Dad Rowland: "Just the sweater vests alone is enough for me to hate him."

Dear Future President Rick Santorum,

I just wanted to express to you my sincere appreciation for the values you’ve been so valiantly fighting for.  Your resistance to those who would breach morals that have defined humanity across time is nothing short of impeccable.  I was especially heartened by your recent stance regarding contraception:

“One of the things I will talk about that no president has talked about before is… the dangers of contraception in this country, the whole sexual libertine idea.” You continued, “Many in the Christian faith have said, ‘Well, that’s okay. Contraception’s okay.’ It’s not okay because it’s a license to do things in the sexual realm that is counter to how things are supposed to be.”

I am totally in agreement with you, as are many of my cohorts.  The great majority of them have never used birth control.  I have never used birth control.  You see, birth control hasn’t been around very long, but most couples before the 1960′s didn’t want to live like the Duggars.  So like me, they did it in a way I like to call “Little House on the Prairie Style”.  Because I’m sure when you decided that you had had enough children, you didn’t go out and buy a separate bed or use any form of birth control.  You stared at those beady little eyes in the mirror, you ripped off that sweater vest, and you decided it was time to start doing it Little House on the Prairie Style.  And I salute you.  I’ve been doing it Little House on the Prairie Style for years now, and I have not had a single abortion yet, even though I’m sure I’ve made enough deposits to stock a sperm bank in Everymanisdeadistan.  I can assure you, my little swimmers aren’t coming close to any eggs.  Well, unless my new holistic health remedy starts selling, Chicken Egg Enemas, which I’m marketing under the very catchy trademark “Chickenemas”.  And if those get anyone pregnant, we’ll end up with a race of Chicken-Human hybrids, which will either quickly dominate and destroy humanity, or they’ll be loving, docile creatures that we can ride like horses, in the way that I always wished I could ride an ostrich as a young boy.  In any event, I’m sure as president the reputation of your name alone will constantly remind the nation of the many options outside of the missionary position that we can explore when contraception is outlawed.

I wish I could offer you more than just my letter of support, like a large campaign donation or CPAC, but the dog got everything in the divorce.  I told the judge that she was just going to use the child support to buy Kibbles n’ Bits while she shacked up with whichever jerk slathered himself in peanut butter.  But you know how judges are these days (probably because almost a fifth of them are women).  I cannot wait until you’re the man appointing them, a man who recognizes that a man should be the head of the household.  Until that order is restored, my mother will continue to decide when the TV is devoted to a five hour NCIS marathon, even after she lied to me and dad and told us she would let us have the remote after White Collar, which is totally unconscionable seeing as how she has them all on the DVR and can watch them whenever she wants to.  Please restore us to the time period when mothers stayed home and hired less white moms to work for them.  I don’t know what the less white moms did.  Never really thought about it.  Just so long as I get the DVR back.

Your friend,
Alex Rowland

Either we can stop having sex, or you can experience what it feels like when I make an up and down motion with my tongue for about five hours. I'll give you a minute to think about it.

License and registration, please.

I’m a loser.  On Supertopo, you can ignite flame wars lasting hundreds, thousands, or tens of thousands of posts long about topics as lame as the Compressor route fiasco, shooting bears, putting lipstick on bears, or having sex with bears, but, I totally failed to get a flame war going when I was trying to start one on purpose, and the subject matter I was dealing with is obviously far more controversial than what constitutes proper bear food (hint: you, unless you’re in a car, or are double wielding .44 magnums).

Subject matter being Homo Climbtastic going to West Virginia in July.  Supertopans primarily live out west, and prefer climbing in bitter, dry, cold areas.  Supertopans fear summer in West Virginia like Star Jones fears Nene Leakes:

Although Star Jones rebukes Nene’s approach to interpersonal conflicts as the product of a lack of education, Star just doesn’t know that Nene is reacting in the same way all of us Atlantans do when encountering manipulative a-holes:  Star: “At least let me know what you’re accusing me of.” Nene: “Shut the fuck up.”

Example: I have a summa cum laude English degree and people are still complaining that I sullied the gays’ relationship with our current governor when I kind of sort of publicly e-mailed him regarding my dissatisfaction with his campaign commercials and the most eruditic treasure from my lexicon was ”big ole wad of donkey cum.”  (At least I can say that out of 1,350,000 results, my “big ole wad of donkey cum” is first on Google.)

Atlanta. Shut the fuck up.

So after failing with Supertopo, I started a forum thread on RealJock.  That probably won’t work either, because the most popular forum threads there include:

• “GLITTER BOMBING” — Lame Gays Making Us ALL Look Bad
• RATE THE GUY ABOVE YOU (1-20)
• Pass, Quick Fuck, or Overnight…?

