baby deer surprised me at close quarters on the trail and gave me a sudden sharp stab of quicksilver-fear, a sensation too rarely felt in this saccharine world where tomorrow is always assured and death is a landlord easily dispensed with - new friends re-encountered on the warrior path, lovely souls i'll never see again and that's a shame - ruminations atop the ridgeline, soaked in sweat and soon to get heading west, tower-bound yet pleasantly besotted with the present...surely someday this will all make sense? 

8/30 - 7 days in a row at the fabulous beacon-wand summer-sweet spot makes it 25 total so far - corner laps 54-56, plus 11 CBIs for 14 runs on the day, the greatest since gestating the concept - the final friday before the big plunge - easy rising - dishes n' breakfast - the grey-gloom of many summer mornings that inevitably yields to glory soon after noon - adam's afterwards in the shade and breeze was total bliss - felt a bit frazzled n' forlorn before the end of the laps really, maybe a sign i need to sit my ass down for a few days, which would make some sorta sense i reckon given i can't remember a day i devoted to just lying around for a long while - that said it's a tower rock approach n' set-up tomorrow w/ a huge sunday afterwards, so maybe labor day will equal its lamentations and i'll rest then? 

9/3 - day 26 - 1 lap (#57), 2 CBIs - opening day of the 19-20 campaign, the 22nd of my career - old enough now that i'm teaching my daughter's friends, apparently she talks to them so i can actually find out some things about her from them  - only time for one lap before fetching the boy-child from crewing out there on the big lake - for the best really, i'm wicked whooped still from the trial of tower rock

9/4 - day 27 - lap 58 n' 2 CBIs -bill n' ujhan n' the prodigal-son-come-home adam in the parking lot - bill scooped up my dropped hook from tower rock's base yesterday along w/ plenty of other debris left over from my fellow floggers, yet he nay managed to bring it with him (no matter, we know he's good for it) - chris b' n company coming down from the party ledge, near the 2 year anniversary i reckon since i first made his acquaintance, busted badly at the base w/ nastia in the soon-time after the big burn had scorched damn near everything in site - shoulda stuffed in one more lap for sure, but its early school season still and it takes the zap oughta me working for the man, so i slunk back home for salmon n' spades w/ the fam n' an early turn-in

[JasonG]

I almost feel bad interrupting this amazing string of ascents to say......wow.

Shine on you crazy diamond.

[billcoe]

 

3 points:

 

1st) What saved the hook was that although we had searched for that hook extensively before firing up Tower (P3 and down, not the top),  was when we headed down  we saw some trash. Wandering towards the shiny trash off in the distance, Adam spy's it on the ground. We rounded up all the trash we could find and your hook was collected because of that. When Adam showed up in the am, I was all flustered as he wasn't committed to a single Beacon route but was tossing out a bunch of classics and I was thinking I needed to bring gear to supplement his rack. I knew I wanted to bring it incase we bumped into each other but I walked right past your hook and it's still there. I can put your name on it but it will get back eventually. As an aside, the Pikas are starting to come out.

 

2nd) To the person who told me that the rap off Blownout will miss the poison oak, I beg to disagree.

 

3rd) A mix up this am led to us having only 9 draws for Monte Cristo Slab. A quick call to Denali Dave who lived close to on the way and he spotted us 10 more and sent us along with a cooler of super greens to boot!  It was perfect. The hot weather of yesterday and today (these plus 90 degree days take it out of you) made for an early finish. We dropped them on Daves porch on the way back. As we are driving back, baked stupid by the sun, Adam notes: Doh!, we should have put a 6 pack in that empty cooler". Right he was, Dave, the beers on me man, thanks again!! Adam flys home Saturday, he's climbing with Timetraver tomorrow and I get a much needed rest day.

Edited September 6, 2019 by billcoe

[ivan]

On 9/4/2019 at 9:31 PM, ivan said:

2018 saw 60 solo laps, a # beyond imagination, but possible by a weird combination of prime weather and a personal calendar no me gusta 

7/20/19 - south side day 1 of the year, well after le grande opening i'll grant you as i sallied up n' down the coast courting more arduous adventures - swimming in the olympics, multi-day colonel bob bumblefuck, marriage counselor sheenagins n' regular ole climbing in leavenworth w/ the silvermans shit-talking each other at every turn, then near a week about mt whitney w/ the whiskey hooligans - 2 solo laps in the shade, every hold an old friend and unforgotten - geoff n' kyle n' larry the gnome at the top n' beers n' bullshitting at the base - managed 70 solo laps last summer, so that's 1/35 of the way to repeating that unbelievable total 

7/21 - day 2 - laps 3-4 - hey, only 33 more days at this rate to top last year - foiled upon arrival at battle ground lake, i bounced off fallen leaf lake too n' resigned meself to clambering out at beacon - once again the rock all to myself, despite the weekend situation - a lap alone, then another w/ some folks thrashing their way up the original dods exit at the end - summer's halfway home n' i'm still all smiles 

7/22 - day 3 - laps 5-7 - a hat trick on a hottish day, 2 in the sun and the third in the shade the hottest of all w/ numerous half-clad hotties along the way

7/23 - day 4 - lap 8 - swam a slow wetsuit-less mile in fallen leaf under cloudy n' cool skies, fetched the boy child from camp, then deposited him again before darting out to the bacon-wand for a single ascent before coming back camas-ways to peruse new houses and ultimately sup on delectable thai takeout

7/24 - day 5 - laps 9-10 - ten laps in five days not so shabby - nary a soul in sight on this sweatyish day, but steve in the parking lot - a week a paradise it would seem... 

7/25 - another hat-trick makes it 13 laps in 6 days, a healthy clip - irish death's n' lovely crowds n' sun n' shade and all after a right-nice long swim continued a paradise-theme-of-a-summer so far...

7/26 - the end of my first summer beacon week and a productive one with 2 more laps to bring the total to 15, 1/4 of the way to last year's ludicrous total, but at a pace to bury it should that be my jealous jam on looking back (i've heard tale their no more nefarious thief than nostalgia though) - a mile swim in fallen leaf while the wulf-man paddled away on lake vancouver, then beacon just after noon in the brutal brightness - shed my black shirt in favor of royal blue - lovely pair of sheilas atop tree ledge on the first lap - sucked down my beer in a batch of shade in the gut under uprising, panting like a bitch - a horde of latinos on the way down, one fella w/ a pack to support the lot of them for a month if need be - the second lap lonely but bearably in the breeze, fat drops of sweat drip-dripping and sizzling away on the stone - then house-hunting and general real-world bummer concerns...

