It’s been an epic last few days for us United States of Americans. Our Supreme Court decided to kick discrimination to the curb, Water Stone Outdoors released  the most epic HomoClimbtastic convention promo video ever (evarrrrr!) and we have more sponsors and bigger gear than we’ve had before.

You’ve probably heard enough about the Supreme Court. What you haven’t heard enough of us is about Water Stone Outdoors, which has produced the most epic promo video ever:

I can’t help but enjoy the photos, which are just as fun:

It appears that there are two parades, a prop plane, a skydiving sock monkey, and enough badassery to make me jealously wonder if the creation of the promo video for the convention is yet more ostentatious than the convention itself, heretofore something I thought unpossible. We had a drag queen with stilts, and they brought in stilts AND A SKYDIVING SOCK MONKEY AND PROP PLANE.

We will not be able to compete with this, because, for the foreseeable future, HomoClimbtastic does not own a plane. Apparently you can ride the plane if you contact Wild Blue Adventure Company, although I don’t know how you convince them to let you put on a sockmonkey suit and jump out of it in midair. Though clearly, it can be negotiated.

We also have a great many sponsors this year, and I get to announce which climbing equipment companies loves you the most (well, we can’t say for sure, because we haven’t opened the Trango box yet) but BlueWater Ropes operating out of my wonderful home state of Georgia sent us TWO climbing ropes, as did STERLING ROPE COMPANY, which is not based out of Georgia, but I suppose I can forgive them for that, because I like Maine.

So if you need a rope, attend the Saturday night HomoClimbtastic auction at Cantrell’s in Fayetteville, West Virginia on July 20, 2013 and buy one while you enjoy drinks! Climb with it the following day!

ClimbTech is sponsoring and sending an actual live climbing human, Ann Raber, along with unknown quantities of swag.

ClimbTech is out of Austin, Texas. Will any platinum sponsors appear to redeem the west coast?

What’s that? Why it’s… FREE SHAMMIES FROM CALIFORNIA. Evolv is sending us more gift certificates for any damn pair of shoes you want to use them for, which basically means, “you better get some shammies or Alex Rowland will not respect you.”

I just blew mine out last week, after having the shoe repair guy bring them back from the dead twice, because I was so insistent on wearing the shoe that finally allowed a heel hook that I sized three sizes down and endured pain for two weeks that rivaled that time I got a hole in my intestinal lining. Now that the shoes are irrevocably dead, I’m going to have to break in another pair.

We have more sponsors, but I am going to do a second post about them shortly (we’re still opening boxes).

What I want to cover now is that climbing companies sponsoring us is a big deal. I’ve harped on this already, but we still live in a country where same-sex marriage is not recognized in 37 states, and companies can sponsor a lot of other things instead. It’s a recognition that we have a long way to go and they’re willing to cut into the profit margin to help.

Or, in some cases, organize an entire West Virginia town.