I just can’t compete with those.  Also, the guys on RealJock all have abs that put the men on the cover of Men’s Health to shame, the result of a body fat percentage low enough to cause renal failure when leaning back against concrete surfaces.  To be fair, the abs/chests are usually an attempt to compensate for the face.  Or brain, or their brain’s face.  But nobody on RealJock cares about those.  Hell, when I get on there, it’s because I’m in that kind of mood where I don’t either.  If you get my drift.  And I think ya do.

Thus, I’m turning to you, Homo Climbtastic members, fans, and friends!  Post about us to places we’ve never seen, heard of, or posted to!  Or just get on the Supertopo/RealJock threads and start throwing flaming poo bombs!  Tell them you’re going to bolt all the walls on Yosemite with two feet spacing between each bolt and you’re spray painting them in bright pink ACROSS ARBITRARY LINES THAT AREN’T ANY GOOD AND YOU’RE GONNA DRY TOOL YOUR 300 POUND BODY UP THE WHOLE WAY TO GET THERE.  Also you’ll be on lead on aid hooks with an infant attached to you with one of those little infant carrying things, and accuse anyone who gets mad that they’re misogynists and that you already bought the crampons and you will not be a victim!  (Editor: Maybe a good spot for another photo?  Ra-ra: I couldn’t find a picture of a fat man dry tooling El Cap on aid gear with a baby attached to him, in case anyone feels like photoshopping one together for me.  Must be believable enough to trick the Supertopans.  Also, he should be wielding a .44 Magnum and be shooting a black bear trying to eat the burrito he left at the base of the crag. Editor: Maybe it would be more offensive if he were bolting while rapping? Ra-ra: Maybe he’s dry tooling, and the infant is rapping?)

Spread the message of our cult far and wide!  I don’t have the time, money, or skill to go chop the remaining anchors on the Compressor route or otherwise bring about climbing infamy the old fashioned way, so please, come up with something that would make me, Nene, and the rest of Atlanta proud!  We’re counting on you!

Shit's always sexier in your head than it is in reality.

One of the things I’ve always loved about HC is that we seem to have a wrench for every nut.  Whatever your orientation, wherever you’re from, as long as you have a sense of humor about yourself, you’re welcome to come.  Holy fuck I think that may have sorta’ rhymed…look at me, I’m a fucking poet over here.  Anychrist, 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.  OK, you’re thinking, that sounds like a good time…you’ve spent more time on your knees in the past year than Tebow, and the good news for you is that there will be people at an HC convention who are just like you!  And y’all can all run off and do blow off a West Virginia stripper’s dick!  I don’t recommend it, West Virginia strippers are often lucky to have all of their original teeth, but that’s neither hither nor thither.  Point is you can have that experience.

West Virginia Strippers: You don't want a piece of this.

And I can have my experience, too.  I don’t like gay bars, so I don’t like the idea of gay bar activities being our recreation at an HC convention.  The great news is that there are a lot of people who climb with HC who feel exactly the same way, so even if the lube wrestling contest was still “on”, or someone managed to get a DJ (I cannot fucking believe this is still a ‘thing’…I really did think all the DJ’s had over-dosed and died back in the 90′s) we would find something else to do.  Maybe go off and form a drum circle or nurture our inner child or squat over some mirrors.  Some shit like that, you know, all warm & fuzzy or what the fuck ever.  Hey…I’m old, I’m married, I have kids, and I had to give up the drinking and drugging a long goddamned time ago.  A good time to me is climbing all day, eating with a group of like-minded people, and going to fucking bed.  Oh, and coming up with a way to completely undermine Christianity and civilization as we know it by turning all heterosexuals gay, but only if I can’t sleep.  That one was for you, Rick Santorum…kiss kiss, darling.

You should see them at church.

Despite doing things in consistently poor taste every year we’ve been in existence, HC has suffered the umbrage of those who are shocked (shocked!) by the latest thing we’ve done.  This is because like the red light district of Amsterdam, or Brooklyn, or Janet Jackson, we have to do something every so often to prove that we haven’t lost our edge, and that at any moment, Justin Timberlake could expose our collective titty to millions of people.

Otherwise, the umbrage takers might think their harumphing has swayed us against being a constant affront to morality and the reputation of LGBTAQ people everywhere.  And umbrage takers are like mouses who take cookies: first, they ask you not to fellate someone at the top of popular sport crag in New Zealand and write about it.  Next, they’ll be giving you shit because the hem of your dress doesn’t go down to your ankles.  (Editor: Maybe they’re just upset by the quality of your tuck job?  Ra-Ra: You duct-tape a kilbasa to your taint and let me know if it stays there.)

