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Norwegian
Trad climber
Placerville, California
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Topic Author's Original Post - May 5, 2010 - 12:50am PT
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in utmost respect for those valiant predessesors whom have traveled "our" 5.10 paths when only hexes and chocks interrupted injury; and when 5.9 was the logical designation for those routes that kicked our arse....
in utmost respect, charlie d.,
i challenge all, or some, would-be sailors to attain every 2nd, or 2nd and a half story balcony WITH A HANDRAIL, along Placerville's 1/4 mile mainstreet. i do believe there exists 7 or 8?
simple. juxtapose a path parallel to the miner's path, both hoss men and angelic beatrices':
climb onto the elevated balconies and bow to the traipsing patrons whom are upholding our's, yours and mine economy. smile to the POLE eese as they wonder upon your position among the stars???
5.9. no harder. the crux is a one arm hang, feet dangling above passer buyers, lunge to a 1930's electrical cord, it blows obviously!
regain, with a one arm pullup, traction unto yonder!
if you send ALL 7 'er 8, ill buy you beers until you stop me.
Thanks charlie D.
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Norwegian
Trad climber
Placerville, California
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Topic Author's Reply - May 5, 2010 - 12:54am PT
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pfff. what's he says'ing?
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Spider Savage
Mountain climber
SoCal
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Flower of High Rank, now there's a 5.9
And beer, not free, at the Lumber Mill afterwards?
Any takers?
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Ed Hartouni
Trad climber
Livermore, CA
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somehow to my testosterone challenged body, this just doesn't seem appealing...
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dogtown
Trad climber
JackAssVille, Wyoming
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It’s a bit far to travel just for beer, maybe, we could bet racks? Or maybe your car?
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Norwegian
Trad climber
Placerville, California
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Topic Author's Reply - May 5, 2010 - 01:08am PT
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weld all, or anyone!
you can do it.
just whisper graces to those departed
as you lie back ancient downspouts, mantle the defunct hangman's tree sign, shimmy up the columns's who sustain yesterday, walk the crooked path, smile past the gutter sludge... lunge for the rusty handrails that the gowned cowgirls of our past held onto as they authored their's future!.
go. do it. then. but not now. bcause now is only that and its of my making and not yurs and when you hold the now in your hand it burns so! that you must consume it... only to regurgitate it, or puke it bak up onto your toes and then kick it ouround.. kick the sh#t of the now until it becomes then, and then...
wish it back.
but its gone.
and It left It's impression upon you, and you'll never be the same, for IT.
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Norwegian
Trad climber
Placerville, California
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Topic Author's Reply - May 5, 2010 - 01:22am PT
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....
when i woke up in the ambulance, completely ignorant of my immediate past,
my only question to the paramedic hovering 'bove me was,
"did i hurt anyone?"
then i rejoined blankdom...
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Scout 2
Trad climber
Placerville
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N
How much longer till they tear it down? You must have hit it early in the day not to hit all the smokers out on the sidewalk!
D
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Norwegian
Trad climber
Placerville, California
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Topic Author's Reply - May 5, 2010 - 01:52am PT
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well,
swheatheart, it is more defunct than gone.
the hangMAN proper is departed. gawd bless his soul.
but the metal skelton of the sign survives! though only rusty angle iron and decrepid wiring which are perfect to receive my hopeful grasp.
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Norwegian
Trad climber
Placerville, California
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Topic Author's Reply - May 5, 2010 - 01:56am PT
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scout i clawed my way up.
up into the fardest reaches of those smoker's most hopeful glances!
i out-climbed their wafting columns of carcinogins.
they did not know what to think of neon charlie! perched within the hangman's tree sign, beaming confident life, and NO rope.
it is interesting to intermingle my notions with those of common understanding.
it's like gently setting el cap down in the lap of the meadow observer.
"gee. that's quite heavy."
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HighDesertDJ
Trad climber
Arid-zona
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Someone is apparently testing a posting bot that randomly puts phrases together.
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Norwegian
Trad climber
Placerville, California
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Topic Author's Reply - May 5, 2010 - 02:07am PT
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mister your avatar is randomly-paired bullsh#t.
