We had breakfast in the morning at the Vandalian. Porter and I are fixed to the same astrological clock of moodiness, so he was cranky that morning. I yelled to him through the order window.

Me: “I’m going to order a water and use your bathrooms and not buy anything.”

Porter: “This sink is loud. I can’t hear anything you’re saying right now. It’s probably better that way.”

Me: “Porter’s cranky right now.”

Nate: “Who is Porter?”

Laurie: “Porter is the most famous route developer on the east coast.”

Nate: “When y’all do your HC convention breakfast here, I’m going to make t-shirts to sell that say ‘I had breakfast with Porter and he was crabby.’”

I think back to last summer, when I was swimming in the lake above the Summersville dam with Porter and Belinda, and Belinda snapping a picture of me with her boxer, Clover, as the sun set.

Clover.

The memory of it is happy, and laps at the mood I’m in this morning, yet I know the three of us were just as pissed at the world then as I am (we are?) now. I remember trading stories about how people complained about how Porter had equipped his routes “you go up there fucker and bolt it yourself!” and how I had run Homo Climbtastic “if you want a guide to show up with gear go hire one!” But in retrospect, the memories of those conversations just make me laugh, like the ones watching Porter smoke on one of the floaties that Kris left behind while I ate my leftover potatoes without flicking the ants off first (you can’t really taste them).

* * *

After breakfast, me, Nathaniel, Laurie and Jonathan were supposed to go mountain biking, but we were one mountain bike short of four bikes, so we stopped by the bike rental shop. Nathaniel found a brand new bike on the floor for rent.

“Can you give us maps to the new Boy Scout trails?” I took out my credit card to pay for Nathaniel’s bike rental.

“When you pay for the bike rental, I’ll give you the maps.”

I wondered to myself if trail map mooching was a major problem at Fayetteville bike stores, although considering the bikers go into the restaurants to take whore baths, I wouldn’t put it past them.

“Ok. Great. Well, this is my credit card. Now give me the maps.”

“Are you familiar with where the trailhead is?”

“Yeah, I looked back there one day last year while they were building it.”

“Then you were the one who got it shut down for two weeks.”

“I doubt that someone looking back there would cause them to shut down for two weeks.”

“They did.”

“Uhh, were they worried about people getting hit by the construction gear?”

“No, you were part of the group they were angry at. The Boy Scouts are really anxious about their property. They don’t even allow people that aren’t part of their group on their other property, they’re worried about child molesters or something.”  I couldn’t figure out if the group he was referring to was people scoping out the trails on foot, or the HC convention.  Nathaniel wasn’t sure either.

Nathaniel finished filling out the rental agreement and I signed my credit card receipt. “I think I can figure the map out.”

Me and Nathaniel loaded up the car. I told Laurie I had gotten a copy of the map.

Laurie: “I’m going to run in and grab another copy, so that we have extras in case we split up.” Laurie ran into the shop.

Nate: “He probably won’t give her one. He’ll probably blame her for giving the Boy Scouts AIDS.”

So we went mountain biking.  Nathaniel has obviously been working out, because the last time he went mountain biking with Laurie he vomited, and this time he was going way faster than me.

(As an aside, because you know I’m not actually writing this down while we’re mountain biking, but afterward at Cantrell’s, Nancy (the Cantrell’s manager) makes a chocolate-pineapple martini that’s strong enough to cause you to lose feeling in your right arm.)

The trailhead triggered memories of seeing buses full of Boy Scouts driving through Roger’s parking lot last summer, reminiscent of prison buses full of prisoners out on work-release programs on GA Highway 316. They were probably very excited about whatever badge work-release earns them. If I had been a Boy Scout, I probably would have been the one who earned the badge for sitting in the corner being crabby.  (The Boy Scouts are a difficult organization to harbor resentment for–although I obviously do–because the people in charge are very far away, and the agents are typically local children with no power. I still condemn any adults involved in the organization for enabling their policies, in particular for their failure to found another organization that isn’t pinned under the vice grip of a despicable group of people.)