When encountering the homosexuals, New Zealanders respond according to a very strongly ingrained cultural heritage, which is to offer them weed. (On a side note, am I really that tall?)

Thus, every year we have to do something perverse.  So this year, I thought, I’ve got it!  LUBE WRESTLING!  (Actually, Queanh thought of it. Blame her.)

Lube wrestling offers a great many advantages.  It takes something as gender exploitative as a wet t-shirt contest and makes it exploitative in an entirely fresh way.  In no other life circumstance will you have the opportunity to upload photos of yourself greased up and shirtless in a luchadore mask to Facebook without making yourself seem like a narcisstic crazy person.  And if nothing else, it allows you to manufacture long-standing feuds to build up hype, which may or may not include pictures of me and Jonny Mo’s head photoshopped into a Street Fighter II challenge screen.

You need big hair to look good in 8-bit. I considered asking J.Elyea to put other people on the other characters, but I became concerned that it would turn into a racial/gender stereotyping shitshow. Also Chavez doesn't have as much muscle as Chun Li.

But then, I had to get serious.  You could say, I had a reality check.  As much as I liked the idea of all of our climbers getting lubed up and holding each other down in bathing suits while everyone threw dollar bills on them, after which I could have some kind of Requiem for a Dream moment when I throw the dirty money in the air, shouting, “fooled you bitches, I normally do this for free,” I had a reality check while shopping online.

Luchadore masks are fucking twenty-five dollars.

And I would need at least four of them.

So, that was that, as far as the lube wrestling was concerned.  Sure, I was fine with spending twenty bucks on WalMart lube, and I figured someone somewhere would have a deflated wading pool sitting around, but my God, the luchadore masks!  You can’t borrow those!

Thus, barring the appearance of a generous benefactor willing to pay two hundred dollars to see extraordinarily good looking rock climbers get lubed up and wrestle, I’m panning the match.  This would never be an issue in a bar in Atlanta, but this is Homo Climbtastic, and these people divide up most of their money between gasoline and dry pasta.

People suggested charging admission, but HC never charges admission.  It’s one of the fundamental tenets of the Homo Climbtastic religion.  (#37: “Thou shalt not be an HRC dinner.”)  Now I’m trying to think of alternative ice breakers with an edge.  Possibilities:

• Make acquaintances with six people who have either committed a felony, had group sex, or acquired scabies.  Preferably with one another.
• Homo Climbtastic crossword puzzle: “Six letters across.  Triggered Danielle’s memory loss episode.  Starts with the letter ‘O’.”
• Fill in the blank trivia:
  •  ”Menage a…. 1) Kia.  2.)  trois.  3.) Honda Accord.  4) Jeep Wrangler.”
  • “Timmy sez… 1) pull hard!  2) I don’t have any cooldowns left!  3.) both!”
• Turn to the person next to you, and ask if you’d be more fuckable if…
  • you had an eyepatch.
  • you were friends with Whitney Houston.
  • you weren’t friends with Whitney Houston.

As you can see, this is a dire situation.  Somebody help me!

He's only pulling hard cause he burned all his cooldowns.

STEP 1. REGISTER NOW!  LIKE NOW NOW!

Fill out the registration form.  There’s no deposit, and you can fill it out even if you’re not sure if you’re coming.  Make sure you see the confirmation page–if you don’t fill out all the required questions, it’ll take you back to the form, and the unfilled, required questions will be highlighted in red.  If we run out of space for anything… people who registered earlier win.  Even if you’re a maybe, click that link and register.

STEP 2. RESERVE YOUR SPACE AT THE CAMPGROUND… SOONISH

Book under the “Alex Rowland” reservation by calling Nancy at Cantrell’s.  Cantrell’s offers tent camping, rustic bungalows, and fancy-pants cabins.  To make a reservation call 304-574-2500 or 800-470-7238.  They’re holding space for us with no deposit, but not forever… cabins book up much earlier than tent sites.  There IS a deposit to reserve your spot at Cantrell’s.

Experience Southern sandstone and other rock-hard bodies carved by God!

Then What?

Expect to get an e-mail from me (Rowland) within a week or two.  If you don’t get one, shoot me an e-mail.

About the Accommodations

If you’re interested in a cabin, check out the page listing the options with a roof, and note that the on-site cabins are the bungalows, the Deluxe Amish Cabins, the Country Cabin, and the Barn Loft-style Cabin.

Tent camping is $8 a night, so with a 50% deposit, you’re facing the loss of $20 if you end up not making it.  So go ahead and book the damn thing if you’re camping.  Plus I’m guessing Nancy will let you upgrade to a cabin if you decide to get all fancy-pants later.

