Top 10 Things That Should Be Banned

There are some things that really get under my skin. I try to let things go that don't affect me, but sometimes I have had such a bad experience with something I put it on my banned list. Generally I don't have a problem with the thing on it's own, but how it is used by people. Can't ban people (or so they tell me), so here is my list. Keep in mind I am no Letterman, and if I touch a nerve these are only my opinions. Drum roll please.......... 10. Mariachi Music. I love Mexican food, but hate to eat it with a trumpet blaring in my ear. 9. Plus sized lingerie. Not that I have to deal with this, but just on general principals it should be banned. 8. Horses on hiking and mountain biking trails. There are some equestrians here in town that put obstacles up that mountain bikers can't ride over because they think they own the trail. Some are also hostile to trail runners. None of them clean up after their horses. I don't like to run through crap weather from a horse, or dog. 7. When the morbidly obese wear high end running shoes. If you can't run to the fridge without getting winded you don't need a $130 pair of running shoes. 6. Birthday parties and family night at the climbing gym. I know it's a fun place to take the kids for a party, but some of us are there to get our workout in. Imagine having a bunch of kids hopped up on frosting hogging the stair master or bench press at your gym. 5. Recumbent bikes. OK, I admit these are basically harmless, but they are just ridiculous. They can't even be ridden up hill. 4. Strollers (sorry Ann). I just don't think anyone needs a stroller the size of my truck for an eight pound baby. I know I don't need to be run over by them anymore. 3. Jet Skis. Here is a prime example of an inanimate object not being the problem, but the type of people who would own them are. It is hard to have a nice quiet day at the lake with the jet ski d-bags constantly buzzing you (again, sorry Ann). 2. DUI bikes. These are the motorized bikes that are being ridden in the bike lane by people who have generally lost their license due to DUI. They are two stroke engines that are far more polluting than four stroke engines. In my opinion if you have lost your license to DUI you should be walking or taking the bus. 1. RV's and Motorhomes in the forest. I don't want to camp next to someone who needs to run his generator all night long so he can watch a DVD. If you need all that you should be in a campground with hookups, a cabin, or a hotel. You really don't like camping if you need a small house to enjoy the outdoors.

Vegas

I was looking for a song this week that would help show what is on my mind. Viva Las Vegas was the only song I could think of about Vegas. I couldn't bear to listen to Elvis, but fortunately Jello Biafra and the rest of the Dead Kennedys had covered it. I am going to Red Rocks to climb next week, and we are staying on the Vegas strip. I can't wait.

Locking Carabiner Review

I haven't done a gear review for a while so when I had to replace these carabiners prematurely (in my opinion) I thought I would share my experience. I have two sets of alpine draws I use for lowering, and top roping climbs. One set is over four years old, and the other is less than two years old. I keep one set on my rack of sport draws, and the other with my trad climbing rack. That way I always have a set with me, I won't forget them, and won't have to make do with something that might not be as safe. The older set has four Black Diamond Positron locking carabiners, and the newer set has two Positrons, and two Wild Country Neons. The Positrons that are clipped into the bolts show no wear except for some scratches which is what I would expect. I was looking at the Positrons that the rope gets clipped into, and they showed some wear with a pretty good rope groove. I had been watching them because they were four years old with probably hundreds of routes on them. I took a quick look at the Neons at the same time and was very surprised at the amount of wear they were showing. It would be different if they had hundreds of top rope routes on them, but they get maybe ten percent of the use as the Positrons. They also had half the life span of the Positrons. The depth of the wear was 30 thousandths of an inch. Which equates to about three quarters of a millimeter, and one millimeter is the recommended retirement for a carabiner by most manufacturers. So they should have some life left in them right? The Neon is an I beam style carabiner, and starts to get sharp where the rope runs over the edge of the rope bearing surface. I don't know about you, but I don't want anything sharp around my rope. All of my trad carabiners are Wild Country Helium which is the same body as the Neon, but with a wire gate. I don't worry about them because they don't have the rope running over them with weight on it anywhere near as much as a set of anchors does, but I do watch them. I talked to a guy at the gym last week, and he had the same experience with the Neon so I don't think it is just me. I wouldn't buy the Neons again if I was going to use them for top roping. I have a few more that I will burn up, and then buy something else to replace them. Probably the Positron. Thanks to anyone who made it to the end of this post (Dave). I know no one is probably interested in this but me. Also if anyone knows how to make paragraphs in the body of a post on Blogger please teach me. I swear I put breaks in this post.