7/27 - summer beacon day 8 - the late morning meetup out near no'bo - adam n' claire n' naterring as we waited for ole'geoff to arrive w/ his prized n' feared jet-ski - beers n' bullshitting n' plan forming - claire drove us up near the dam and we flung ourselves into hamilton creek, expecting far more fun than the fickle world felt like paying out, stumbling mid-knee forever through the stream in wetsuits w/ stuff sacks full of beer - the main current at last and drifting down under the beacon face, admiring some hard-dudes dancing on the journey to the east above big ledge - many more bevies on the dock afterwards n' some soft-porn skinny-dipping by the masses, than back to the little road hold-out before cursing them fools n' cutting loose to clamber up the corner in the gloaming-dark before darting back to home for chicken salad n' discoursing over stranger things 

7/28 - beacon day 9 - 2 more laps makes it 18, a tear beyond my tenous memory - wurst to drag adam's esposita up the corner at first, but she foreswore the morning heat and when adam got froggy on the immediate details i said fork-it n' went n' did a lap while he helped a timberline high-to-do set up a big kayak shuttle down to kalama- soggy as hell from sweat i returned as his business was concluded, having to concede another climb in the immediate future was fucked - we repaired to the river again then n' had a mort of swimming n' redneck shenanigans before i felt honor-bound to take advantage of the recent shade for another clambornation n' siddle on back home - plenty of folks casting about at the base, one even who recognized my nom de guerre n' threw a compliment my way that in hindsight i think i mighta thrown back a tad too heelish - perhaps if i spent more time on my people skills instead of scratching the Endless Itch?  

7/29 - was supposed to be a beacon-less day but the beacon lords giveth n' they take away too - beacon day 10 (in a row!) at any rate, n' solo lap 19 - met the k19 near noon after carting the boy child to row-row-your-boating on lake vancouver and stuffing in a quick swim at fallen leaf lake - after dressing his sadly chapped hands i cast out camas-ways - the plan was the adventure swim to phoca rock from the washington side, a jam i've yet to even get wet for yet despite numerous attempts, and this one the same - nastia said she was illish and prefered a columbia crossing at hood river instead, so sure, why not?  we both drove to set up a car shuttle and noticed near arrival that the wind was whipping, the waves white-capped and their swells nice n' rolling long - gave me the heebie-jeebies a bit, soul-scarred as i remain from the one and only trans-columbia transit i made a few years back w/ ole'pat when the gorge was freshly burnt and i was perhaps drunk by naval standards at our 10 am departure (holy jeebus, that incident still ranks high on my most-terrified ever list) - after setting up the shuttle though we gave her a go, me in my wetsuit and snorkel and boots and web-gloves and day-glo orange personal swimmer buoy (and sober besides, having learnt all kinds of lessons that chilly october morning) but the russkaya of course was just in her dainty 2-piece and rocking the doggy paddle stroke, true russian-berserker style and blazeningly loving it - not too far from shore the waves and winds announced their presence with authority and our humble tribe quailed at their querulousness, first she then me after starting a 2nd attempt alone - retiring to the oregon side once again to recover her car n' kick about the conversation-can we revolved the rubik's cube of future combinations and settled upon giving something/anything a chance someday soon, assuming we live that long  - a solo beacon lap on a wind-wracked n' shady south side sans shirt was my true reward for listening to the Little Voice Inside Me and chopped the voyage home neatly in half - all i have to worry about now is tomorrow...

7/30 - 11 back-to-back beatard days and i'm a bit drained - 2 more laps for 21 total on this still youngish summer - crater lake complications and house-swapping horseshit clouds everything, my spirits low - might it be that nothing ever really gets better?

8/1 - sou'side summer beacon day 12 of 2019 - solo laps 22-23 - early morning rising to house-hunt n' tidy up domestically, kinda lame really but we are rarely masters of our own destiny i reckon - the daughter-child to her amiga's skamania abide in the late afternoon left time for yours truly to scramble up the bacon wand twice before achieving apogee and getting sucked back west once again to stuff more things into the bursting garage before the photo man comes to record it all in the morning - the great crater lake creep south at sunrise, all mortal concerns cast aside in the gawdamned interest of aquatic glory 

8/8 - day 13 - laps 24, 25, 26 - a sad week away from the bacon-stone, but well spent - a swim-trip to crater lake - cock-blocked by the feds, we found better refuge at waldo lake, which was much like taking the 2nd hottest girl at the party home - union bidness in mcminville and quite alright, though it brought the summer death-knell to the forefront of a keening mind - rain in the west, after hours the beaconwand cast its spell and the world was my oyster again - gnome the larry in the gloaming lot, then kyle n' company came crawling in - three laps passing through numerous parties - some-guy-named-steve earned his Hero of Beacon Rock w/ oak-leaf clusters - placid blood flowed freely as it should in the scraping places - kyle got the kid up though competent legal counsel would eagerly have urged him not 

8/9 -estival beacon aeon 14 - laps 27-28 - a lazy friday summer sleep-in, the first in some time - warm coffee n' cold eggs w/ the wifey over steven colbert n' some orange-is-the-new-black - the kids like college students, slow to rise - afternoon i ambled out to beacon to meet old ben - beat him by an hour so got a lap in alone before he arrived with his boy asher, sullen n' silent, as a man should be in this shocking modern age - led them up the route sans belays, which i reckon counts as solo too, though a rope was technically tied round my ample beer-gut - a gaggle of elk gamboling about the meadows below the eastern train track, their worries little ones in this wonderous season - the drive home dominated by the sweet smell of summer rain n' the dying sun...

8/11 - day 15 - a rare reverse-golden-sombrero raises the lap count to 32 on the summer - the trip took weather-faith, for the rain fell throughout the gorge on the drive in, even in the lot itself a profound mist made its presence known - a fool's errand i thought, but took my shoes down to the base anyway to see if the stone was dry despite 2 days of storms and so it was, and with hordes of portlanders putting their dirty libturd-hands all over it in flagrant degradation too - kyle n' bill n' joe n' countless over fools all encountered and gavreeted with, and one parcel of folks i passed 4 times in total over the next few hours - the history of the world it would seem, and fitting that the soundtrack was 4 episodes of a podcast all about the ending of it 

8/12 - day 16 - lap 33 - the smell of sudden fiery death roused me at 5 and an hour later i arose in protest at my prickly senses - after tea and trailer park boys i eased myself eastwards for a single lap in the sun - the stone alone, i savored my solitude, the drip-drip of sweat the only sense of time to contend with - afterwards car-chores and lake-swimming w/ many chilluns 

8/13 - day 17 - laps 34-35 - the world waxes largish, so what exactly is the goal now? last year the improbable # of 60 made me think 61 is all any sane man might relish, or maybe just 62 to stick a fork in the eye of roger morris, but now something much bigger indeed seems possible - how about 74 to offer the proverbial bitch-slap to barry bonds? even if that is to be the improbable mark, such a tally looms already large in the wind-screen and is to be sought for - the hazy outlines of a plan for a phenomenal 14-in-a-day assault in september with a whole heap of fools to propel the thing to a frenetic conclusion - that's in the future though - tonight was sublime solitude and shade and space for easy contemplation - a podcast on theoretical physics' hapless potential to create an end of the world to keep me company - the peregrines on the scene after being rather silent this past month - stone throwing teenage tourists and a positive conversation on the merits of manslaughter - a road trip begins tomorrow w/ the family and maybe a giant swim in crescent lake at the conclusion - there's marrow still in the bone of summer boys, and meat on it to spare as well 

8/19 - day 18 - laps 36-40 for the rare Reverse Platinum Sombrero - a near week at the beach w/ the fam - a crossing of quinault and an epic lake crescent thing - barely a week left in summer 2019 i awoke wicked sore but set out east anyways - the stone near alone for the first 4 laps, but then dave n' steve where there n' we cackled our way upwards together alone to mushroom ledge n' some serious meditation 