Split up equally, the bungalows will run about $12 a night, and the cabins about $25. The cabins have air conditioning.

But it’s in the South!

Damn straight!

Dagummit!

We get lots of e-mails from anxious yankees, terrified of rain, Southerners, humidity, and Burt Reynolds.  Well, we can’t promise you Burt Reynolds.  But we can promise you a lake to cool off in about ten feet from the climbing, food so good it’s escandalo, the hijinks of the Homo Climbtastic leaders and members, aaaaaaand world class sport routes (with plenty of trad routes to keep those with high ankled shoes occupied).

If you’re wondering how it is that a small town in West Virginia is so good at playing host to a queer climbing convention, well, there’s only one way to find out.

See you at the New.

Photos of Kim Jong Il is kind of our thing now.

Although a few outside of HC may have suggested otherwise, Homo Climbtastic has never had any control over the other queer climbing groups out there.  They’ve also never had any control over us.  Some of you may think, “well, duh,” but on a somewhat regular basis, people refer to the local clubs as being ”branches” of HC, or mention starting another “branch” of HC.  Or they ask us (at HC) to get a local club to do something, or they ask a local club’s leaders to make us do something.

We’re all independent of each other.  If I were to call up Kris at ClimbMax Colorado, and had delusions of grandeur about our power, it would go something like this:

“Hey Kris!”
“Hi Alex!”
“Hey Kris, if you could throw an HC event sometime next month in Colorado, that would be great. Also, there’s some changes I want you to make to your web site, and can you make me a sandwich?”
“How about I teabag you and spike this football into your nuts?”

I’ve wondered where this confusion stemmed from, as it predates our linking to the other clubs, or the ambassador system, but perhaps those bolster the myth, so I’ll clarify those too.  The ambassadors are simply people we trust to relay important information or to whom we can send people interested in another club.  The links are a non-exhaustive list of clubs we recommend for queer climbers, each with a targeted geographical area, user group, or scope that may be smaller or larger than our own.

The HC dictators have yet to agree on a single purpose for the club, so their individual contributions are probably the best expressions of the various reasons why it exists.  By some criteria, HC may appear to have emerged as a de-facto umbrella group for queer-friendly outdoor climbers (and friends), but as far as I can tell, that status has been simply the collateral damage of what we actually intend to do, which is bring together people we think are awesome.  We don’t do anything to try and dutifully represent all who call themselves queer climbers.  Should we?  Dunno.  But we’re not.  It would be too much work, and half of us don’t even have jobs.

This hasn’t jibed with the occasional donkey-nut lickers who think an organization named “Homo Climbtastic”, as some kind of Grand Representative of All That Is Queer Climbing, should clean up its act, be responsible, stop using phrases like “donkey-nut lickers”, stop posting photos of Ashton Kutcher on the toilet, and stop placing commas outside of quotation marks.

I'm watching you!

Well, we’re not changing, we’re not an umbrella group, and as Miss Kelly Gray has oft expounded, even if our obnoxious behavior meant that it would just be the eight of us sharing a cabin in West Virginia, we’d do it, cause it’d still be the shit.  (And yes, regarding the dutifully flaming messages about our grammar, this actually happens.)  You’ll have about as much luck with us as flaming Porter Jarrard to re-equip one of the hundreds of routes he bolted thirty years ago. (Also happens!  ”You want it fixed? You go do it.”)

Nor will you get any further with the local clubs, whose organizers don’t devote several hours a week to volunteering just to get mouthed off at by strangers (happens!) about membership fees (happens!) or not teaching enough people for free (happens!) or not loaning out their equipment (happens!).

Where these people come from, I don’t know. They’re probably the same people on my condo unit’s HOA board who harass me for parking in an unmarked space.

“I’m not blocking anyone in.”
“You can be towed.”
“Is anyone in a ten unit complex actually going to call to have their neighbor towed on a Friday night? Don’t they have lives?”
“Any of the residents can call to have you towed.”
“There’s like ten people who live here. I’m a resident, does that mean I can call to have you towed?”
“I’m legally parked, the HOA board already agreed on who can park where.”
“I’m going to run to replace you on the HOA board with the single platform that anyone with the spare time to blow running for a spot on an HOA board should not be on an HOA board.”

My complex is bright enough to be seen from space, but not from anywhere else, so I'm pretty sure these security lights are here to make it easier to watch my own kidnapping and murder.

Somehow, perhaps because they’re used to being in neighborhoods with HOAs, student bodies with student body representatives, and so on, borderline personality disordered people have become complacent with the idea that if they show up, that means they can run the place.  They’re probably used to running the place, because nobody bothers running against them to decide what day the communal refrigerator gets cleaned out (people have died for this!).

