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climberweenie
Trad climber
San Jose, CA
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Apr 11, 2006 - 10:35am PT
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Now the local bar room denizens have witnessed the rants and mimes of many a climber who rode the magic bus all the way out to the last stop but one. But I'll never forget the looks on their faces when climberweenie ambled through the gates all dusty parched and smelling of death, packing mangled cams on his hips like colt 45's, eyes firmly asserting "I've seen my maker" as he took his first shot of whiskey from the hand of a stunned tourist. The road rash oozing from his forehead to his waist seemed to back up his claim.
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looking sketchy there...
Social climber
Latitute 33
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Topic Author's Reply - Apr 11, 2006 - 11:05am PT
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Seems like the competition is warming up.
But, it ain't over til the big fellow sings...
Forgot to mention, deadline for entries is Saturday April 15, 2006, 4:00 pm (unless handed in personally).
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Grug
Trad climber
Golden, Colorado
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Apr 11, 2006 - 11:09am PT
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Randy - brilliant idea for a thread...
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steelmnkey
climber
Vision man...ya gotta have vision...
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Apr 11, 2006 - 11:21am PT
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Does it have to start with "ho-man" ?
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yo
climber
I'm so over it
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Apr 11, 2006 - 11:25am PT
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hahahaha
Was that Largo or Raymond Chandler? Was that Bogart ordering that burger?
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TradIsGood
Trad climber
Gunks end of country
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Apr 11, 2006 - 11:37am PT
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Turnabout at the Hairpin
Not long ago I revisited New Paltz. As it happened, my partner was not due until the next day. The weather promised to be excellent – warmer than normal for a mid-spring day. Wasting such an opportunity seemed sacrilegious, so I wandered down the carriage road to the Uberfall trusting serendipity.
Perched on a rock was a bird with plumage remarkably similar to a scarlet tanager. She hopped off as I approached and asked if I had a partner. Noticing a healthy top round, rib eye and some ripe melons all packaged tightly into the black shorts and red top, I honestly allowed that I did not yet have one for the day.
Naturally there seemed suddenly to be a bit of spray. Not a downpour, but slightly persistent – kind of like that of a scrub jay. Apparently the young filly was determined to lead.
So I told her my name was John. I was not really from around here, but I had climbed here a little bit a long time ago and had done a bit more climbing in California. She looked around, shrugged and said she was sure she could find something that would be fun and off we went.
As we approached the hairpin turn, she looked up. “Ribs is free. Let’s hop on that.” With that she headed up the trail to the base. As I arrived, she asked if I had ever lead belayed before. I said yes, and she seemed satisfied with that answer. At this point I probably should mention that she might stretch to a full five feet, at least with her climbing shoes. I asked if I could look at the guidebook for a second. She tossed it to me and put on her harness and shoes and started clipping gear to the loops as I paged through, pretending to check out the climb.
Now just to the right of Ribs is a 5.7 called Calisthenic. Like any number of Gunks routes, the crux is all in the first fifteen feet. There is a roof about three feet deep at about chest level, for me, and the first holds are just a couple inches above eight feet off the deck. I allow as how a 5.4 seems like it might be too easy even for a warm-up and wonder if she would not rather try “this 5.7 over here”.
She agrees. I start flaking out the rope, and she drops her harness to the ground. Figuring she is headed around the corner to take care of business, I can hardly wait for the thrashing to begin, since there is nothing but a couple of fingernail horizontals between the ground and the buckets well above her reach.
I pick up a quick movement in my peripheral vision and look up to see her making a short run, quick turn and plant her left foot high on the wall under the roof. Her right thigh hits the roof stopping the backward rotation and she just snags the buckets by a couple of fingertips. Reaching up with the other hand she works both hands onto the hold. Almost as quickly she cranks off a couple lock-offs, a nice tension move and she is standing below the tree above. She holds a foot down as far as she can reach and I toss a loop of the rope over it. After I sent up her harness, she said, “Largo, did you really think I was going to ask you to give me a gymnast start to reach those jugs?”