There isn’t much to say about the mountain biking itself, other than that people were friendly and afterwards, everyone’s taint felt sore, except for Laurie, who wears some kind of padded onesie singlet like an eighties teen pop star. “It was a gift when I was sponsored, so I wear it whenever I can.”

We pulled up in front of the bike store to return the bike.  Bike store guy was hanging out on a bench.

Nate: “Hey.”

BSG: “How was the biking?”

Nate: “It was good.”

BSG: “Yeah?”

Nate: “Yeah.”

I lowered the bike rack and opened the trunk.

Nate: “So, uh, I have some bad news. I got the trails shut down.”

BSG: “They’re shut down?”

Nate: “All of them. Nobody’s gonna be able to use them again. Because of me.”

“What?”

“Yeah. I ran into the Boy Scouts. Caused some trouble.”

“…”

“Yeah.” Nate nodded. “I gave them all AIDS.”

Laurie: “That’s not the only thing we gave them. We also gang-raped the scout master.”

Me: “How do you put this rear tire back on?”

BSG: “I’ll show you. I just have to check it and make sure there’s no damage.” He spun the tires and shifted all the gears. “Yeah, it looks good.”

Me: “Well, there is one thing you should know. About the bike.”

BSG: “What’s that?”

Me: “It has AIDS.”

Nate: “You better disinfect it.”

BSG: “The woman in the bike shop earlier when you guys were renting the bike was part of the Boy Scouts leadership, I just was trying not to offend her.”

Me: “Obviously.”

We got in the car and shut the doors.

Me: Do you think we were too hard on him?”

Nate: “Nah.”

The characters in this week’s blog series are:

Nate, played by Nathaniel, my brother.

Jon, played by Jonathan.

Laurie, played by Laurie, the first syllable pronounced “lah” and not “lore”.

Me, played by a partially deliberately fictionalized simulacrum of myself skewed by gaps in my own perception.

I had to settle for this dark and blurry shot of Laurie. She’s been in previous blogs though, so it’s not like you don’t know already what she looks like.

Unlike all of the homos going to Pensacola, we’re departing from Atlanta to head up to West Virginia to climb for memorial day weekend. The New River Gorge is kind of the opposite of Pensacola. Aside from being North, and not South, and being mountains, and not beaches, West Virginia is also not hosting Pensacola Gay Pride.

Me: “I need to ask a question about Pensacola Pride.”

Laurie: “It’s called Sexacola. I’ve been. Woooooo! Ask me! What’s the question?”

Jon: “How many penises did you see?”

Laurie: “None. How many vaginas did I see? Yeaaaah! Alex, what was the question?”

Rowland: “I just needed a quote for the blog. I got one.”

Laurie: “I told Melissa you would be blogging and you could follow us on the blog. You should give her a shout out. Maybe not on this post.”

Rowland: “Because of the talk of Sexacola? It’s for the better, because it signals I’m a positive influence.”

So I’m passing up on Sexacola to go to West Virginia. I have mixed feelings about this, because the only time I’ve had sex on the beach was really, really, really fun, despite our failure to figure out how to carve an apple bong. But I also was a bit bored by recent weeks’ Facebook talk about everyone’s plans for sardine canned motel rooms in Florida, and I was also concerned about the very real threat that it would just be a bunch of Atlanta gays expecting to finally be able to meet some fuckable guys who don’t share 86 mutual facebook friends. For those of you who are outsiders, gay in the big city is its own small town.

I lived in North-ish Florida for several months a year ago, and I was not very successful on the dating scene, I think because the beauty expectations there include shaving and showering on a daily basis. Fun trivia: GQ magazine named Atlanta the worst dressed city in America. I’m pretty sure I’m part of the problem.

Bomber jacket, aviators, no gel in hair, beard, and a “Honey Badger Don’t Care” t-shirt, any one of which independently sufficient to kill your game in Florida, where I was already handicapped for not being blonde.  Also I’m pretty sure I made that pose a lot.

Laurie’s discussing her girlfriend:

Laurie: “Melissa’s always a step ahead of me. When I’m thinking of buying her flowers, she shows up with flowers. When I’m about to send a text, I get a text. Always a step ahead of me.”