This isn’t to say that we don’t solicit feedback; I’ll politely inform you, for example, that the budget just didn’t allow for strippers this year, or that we’re still working on t-shirts.  So don’t let our hateful rants scare you away from throwing your ideas into the suggestion hopper.  Except for ideas about how we can move the convention to someplace closer to you. If I put the time I put into HC working a minimum wage job, I could fly to Malorka, so please, please no more of those.  If I die from another stress-induced Las Vegas chocotini incident, my availability to plan subsequent conventions will be greatly diminished, limited to me becoming a ghost and haunting other people into doing it.  And the convention would still probably end up being in West Virginia, because the person who found “PLAN THE NEXT HC CONVENTION” written in blood on their bathroom mirror would probably just assume that’s where my dead self wanted it to be.

All we’re trying to communicate is that the reason we’ve done such a terrible job at being an umbrella group is because we’re… not an umbrella group.

But we love your constructive criticism.  And hell, we love the flaming too, because there’s nothing more fun on the dictator email listserv than passing around hate mail and lol’ing about it.

Now get off the comment threads and go remove “climbing” as an interest from your OK Cupid profile.

The worst offenders in this category are people on online dating web sites.  Like OK Cupid, which is famous for their zillions of personality profiling “match questions.”  I’ve answered 236, and I still keep getting people who think flag burning should be outlawed.

You know I'm not quite sure why I didn't click perverts instead. I really would know better than anyone else on this.

So guys on OK Cupid or whatever buttsecks finding dating web site message to say, “I LOOOOOOVE CLIMBING!”

This is when you ask, “what kind of climbing”, and it all falls apart. Because in the gym, there aren’t multiple kinds of climbing, there is only one kind of climbing, where there’s a rope running up to the top and you’re wearing athletic shorts and socks in your shoes and climbing gloves (note: Julio can pull off athletic shorts, because they are athletic short-shorts, and the indentation of his penis is visibly large enough to create a veil of shame with enough mass that time slows down and light bends around it, but the chances are very, very high that you are not Julio).

Although I’m usually not a prescriptive grammarian, if you’re going to climb at the gym, “I’m going to climb at the gym” is the superior nomenclature. Because to us, when you refer to gym climbing as simply “climbing”, it’s as though we’re saying, “we’re gonna take our Harleys up the interstate” and you say, “I love biking! I own an 18 speed Trek! I, too, take it on the road from time to time.”

But even that isn’t an appropriate analogy, because biking (as in bicycling) is still cool. So maybe a more appropriate analogy would be, “I’m trying to decide whether I like a single speed for mountain biking or not,” and you replying, “well I love being able to adjust the friction in my spin class, so I would highly recommend that feature!”

Not that the people in spin class couldn’t totally kick my ass at spin class. They did. I was well short of whatever it was those people were spinning. Just like there may be some German girl who can crush all your climbing gym projects and offer you struedel afterwards. But if you put her on the Orb, she’d probably fall three feet, hit her head on the dirt, and start crying and demanding why there isn’t 200 square feet of padding. But then again, maybe not. Maybe I’m just trying to make Ann feel better about getting demolished by someone too callous to even offer her a 2nd place struedel. But by gosh, there is something absolutely special about taking 5.12 gym climbers outside for the first time. And by special, I mean retarded. And by retarded, I mean you’re amazing and you can do anything! Except climb outside, apparently.

I thought I had taken enough X for the techno music, but was it enough for the disco ball?

Now, there are those who have presented very compelling reasons why gym climbing is a sport that deserves recognition as its own inherent institution. And to them, I say, your photo of you on a 5.14 gym climb will be discarded by the editors of the Patagonia catalog for a picture of some fat jerk on a 5.8 top-roping outside and there’s not a goddamn thing you can do about it. It is literally easier to collect the money to pay someone to judge your Klingon costume than it is to collect the money to pay someone to judge your gym climbing. You will find more opponents in Scrabble, Street Fighter II, and putting together castles out of popsicle sticks.

So, I am calling for an end to this tolerance of anyone referring to gym climbing as though it’s anything but a training device and a cruel impostor of actual climbing, A) because it’s just irritating, and B) because it’s fostered a massive delusion on gay dating web sites, which should be legally required to have a javascript mechanism double check people who click climbing as an interest with a test question:

“Do you know what lead climbing even is?”
“Have you ever worn a helmet because rocks were hitting you in the head?”
“Are your routes ever marked with anything besides tape or neon colors?”

A kind of captcha for posers. Poser Captcha.

This was by far the least offensive of the captchas on google image search. You try it.