8/24 - day 19 - laps 41, 42 n' 43 meant it was a douglas adams day (shamefully i must admit i forget my towel, but proudly i can say i did not panic) - 3 days in the alpine lakes wilderness didn't beat me down enough i guess, 'cuz the girl-child asked to get carted out to skamania for the afternoon to cavort w/ her polish friends and i rallied to run laps while letting her have her what-have-you - summer is doomed and so are you 

8/25 - day 20 - laps 44-45 - 11 CBIs n' 13 runs (new stats, to keep things fun n' make a game of the mundane - every meat-popsicle lapped is a Climber Batted In - runs are laps plus CBIs - good lord, the record couldn't be higher than 50 runs in a day could it?) - the coast guard earns its gold from yuppie scum along the banks of the rude columbia - nastia n' her main-squeeze set to scramble up blown-out in the blistering shade under the heavy hail of tourist stone, our beers n' smokes n' smalltalk cut savage short - the experiment to substitute a cordelette in lieu of a bolted anchor at the top an abject failure within 24 hours, though kinda an apollo 13 one since i got the cord returned as requested - 2 cruiser laps in the autumnally-building breeze with the crowds abounding, summer's done been set on a goddamn gibbet  

8/26 - blackjack day - laps 46-7 make me prime again - 4 CBIs for 6 runs - a soft slumber ended in the gentlest fashion - the damned dentist - the dmv denied - summer slams into the brickwall while i straighten out the classroom - a big breeze builds as we stumble eastwards - the first lap looms into the time-traveler and his canadian dame, well over her head on the second pitch, so i stayed to help her suss out the sitch and sacrificed a hat trick - beers and the inevitable bullshiting - the world careens and carries us along in its endless crapulous fucking fashion 

8/27 - summer beacon day double-deuce - laps 48-9 make me prime n' prone to wine - 96 degrees n' a big-breeze in the parking lot - the first day back to the what-have-you and the bullshite-factory appears to have been working overtime in my absence - cryptic runes n' rude cynosures, thank-fuck their clutches are so fleeting - a lap alone in the wild wind, and then another, all to seek and find the freek

8/28 - day 23, laps 50-51 - another hot day, minus the breeze - the mechanisms continue to rumble up to speed on the work machine, the corporate speak as thick as cancer but only half as deadly - hit beacon in a hurry w/ familialial functions to attend to in the soon-time  - 26 minutes car to car on the first lap, but a bit more mellow on the second - a curtailed conversation on retro-bolting an anchor on the corner down in the parking lot, sadly one that seems to have concluded with them deciding to add yet another scar to the recently patched rock in question - i guess we'll see if they go through with it... - lovely thai dinner after back-to-school night at least and so it goes and goes 

8/29 - day 24, laps 52-53 - awoke to the crack of thunder and the cold iron sound of roiling rain in the early hours - such wondrous slumber in a dry place, the wicked world just an open window away - the final pre-season day before the Big Show, the crest of bullshit surmounted and now we ride the flood tide to a preternatural future, knowing what is to come merely from a fleeting look back  - work over, i walked out the door to doom-streaked clouds and rain but bounded east on enthusiasm alone, sure that the universe intended me to climb today or never again at all and not caring which it was to be - the deep funk of strange humidity on the trail down - mama deer and baby deer surprised me at close quarters on the trail and gave me a sudden sharp stab of quicksilver-fear, a sensation too rarely felt in this saccharine world where tomorrow is always assured and death is a landlord easily dispensed with - new friends re-encountered on the warrior path, lovely souls i'll never see again and that's a shame - ruminations atop the ridgeline, soaked in sweat and soon to get heading west, tower-bound yet pleasantly besotted with the present...surely someday this will all make sense? 

8/30 - 7 days in a row at the fabulous beacon-wand summer-sweet spot makes it 25 total so far - corner laps 54-56, plus 11 CBIs for 14 runs on the day, the greatest since gestating the concept - the final friday before the big plunge - easy rising - dishes n' breakfast - the grey-gloom of many summer mornings that inevitably yields to glory soon after noon - adam's afterwards in the shade and breeze was total bliss - felt a bit frazzled n' forlorn before the end of the laps really, maybe a sign i need to sit my ass down for a few days, which would make some sorta sense i reckon given i can't remember a day i devoted to just lying around for a long while - that said it's a tower rock approach n' set-up tomorrow w/ a huge sunday afterwards, so maybe labor day will equal its lamentations and i'll rest then? 

9/3 - day 26 - 1 lap (#57), 2 CBIs - opening day of the 19-20 campaign, the 22nd of my career - old enough now that i'm teaching my daughter's friends, apparently she talks to them so i can actually find out some things about her from them  - only time for one lap before fetching the boy-child from crewing out there on the big lake - for the best really, i'm wicked whooped still from the trial of tower rock

9/4 - day 27 - lap 58 n' 2 CBIs -bill n' ujhan n' the prodigal-son-come-home adam in the parking lot - bill scooped up my dropped hook from tower rock's base yesterday along w/ plenty of other debris left over from my fellow floggers, yet he nay managed to bring it with him (no matter, we know he's good for it) - chris b' n company coming down from the party ledge, near the 2 year anniversary i reckon since i first made his acquaintance, busted badly at the base w/ nastia in the soon-time after the big burn had scorched damn near everything in site - shoulda stuffed in one more lap for sure, but its early school season still and it takes the zap oughta me working for the man, so i slunk back home for salmon n' spades w/ the fam n' an early turn-in

9/6 - day 28 - laps 59-60, plus 6 CBI's for 8 runs - with 6 prime-bacon-wedder-weeks to go, i'm plumb astride last year's all-time record w/ nothing to hold me back but random rain n' the rude restrictions of this love-shackled life - end of a week left me blinking n' bruised n' senselessly tired, thus the start of a third too terrible to comprehend, so home i crawled n' passed out in the midst of pizza n' bill maher, wine-cup perched on chest - clearly this world needs a li'l leg room

Edited September 7, 2019 by ivan

[ivan]

23 hours ago, ivan said:

2018 saw 60 solo laps, a # beyond imagination, but possible by a weird combination of prime weather and a personal calendar no me gusta 

7/20/19 - south side day 1 of the year, well after le grande opening i'll grant you as i sallied up n' down the coast courting more arduous adventures - swimming in the olympics, multi-day colonel bob bumblefuck, marriage counselor sheenagins n' regular ole climbing in leavenworth w/ the silvermans shit-talking each other at every turn, then near a week about mt whitney w/ the whiskey hooligans - 2 solo laps in the shade, every hold an old friend and unforgotten - geoff n' kyle n' larry the gnome at the top n' beers n' bullshitting at the base - managed 70 solo laps last summer, so that's 1/35 of the way to repeating that unbelievable total 

7/21 - day 2 - laps 3-4 - hey, only 33 more days at this rate to top last year - foiled upon arrival at battle ground lake, i bounced off fallen leaf lake too n' resigned meself to clambering out at beacon - once again the rock all to myself, despite the weekend situation - a lap alone, then another w/ some folks thrashing their way up the original dods exit at the end - summer's halfway home n' i'm still all smiles 

7/22 - day 3 - laps 5-7 - a hat trick on a hottish day, 2 in the sun and the third in the shade the hottest of all w/ numerous half-clad hotties along the way

7/23 - day 4 - lap 8 - swam a slow wetsuit-less mile in fallen leaf under cloudy n' cool skies, fetched the boy child from camp, then deposited him again before darting out to the bacon-wand for a single ascent before coming back camas-ways to peruse new houses and ultimately sup on delectable thai takeout

7/24 - day 5 - laps 9-10 - ten laps in five days not so shabby - nary a soul in sight on this sweatyish day, but steve in the parking lot - a week a paradise it would seem... 