Some days you eat the bear…
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Russ Walling
Social climber
Same place as you, man...... (WB)
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Apr 11, 2006 - 12:20pm PT
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Ho man... Phineas was thin. As thin as a pool cue and wiry in an odd sort of way. He was so thin in fact he could shower in the barrel of a .22 and towel off without ever touching the rifling. His forte was dimes, and I mean thin ones. Seems the winter training sessions coupled with his diet of honey and M&M's had treated him well. I sauntered over to where he was just finishing the prep work on an atom sized hold he was about to mantle.... He had the requisite tooth brush, a dental pick, pencil eraser, two jewelers loupes, a chicken bone replete with scrimshaw and jar of fruit flys. After a arduous ritual involving all the superfluous accoutrements he was finally ready to slap some dermis to granite. I stood back and watched.... With a groan, a wheeze and a whinny, he had somehow managed to press out a full butterfly mantle on an imperceptible hold on an overhanging wall. He labored to get his towel rack femur high enough to plant a toe on a quark out left. From here it was child's play to the summit, a mere twenty-three feet of edges so thin Superman and all his powers would still need a scanning electron just to put together a sequence. Between summit wheezes he asks if I'm going to give it a go.... "no thanks Babe... I did this pile back when people thought Intersection Boulder was hard".
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Grug
Trad climber
Golden, Colorado
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Apr 11, 2006 - 12:51pm PT
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Ya get the feeling that Russ could do this all day!
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maculated
Trad climber
San Luis Obispo, CA
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Apr 11, 2006 - 01:00pm PT
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Damn, Russ *is* good.
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Ksolem
Trad climber
LA, Ca
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Apr 11, 2006 - 01:05pm PT
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Keep it coming, y'all.
This is some of the funniest stuff I have ever read!
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can't say
Social climber
Pasadena CA
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Apr 11, 2006 - 01:13pm PT
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Grug, that's because he did and probably still does do it all day long. Bullwinkle's shot of Mo and Libido Roy doing Largo pouts is hilarious.
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steelmnkey
climber
Vision man...ya gotta have vision...
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Apr 11, 2006 - 03:30pm PT
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Ho-man… Lloyd was fat. The kinda guy who ain’t seen his little buddy in ten years of urination. Like he had his own gravity field. Watching him waddle up to the rock brought to mind a line from the film Usual Suspects…the dude was clearly “Orca Fat”. Why I’d hooked up with such a rotund beast was currently evading reasonable logic in the scrambled recesses of my grey matter.
Maybe better I didn’t recall why I’d agreed to “tick off a few pitches” in the Monument with him. I’d seen him across Nomad, his pudgy digits wafting through the pages of the latest guidebook and thought, Ho-man, no climber there. I was as desperate, though, as I was partnerless and it was mid-week. On top of that, I was shoveling the dregs from my last three pound can of garbanzos, and I was running on borrowed time for this road trip. One, maybe two more days at the most and then it was back to the slingshot factory to save up for next time.
So when Lloyd looked up at me, heavy eyebrows pushing up a stack of furrows that looked like puppy wrinkles, and asked if I was looking for a partner, the word “sure!” came flying out of my mouth before I could clap one of my abused mandibles over the apparently uncontrolled hole in my face. Outside, Lloyd chucked his crag bag into the back of my Gremlin. Geeze, even his sack was fat, I thought, as I listened to the weight of the bag crunching what was left of my wasted shocks ever closer to the gravel lot. “What kinda gear ya got in the bag, Lloyd?” His reply came out in a sort of soft wheeze, “I got a rack, rope, personal stuff. Oh, and my lunch, of course.” Of course. Probably a turkey dinner, I thought.