Poser Captcha could really be extended to all sorts of things. Want to indicate an interest in biking?

“Do you even own a bike?”
“You don’t. Be honest.”
“Are you able to even take the wheel off of a bike?”
“When someone buzzes you on the roadway, do you smash their rearview mirror with your bike lock before or after photographing their license plate and uploading it to facebook?”

Comment thread idea: Poser Captchas for your own interest areas!

Three climbers clipped into an anchor point respectively using a clove hitch (left) and figure eights on a bight (middle and right).

- You clip in directly to a crux bolt on an overhanging sport route to rest. Then you forget about having clipped in directly to the bolt, call “on belay,” and launch for that big dyno without unclipping. This can be really dangerous!

- You clip directly into an anchor point near your feet while standing on a ledge to take pictures, to rappel, or to setup a top rope. Then you slip and fall over the edge.

- You clip in directly to an anchor at the top of a single-pitch sport route or anywhere on a multi-pitch route and climb above the anchor to reposition yourself in a better stance or to make room for your partner. Then a hold unexpectedly breaks and you fall onto your anchor point.

Dean M. and I in the belay station for "Hard Left" and "Hemisphere" in the Red -- I am clove hitched to a large biner attached directly to the rappel chains. Falling from here if the chains and rope were taut would be approximately factor 1.5 - 2.0, as there is 3 feet of "rope" out and I would be falling 5-6 feet.

“So what if I fall a few feet,” you might ask. The answer: You can break bones or snap carabiners from a fall of even a few feet. Even if the total distance you fall in these scenarios is, for example, 4 feet (on a standard 2-foot sling), this produces a maximum fall factor of 4ft / 2ft = 2.0 — the highest possible in normal climbing activities — and corresponds to ~16kN of impact force for a 160lb climber using any sort of low-stretch tether (a Dyneema or Spectra sling or quickdraw, or even a PAS or daisychain), in theory. 16kN will rip out your last piece of gear or break a cross-loaded biner, but these are the least of your worries — such forces can cause internal injuries, and, in a multipitch setting when climbing directly off of the belay, have the potential to destroy your anchor and send you and your partner hurtling into the abyss.

Sound incredible? Check out this drop-test video by DMM, which demonstrates what physics geeks and savvy climbers have known to be true for a long time: http://www.dmmclimbing.com/video.asp?id=5 — falling onto static low-stretch material can be disastrous, and not just in theory. Just a 12 inch, factor 1.0 fall onto a Dyneema quickdraw produced a maximum impact force of 12.5 kN — that’s going to hurt!

What could happen when a carabiner receives cross-loading forces.

How can one deal with this potential danger? The old school answer is simple: Never climb above your anchor point for any reason, or more precisely, never let slack develop between you and the anchor point. This remains sounds advice if it were always followed.

New school thought offers an equally simple but greatly improved answer: Tie in with the rope. Peak impact forces in climbing falls usually are mitigated by several factors afforded by the climbing rope, including material stretch (lead ropes are dynamic) and knot tightening at the tie-in point in the event of a fall. When you are directly connected to an anchor point with a static low-stretch sling, however, these force-reducing properties in your safety net are largely absent.

The simplest way to regain these properties would be to tie into the anchor with the rope. This can be accomplished by simply using the rope attached to your harness to clip into the anchor point using a clove hitch or a figure-8 on a bight. This method of clipping in covers many common scenarios such as belaying on a multipitch route or working near a cliff edge where you could take a fall. New school thought would argue that there is no reason to use a short, unadjustable tether in such circumstances; this is also when I most often witness ‘mos and non-‘mos alike clipping into the anchor with a Spectra or Dyneema sling. I always use the rope instead of a sling to attach myself to the anchor when I can.

For scenarios when you must use a sling to connect to an anchor point (preparing to rappel or to clean the draws at the top of a sport route), in addition to following the old school advice of never fall from above your anchor point, you can improve your safety margin by replacing your Dyneema or Spectra tether with a nylon sling, which is stretchier.

Stretchiness is relative. For climbers, the lead rope usually is the stretchiest material available, but if that’s not available for tethering (e.g., you’re preparing to rappel), nylon is stretchier than Dyneema or Spectra, and DMM’s drop tests show an improvement in terms of slightly lower impact forces when falling onto a nylon sling.

Although replacing your Dyneema or Spectra tether with a nylon one will reduce impact forces, those forces can still be high enough to be very unpleasant at best in the case of a true factor 2 fall. However, in conjunction with being vigilant about not allowing slack to develop in your tether, using a nylon sling is a good compromise. I prefer to use a nylon tether to attach to anchor points and save my Dyneema and Spectra slings for quickdraws and for extending my gear placements.