Steve's Arete...........Again

Here is a picture of one of the most aesthetic climbs on Mt. Lemmon in my opinion. Ryan and I made it one of our New Year's resolutions to lead it. We went Friday afternoon to start working on it. Ryan has lead it, but not clean yet. I have done it clean on top rope, but not this time.

Here is another view of the climb where you can see how there are holds on both sides. It is pretty overhanging, and hard to clip. Fortunately the falls are clean even though you have to pay attention or you will swing face first into the Arete. It was pretty windy as you can see by the rope.

Here is Ryan at the top of one of our four laps each. My forearms were about to explode after the fourth lap.

Ryan hanging from????????????? a helicopter?

Saturday we went to Munchkin Land with Tony, Josh, and Allison. It was a fun day, but my hands and forearms were beat up from Friday. It will take a few days for my skin to heal. (See Ryan striking a "Mr. Cool" pose.)

"Not So Bad"

After my last post I didn't get the reaction I was looking for. I was hoping that Dave would help make me look a little more sane. I figured it must be because the pictures, for some reason, didn't turn out very clear. It was probably the way I copied and pasted them, and the fact that I couldn't post all of the photos. My solution? Post a link https://picasaweb.google.com/grow.david/CurrentClimbingGear?feat=directlink# to the entire lot. Somebody please get Dave some help. As for me. I can quit at any time. I just need a few more things for the Red rocks trip, the Aravipa Trip, the Teton trip, and the J-Tree trip. Really. I can. On another note, how do you like the cover of Kelly Clarkson's song. It's amazing how good some of these pop tart songs can be if a real band does them.

Not So Bad By Comparison

So, I've been feeling a little self conscience about all the gear I have been buying lately. Granted I have bought it all on sale or used and saved some money, but I would have saved more if I had not spent the money to begin with. I decided to do what any mature person would do. I am pointing the finger at someone else. Here are some pictures of my friend Dave's rack. Remember, he just started collecting gear last year.

This is his primary set of cams. His sport draws.

His trad draws.

Passive pro. There are a few other pictures too, but I can only fit five per post. In those pictures are another complete set of cams up to Camalot #5, half a dozen belay devices, some sky hooks, a set of aliens, and a killer bouldering wall complete with more holds than my local gym has. I feel much better now that I have diverted the attention away from me.

Somebody Stop Me!!!! Please!

This weekend was Summit Hut's big Spring Sale. I know I just went to the Sidewalk Sale, and bought a bunch of stuff but I went anyway. I was looking for a new pair of climbing shoes, and they had this pair of $140 shoes for $80. Couldn't pass them up. I just hope they stretch about a half size (those are the knuckles of my toes pushing up on the top of the shoes).

I had also been watching for a three man tent for our backpacking trip to the Tetons this summer. I have three, (yes three), two man tents, but I wanted a little more room for gear when the weather goes south. And it will go south too. It will be nice if we are stuck inside of the tents because we can all get in this Drifter 3 to play cards or fight. It was normally $199 but on sale for $145. I also had a couple of $10 off your $100 purchase so I split it up into two purchases to get a total of $20 off.

I picked up this pair of Mountain Hardwear pants too. They are just light weight hiking pants, but after last week's blood bath I thought I might think about wearing pants a little more often. I am obviously out of control spending money on gear so please help me. Send all cash donations to.................................

