Discussion Topic |
|
This thread has been locked |
scuffy b
climber
The deck above the 5
|
|
|
Jul 18, 2007 - 01:16pm PT
|
When is a picture of somebody on an eight-foot rock worthy of
praise?
When is a picture of somebody on an eight-foot rock worthy of
scorn?
I'll take any photos, gladly, in almost all cases.
|
|
scuffy b
climber
The deck above the 5
|
|
|
Jul 18, 2007 - 03:13pm PT
|
Yer confused, Dingus.
I'm not living history.
I'm a living fossil.
Learn the difference.
What's that roof thingy?
|
|
Jaybro
Social climber
The West
|
|
|
Jul 18, 2007 - 03:24pm PT
|
Bear shidt?
Wild wild ?
Did those guys guys make a feild trip to Soquel last night?
I can think of an eight footer (mas o menos, prolly 15') that may still need brushing.
|
|
Oli
Trad climber
Fruita, Colorado
|
|
|
Jul 18, 2007 - 03:36pm PT
|
Now that was funny, Wes.
|
|
scuffy b
climber
The deck above the 5
|
|
|
Jul 18, 2007 - 04:28pm PT
|
Ed, Gary and Santa Cruz Ron made it last night.
Gobies were acquired, technicolor yawns were avoided by all.
Ron's 7-month-old daughter was there to keep us honest.
Some of us thought it was steep, but it's probably pretty
slabby in reality.
That thing you're thinking of got brushed pretty well the other
day. The Other One still needs to encounter the chimney brush.
|
|
Jaybro
Social climber
The West
|
|
|
Jul 19, 2007 - 12:05am PT
|
So, Roy Wonder@55, unless I am, in my doderage still confused, I think you're the Bastille day birthday boy that I accused Nature of being. Happy birthday! If not, happy birthday! anyway, you got one coming, sooner or later.
Scufyb, glad to hear of the turnout, down there! Hope someone got photos! I'll get there eventually, next week with my new fangled clutch I plan to make it to Gary's.
Btw, since that post of yours, my internal boombox has been replaying the kink's Apeman, I only occasionally think of Maureen O'Sullivan, though.
|
|
Oli
Trad climber
Fruita, Colorado
|
|
|
Jul 19, 2007 - 03:55pm PT
|
Almost twenty-five posts in a row with nothing about "living history."
|
|
Jaybro
Social climber
The West
|
|
|
Jul 19, 2007 - 04:05pm PT
|
You're not counting the last 7, or so?
|
|
scuffy b
climber
The deck above the 5
|
|
|
Jul 19, 2007 - 04:08pm PT
|
Well, Pat, threads get tired. Two of those posts are yours.
If none of those 25 posts had been posted, this would probably
be on the 3rd page by now.
|
|
bvb
Social climber
flagstaff arizona
|
|
|
Jul 19, 2007 - 04:12pm PT
|
"Almost twenty-five posts in a row with nothing about "living history."
don't sweat it pat, i'm still lurking out here.
the living history abides.
|
|
Jaybro
Social climber
The West
|
|
|
Jul 19, 2007 - 04:17pm PT
|
some day, maybe 30yrs out, someone is gonna ask, "what was the deal with those turn of the century wood odubs in nocal? where did those guys take that?"
Perhaps some of us will still be around to guide them back to the reference that this part of this thread has become.
-Only semi-facetcious, there is a lot more going on here than that. Although that is, in my view anyway, a fractal of what this thread started out about.
|
|
scuffy b
climber
The deck above the 5
|
|
|
Jul 19, 2007 - 05:55pm PT
|
Oli,
I have a history question. My recollection from reading the
Nerve Wrack Point account has you and Tom mumbling around pieces
of chalk held in your mouths, I think more than once. You also
were shown recently on some thread with chalk in your mouth as you bouldered. The photo taken of you at the top of Nerve Wrack
Point doesn't seem to show any obvious pockets, and I infer (from
the fact of chalk ever being in your mouth) that you didn't use
chalk bags at the time. How did you carry chalk on such a long
climb?