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phile
Trad climber
SF, CA
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lord, what fury hath thou wrought upon my cow milk, a mere fortnight wiser than its young sell by? the victim of thy vengeance art solid. wherefore this foul stench? pray tell, is this now cheese?
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Norwegian
Trad climber
Placerville, California
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Topic Author's Reply - May 5, 2010 - 02:11am PT
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phil,
check the sell-by-date.
it's printed right on the side.
i think you're screwed.
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Norwegian
Trad climber
Placerville, California
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Topic Author's Reply - May 5, 2010 - 02:13am PT
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weldit
i've a double ledge if you've a haul bag.
we could make silence among history.
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Norwegian
Trad climber
Placerville, California
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Topic Author's Reply - May 5, 2010 - 02:18am PT
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alright.
my silent partner never complains, she!
and she's fixed so i've no more's kiddies to check my travels.
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Norwegian
Trad climber
Placerville, California
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Topic Author's Reply - May 5, 2010 - 02:20am PT
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anyway im no homophobe
but nowon ever was hurt in silence.
i think it's the last innocence, except maybe appalachain spring by aaron copeland. but any-witch flies her broom neath your nose and you sneeze but sheez apt upon her way and cackles at your gastro-reflex and she,
journeys onward..
as will i.
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Norwegian
Trad climber
Placerville, California
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Topic Author's Reply - May 5, 2010 - 02:32am PT
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tr, such a cross post.
i'll try real hard to take no offense.
im as sober as a butterfly.
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James Doty
Trad climber
Idyllwild, Ca.
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Such genius.
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Norwegian
Trad climber
Placerville, California
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Topic Author's Reply - May 5, 2010 - 07:19am PT
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mine is an ignorant challenge because:
1. the historic buildings / signs / etc will be damaged.
2. you could be arrested.
3. it sheds a bad light on climbers
im sorry to have posted this.
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Stewart Johnson
climber
yo mama
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i think i saw nordude on the side of a milk carton once,maybe twice.
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Branscomb
Trad climber
Lander, WY
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It was the beginning of the end when they closed Lindy's and turned it into a wheelchair and walker storage area for Robinson's Pharmacy. Some sort of Mormon joke or judgement there. f*#kin Mormons. Then they killed The Round Tent. Really the end and turned the whole town into a yuppie shopping district.
Maybe now it's getting back to its old self, all the f*#kin yuppies can't afford so many lattes and poopoorrie.
When I was a kid in Placerville there were only 5000 people in town, and 14 bars. The last day of Labor Day weekend my best friend and I would walk down through the woods onto Bedford avenue, go up on Quartz Alley and walk out on the roof of the Round Tent so we could watch the Hell's Angels come out of Lindy's in the afternoon on their way back to Oakland. Half the town was lined up under us on the sidewalk. Those guys had a real sense of showmanship. They'd come out of Lindy's and stride, literally, to their hogs, get on them and then they'd fire all those big Harleys up at once. Shake the windows till they'd almost break. Then they'd pull out in formation with the Sheriff tailing them, just for show.
My friend and I were so impressed that we went in on a Harley 74 when we were in High school. No helmets or any of that stuff. We were immortal. We made a bet with our buddies that we could break 100mph from a standing start at the Canal Street light to the Placerville Drive offramp with the two of us on it. I piggy backed behind my friend to look over his shoulder and check the speedometer when we went by the offramp. I had a reputation for honesty in those days. We were doing 120 when we went by that offramp and you wouldn't believe how far over we were leaned when we went up that curve going west. It was winter, too. Could have been icy and we could have really gone over the top. Ah, we were immortal.
I never hung out in the Hangman's Tree. It was mainly for all the old drunks from Placerville Rooms to hang out in, but I was sorry when my Mom told me it had closed too. Another victim of f*#king yuppiedom.
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Norwegian
Trad climber
Placerville, California
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Topic Author's Reply - May 5, 2010 - 10:52am PT
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ho and i found a bombay chimney on the outside face of the radiused helix ramp at the town parking garage.
walk down the railroad tracks, checking the littered liquor bottles for hints of wisdom, and hop the guardrail to access the east face of the garage.
squirm back until you can chimney. its about 2.5 stories tall, y'all.
and the crux is uncanny.
while your there, try the 3 story perfect handcrack. the only problem with this is that it faces highway 50 so's all gawk your way even the cops!