A Good Week

Week before last was one of those weeks where lots of good things just seemed to happen. I had Thursday and Friday off with the kids for rodeo. No really, the kids get two days off for the rodeo. I guess they must feel sorry for the kids in Tucson because they never get snow days. Anyway, it was one of those weeks where good things just kept happening. Below are a couple of examples. Remember the ugly yellow truck? I think the thing that made it the ugliest were those hideous wheels and tires. Granted the color doesn't help, but those wheels and tires made me cringe every time I saw them.

A few Craig's List adds and phone calls later I had bought a set of factory wheels for a 2003 Nissan Frontier, and sold the wheels and tires (separately). All that was left was a trip to Discount Tire to make the truck look better. I think it actually looks like a truck now as opposed to, well, I'm not sure what. If only I could buy and sell paint on Craig's List.

While I was standing outside admiring my new treads the mailman showed up. Amy checked the mail, and handed me a relatively heavy little box. I wasn't expecting anything so I didn't know what it might be. When I opened it I was pleasantly surprised. My friend Dave from Maryland had sent me a few pieces of climbing gear.

Apparently people in D.C. have more money than they know what to do with so they buy stuff, never use it, and then sell it on Craig's List supper cheap. Dave has a huge rack (makes mine look wimpy) so he sent me a few pieces he had multiples of. Free gear. Now that's what I call a good day. Thanks Dave.

Not My Day..............

Although I had a good time anyway. Here is a picture of the bail biner I had to leave on a 5.11 that I thought I could pull the roof. I ended up falling off and cutting one of my fingers on a sharp hold, getting a couple of blood blisters on some of my other fingers, and banging up my leg a little bit. I also managed to bleed on Ryan while he was belaying me.

I tried to clean myself up a little, but when I got home Amy asked "what happened?" I said "what" like I didn't know what she was talking about. Then she said "I suppose you want a picture for your blog?" It's just scrapes and bruises, but my shorts may never be the same again.

We did get to do a couple of really fun routes though. Bottoms Up is on the left of the arete, and Cheers is on the right face. I looked and they are rated anywhere from 5.8+ to 5.10a. Cheers was probably 5.9+ and Bottoms Up was significantly easier.

We did a good deed too. Here is Mike and Paul with a guy in the background. He was part of a rope team that were bound and determined to get one of them killed. We kept hearing things like "that's to much slack", or "what do I do now?"

At one point Ryan and I looked over to see the guy on the ground climbing un-roped. I went over to see if I could help before I had to help carry out a body. It turns out that the guy on the ground had no idea what was going on, and the guy at the top of the climb knew only slightly more. All of their gear was fresh out of REI. I think they had cut the tags off that morning, and possibly bought it on the way out.

Turns out the guy on the ground had just unclipped the belay device from his harness and left it on the rope with the carabiner when the climber told him to take him off belay. When the climber started to pull up rope the belay device wouldn't pull through the quick draws (imagine that). I told the climber I was going to pull some rope back and got the belay device off the rope. I told the other guy to come down. We were on a ledge above a long rocky slope. If he fell it was going to be a long tumble. He slipped, but was able to stop himself. I was sure glad because I didn't want to roll down the slope with him if I had to try to stop him.

They finished climbing and left for another part of the crag. One of them came back a little while later to retrieve a cam they had left sitting on the ground. I walked over to where they had been climbing to look at the route and found a chalk bag and some garbage they had left. They came back later for the chalk bag and all four of us made sure they knew we were not happy that they had left their garbage too. I still don't think they got it.

80's Music

The other day I heard a cover of the 80's hit Shout originally done by Tears for Fears. Disturb did the cover. I really enjoy hearing some of my favorite songs from when I was in high school covered by newer bands. I compiled a few songs that were either songs I liked, or songs that I like the cover. I have never been a George Michael fan, but I like the Seether cover for example. A few of my favorite 80's bands are represented in the list. The Cure, Depeche Mode, New Order, and Bauhaus. OK, I know that I did Bauhaus in reverse. They covered David Bowie's Ziggy Stardust in the 80's. Close enough for me. I know that some of you are fans of music from the 80's. I also know some of you were born in the 80's (the late 80's). Anyway, I hope you find a song or two that you can enjoy. Sorry Brett. No Justin Bieber.