7/25 - another hat-trick makes it 13 laps in 6 days, a healthy clip - irish death's n' lovely crowds n' sun n' shade and all after a right-nice long swim continued a paradise-theme-of-a-summer so far...

7/26 - the end of my first summer beacon week and a productive one with 2 more laps to bring the total to 15, 1/4 of the way to last year's ludicrous total, but at a pace to bury it should that be my jealous jam on looking back (i've heard tale their no more nefarious thief than nostalgia though) - a mile swim in fallen leaf while the wulf-man paddled away on lake vancouver, then beacon just after noon in the brutal brightness - shed my black shirt in favor of royal blue - lovely pair of sheilas atop tree ledge on the first lap - sucked down my beer in a batch of shade in the gut under uprising, panting like a bitch - a horde of latinos on the way down, one fella w/ a pack to support the lot of them for a month if need be - the second lap lonely but bearably in the breeze, fat drops of sweat drip-dripping and sizzling away on the stone - then house-hunting and general real-world bummer concerns...

7/27 - summer beacon day 8 - the late morning meetup out near no'bo - adam n' claire n' naterring as we waited for ole'geoff to arrive w/ his prized n' feared jet-ski - beers n' bullshitting n' plan forming - claire drove us up near the dam and we flung ourselves into hamilton creek, expecting far more fun than the fickle world felt like paying out, stumbling mid-knee forever through the stream in wetsuits w/ stuff sacks full of beer - the main current at last and drifting down under the beacon face, admiring some hard-dudes dancing on the journey to the east above big ledge - many more bevies on the dock afterwards n' some soft-porn skinny-dipping by the masses, than back to the little road hold-out before cursing them fools n' cutting loose to clamber up the corner in the gloaming-dark before darting back to home for chicken salad n' discoursing over stranger things 

7/28 - beacon day 9 - 2 more laps makes it 18, a tear beyond my tenous memory - wurst to drag adam's esposita up the corner at first, but she foreswore the morning heat and when adam got froggy on the immediate details i said fork-it n' went n' did a lap while he helped a timberline high-to-do set up a big kayak shuttle down to kalama- soggy as hell from sweat i returned as his business was concluded, having to concede another climb in the immediate future was fucked - we repaired to the river again then n' had a mort of swimming n' redneck shenanigans before i felt honor-bound to take advantage of the recent shade for another clambornation n' siddle on back home - plenty of folks casting about at the base, one even who recognized my nom de guerre n' threw a compliment my way that in hindsight i think i mighta thrown back a tad too heelish - perhaps if i spent more time on my people skills instead of scratching the Endless Itch?  

7/29 - was supposed to be a beacon-less day but the beacon lords giveth n' they take away too - beacon day 10 (in a row!) at any rate, n' solo lap 19 - met the k19 near noon after carting the boy child to row-row-your-boating on lake vancouver and stuffing in a quick swim at fallen leaf lake - after dressing his sadly chapped hands i cast out camas-ways - the plan was the adventure swim to phoca rock from the washington side, a jam i've yet to even get wet for yet despite numerous attempts, and this one the same - nastia said she was illish and prefered a columbia crossing at hood river instead, so sure, why not?  we both drove to set up a car shuttle and noticed near arrival that the wind was whipping, the waves white-capped and their swells nice n' rolling long - gave me the heebie-jeebies a bit, soul-scarred as i remain from the one and only trans-columbia transit i made a few years back w/ ole'pat when the gorge was freshly burnt and i was perhaps drunk by naval standards at our 10 am departure (holy jeebus, that incident still ranks high on my most-terrified ever list) - after setting up the shuttle though we gave her a go, me in my wetsuit and snorkel and boots and web-gloves and day-glo orange personal swimmer buoy (and sober besides, having learnt all kinds of lessons that chilly october morning) but the russkaya of course was just in her dainty 2-piece and rocking the doggy paddle stroke, true russian-berserker style and blazeningly loving it - not too far from shore the waves and winds announced their presence with authority and our humble tribe quailed at their querulousness, first she then me after starting a 2nd attempt alone - retiring to the oregon side once again to recover her car n' kick about the conversation-can we revolved the rubik's cube of future combinations and settled upon giving something/anything a chance someday soon, assuming we live that long  - a solo beacon lap on a wind-wracked n' shady south side sans shirt was my true reward for listening to the Little Voice Inside Me and chopped the voyage home neatly in half - all i have to worry about now is tomorrow...

7/30 - 11 back-to-back beatard days and i'm a bit drained - 2 more laps for 21 total on this still youngish summer - crater lake complications and house-swapping horseshit clouds everything, my spirits low - might it be that nothing ever really gets better?

8/1 - sou'side summer beacon day 12 of 2019 - solo laps 22-23 - early morning rising to house-hunt n' tidy up domestically, kinda lame really but we are rarely masters of our own destiny i reckon - the daughter-child to her amiga's skamania abide in the late afternoon left time for yours truly to scramble up the bacon wand twice before achieving apogee and getting sucked back west once again to stuff more things into the bursting garage before the photo man comes to record it all in the morning - the great crater lake creep south at sunrise, all mortal concerns cast aside in the gawdamned interest of aquatic glory 

8/8 - day 13 - laps 24, 25, 26 - a sad week away from the bacon-stone, but well spent - a swim-trip to crater lake - cock-blocked by the feds, we found better refuge at waldo lake, which was much like taking the 2nd hottest girl at the party home - union bidness in mcminville and quite alright, though it brought the summer death-knell to the forefront of a keening mind - rain in the west, after hours the beaconwand cast its spell and the world was my oyster again - gnome the larry in the gloaming lot, then kyle n' company came crawling in - three laps passing through numerous parties - some-guy-named-steve earned his Hero of Beacon Rock w/ oak-leaf clusters - placid blood flowed freely as it should in the scraping places - kyle got the kid up though competent legal counsel would eagerly have urged him not 

8/9 -estival beacon aeon 14 - laps 27-28 - a lazy friday summer sleep-in, the first in some time - warm coffee n' cold eggs w/ the wifey over steven colbert n' some orange-is-the-new-black - the kids like college students, slow to rise - afternoon i ambled out to beacon to meet old ben - beat him by an hour so got a lap in alone before he arrived with his boy asher, sullen n' silent, as a man should be in this shocking modern age - led them up the route sans belays, which i reckon counts as solo too, though a rope was technically tied round my ample beer-gut - a gaggle of elk gamboling about the meadows below the eastern train track, their worries little ones in this wonderous season - the drive home dominated by the sweet smell of summer rain n' the dying sun...