At the crag, Lloyd quickly offered to lead the first go, and in spite of my better judgment...hell...any judgment, I gave in. I think it was just some odd desire to pull up my beach chair for a front row seat on the all-star wrestling match I was sure was about to go down. Lloyd was sweating already, drops falling on the desert floor like someone pouring bucket of ping pong balls off a porch. Pit stains the size of basketballs had shown up on his shirt, which seemed to be defying the stress limitations of cotton fabric and prominently featured a logo and single word “Atari” below. He racked up and waddled to the face, thrusting one beefy mitt into the fissure we’d agreed on. “Climbing!” he wheezed.
At the time, I had a moment of clarity... oh Jesus, what if he falls?
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WBraun
climber
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Apr 11, 2006 - 03:35pm PT
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Fuccking awesome Russ!!!!!
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Russ Walling
Social climber
Same place as you, man...... (WB)
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Apr 11, 2006 - 03:57pm PT
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"Atari" (bwhahaha!)
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James
Social climber
My Subconcious
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Apr 11, 2006 - 04:06pm PT
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nice Russ
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Karl Baba
Trad climber
Yosemite, Ca
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Apr 11, 2006 - 04:09pm PT
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That was a major classic Russ and preempted my plan for a drooling, womanizing post...
If I get time, I'll do it anyway but you win
Peace
karl
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happiegrrrl
Trad climber
New York, NY
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Apr 11, 2006 - 04:30pm PT
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James....what MIGHT be funny would be to put a little Largo spin on the story you linked.......
Maybe you are too close to it to be the one, but you've got to admit a "Long Spin" of the bounce alone would be worth reading.....
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looking sketchy there...
Social climber
Latitute 33
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Topic Author's Reply - Apr 11, 2006 - 04:42pm PT
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Now things are getting good. Screw the word limit, now I want to hear how these stories end. Too funny.
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Karl Baba
Trad climber
Yosemite, Ca
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Apr 11, 2006 - 05:23pm PT
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Ho Man, and Ho Woman too.
The impossible boulder problem was spitting off the usual culprits like chaw from the craw of a bush league pitcher in Arkansas. It was a hot day in Josh but nobody used that as an excuse because we all knew we’d come back and fail on it in the cold as well.
ButtFace had just been excreted from half way up the monstrosity and was dusting off his actual butt when a couple of fine young ladies happened up us, looking lost.
The whole crew straightened up like teenagers caught smoking by their preacher, then suddenly slouched in the realization that it was time to pretend to be cool, as if nothing were happening.
But something was happening. Women didn’t frequent climbing areas in the Pleistocene era. Even a semi-man from the East German Women’s Olympic team would have taken the breath away for this cactus league of desert rats suffering a prolonged drought of feminine nourishment.
But that’s not what kind of women found us. They were the class previously unseen outside the pages of magazines that we didn’t admit reading. Twins to boot. Buttface actually went slack-jawed as he gaped at them. He started to drool and, panicking, Posertronic tried to wipe the froth from his mouth with a chalked up hand painting his face white in the process.
“Do any of you gentlemen know where the ‘Outback’ is?” the equally lovely twin uttered as we sipped the nectar of her voice like a wine we couldn’t afford. “We have a photo shoot by a climb called ‘Rollerball’ and we just can’t find it.”
Everyone knew exactly where ‘Rollerball’ was, but could only manage to fall over their words as if our mouths were filled with marbles. Finally, Fellatio Alger asked what kind of shooting they were aiming at.
“It’s about Oral Pleasures” the other equally lovely twin tittered, clearing aiming at inflaming our vulnerable pathos. A couple of guys bent over slightly as if they had to control their bodily functions suddenly.
I got flustered and blurted out that “My name is John Long and even my name qualifies me to join in your production. Do you need talent?”
The twins looked at each other in a knowing fashion that could only be deciphered as amused weary contempt for the planet of gelatinous men that they must have constantly created with their presence.
“Let’s see your teeth, it a chewing gum commercial.”
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