Rowland using a nylon sling to clip in while belaying near a cliff edge in the New River Gorge. There is no slack between Alex and the anchor point, reducing his potential fall factor.

“Anything else lined up?” everyone asks.

No.  Nothin’.  My God, should I have not ignored those 500 invites to LinkedIn that I got? I could be like, so linked in right now!  I could be spamming tens of thousands of acquaintances of acquaintances my resume!  And they could be spamming theirs to me!  And we could all spam each other!  And I could spam people who aren’t on LinkedIn with invites for me to be their first friend on LinkedIn!

Ok, so I left on far better terms than this, and I was able to pee whenever I wanted, but I just couldn't not use this.

So I take solace in the typical things people take solace in during times of unemployment.  Mostly, “at least I’m not some poor child in Mauritania,” and “if those people at the Red can live on $100 a month, I can handle this!”

The solace doesn’t last long.  What if I don’t want to loot through Miguel’s dirtbagger/left-behind/freegan box for the half empty jar of pesto?  What if I like my 4G cell plan, my Grindr Xtra, my pork butt?  I don’t wanna be a copy writer for an SEO contractor!  I’m too pretty to depend on winning ABS Nationals to have enough gas money to get me to the next box of half-empty pesto!  I can’t even win ABS Nationals!  The Gay Games aren’t until like 2014, they probably aren’t awarding money, climbing probably won’t be included, and Mikey or Timmy might show up!  And then I’d be stuck in Cleveland, whose only idea of a tourist attraction is the Gay Games!  Maybe Cleveland’s great, I’ve never been.  But I’m too old to get back on the pole!

So, to avoid the search for a new job, I’ve been devoting myself to the great distractions of reworking the Homo Climbtastic web site and planning for the next convention.  This, however, brings its own frustrations.

First, planning the conventions involves a lot of talking to potential attendees, and if there’s one rule of talking to potential attendees, it’s that the more they want to talk to you, the exponentially less likely they are to actually come.  Second rule is that somehow, someway, the HC web site or facebook group or our reputation or something does a magical job of scaring away the “masc dudes seeking other st8 acting guys to just chill with”.  It’s an amazing phenomenon, but also poorly understood.  You probably wonder how it is that the people who show up are who they are, and somehow there’s a certain element missing.  Where did they go?

Well, usually, the conversation loosely follows them asking me if there are attractive masculine guys there, and me saying,

“yes, but if that’s the only reason you’re coming, the people there will probably laugh at you, crush your projects, and joke about rubbing their groins down with chalk and teabagging you.  and that’s just the women.”  (i would use the phrase “cis women”, but they just get confused and i don’t feel like explaining it.)

and then they say, “oh that’s cool.  so lots of hot guys?”

“yes.”

“what’s the climbing like?”

“like, stiff 5.10 i guess.”

and then it’s something about how they’re really better at kayaking or fishing or monster truck rallying or whatever but they just bought one of those hand squeezey things at the athletic store and they think if they use it everyday they totally might be totally able to go, cause, you know, that’s all that’s holding them back from 5.10, their lack of resolve to use that little hand squeezy thing on a more regular basis.

First I'm gonna teabag you, then I'm gonna spike this football into your nuts!

so after the brief thought that i’ll never get that hour of my life back, i turn to trying to improve this free-ish wordpress web site, which led to the recent concern on the Homo Climbtastic Facebook comment boards about me boldly removing the page devoted to photos of hot shirtless climbers in HC.

“WHY?” asked Timmy.  “Whyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyy?”  He even posted it twice, and I’m not sure if it was to express his intense dissatisfaction, or because his IPad posted it twice, which would make sense, because his IPad is gayer than he is.  (And by “gayer”, I’m not referring to anachronistic notions of being effeminate, but simply to the desire to suck cock like a packed blunt.)

Anyfuck (I’m co-opting Kelly’s phrase) I know I’m being hypocritical, cause I know I go to Lah Fitness and do my little roman chair exercises and crunches on the inflatable ball and such, but it’s just that sometimes, when I see pictures advertising gay sporting whatever…

I've been waiting for the moment I could break out the poses that don't need one hand to hold the iphone! And yeah I'd fuck the one in the middle too. Sue me.

…I just wanna die.

I’m not saying that I don’t want to be able to walk into the mall and see Rafael Nadal in his underwear and stop in front of the poster for about five minutes having a mind wank, in fact, I think that’s exactly how I want it to remain.  What I want to forestall is the homo world’s trending into this strange territory where gay men keep seeking and getting modeling gigs, getting paid minimum wage, and listing their Facebook occupation as “model” because some creepster photographed them all day for about 5% of what a stripper would make if they kept the g-string on.  Someone needs to step in and tell these poor children on the ab machines that the only way to make money simply by being a good looking man (after discounting the cost of roids and the gym membership) is by either working the pole or selling real estate.  And the market for real estate is not rebounding, if these emails I keep getting from my agents about how it’s definitely rebounding are any indication.