8/11 - day 15 - a rare reverse-golden-sombrero raises the lap count to 32 on the summer - the trip took weather-faith, for the rain fell throughout the gorge on the drive in, even in the lot itself a profound mist made its presence known - a fool's errand i thought, but took my shoes down to the base anyway to see if the stone was dry despite 2 days of storms and so it was, and with hordes of portlanders putting their dirty libturd-hands all over it in flagrant degradation too - kyle n' bill n' joe n' countless over fools all encountered and gavreeted with, and one parcel of folks i passed 4 times in total over the next few hours - the history of the world it would seem, and fitting that the soundtrack was 4 episodes of a podcast all about the ending of it 

8/12 - day 16 - lap 33 - the smell of sudden fiery death roused me at 5 and an hour later i arose in protest at my prickly senses - after tea and trailer park boys i eased myself eastwards for a single lap in the sun - the stone alone, i savored my solitude, the drip-drip of sweat the only sense of time to contend with - afterwards car-chores and lake-swimming w/ many chilluns 

8/13 - day 17 - laps 34-35 - the world waxes largish, so what exactly is the goal now? last year the improbable # of 60 made me think 61 is all any sane man might relish, or maybe just 62 to stick a fork in the eye of roger morris, but now something much bigger indeed seems possible - how about 74 to offer the proverbial bitch-slap to barry bonds? even if that is to be the improbable mark, such a tally looms already large in the wind-screen and is to be sought for - the hazy outlines of a plan for a phenomenal 14-in-a-day assault in september with a whole heap of fools to propel the thing to a frenetic conclusion - that's in the future though - tonight was sublime solitude and shade and space for easy contemplation - a podcast on theoretical physics' hapless potential to create an end of the world to keep me company - the peregrines on the scene after being rather silent this past month - stone throwing teenage tourists and a positive conversation on the merits of manslaughter - a road trip begins tomorrow w/ the family and maybe a giant swim in crescent lake at the conclusion - there's marrow still in the bone of summer boys, and meat on it to spare as well 

8/19 - day 18 - laps 36-40 for the rare Reverse Platinum Sombrero - a near week at the beach w/ the fam - a crossing of quinault and an epic lake crescent thing - barely a week left in summer 2019 i awoke wicked sore but set out east anyways - the stone near alone for the first 4 laps, but then dave n' steve where there n' we cackled our way upwards together alone to mushroom ledge n' some serious meditation 

8/24 - day 19 - laps 41, 42 n' 43 meant it was a douglas adams day (shamefully i must admit i forget my towel, but proudly i can say i did not panic) - 3 days in the alpine lakes wilderness didn't beat me down enough i guess, 'cuz the girl-child asked to get carted out to skamania for the afternoon to cavort w/ her polish friends and i rallied to run laps while letting her have her what-have-you - summer is doomed and so are you 

8/25 - day 20 - laps 44-45 - 11 CBIs n' 13 runs (new stats, to keep things fun n' make a game of the mundane - every meat-popsicle lapped is a Climber Batted In - runs are laps plus CBIs - good lord, the record couldn't be higher than 50 runs in a day could it?) - the coast guard earns its gold from yuppie scum along the banks of the rude columbia - nastia n' her main-squeeze set to scramble up blown-out in the blistering shade under the heavy hail of tourist stone, our beers n' smokes n' smalltalk cut savage short - the experiment to substitute a cordelette in lieu of a bolted anchor at the top an abject failure within 24 hours, though kinda an apollo 13 one since i got the cord returned as requested - 2 cruiser laps in the autumnally-building breeze with the crowds abounding, summer's done been set on a goddamn gibbet  

8/26 - blackjack day - laps 46-7 make me prime again - 4 CBIs for 6 runs - a soft slumber ended in the gentlest fashion - the damned dentist - the dmv denied - summer slams into the brickwall while i straighten out the classroom - a big breeze builds as we stumble eastwards - the first lap looms into the time-traveler and his canadian dame, well over her head on the second pitch, so i stayed to help her suss out the sitch and sacrificed a hat trick - beers and the inevitable bullshiting - the world careens and carries us along in its endless crapulous fucking fashion 

8/27 - summer beacon day double-deuce - laps 48-9 make me prime n' prone to wine - 96 degrees n' a big-breeze in the parking lot - the first day back to the what-have-you and the bullshite-factory appears to have been working overtime in my absence - cryptic runes n' rude cynosures, thank-fuck their clutches are so fleeting - a lap alone in the wild wind, and then another, all to seek and find the freek

8/28 - day 23, laps 50-51 - another hot day, minus the breeze - the mechanisms continue to rumble up to speed on the work machine, the corporate speak as thick as cancer but only half as deadly - hit beacon in a hurry w/ familialial functions to attend to in the soon-time  - 26 minutes car to car on the first lap, but a bit more mellow on the second - a curtailed conversation on retro-bolting an anchor on the corner down in the parking lot, sadly one that seems to have concluded with them deciding to add yet another scar to the recently patched rock in question - i guess we'll see if they go through with it... - lovely thai dinner after back-to-school night at least and so it goes and goes 

8/29 - day 24, laps 52-53 - awoke to the crack of thunder and the cold iron sound of roiling rain in the early hours - such wondrous slumber in a dry place, the wicked world just an open window away - the final pre-season day before the Big Show, the crest of bullshit surmounted and now we ride the flood tide to a preternatural future, knowing what is to come merely from a fleeting look back  - work over, i walked out the door to doom-streaked clouds and rain but bounded east on enthusiasm alone, sure that the universe intended me to climb today or never again at all and not caring which it was to be - the deep funk of strange humidity on the trail down - mama deer and baby deer surprised me at close quarters on the trail and gave me a sudden sharp stab of quicksilver-fear, a sensation too rarely felt in this saccharine world where tomorrow is always assured and death is a landlord easily dispensed with - new friends re-encountered on the warrior path, lovely souls i'll never see again and that's a shame - ruminations atop the ridgeline, soaked in sweat and soon to get heading west, tower-bound yet pleasantly besotted with the present...surely someday this will all make sense? 

8/30 - 7 days in a row at the fabulous beacon-wand summer-sweet spot makes it 25 total so far - corner laps 54-56, plus 11 CBIs for 14 runs on the day, the greatest since gestating the concept - the final friday before the big plunge - easy rising - dishes n' breakfast - the grey-gloom of many summer mornings that inevitably yields to glory soon after noon - adam's afterwards in the shade and breeze was total bliss - felt a bit frazzled n' forlorn before the end of the laps really, maybe a sign i need to sit my ass down for a few days, which would make some sorta sense i reckon given i can't remember a day i devoted to just lying around for a long while - that said it's a tower rock approach n' set-up tomorrow w/ a huge sunday afterwards, so maybe labor day will equal its lamentations and i'll rest then? 