Nate: “Just push her down the stairs. She won’t be a step ahead of you then.”

We’re passing through Knoxville.

Nate: “K-town!”

Laurie: “How is working at the zoo?”

Nate: “I held a baby kangaroo. Cutest thing in the entire world. We have a lot of charity balls. Rich people dressed up and donating money. Animals. Alcohol.”

Jon: “Animals drinking alcohol.”

Nate: “There was a chimp holding a beer.”

My mind drifts back to Pensacola. Last night, I was in Atlanta for a lawyers’ networking function, and afterwards I went to the gay bar, and there were people talking about their difficulty in choosing which bathing suit to use to premier their Lah Fitness bodies in Pensacola. I didn’t own but one gay-ish bathing suit, and Elsbeth says it’s not even gay, it’s just European. For what that’s worth. Anyway, the discussion reminded me of a recent conversation with my mother, which was spurred by the gay bathing suit companies, who got ahold of my parents’ mailing address and sent them a catalog.

Mom: “These look like women’s bathing suits. And their legs are shaved. Why don’t they just wear speedos? Speedos are attractive, but still manly.”

Rowland: “I agree. Don’t look at that page.”

Mom: “Do people actually buy bathing suits designed to make your penis look bigger?”

Rowland: “Nobody I know of.” I knew several.

Jon.

My laptop will probably die before we cross the Tennessee/Virginia border. Or whatever border we’re heading toward. I get confused when we don’t go up 85. We’re currently looking for an exit where we can stock up on Reese’s Pieces and Slush Puppies, because it’s midnight and we still have four hours on the road to go. We see a sign for a truck stop seven miles away. Truck stops are dangerous—I always end up buying kitschy shit, like my “Just Swallow It” keychain, memory foam pillows, numerous pairs of sunglasses, and overpriced beef jerky. Everything looks really appealing at a truck stop at midnight. It suddenly dawns on me why straight truck drivers have sex with each other.

The enticing objects included a hologram dogs-playing-poker poster, and a large floating helium filled goldfish with battery powered fins that would probably be sold at Sharper Image for a thousand dollars. The Sharper Image model would probably have an air filter attached.

Nathaniel scouted through the DVDs. “The king of the midgets grows to be beloved by the circus he works for. Let’s get this one. $5.99.”

Jon: “I think we should get this book on tape about L. Ron Hubbard and scientology.”

Nathaniel shortly before falling asleep.

As often happens when there are more than two men in the 18-35 age bracket, we ultimately found consensus in shotgunning beers in the parking lot.

Me: “I’ve never actually shotgunned a beer before. How do you do this?”

Laurie: “You punch a hole in the bottom with a key and drink it from the other side.”

So now we’re on the highway and I’m a little bit intoxicated and wondering if some flash of honesty will pierce the veil of my sobriety. “I want a boyfriend with a really big dick.”

That wasn’t very interesting. Also I already knew that. I don’t feel drunk at all. I’m just saying things I think rather than just thinking them.

My laptop battery is fading. I feel the urge to come up with something meaningful. Some conclusion that will round out the underlying mental conflict I have about riding with my crew off to the mountains while the Alex in the parallel universe is riding in the opposite direction toward Pensacola.

It occurs to me that I made the right decision because Nathaniel is in this universe; which sounds overly sentimental, but it really isn’t.

I see signs saying we’re heading to Bristol, and I mentally transpose it with Beckley. I think back to when I first drove to Beckley to pick up [redacted]. I think about the affair I fucked up, and wonder if anything serious would have come of it if I hadn’t fucked it up, and then I realize that I don’t regret it at all, because then I never would have fallen in love with [redacted], and later [redacted], and of course fucked up those too. I wonder to myself if when I’m dying by the side of the road they’ll all seem like links in a chain I could never imagine not remembering.

The parallel universes where I didn’t strangle Schroedinger’s cat spiral out of control, particularly the ones where I was at least briefly honest about how I felt rather than opaque under the delusion that no one would fabricate what I was after if they couldn’t tell what it was.