I suppose I could be swayed if Timmy took some photos that were so provocative that I just couldn’t not post them.

Apologies to those who’ve only known me since 2011–seems I haven’t been myself, and I’m sorry for only letting you experience the docile simulacrum. (I should have taken the absence of haters as a warning sign!)  It just took me a hot minute to remember how to chalk my groin.  Welcome to 2012, mother fuckers!

Bowser y'all!

Well, it turns out this dude was at the anchors of the climb immediately to our left, and through some freak accident his belayer wasn’t actually on belay.  Or something, ’cause he let go and fell sixty fucking feet.  Evidently he landed on his feet and did some kind of fucking ninja roll or whatever, that shit was fucking insane and even though I didn’t see it (I was belaying Jini, you’ll recall from earlier in our convo) I’m sure it must have looked fucking amazing.  And he landed on his back.  Or something, but again I didn’t really see that part.  I heard that if he had let his head fall just another inch, he would’ve been talking funny for the rest of his life.  Or maybe it was a half-inch, anyway you get my drift.  Dude that shit was life threatening.

No way that guy wasn't a fucking ninja with the way he came down and rolled. Well, anyway, that's what I heard. I was giving Jini a catch.

Anyfuck, I lowered Jini down (she was pretty shaken…I guess she actually saw the whole thing happen since she wasn’t belaying anyone and was able to focus) and turned my attention to the accident.

What I saw was ten people staring at a good looking guy who was shaking his head and trying to figure out if he was hurt or not.  I remember thinking “shit, he’s not gonna’ climb anymore today which means that shirt’s not coming off” ’cause I’m selfish like that and he was actually kinda’ hot.  I also saw his belayer, who was much worse for wear.  The realization that she’d come very close to being responsible for another person’s death had very clearly set in.  Her hands were red and blistered from trying to grab the rope in a desperate effort to stop his descent (which she did, at the very last second, perhaps saving him…but who fucking knows.)  Did I mention he was on top-rope?  Not that it should make any difference, but we all know it does.

So I thought about belaying for the rest of the day.  I thought about the ramifications of giving someone a “catch”, and how frequenly…especially when that person is on top-rope…we lose focus on the climber and talk to our friends, or reach back to grab a drink of water, or even get so involved in laughing and joking with each-other that we forget for a second that we hold another person’s life in our hands.  And how sometimes that second of inattention could intersect with the climber missing a key hold.  Or something.  I’ll repeat:  I have no idea if that’s what caused this accident, I was catching Jini (I totes love her, y’all have to meet her!) but this is the kind of shit I think about when I hear about accidents like this.  Anyway, it was totally serious and I wish I could convey how important it is to belay attentively, no matter what…but some of you mother fuckers are gonna’ do what you wanna’ do, and that’s fine.  You will not be catching me while you’re doing it, or any of my friends.  Don’t think I’m not watching, either, ’cause I’m totally shallow and judgmental like that, you can ask anyone.

Anyway then a second thing happened.  Remember that game that we used to play when we were kids?  The one where one person told another person something and you had to whisper what you heard to the next person until the last person said out loud something that in no way even closely resembled what the first person said?  Yeah, that happened.  As we walked to different walls and talked to people, everybody had heard about the accident, and everybody had a different story.  The belayer wasn’t paying attention, the climber shit himself and some got on the rope which ate through and caused the fall, the belayer had a recalled “Grigri of Death”…everybody had a different story.  So hot.

I didn’t think about that part too much.  Climbers are gossipy.  That’s why Austin is awesome…if you’re a douche, chances are everybody in town knows about it and doesn’t want to climb with you anymore.  And all of the people with really low self-esteems will want to fuck you.  Just remember it’s a double-edged sword, ya’ douche bag.

So, in conclusion, some shit happened at Reimers in Austin and I didn’t really see it even though I was standing right fucking there because Jini was climbing (that girl is a national treasure…) and I was paying attention to that.  But it happened, and somebody got dropped.  He lived but didn’t take off his shirt, which still kind if irks me, but I’m glad he’s alive to take off his shirt another day.  Also, in a similar but un-related vein (since I have no idea how the accident happened), the business of belaying is quite serious, and failure to perform your duty properly could lead to someone else’s death.

This is Jini, being awesome, which is totally her "neutral" setting, and she only fluctuates between "kind of awesome" and "Holy Fuck that's awesome".

Yay Climbing!