As an aside, I thought the piece was powerful, as did my friends.
However, some of them were disillusioned when they did the climb
and were not as terrified as they expected.
|
|
scuffy b
climber
The deck above the 5
|
|
|
Jul 19, 2007 - 05:56pm PT
|
wes, how do you know they're not in disguise?
|
|
Mighty Hiker
Social climber
Vancouver, B.C.
|
|
|
Jul 19, 2007 - 06:01pm PT
|
WC: rubbish, without a pause.
|
|
rmuir
Social climber
the Time Before the Rocks Cooled.
|
|
|
Jul 19, 2007 - 09:57pm PT
|
In Newport Beach, they were a.k.a., Gook Boots. Two-thirds the price of EBs, and one-third the boot. Man. I've seen galoshes that could edge better. The worst shoe ever.
|
|
Oli
Trad climber
Fruita, Colorado
|
|
|
Jul 19, 2007 - 11:00pm PT
|
OK, gray hair is living history. I can live with that. That would make me incredibly alive and monumentally historic.
Nerve Wrack Point. A very hot, sweaty, sunburnt day. Knobs greasy, Kronhoeffer shoes, like roller skates by comparison to today's sticky rubber shoes, which now make what were once sloping, marble-sized knobs seem like one-foot wide ledges. We had no chalk bags yet, if I recall. I kept a few tiny blocks, about the size of several Tums, in my right pants pocket (I was wearing some cut-off jeans). Only now and then did I reach in to dab a little on my fingertips. I don't think Higgins had any chalk... can't remember. Maybe he did, but he didn't use it much. There are more bolts on the route now, as well. When you don't know a route will go, it's an adventure, there is uncertainty. You can't see the difficulty from below. To start the climb today, you already know it's only 5.9 at most, or maybe easy 5.10 for a move somewhere, in sweltering heat. That's a big psychological advantage. To repeat a route, to look up and see a bolt twenty feet ahead negates much of that fear. You know you can get to that bolt somehow. You don't have to think about getting strung out somewhere or how you will be able to stand on little knobs, or ONE little knob, let go, and hand-drill the bolt while in balance. Now you just quickly clip the bolt. Lots of other factors make such a first ascent more exciting and difficult than any repeat could ever be.
But we wrote that piece not to brag about some ferocious climb. Hardly. It wasn't a climb even close to our limit abilitywise. We wrote Nerve Wrack Point because we both are writers and were in a mood suddenly to try a collaboration... a few impressions, back and forth. I was at Higgins' house, then in Visalia, early 1970s. He put on a beautiful tape of Ravel, and I went into another room. We could write separately but hear the same inspiring music. He could hear me with my paper up against the wall, in the room next to him, scratching things out. Now and then you'd hear a loud laugh or giggle, as one of us thought of some inane thing to write that ended up on the cutting room floor. It was all in fun. Tom had to go to the bathroom at one point. I heard him in there say, aloud, as though drafting a line for the article, "Soon I was finished and feeling better." The laughter at times became so painful it hurt. Later at an airport, I was broke and trying to use a phony youth discount card. I was taken aside by authorities and couldn't catch a plane. Peter Haan came to the rescue, drove to the airport and loaned me the money to buy a ticket. While waiting there, Peter and I brainstormed. He threw out some creative ideas that helped me envision the final section of the article, the part about being in the airport and thinking about Higgins.
I've repeated the climb many times and found it to be modest, nothing a relatively decent Tuolumne climber couldn't enjoy readily. The difficulty was never the issue, though you will never know what that blank wall was like on the first ascent. We may have played it up a small bit for the sake of the article..., but if anything the depth of friendship was understated.
|
|
john hansen
climber
|
|
|
Jul 19, 2007 - 11:11pm PT
|
Well ,, there you go.