9/3 - day 26 - 1 lap (#57), 2 CBIs - opening day of the 19-20 campaign, the 22nd of my career - old enough now that i'm teaching my daughter's friends, apparently she talks to them so i can actually find out some things about her from them  - only time for one lap before fetching the boy-child from crewing out there on the big lake - for the best really, i'm wicked whooped still from the trial of tower rock

9/4 - day 27 - lap 58 n' 2 CBIs -bill n' ujhan n' the prodigal-son-come-home adam in the parking lot - bill scooped up my dropped hook from tower rock's base yesterday along w/ plenty of other debris left over from my fellow floggers, yet he nay managed to bring it with him (no matter, we know he's good for it) - chris b' n company coming down from the party ledge, near the 2 year anniversary i reckon since i first made his acquaintance, busted badly at the base w/ nastia in the soon-time after the big burn had scorched damn near everything in site - shoulda stuffed in one more lap for sure, but its early school season still and it takes the zap oughta me working for the man, so i slunk back home for salmon n' spades w/ the fam n' an early turn-in

9/6 - day 28 - laps 59-60, plus 6 CBI's for 8 runs - with 6 prime-bacon-wedder-weeks to go, i'm plumb astride last year's all-time record w/ nothing to hold me back but random rain n' the rude restrictions of this love-shackled life - end of a week left me blinking n' bruised n' senselessly tired, thus the start of a third too terrible to comprehend, so home i crawled n' passed out in the midst of pizza n' bill maher, wine-cup perched on chest - clearly this world needs a li'l leg room

9/7 - day 29 (5 CBIs for 6 runs) - roger morris reclamation day w/ lap 61 i say, my personal best n' for all i can imagine beacon's too, at least for a single year of solo laps - on the horn early w/ adam but we thought it fucked yet somehow separately we crawled to the wall n' didn't say shit when we saw each other, me 'specially w/ only a few minutes of fucking-around time cooked into the cookie - a three-some at tree ledge, the poor sheila below certain she had to do the hard-core-headwall - kincaid n' norman n' the normal nattering high above the hills, me nut-booby n' stupid - could it be that this is it for the simple set?  

[ivan]

On 9/7/2019 at 11:02 PM, ivan said:

2018 saw 60 solo laps, a # beyond imagination, but possible by a weird combination of prime weather and a personal calendar no me gusta 

7/20/19 - south side day 1 of the year, well after le grande opening i'll grant you as i sallied up n' down the coast courting more arduous adventures - swimming in the olympics, multi-day colonel bob bumblefuck, marriage counselor sheenagins n' regular ole climbing in leavenworth w/ the silvermans shit-talking each other at every turn, then near a week about mt whitney w/ the whiskey hooligans - 2 solo laps in the shade, every hold an old friend and unforgotten - geoff n' kyle n' larry the gnome at the top n' beers n' bullshitting at the base - managed 70 solo laps last summer, so that's 1/35 of the way to repeating that unbelievable total 

7/21 - day 2 - laps 3-4 - hey, only 33 more days at this rate to top last year - foiled upon arrival at battle ground lake, i bounced off fallen leaf lake too n' resigned meself to clambering out at beacon - once again the rock all to myself, despite the weekend situation - a lap alone, then another w/ some folks thrashing their way up the original dods exit at the end - summer's halfway home n' i'm still all smiles 

7/22 - day 3 - laps 5-7 - a hat trick on a hottish day, 2 in the sun and the third in the shade the hottest of all w/ numerous half-clad hotties along the way

7/23 - day 4 - lap 8 - swam a slow wetsuit-less mile in fallen leaf under cloudy n' cool skies, fetched the boy child from camp, then deposited him again before darting out to the bacon-wand for a single ascent before coming back camas-ways to peruse new houses and ultimately sup on delectable thai takeout

7/24 - day 5 - laps 9-10 - ten laps in five days not so shabby - nary a soul in sight on this sweatyish day, but steve in the parking lot - a week a paradise it would seem... 

7/25 - another hat-trick makes it 13 laps in 6 days, a healthy clip - irish death's n' lovely crowds n' sun n' shade and all after a right-nice long swim continued a paradise-theme-of-a-summer so far...

7/26 - the end of my first summer beacon week and a productive one with 2 more laps to bring the total to 15, 1/4 of the way to last year's ludicrous total, but at a pace to bury it should that be my jealous jam on looking back (i've heard tale their no more nefarious thief than nostalgia though) - a mile swim in fallen leaf while the wulf-man paddled away on lake vancouver, then beacon just after noon in the brutal brightness - shed my black shirt in favor of royal blue - lovely pair of sheilas atop tree ledge on the first lap - sucked down my beer in a batch of shade in the gut under uprising, panting like a bitch - a horde of latinos on the way down, one fella w/ a pack to support the lot of them for a month if need be - the second lap lonely but bearably in the breeze, fat drops of sweat drip-dripping and sizzling away on the stone - then house-hunting and general real-world bummer concerns...

7/27 - summer beacon day 8 - the late morning meetup out near no'bo - adam n' claire n' naterring as we waited for ole'geoff to arrive w/ his prized n' feared jet-ski - beers n' bullshitting n' plan forming - claire drove us up near the dam and we flung ourselves into hamilton creek, expecting far more fun than the fickle world felt like paying out, stumbling mid-knee forever through the stream in wetsuits w/ stuff sacks full of beer - the main current at last and drifting down under the beacon face, admiring some hard-dudes dancing on the journey to the east above big ledge - many more bevies on the dock afterwards n' some soft-porn skinny-dipping by the masses, than back to the little road hold-out before cursing them fools n' cutting loose to clamber up the corner in the gloaming-dark before darting back to home for chicken salad n' discoursing over stranger things 

7/28 - beacon day 9 - 2 more laps makes it 18, a tear beyond my tenous memory - wurst to drag adam's esposita up the corner at first, but she foreswore the morning heat and when adam got froggy on the immediate details i said fork-it n' went n' did a lap while he helped a timberline high-to-do set up a big kayak shuttle down to kalama- soggy as hell from sweat i returned as his business was concluded, having to concede another climb in the immediate future was fucked - we repaired to the river again then n' had a mort of swimming n' redneck shenanigans before i felt honor-bound to take advantage of the recent shade for another clambornation n' siddle on back home - plenty of folks casting about at the base, one even who recognized my nom de guerre n' threw a compliment my way that in hindsight i think i mighta thrown back a tad too heelish - perhaps if i spent more time on my people skills instead of scratching the Endless Itch?  