And in this universe, I’m returning to West Virginia. Keane’s “Somewhere Only We Know” reminds me of the times I wish I had said something, and more importantly the places I would have said it.  In front of the bow of the docked cruise ship, or running up the amphitheater stairs to catch the first song of a concert. If Virginia is for lovers, then the East River Mountain Tunnel is an appropriate extension of the analogy.

The beer fades. Nathaniel is asleep in the back seat. He and Jon were watching some video with the jersey shore guy on acid. One of them is snoring but I’m not sure who.

Me: “George Michael? “

Laurie: “I only have Faith.”

Me: “That’s fine.”

It’s just the two of us now, working the graveyard shift. They’re the longest two hours of a car trip. But not when you have the entire Jagged Little Pill album! That it’s still a seminal record makes me feel better about collecting the entire album on a cassette tape as a kid. I sing along to all the jilted lover songs now, as I did then, even though I’m the asshole she’s talking about.

NOTE: This series is about belaying in single pitch sport areas. Technique changes for multipitch and trad scenarios. This ain’t trad school.  Trad is a whole different ball game y’all!

FACT: The failure to catch a climber’s fall and make it SOFT is probably the #1 reason why people don’t like climbing with you.

You can be a kleptomaniacal serial killer and people will still accept belays from you if they can count on your catches to be soft.  Conversely, your climbing buddy may be your condom/dental-dam-free monogamous sex partner of the last ten years, and then when it comes time for a belay, they always seem to be… with someone else.  What makes that person so great?  It’s cause they can give a soft catch and you can’t.

What is a soft catch?

A soft catch occurs when you spread out the area in space and time for the climber to decelerate at the conclusion of their fall.  The main purpose of the soft catch is to keep the climber from rocketing back into the wall.  The phrase connoting it, “soft catch,” makes it seem like the main point of the soft catch is that the catch has the nice, comfortable side effect of making a fall feel more gentle, like coming to a stop on an elevator.  But that’s actually not the main reason sport climbers do it.

Part of the softness of the catch comes from that specially designed rope you bought.  The other part comes from you.

The rope is not stretchy enough to avoid all serious climbing injuries.  Just relying on the rope, and not making the catch more dynamic with your own action, introduces some serious problems. (They’re more serious in trad, but this is not an article about trad.)

Why is a hard catch dangerous?

The reason a hard catch is dangerous is because it swings the climber toward the wall, not because it’s an uncomfortable jolt (you’re climbing on bolts, so the threat of ripping out trad gear isn’t the issue here).  This swing into the wall introduces TWO independent dangers.

First, the velocity of hitting the wall can be enough to break whatever part of your body runs into it.  Climbers may hit the wall with their ankles, hands, hips, or in the case of an inversion, the backs of their heads.  The most common injuries are those to the ankles.  The more tragic cases involve climbers who invert while falling and hit the back of their head on the face with enough force to kill them.  Sport climbers often don’t wear helmets, so a soft catch can be enough to save your climber’s life.  Conversely, a hard catch can be enough to kill them.  You probably have a climbing friend of a friend who died or was seriously injured this way.

Second, by swinging into the wall, the climber may hit objects they wouldn’t have hit otherwise.  A soft catch results in a climber drifting down rather than in toward the wall, even on overhanging routes.  Belayers sometimes mistakenly give hard catches because there are ledges–but sometimes, a soft catch will cause the climber to miss the ledge entirely, and a hard catch will guarantee that they will hit it.  It’s counter-intuitive, and thus an easy mistake for new belayers.

So how do I get good at giving a soft catch?

You practice doing it over and over until you get good at it.  Do it in a controlled environment, like a climbing gym, where you can catch one fall after another.  If you do it right, you will end up far into the air (e.g. five or so feet of space between your feet and the ground) and the climber will feel a noticeably comfortable stop.  On a vertical wall, they will not need to use their legs to brace against the collision with the wall.  Keep doing it until you can nail it every single time.

Do it with different climbers as well, so you become accustomed to the feel of the rope and the corresponding timing with different climbers’ weights.  If you’re used to catching a heavier climber, you will probably jump too late for a lighter climber, because you’ll be attuned to jumping at a certain level of pull.