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kev
climber
A pile of dirt.
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Not sure it's 5.9 but it's certainly sketchy....
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Branscomb
Trad climber
Lander, WY
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I see Randy climb into the cab of the locomotive behind the gas station on one of my trips out to the full service island to pump gas, wash the windshield and check the oil for a customer. He’s returned home for the winter. It’s a wet cold night next to Hangtown Creek, good for pneumonia. When the customer leaves, I walk over to the locomotive, a historical monument the city had bought from the railroad.
Randy, how’s it going?
A pale, mustached face peers out the cab.
Elias, how are you, man?
OK. How are you?
Oh, pretty good. Been up in Idaho all summer and come back down to see my old man.
Say, I’m working over there, motioning towards the station. You want to stay inside tonight? Get out of this cold?
That’d be great, man. Let me get my stuff.
Someone drives into the self serve island.
You come on over, Randy, OK? I have a customer now, but you come on over.
I walk back into the bright flourescence of the station.
After the car drives away, Randy slides around the corner of the station, looking around.
You can sleep back here, taking him into the back office, but you have to be out by six-thirty. Dennis would fire me if he found out I was running a hotel.
That’s okay. You just wake me up when it’s time. Thanks man, I appreciate it.
See you in the morning.
He looks tired and unwell, puffy eyes, pale despite having been outside so much. Maybe he’s been doing a lot of drugs again, coming home to straighten out, like in the past.
We’d been in high school together in the late sixties. At that time, Placerville was a conservative backwater where everybody knew everyone else. You were expected to be in church on Sunday, even with a terminal illness. Until 1968, the teenage idea of a great party was smoking Marlboro Reds and swilling Budweiser and Jim Beam in the setting of dense manzanita groves. This changed when Juvenile Services in San Francisco started placing young runaways, picked off of Haight-Ashbury, in foster homes in the Sierra foothills. It was thought that all the fresh air and God fearingness of the foothill communities would straighten those kids out. For the most part, their parents didn’t want them back, since they had been pretty wild even before hitting San Francisco. The fresh air theory didn’t work so well, however. Those kids had connections on the street in the Haight. They’d get someone to drive down, under the guise of going to the Steinhart Aquarium or some other improving educational activity, and come back to Placerville stoned to the winds and loaded up with grass, hashhish, speed, cocaine and psychedelics. Our old diversions just couldn’t cut it against that stuff. Until around 1970, El Dorado County law enforcement felt that such awful things couldn’t happen in our pure and godly community. The adults in charge of our existences were caught flat-footed for a couple of years, with no idea what was going on with those silly kids. There was one girl who became quite fonds of LSD. She ate acid once or twice a week. She’d come to school dressed in Indian saris with comets and stars painted in bright colors across her face and a pleasant spacey look in her eyes. We were discussing the Scarlet Letter in English one day and Mr. Lambert asked her what she thought of some aspect of the story. She was staring out the window. When he finally got her attention, she answered that whatever was on the outside didn’t really matter at all. Silence. No further questions for Charlotte. She was considered to be artistic, one of Mrs. Floyds’ top art students, so erratic responses were treated as the expressions of that temperment. You might not understand it, but she was so nice that it didn’t matter.
Some of us didn’t make it through those days with as much grace. One of my friends ended up in the State Mental Hospital from eating LSD. Another had most of his stomach removed after eating Drano in a fit of drug induced depression. Randy had eaten his share of psychedelics. The only thing that made sense to him anymore was hitching around the United States, picking up odd jobs here and there, then moving on. Whenever I saw him in town, I’d buy him a meal at Dennys, since he always looked famished. We would draw disapproving stares from the management and customers because Randy was a little loud. He didn’t know how to act around straight people anymore, how to hold himself in and appear normal. I’d let him sleep in the back office of the gas station when he came through, or give him a few dollars. We were both little wild animals. I could cite literary references whereas Randy could hardly read, but we shared a sense of wildness, though he was more so than I. I envied his wildness, the truthfullness he had to keep at it even though it was obviously a hard, hard life. I let him use me a little, taking my money, because I felt guilty about not totally letting myself go after that wildness, hedging my bets like any other second-rate chickensh#t, playing the game of having a back-up life up my sleeve in case this one didn’t work out.