Living history.
|
|
Tarbuster
climber
right here, right now
|
|
|
Jul 20, 2007 - 01:17am PT
|
Nice Oli, that Nerve Wrack Point is a gem too.
Once upon a time, back in the Flash Dance 80's in Boulder...
Skip Guerin and I are taking a gay stroll along the Pearl St Mall. We step into a gag shop where Skip quickly spies the prize: a perfectly fake, totally believable pile of glistening dog poo. I have to say it looked very, very, fresh: you know, wet.
"Oh man, we gotta send this to The Fish!" exclaims Arthur "Skip" Guerin. "But first, we gotta test it out". So Skip acquires the gleaming biscuit and in short order we lay it in the middle of the living room where he is opportunistically surfing the couch circuit and wait for the arrival of the payin' room mates.
Kieth Gotshall, a really nice, unassuming, generally light hearted fellow, a bona fide payin’ room mate, comes sauntering merrily through the doorway, goes straight to the fridge, comes around the corner into the room and just as he twists the cap to his beer, stopps dead in his tracks. Kieth’s eyes become transfixed upon the item on the carpet beneath his feet. He is totally unconscious of the beer suds dripping onto his hand from the opened bottle.
Skip, already properly smashed into the couch, slowly rolls his face down into the pillows. Now the charge which lay heavily upon my shoulders sinks in quickly: I am to be straight man....“Don’t you guys see that!!!”....“See what Kieth”, this, as I nonchalantly nurse my own brew and peruse the local weekly....“There, …there’s a fresh dog sh#t right on the carpet! You guys don’t see that!”
Skip, rolls over: “Oh man, check that out, I thought you were kidding, that’s fer real”, then he lazily, smartly giggles and resumes his cushion face position and half muffled, moaning through the pillows: “That’s rough duty Kieth, ho, ho man, Roy, help him out or somethin’…”....“I dunno Kieth, I ain’t seen no dogs, hmm, the door has been opened, we’ve been snoozing for a bit, uh…do you guys even have a dog?”
Kieth, hook line and sinker, proceeds into the kitchen, where he arms himself with all manner of poop extraction accoutrement: a spatula, paper towels, a trash bag, all this in hand and arm as he emerges from the pantry with his free hand pinching his nose. “Oh man, I can’t do it. This is awful. Dog sh#t right here in our house, in the living room, square in the middle of the shag carpet. And it’s still moist.”
He backs away a few steps, creeps back into the kitchen and slumps into a chair, remembers his beer, takes a respite with a few sips. “Oh Man…”. Then he stands up, resolves to arm himself with more paraphernalia from the kitchen drawers and re approaches the task, this time with jaw set and mind resolved to embrace ...the challenge.
The next day Skip wrapped the prize and posted it off to Russ at Fish Products, where it became, for a time, one of the dapper side offerings, a pause in the gateway to the illustrious big wall gear line.
|
|
John Moosie
climber
|
|
|
Jul 20, 2007 - 02:14am PT
|
LOL Roy, I thought for sure you were going to say that just as keith was about to pick up the fakie, Skip walked over and took a big ol lick on it. Hahaha....That was the image I had. Thanks for the story Roy. And thank you Oli. Good stuff.
John
|
|
Tarbuster
climber
right here, right now
|
|
|
Jul 20, 2007 - 12:28pm PT
|
Yes John Moosie,
Your finish gives sturdier legs to the tale!
I like it.
Oh well,
Back to living history,
For we must be ever vigilant in heralding our most cherished icons:
...Fish Products & Russ Walling: THE industry benchmark for, Quality, Attitude, & Purpose! ...(QAP)
...Dream, Believe, Do, Become.
Slaving away the wee hours to bring us all The Finest Gear & Accoutrement!
Face it, You Love It, You Gotta Have it...
Livin' Fuchin' Histry'
|
|
|
SuperTopo on the Web
|
Let us know!