Practicing this with your climbing partners will also make them more likely to trust you, more likely to climb harder, and make climbing more fun.

But how do I actually do it?  Give a soft catch that is?

At the point at which the rope becomes taut during a fall, you jump.  And you jump hard.  Everyone I have encountered who wrote on the subject has described it as a “gentle hop,” but I say “jump hard!”  This may be because I weigh 180 pounds.  In any event, I have NEVER been caught in a fall that seemed too soft.  It would be like a couch that was too comfortable.  Occasionally, other factors will intervene that will cause you to want the catch to be harder (described below), but in general, the softer you can make it, the better.

If you jump too early, then the rope will go taut while you are coming back down, which will moot any effect of your jumping.  Jump too late, and you’ll be pulled up after you’ve arrested their fall.  This means you’ll still fly into the air, giving you only the appearance that you did it right, but the force of your jump will not have actually helped decrease your climber’s rate of deceleration when they needed it.

So timing is everything, as is feedback from the climber about the quality of the catch.

This requires you to:

1. Watch your belayer like a hawk, so that you are in a jumping stance the moment they fall
2. Stand almost immediately beneath the lowest-clipped bolt (or slightly to the side if they are in danger of hitting you or catching your line with their leg)
3. Practice with your climber and get feedback about the quality of your catches

If you are chit chatting away, thirty feet from the wall, then your climber will not make any hard moves and will think you suck and will anxiously await an opportunity to climb with someone who actually takes belaying seriously.

The Exceptions

By default, your catches should be as soft as possible.  There are THREE main exceptions:

1. Your climber is at risk of DECKING.
2. Your climber is on SLAB.
3. Your climber is projecting a route and is working a move over and over and is very close to the bolt on an overhung sport route.
4. (There is no fourth.  There are reasons unique to trad, but I keep telling you this isn’t a trad article, even though you don’t want to believe me.)

A soft catch will extend the distance of the climber’s fall.  If this puts them at risk of hitting the ground, then the danger of a hard catch is outweighed by the danger of decking.  This generally occurs around the second bolt, particularly when clipping.  If the climber is at risk of decking, the belayer will focus their attention on taking up slack while the climber is falling (by taking in rope with the hands and sitting down).

If your climber is on slab, there will be no reason to prevent the pendulum caused by a hard catch.

If your climber is projecting, occasionally the climber will prefer a slightly harder catch so they can work a section without having to jug up.

What about the amount of slack before the fall?

This is a hard point for many to understand, or at least seems so, given how many belay.  But here goes:

DO NOT MAKE THE ROPE TAUT WHEN THE CLIMBER IS ABOUT TO FALL.

Paradoxically…

DO NOT GIVE OUT EXTRA SLACK WHEN YOU REALIZE THE CLIMBER IS ABOUT TO FALL.

Generally, when climbing with strangers, I find that only a third of belayers will handle an expected fall properly, with the other 2/3 divided equally between the two no-no’s listed above.  After shouting, “falling”, you feel the rope go tight, or you see the belayer throw out some extra slack, and you think to yourself, “oh, fuck my life.”

In general, the proper amount of slack to have out, at all times, is the minimum necessary to prevent the rope from going taut.  That’s it.  Burn that sentence into your brain.

As with all things climbing, there are exceptions.  If your climber is in danger of hitting a lip (because they’ve just pulled through an overhang) then it may make sense to pay out extra rope so that they fall into free space–but if you are an attentive belayer, YOU ALREADY DID THIS BEFORE THEY ANNOUNCED THE FALL.  Thus, short of you realizing that you weren’t paying attention, you generally shouldn’t ever have to pay out extra slack when you see that a fall is imminent.

Paying out extra slack before the fall DOES NOT make the catch softer.  In fact, in a single pitch sport situation, it by definition makes the catch harder.

What do you mean by “taut”?

