The Flames.

According to The Independent, the presence of a mouse, however small, on an aircraft isn’t as harmless as it sounds. Mice can chew through wiring, not to mention the common sense issues that might arise around hygiene, food service, and general public distaste for pests. So when rodents are found on a plane, flight crews need to perform thorough checks before the aircraft is deemed safe for travel.

Harry Marinakis ·
All the dirtbag climbers are dead? I'm not dead, I'm just a one-percenter now.

I was a total dirtbag climber back in the 1970s and 1980s.

I was homeless and slept in my Volkswagon for a few years. My VW was baby-diarrhea brown, but it was totally tricked out with curtains in the windows and a tape deck and... Well, maybe my VW wasn't very tricked out. But it did have a Chouinard sticker in the back window.

I broke off the key in the ignition in the START position, so to stop the car I had to pop the clutch to stall it, and then disconnect the battery. When I wanted to start my car, I connected the battery, put the gear in neutral, and pushed the car as fast as I could, and jumped in to pop the clutch.

Then the accelerator cable broke, so I ran a cable inside of the car back to the carburetor and operated it by hand.

It was a real dirtbag climber's car, and I got laid a lot in that car. We even drove that old VW all the way to the Bugaboos in 1982. We crossed the border into Canada at 4:00 a.m. and stopped for gas right away. A Canadian at the adjacent pump welcomed us yanks by giving us a free bag of weed. He said that he felt sorry for Americans. That VW was as good as a jeep on those old Canadian logging roads.

Eventually the engine blew up and I abandoned the car, so I just started hitch-hiking everywhere. I slept in parking lots under pickup trucks when it was raining, and when the weather was good I just walked out into the woods with my sleeping bag.

One summer I couldn't even afford a sleeping pad or sleeping bag, so I slept in the High Sierra directly on the ground in a bivy sack. It was truly miserable.

Once we were hitch-hiking in 105-degree heat along U.S. 395, bound for Lone Pine and Mt. Whitney, but no one would stop. We walked for 10 miles in the heat. A hot chick in a sports car stopped for us. She was in a really big hurry and yelled at us to hurry up and get into her sports car. Once we got back on the road, I asked her why she stopped for hitch-hikers if she was in such a hurry. She asked me to open the glove compartment in front of me. I did, and there was a rolling machine mounted to the inside of the door and giant bag of green stuff in the glove compartment. She put me to work rolling a bunch of fatties while she sped down the highway at 90 m.p.h. When she dropped us off in Lone Pine, we had no idea where we were, or even why we wanted to be there in the first place.

Another time I was hitch-hiking to go climbing, and no one was stopping. I was dead broke. No food, no money, just climbing gear. I walked across the freeway overpass and found a bag of joints lying in the gutter. A U.P.S. truck drove by a stopped for me. He said that he would give me ride directly to the trailhead but ONLY if I got him high along the way.

One year I got a job and bought another car, but 6 months later I quit my job, sold everything that I owned (including my car), and went to Denali.

Winters could be tough. We found a hotel with a big roaring fire in the lobby. When the desk clerk wasn't looking, we tip-toed into the lobby and went to sleep on the floor behind the couch near the fireplace. Another alternative was to find a lonely Curry Co. chick who could keep you warm during the winter months.

For money, sometimes we went gambling in Reno, pooling our last $20 for the gas to get there. (This was back when there was still single-deck blackjack). We gambled for 3 or 4 days straight, drinking a lot of free Heineken and eating at $2.50 breakfast buffets. We would make $200 to $300, which would last us another 3-4 months back in Yosemite. We always pooled and shared the money. Does that mean we were hippies or Commies?

But most of the time we collected nickel-deposit cans for cash. At the recycling station, we turned in our cans. While one of us flirted with the chick at the cash register, the other one re-collected the cans we had just turned in, and then turned them in again. And again.

Food was never much of an issue. We went diving in the dumpsters at 4 a.m. for most of our food. One guy held the lid open and the other guy rummaged around inside of the dumpster with a headlamp. You get used to eating moldy bread and rotting black bananas. Sometimes you score big with an orange, or a box with a couple of donuts.

We also stood around at hamburger joints to dig food out of the garbage cans.

The Yosemite Lodge cafeteria was a great place to eat, because you could scarf people's left-overs after getting in the door with only 25 cents for a cup of coffee. The best seat in the house was where the conveyor belt of dirty dishes went back into the kitchen, because you could sit there all day and pick plates of mostly-eaten food from the conveyor belt.

Once an older lady walked up to me in Yosemite and handed me a large grocery bag full of food -- out of the blue! She said that she was the fairy god mother of climbers.

Well, sometimes food was an issue. One summer in the High Sierra a family visited our campsite and gave us a string of brown trout. We devoured the trout raw, right off the string. I didn't realize that this was a very strange event, until much later, when I realized that at 6'00" I was down to 120 pounds. I was horrified when I saw my emaciated body in a mirror.

I never stole anything from anyone, food or otherwise. The thought of stealing never even occurred to me.

Of course, in-between all of the above adventures are climbing trips to the High Sierra, Yosemite, Joshua Tree, Tetons, Sandias, Rocky Mountains, South Platte, North Cascades, Squamish, Bugaboos, Denali.....

Man, I could go on and on about the life of a dedicated, homeless, dirt bag climber.........