7/29 - was supposed to be a beacon-less day but the beacon lords giveth n' they take away too - beacon day 10 (in a row!) at any rate, n' solo lap 19 - met the k19 near noon after carting the boy child to row-row-your-boating on lake vancouver and stuffing in a quick swim at fallen leaf lake - after dressing his sadly chapped hands i cast out camas-ways - the plan was the adventure swim to phoca rock from the washington side, a jam i've yet to even get wet for yet despite numerous attempts, and this one the same - nastia said she was illish and prefered a columbia crossing at hood river instead, so sure, why not?  we both drove to set up a car shuttle and noticed near arrival that the wind was whipping, the waves white-capped and their swells nice n' rolling long - gave me the heebie-jeebies a bit, soul-scarred as i remain from the one and only trans-columbia transit i made a few years back w/ ole'pat when the gorge was freshly burnt and i was perhaps drunk by naval standards at our 10 am departure (holy jeebus, that incident still ranks high on my most-terrified ever list) - after setting up the shuttle though we gave her a go, me in my wetsuit and snorkel and boots and web-gloves and day-glo orange personal swimmer buoy (and sober besides, having learnt all kinds of lessons that chilly october morning) but the russkaya of course was just in her dainty 2-piece and rocking the doggy paddle stroke, true russian-berserker style and blazeningly loving it - not too far from shore the waves and winds announced their presence with authority and our humble tribe quailed at their querulousness, first she then me after starting a 2nd attempt alone - retiring to the oregon side once again to recover her car n' kick about the conversation-can we revolved the rubik's cube of future combinations and settled upon giving something/anything a chance someday soon, assuming we live that long  - a solo beacon lap on a wind-wracked n' shady south side sans shirt was my true reward for listening to the Little Voice Inside Me and chopped the voyage home neatly in half - all i have to worry about now is tomorrow...

7/30 - 11 back-to-back beatard days and i'm a bit drained - 2 more laps for 21 total on this still youngish summer - crater lake complications and house-swapping horseshit clouds everything, my spirits low - might it be that nothing ever really gets better?

8/1 - sou'side summer beacon day 12 of 2019 - solo laps 22-23 - early morning rising to house-hunt n' tidy up domestically, kinda lame really but we are rarely masters of our own destiny i reckon - the daughter-child to her amiga's skamania abide in the late afternoon left time for yours truly to scramble up the bacon wand twice before achieving apogee and getting sucked back west once again to stuff more things into the bursting garage before the photo man comes to record it all in the morning - the great crater lake creep south at sunrise, all mortal concerns cast aside in the gawdamned interest of aquatic glory 

8/8 - day 13 - laps 24, 25, 26 - a sad week away from the bacon-stone, but well spent - a swim-trip to crater lake - cock-blocked by the feds, we found better refuge at waldo lake, which was much like taking the 2nd hottest girl at the party home - union bidness in mcminville and quite alright, though it brought the summer death-knell to the forefront of a keening mind - rain in the west, after hours the beaconwand cast its spell and the world was my oyster again - gnome the larry in the gloaming lot, then kyle n' company came crawling in - three laps passing through numerous parties - some-guy-named-steve earned his Hero of Beacon Rock w/ oak-leaf clusters - placid blood flowed freely as it should in the scraping places - kyle got the kid up though competent legal counsel would eagerly have urged him not 

8/9 -estival beacon aeon 14 - laps 27-28 - a lazy friday summer sleep-in, the first in some time - warm coffee n' cold eggs w/ the wifey over steven colbert n' some orange-is-the-new-black - the kids like college students, slow to rise - afternoon i ambled out to beacon to meet old ben - beat him by an hour so got a lap in alone before he arrived with his boy asher, sullen n' silent, as a man should be in this shocking modern age - led them up the route sans belays, which i reckon counts as solo too, though a rope was technically tied round my ample beer-gut - a gaggle of elk gamboling about the meadows below the eastern train track, their worries little ones in this wonderous season - the drive home dominated by the sweet smell of summer rain n' the dying sun...

8/11 - day 15 - a rare reverse-golden-sombrero raises the lap count to 32 on the summer - the trip took weather-faith, for the rain fell throughout the gorge on the drive in, even in the lot itself a profound mist made its presence known - a fool's errand i thought, but took my shoes down to the base anyway to see if the stone was dry despite 2 days of storms and so it was, and with hordes of portlanders putting their dirty libturd-hands all over it in flagrant degradation too - kyle n' bill n' joe n' countless over fools all encountered and gavreeted with, and one parcel of folks i passed 4 times in total over the next few hours - the history of the world it would seem, and fitting that the soundtrack was 4 episodes of a podcast all about the ending of it 

8/12 - day 16 - lap 33 - the smell of sudden fiery death roused me at 5 and an hour later i arose in protest at my prickly senses - after tea and trailer park boys i eased myself eastwards for a single lap in the sun - the stone alone, i savored my solitude, the drip-drip of sweat the only sense of time to contend with - afterwards car-chores and lake-swimming w/ many chilluns 

8/13 - day 17 - laps 34-35 - the world waxes largish, so what exactly is the goal now? last year the improbable # of 60 made me think 61 is all any sane man might relish, or maybe just 62 to stick a fork in the eye of roger morris, but now something much bigger indeed seems possible - how about 74 to offer the proverbial bitch-slap to barry bonds? even if that is to be the improbable mark, such a tally looms already large in the wind-screen and is to be sought for - the hazy outlines of a plan for a phenomenal 14-in-a-day assault in september with a whole heap of fools to propel the thing to a frenetic conclusion - that's in the future though - tonight was sublime solitude and shade and space for easy contemplation - a podcast on theoretical physics' hapless potential to create an end of the world to keep me company - the peregrines on the scene after being rather silent this past month - stone throwing teenage tourists and a positive conversation on the merits of manslaughter - a road trip begins tomorrow w/ the family and maybe a giant swim in crescent lake at the conclusion - there's marrow still in the bone of summer boys, and meat on it to spare as well 

8/19 - day 18 - laps 36-40 for the rare Reverse Platinum Sombrero - a near week at the beach w/ the fam - a crossing of quinault and an epic lake crescent thing - barely a week left in summer 2019 i awoke wicked sore but set out east anyways - the stone near alone for the first 4 laps, but then dave n' steve where there n' we cackled our way upwards together alone to mushroom ledge n' some serious meditation 

8/24 - day 19 - laps 41, 42 n' 43 meant it was a douglas adams day (shamefully i must admit i forget my towel, but proudly i can say i did not panic) - 3 days in the alpine lakes wilderness didn't beat me down enough i guess, 'cuz the girl-child asked to get carted out to skamania for the afternoon to cavort w/ her polish friends and i rallied to run laps while letting her have her what-have-you - summer is doomed and so are you 

8/25 - day 20 - laps 44-45 - 11 CBIs n' 13 runs (new stats, to keep things fun n' make a game of the mundane - every meat-popsicle lapped is a Climber Batted In - runs are laps plus CBIs - good lord, the record couldn't be higher than 50 runs in a day could it?) - the coast guard earns its gold from yuppie scum along the banks of the rude columbia - nastia n' her main-squeeze set to scramble up blown-out in the blistering shade under the heavy hail of tourist stone, our beers n' smokes n' smalltalk cut savage short - the experiment to substitute a cordelette in lieu of a bolted anchor at the top an abject failure within 24 hours, though kinda an apollo 13 one since i got the cord returned as requested - 2 cruiser laps in the autumnally-building breeze with the crowds abounding, summer's done been set on a goddamn gibbet  

8/26 - blackjack day - laps 46-7 make me prime again - 4 CBIs for 6 runs - a soft slumber ended in the gentlest fashion - the damned dentist - the dmv denied - summer slams into the brickwall while i straighten out the classroom - a big breeze builds as we stumble eastwards - the first lap looms into the time-traveler and his canadian dame, well over her head on the second pitch, so i stayed to help her suss out the sitch and sacrificed a hat trick - beers and the inevitable bullshiting - the world careens and carries us along in its endless crapulous fucking fashion 