You will generally leave a gentle curve in the rope while the climber is climbing, so that they won’t get short-roped if they make sudden movements.  When you realize they are about to fall, it’s prudent to take in enough rope to eliminate that curve, but don’t take in enough that the rope actually tugs on the climber, or causes the quickdraws to all stick out perpendicular to the wall.  That’s what I mean by “taut”. (Note: when the climber is significantly to the left or right of the bolt, it’s usually better to leave the curve in.  Otherwise, it’s grandfather clock, cheese grater mania.)

In a decking situation, anything goes–the more rope you can pull in, the better.  But it’s an easy beginner mistake to wrongly perceive the fall distance and needlessly drag the climber off the second bolt.  The climber sprains their ankle, and you notice that the climber still had a good ten feet of buffer after the fall is over.

Other notes

Gym climbs frequently have bolts only six or so feet off the ground.  They don’t really serve any purpose besides letting a climber work the first few moves of a route while clipped from above, and for our purposes, they risk the belayer getting sucked into the first bolt at high speed when catching.  If the belayer is at risk of hitting the first bolt, make sure you unclip it after you clip the second bolt, or don’t clip that first bolt at all.  If this introduces any kind of danger in the gym, or on a route bolted like a gym, use a stick clip to clip the second or third bolt (in other words, where the first bolt would be on more conservatively bolted climbs).

What about letting the rope feed through the device to make the catch soft?

Some climbers are capable of making a catch soft by letting rope feed through the device on purpose during the conclusion of the fall.  This is a technique better reserved for multipitch trad climbers, who make up maybe 5% of all climbers, but 50% of internet climbing forum authors.

The technique requires gloves and if you screw it up, the climber will deck.  If you want to learn how to catch falls with this method, you should probably practice in a way that has a fail-safe until you can do it properly.

Because you can’t do this with a GriGri, people sometimes use this as justification for saying that ATCs are categorically safer.  They are wrong.  In a sport climbing environment, giving up the GriGri for this reason would mean that you would be giving up all the safety benefits of an autolocking device in exchange for a catching capability that is both unnecessary and which probably fewer than 2% of belayers know how to do safely.  You may be with a belayer who has gloves and who you trust to pinpoint your fall location and speed with an ATC, but if so, you are probably married to them and (I hope) are not wasting your time on basic belay instruction articles.

The ATC, like the GriGri, and the many other belay machines out there, is a machine among many, geared to some situations and not others.  If you want a cheap tube-style device for sport climbing, get a Jaws.  (There are other tubes with added brake action, the Jaws just happens to be the best I’ve used.)  As with all things in life, people will evangelize certain belay devices because of a lack of familiarity with the others.  The widemouthed ATC in an unfortunate legacy, imported from a world of trad where the ATC’s weight, multi-purpose utility, and ease of braking larger diameter ropes was more useful.  If you’re too cool for the GriGri, learn the munter hitch or the eight, or buy a tube that can catch heavy people on thin sport ropes.  (That rope at the gym, by the way, is fatter and fuzzier, which is why catching people on an ATC may seem heretofore quite easy.)

What about running toward the wall?

Kind of like the opposite of our multipitch trad climbers, there are people who are capable of running toward the wall to control a fall.  This is reserved for a gym environment in a competition setting.  In any other situation, there will be objects in the way (including other people if you’re at a gym outside of a competition), unstable footing, or a high first bolt preventing you from doing this.

The blog Band of Thebes linked to us, causing me to spend an hour or two not working when I should be working.  This comes after a big buzz generating link in the DPM Climbing news feed, which may later include a write-up about the convention itself (which presents a reason for our most talented photographers to click even more than usual, since we’ll need magazine-worthy climbing shots for such a feature).

That stance has nothing to do with the slackline, it's just how I walk most of the time.

I spent my rest day slacklining.  Which I’m not terribly good at, but I was able to start from sitting most of the time.  Also noticed that the two inch webbing, contrary to expectation, is way harder.  Rock climbers are required to know at least one other performative sport, because for the most part they’re professional narcissists. (Editor: They?)