I smoked a joint, watching the big digital clock on the Savings and Loan progress from 3:00 to 3:05. It was seldom that anyone stopped for gas at 3:00 in the morning on a weeknight. It was a safe bet that I could smoke a joint and clean the bathrooms at that hour and not be interrupted. I stood there, watching the clock, thinking how awful life must be for people lacking dreams, with nothing but the endless drudge through years of working jobs like this until whatever youth they had shrivelled and died. Many people I’d gone to high school with came through the station at night, especially on the weekends after the bars closed. Most of them have a steady job, a wife, kids. They have that ‘what happened?’ look that deer have in the headlights before you run into them. I knew they’d had dreams of doing interesting things but life hadn’t worked out that way. Doing interesting things involves some insecurity and fear. They couldn’t do it. They had never left the security of their home town. I saw them but they never saw me. They were too busy with their cares to look at me when they handed the credit card out the window. I was like some spaceman in a parallel universe.
I woke Randy at 6:30.
Randy, you need some money for breakfast?
No, I’ll just start for Georgetown.
Nobody’s going out there this early. Here, take this and get yourself something to eat, okay? I hand him a few dollars.
Well, all right. Thanks, Elias, I owe you. See you around, man.
Take care of yourself, Randy.
Oh, I will.
I watch him walk across the street with that avoiding the law hunch to his shoulders that people chronically in trouble adopt. I suddenly feel sorry for him, really. That cold morning drizzle coming down on his too thin shoulders, too crazy anymore for most people to give him a nights’ shelter or say hello to him as an equal on this lonely stone.
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John Moosie
climber
Beautiful California
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Jeeze Branscomb. thats a hell of a story. Good writing too.
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phile
Trad climber
SF, CA
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awesome. and depressing. well done.
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Dickbob
climber
Colorado
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The likes of Norwegian and Branscomb are the reason that I do the Taco.
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Flashy P
climber
Sparks, NV
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This sounds like a good cross training exercise for comping. Can we set up topropes on these balconies or are crash pads enough? I can borrow a crash pad from a friend who is a trad climber, he only boulders.
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Charlie D.
Trad climber
Western Slope, Tahoe Sierra
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Who could have predicted a few or more beers downtown last night with the Norwegian would utimately yield such an interesting echo from a local of times before, Branscom? As if being in the fine company of the Norwegian wasnt already worth the price of admission, I'm truly richer today despite the headache....thanks Bob & Chuck.
Charlie D.
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JOEY.F
Social climber
sebastopol
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"The likes of Norwegian and Branscomb are the reason that I do the Taco."
Indeed!
Mr. Branscomb, we may have a few long ago aquaintences in common.(Luther, Nobel)?
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quietpartner
Trad climber
Moantannah
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Nice writing Branscomb!
Understandable too.....
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dogtown
Trad climber
JackAssVille, Wyoming
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So, do you have a Rack or Car to bet? If not stop the BS and move on.
DT.
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Sherri
Trad climber
WA
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A milk carton makes it easy
to find yourself
if you are lost.
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guido
Trad climber
Santa Cruz/New Zealand/South Pacific
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Thanks Branscomb-nice read!
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just_one
Mountain climber
CA
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"Thanks Branscomb-nice read!"
Seconded! Very well written story.
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RonV
Trad climber
Placerville
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Bob, we all know you are closet yuppie.
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Branscomb
Trad climber
Lander, WY
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No, Vard, pleeeeeeeaaaaasssssssse don't tell on me!
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NotIt
Trad climber
Malaga Cove
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Slight Thread Drift...
Every time the words "flower of high rank" are uttered, my antennae go up.
That's the kind of 5.9 that only existed before there was a 5.10. Classic.
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| Messages 1 - 41 of total 41 in this topic |
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