8/27 - summer beacon day double-deuce - laps 48-9 make me prime n' prone to wine - 96 degrees n' a big-breeze in the parking lot - the first day back to the what-have-you and the bullshite-factory appears to have been working overtime in my absence - cryptic runes n' rude cynosures, thank-fuck their clutches are so fleeting - a lap alone in the wild wind, and then another, all to seek and find the freek

8/28 - day 23, laps 50-51 - another hot day, minus the breeze - the mechanisms continue to rumble up to speed on the work machine, the corporate speak as thick as cancer but only half as deadly - hit beacon in a hurry w/ familialial functions to attend to in the soon-time  - 26 minutes car to car on the first lap, but a bit more mellow on the second - a curtailed conversation on retro-bolting an anchor on the corner down in the parking lot, sadly one that seems to have concluded with them deciding to add yet another scar to the recently patched rock in question - i guess we'll see if they go through with it... - lovely thai dinner after back-to-school night at least and so it goes and goes 

8/29 - day 24, laps 52-53 - awoke to the crack of thunder and the cold iron sound of roiling rain in the early hours - such wondrous slumber in a dry place, the wicked world just an open window away - the final pre-season day before the Big Show, the crest of bullshit surmounted and now we ride the flood tide to a preternatural future, knowing what is to come merely from a fleeting look back  - work over, i walked out the door to doom-streaked clouds and rain but bounded east on enthusiasm alone, sure that the universe intended me to climb today or never again at all and not caring which it was to be - the deep funk of strange humidity on the trail down - mama deer and baby deer surprised me at close quarters on the trail and gave me a sudden sharp stab of quicksilver-fear, a sensation too rarely felt in this saccharine world where tomorrow is always assured and death is a landlord easily dispensed with - new friends re-encountered on the warrior path, lovely souls i'll never see again and that's a shame - ruminations atop the ridgeline, soaked in sweat and soon to get heading west, tower-bound yet pleasantly besotted with the present...surely someday this will all make sense? 

8/30 - 7 days in a row at the fabulous beacon-wand summer-sweet spot makes it 25 total so far - corner laps 54-56, plus 11 CBIs for 14 runs on the day, the greatest since gestating the concept - the final friday before the big plunge - easy rising - dishes n' breakfast - the grey-gloom of many summer mornings that inevitably yields to glory soon after noon - adam's afterwards in the shade and breeze was total bliss - felt a bit frazzled n' forlorn before the end of the laps really, maybe a sign i need to sit my ass down for a few days, which would make some sorta sense i reckon given i can't remember a day i devoted to just lying around for a long while - that said it's a tower rock approach n' set-up tomorrow w/ a huge sunday afterwards, so maybe labor day will equal its lamentations and i'll rest then? 

9/3 - day 26 - 1 lap (#57), 2 CBIs - opening day of the 19-20 campaign, the 22nd of my career - old enough now that i'm teaching my daughter's friends, apparently she talks to them so i can actually find out some things about her from them  - only time for one lap before fetching the boy-child from crewing out there on the big lake - for the best really, i'm wicked whooped still from the trial of tower rock

9/4 - day 27 - lap 58 n' 2 CBIs -bill n' ujhan n' the prodigal-son-come-home adam in the parking lot - bill scooped up my dropped hook from tower rock's base yesterday along w/ plenty of other debris left over from my fellow floggers, yet he nay managed to bring it with him (no matter, we know he's good for it) - chris b' n company coming down from the party ledge, near the 2 year anniversary i reckon since i first made his acquaintance, busted badly at the base w/ nastia in the soon-time after the big burn had scorched damn near everything in site - shoulda stuffed in one more lap for sure, but its early school season still and it takes the zap oughta me working for the man, so i slunk back home for salmon n' spades w/ the fam n' an early turn-in

9/6 - day 28 - laps 59-60, plus 6 CBI's for 8 runs - with 6 prime-bacon-wedder-weeks to go, i'm plumb astride last year's all-time record w/ nothing to hold me back but random rain n' the rude restrictions of this love-shackled life - end of a week left me blinking n' bruised n' senselessly tired, thus the start of a third too terrible to comprehend, so home i crawled n' passed out in the midst of pizza n' bill maher, wine-cup perched on chest - clearly this world needs a li'l leg room 

9/7 - day 29 (5 CBIs for 6 runs) - roger morris reclamation day w/ lap 61 i say, my personal best n' for all i can imagine beacon's too, at least for a single year of solo laps - on the horn early w/ adam but we thought it fucked yet somehow separately we crawled to the wall n' didn't say shit when we saw each other, me 'specially w/ only a few minutes of fucking-around time cooked into the cookie - a three-some at tree ledge, the poor sheila below certain she had to do the hard-core-headwall - kincaid n' norman n' the normal nattering high above the hills, me nut-booby n' stupid - could it be that this is it for the simple set?  

9/12 - day 30 - laps 62-63 n' 11 CBIs for 13 runs - the soon-come cloud-bursts of baleful fall crashed down last sunday, tornadoes sweeping the neighbors with their gin n' juice to the middle of the street to natter over armageddon on the wing - 2 days of swimming for my daily-fun 'cuz ducks don't care if its damp out, but it just ain't the same, my soul shackled a wee bit to the corpse of coming winter - a sudden return to summer this morning though revivified my resolutions and at 330 out the door i went - the one-true-kevbone n' arent on the warrior - steve on my tail a few minutes behind, sounds like he lassoed himself a solo golden sombrero today, not too often i get out-cornered... a whole herd of folks suddenly come tree ledge, i cruised on through though on a ninja-mission to score another lap n' bounce back right quick to fetch the crewing feller from lake vancouver's teeming shore - the cherry on top the new-finangled high-tech contraption i plucked from the most obscure of places - my biiiiirthday prezent came early this year

[billcoe]

The rain having turned off, Ujahn and I decide to do a lap. Hit the parking lot @ 1:45pm and meet a couple finishing up who were Beacon first timers. Fella had left a back off nut on Crusin, Ujahn says: "I'll go get it for you and bring it right back."

"Nah, it's booty. "

"But I can run down and fetch it right off for you."

"Nah, we are leaving, it's yours".

 

So we did. Another nice couple let us pass at the traverse, we stopped at Uprising belay for beer slowing the car to car to a leisurely 1-3/4 hours and only minor knee pain. At the bottom in the parking lot, waiting for Ivan to show so I can return his non-booty dropped off Tower Rock hook we'd fished out of the talus, I send Ivan a photo of my car in the lot with his hook hanging off the rear view mirror to emphasis the point and speed him up if such is possible.

 

Sitting on the park bench sipping suds, Adam and Timetraverl show up looking like they mean business. I offload Ivans hook to a very gracious Adam, my temporary possession of said hook only slightly marred by being too drunk earlier and deciding to assist in laying some identity pipe for Ivan: engraved and wrote his name all over the thing. Didn't seem like such a fine idea once I sobered up to debase another mans property, however, should it be dropped again, everyone will instantly knows who's property it is.

 

Regardless, my charge is now Adams Albatross.

Edited September 14, 2019 by billcoe