In between runs, I talked to Eric on the bench nearby about his Gold Wing. I friended him on Facebook, in time to see the flames of his discontent over the forums at Red River Climbing, with accompanying comment thread:

I feel Great! Today, I canceled my account on Red River Climbing. A [forum for rock climbers at the Red River Gorge]. It’s getting to the point where I really can’t stand rock climbers anymore. People on there are for the most part, so full of crap… There are a few good ones that use the site, but mostly, it’s just a bunch of drama hungry people that think their… (insert other word for crap) don’t stink.

• yuuup. fuck that shit.
• Dude, let C2C and all his friends, and all the rest of the drama babies rot! I’m over them!

After a quick visit, I realized that I have to retire my “Rockclimbing.com Theory of Climbing Forum Etiquette” which was that climbing forum users are flaming trolls because they have anonymity and only a very, very slight possibility that you’ll meet them in person.  Given that the Red only has an effective population of maybe 300 at any given time, the forums at Red River Climbing, where you can post nicely for a climbing partner and get trolled, gave that theory a fiery troll death, a death that even the trolliest troll would be proud of.  Even the trolls at Supertopo are nicer, at least after I scold them.  I wonder what it’s like when they run into each other in Muir Valley. (Editor: I’m sure their response would be “I go to the places that aren’t in the guidebook to avoid the noobs.”  Me: I think they’re 14 year old girls in China. Editor: Both could still be accurate… Me: But how would they know about Baby Deer? Editor: Baby Deer is the most famous thing about the Red.  Baby Deer is already a main character in three state-owned cartoon programs and is also the star of a Japanese porno.)

That’s actually not the primary reason I find it interesting.  What I find more interesting is how the Red informs my perceptions of homosexuals, or rather, my perception of homosexuals’ perceptions of other homosexuals.

Contemplate Kelly’s earlier post, in which he said:

when I showed up at my first HC convention I was really fucking nervous that this would be another gay event where we adhered to the classic gay stereotypes…everybody get fucked up, everybody sleep with each other, and everybody get dramatic about nothing.

To which I say, guuurrrrrrrrrrrrl, gay people don’t have shit on the heterosexuals at the Red, and I’ve been to Blake’s.  I can’t even imagine what a RRG campground would look like if there was ready access to coke and tina, and I’m already afraid to go in the communal shower.  Next time we convene at the Red, I’m going to force Kelly to spend one night camping in lieu of a cabin, kind of like the way they forced that homophobic Augusta State grad student to spend time with gay people so she could see that they were not a bunch of morally-bankrupt abominations, the only difference being that the purpose of this would be to show Kelly that straight people are morally-bankrupt abominations.

Although I understand she sued all the way to the 11th Circuit to get out of Augusta State’s nefarious plans to make her commune with gays, so I’m not sure I should expect to fare much better with Kelly.  I would certainly fight it.

FACT: Michelle Ellington has not updated her Facebook profile picture in two years.

But this all gave me a SPLENDID IDEA.  Nobody gives you publicity the way trolls give you publicity, and trolls LOVE talking about gay sex.  Thus, I have to nefariously craft a post that will guarantee I get trolled, perhaps by including the following:

-references to gay sex

-name dropping

-explicit hopes that i won’t get trolled

This isn’t going to be easy.  Suggestions are appreciated.  I want this to be something bumped to the top of the heap for months by people debating various dirtbaggers’ sexualities, hopes for encountering lesbians, and questions over who could best deep-throat an Ale-8 bottle, the last of which would emanate from fake accounts set up by me.

Update: Although this post is scheduled to automatically post at 6pm, I’ve already created the forum thread if you want to stoke the flames of troll warfare.

The Red has a lot of dirtbaggers, more than the other climbing meccas I’ve been.  When I see them emerge from their vans in the morning I wonder if I should have gone to law school.

When they did that 60 Minutes segment on Alex Honnold and the reporter was expressing her fascination and awe about how he lives out of his car, I was laughing, kind of in the way I laugh at Yankees exploring the south, like, as Susan puts it, Columbus exploring the new world.  In any event, there’s a charismatic draw to the dirtbagger, who is basically living like a homeless person (well, you are a homeless person) only you can still get laid because your Mountain Hardwear and Prana clothing is color coordinated and distracts onlookers from the fact that there are dead bugs in your hair, you smell, and you keep a jug in your car or tent full of your own urine; which you squeeze in before you screw shut and store upright because you know if you don’t do those two things you come home to discover that urine in an airtight space is like a very slow acting dry-ice bomb and the laundromat closed five hours ago.  Not that I know anything about this.

You'll never be sure about your apple juice again. It's certainly not blast proof.

Without some dead gazelle-trampled lion-father back home and a birthright to claim, it’s hard to resist the appeal of living on the road with a mattress in the back of a truck.  Akuna matata!  Enjoy nature while everyone else slaves away in an office building.  Free from a job that would pay for the toenail fungus medication, and your only obligation to resuscitate the vestiges of modern living is to steal a shower once every two weeks when encountering a weekend warrior who expects you not to smell like an armpit before you fuck them.  That’s pretty much all you have to worry about, cause with the abs you have from climbing, they simply don’t assume or don’t care that they’re about to get foot warts, toenail fungus, scabies, and a yeast infection before they’ve even finished putting the condom on.

Not that I’m not envious (well not of the scabies at least).  I do like sitting here watching the door flap open, and then flap closed, and eavesdropping on these people talking about the materials in bungee cords and solar panels.

The unappealing part is that everyone is painfully introverted.  You have to shoot them in the shin before most of them will look up.  Most outsiders would mistake this for arrogance or narcissism, but it’s really an intense fear of other people, combined with the fact that unless they see you for more than three days in a row, there’s a 99% chance they’ll never see you again.  Among friends they’ve known for years, people on the verge of divorce, or with children with failed surgeries, or with dead or dying parents, talk mostly about route beta and RV parts and sex.  It’s probably the more obvious response to a terminal existence; it’s just not the expected one, I suppose because nihilists don’t write from Walden pond.  And if you really want to get grad school thesis about it, I think photography prevails over any other medium because it’s the most immediate means of proving any of this exists.  Kind of in the way Romantics write to prove that they exist. /philosophy

Laurie has a lot of engineering to do, whereas I… don’t, so I’m just doing the blog every day thing.

I consumed all of the bandwidth at Miguel's for like five minutes uploading these. I looked around to see if anyone was cursing about not being able to downgrade climbs on 8a, but the only thing screaming was a small infant, and fortunately she wasn't able to verbalize her anger that I was fucking with her wifi speed. But I swear she was looking straight at me.

Last night we met some more giblets, which is my new catchphrase for people who fit somewhere into the GBLT stratosphere.  I’ve been thinking it in my head for years now, so maybe it’ll catch on.  It involved a humorous scene in which a bunch of queer people walked in and we mistakenly stole a table from queer group 2 not realizing that they weren’t affiliated with queer group 1, and they obviously took umbrage with us, queer group 3, for thinking that they/we all look alike.

Today’s excitement was not my poor performance at the Chocolate Factory, or that we think we saw some famous French climbers, but rather the drama of the road leading to the parking lot of Pendergrass falling out.  Which effectively trapped all of the climbers who got up early to get there before everyone else, which, I have to be honest, kind of makes me laugh.

If you'd slept in, you wouldn't be trapped over there.

Fortunately for the stranded climbers up yonder, there was a guy with a backhoe able to patch up the road by dragging a big old rusted metal tube over and spreading dirt on top of it.

I should have been a construction worker.

Laurie was trying to estimate in her head how long it would take for the tube to collapse and she was saying words I didn’t understand.  It made me wonder how many roads and bridges I’ve ridden over that were supported by fragile platforms only barely suspending me above catastrophe like a rock on wet toilet paper.

Finished!

My feet were killing me because I spent the last two days climbing in my three-sizes-down Shammys and Katanas, so I went ahead and bought a pair of half-sized-up Evolv Defys.  They fit like loafers, and I’m pretty sure it was a great purchase cause I can also use them to go jogging.  Also I can fit socks in them.  I’m tired of living like a geisha.  From now on it’s comfort style climbing, and if I can figure out how to attach a martini shaker to my harness, I’m totally doing it.  Also I’m buying white belay gloves.