I’ve mentioned before that my brother and his wife are the coolest people on earth, and therefore their kids are the luckiest I know.
So there’s the stairway my brother and his wife had built into their house. I’ve mentioned that before, too, but I have new photos to share. So here you go:
The ultimate cool people stairway, fitted perfectly for snowy winter evenings when you just can’t get any fun exercise otherwise-
So it turns out that you can rent Climb Nashville overnight for a lock-in. Just like the old school and/or church lock-ins you went to as a kid, only with ropes, harnesses and more handholds than any one person could count in a lifetime. Seriously, this was my first time going to this climbing gym, and it’s stunning. The climbing holds are like stars in the sky, if stars had tape markers underneath them. Wow!
My view as I woke Saturday morning.
So I think Hubris will have to visit a nice climbing gym soon. The photo above is from the spot where my sleeping bag wound up. Under the bouldering wall and looking past that, you can see one little bit of the massive climbing wall that circles the entire building. Go see.
Okay, I’ve got a couple more of the old originals, but I’ll intersperse them with new stuff. Mostly ’cause even I’m tired of seeing the black and white. So if you missed the bright colors yesterday, click back and check it out. And of course, more brightly colored fun tomorrow.
Back to the Nostalgia Run! Er… Climb. I like this one. Maybe I should have resurrected it for new art and color. Maybe I will, years from now, when none of you guys remember having read it. I’m sneaky that way.
Were you sick and tired of Black & White comics? Me, too. This is still one of the old original strips that I’ve trotted out, but I colorized it for us.
I like the humor, but I’ve been told it might be too oblique. I don’t recall why I chose to show a mountainside in each panel- maybe to show that they were stalled out and give the feeling that they needed to get moving. Maybe I was trying to blast through a lot of ideas and this one lent itself to a static image better than others. Maybe I was trying to give an impression of isolation on a rock face.
Or maybe it’s what you’re thinking and I was too young and impatient to do something with exciting visuals. I do remember back then being shocked at how much time and effort went into the communicative elements of every… single… panel. I was probably grateful to just draw one and then cut and paste (real cutting and real pasting… with paste) the next two.
I will doubtless never be forgiven by people who know how to treat trees properly, but here it is:
When I first moved into the house I’m in now, I was mighty impressed by the big ol’ pecan tree out back. It’s lowest limbs were too high for good climbing, but it’s a fine tree nonetheless. If you poison all the squirrels (Now I’m in trouble with the people who know how to treat squirrels properly) then you and your family can actually have pecans to eat. It provides wonderful shade, thus keeping down the utility bills.
On the downside, pecan trees are brittle things and it drops limbs without provocation. In a high wind, it’s downright murderous, and I worry that one day, it’ll come visit me in the studio personally, taking a lot of roof and things with it.
But then, it provided me with a lot of fun, too. I put handholds on it. Y’know, those climbing holds you’re supposed to use on climbing walls? Those. I scraped some smooth places in the poor ol’ tree and mounted these holds. It then wasn’t just a tree, it was a boulder. (for those of you who don’t do crazy stuff with handholds- it’s climbing if you’re going up, it’s ‘bouldering’ if you’re more or less going sideways) So I had much fun for a while going round and round my tree. I found clever little ways of doing it that I was fond of. My brother, who really IS a climber, showed me a couple of even cooler things (Like pretty much starting from a lying-down position and going up and around. Tough, it was) and I got to the point where I could circle the tree maybe three times before I had to give up with wobbly arms.
I never did do what I wanted to- start a daily regime of circling the tree first thing in the morning to keep in shape. Ah, well, the best laid plans of mice and men gang oft aglée… or something like that.
Eventually, the tree started healing and the holds are no longer even remotely safe to use. I took a few of them off so the kids wouldn’t come crashing off the tree.
So one day, maybe I’ll set up something else, but you know what was the best part of handholds on the tree? Most people that saw them assumed they were for climbing up the tree. and so they’d go up a few feet and then look down and say “I can’t get any farther. What do I do?” And you’d tell them “Go around.” and they would, then they’d say “I’m back where I started. Now what?” to which the answer was, of course, “Go around again.” Then they’d get upset and quit. I don’t know what the hell they thought was up in the tree that they’d rather keep going up, but that’s people for you.
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P.S. See, it’s always worth the time to check out the comments. James Riendeau posted a link to this video:
So I climbed out. The old guy working on the train, or at least working on the overworked mechanism that dragged trains up and down the crack track, said I was the only one who’d done what I did. It’s very possible he didn’t know, though. I mean, if someone else lost a boat under the bridge, chances are he or she could have just ridden the train back up. My failure was in waiting around until the train was broken before losing my paddle and my boat. The story would not be so entertaining or as long, if only my timing had been better.
So the word goes out that some idiot has appeared in the little theme park out of, well, not NOWHERE, but I didn’t come in through the front door. Where, importantly, I guess, the ticket booth is. In the time it took me to stagger off of the track and get my bearings (meaning to see where the nearest water fountain is- I was dying for water) the management sent a flunky. I thought “Oh, what’s this kid here for? To make sure I’m alright? To see if I need assistance? To offer food or rest in an air conditioned medical office before sending me on my way?”
No. He watched me like a hawk without saying more than “Hey.” He watched as I got my long drink of water. He watched as I scanned the area for the exit. He followed me as I slogged out of the little theme park. He was there to make sure I didn’t have any fun or ride any rides or purchase any souvenir candles after having sneaked in the back door. As I walked out into the parking lot, he turned and went back to whatever his usual job is- sweeping, dishing out ice cream, and sprinkling kitty litter on toddler vomit… or something. I DO hope that playing Sergeant At Arms for seven minutes was the highlight of his theme-park career. Punk.
So. The parking lot. It’s a nice one. There’s landscaping and the typical (for the time) faux-carved-wood signage. I looked around, hoping to see not only a truckload of my friends, but lots of boats strapped to the top of the truck. LOTS of boats, including one mottled white Perception Corsica Matrix. No luck.
Honestly, I had no way to gauge how long the rest of the trip was for anyone in a boat. This was my first trip into the area, and I’m one of those tagalongs who doesn’t look at the maps so much. So I could only hope that they didn’t finish the run an hour ago, come by here looking for me, decide I’d already gotten a ride somehow, and taken off to the campground. Surely, if they got here and didn’t find me, they’d have asked someone if a kayaker had ridden the train out of the gorge and come through the park. They’d have then been told the train wasn’t working, and they’d have gotten concerned… you get the idea. Things might have gone differently.
So I sat on a large and generally well-placed rock to await my friends, and to get news of my stray gear.
This might have been boring, except there were fraternity boys in the parking lot, too. They had a big white Econoline van. Never a dull moment with a bunch of fraternity brothers and their van to watch. I need to mention the deer, too. As with a lot of rustic tourist destinations, deer wander around the parking lot of the Royal Gorge Bridge and Theme Park. Black tail deer, I think, but you’d have to ask someone who can tell one deer from another to know for sure. I would have asked Dennis, but he was driving the truck that was… not here. You get the idea.
Deer in public vacation spots learn to think of people as sources of tasty tidbits, and probably as sources of eye-stinging flashes as everyone takes photos of deer taking tasty tidbits from vacationers. Fraternity boys are NOT like other vacationers. Other vacationers do not try to offer tasty tidbits to deer while luring them into vans. There are people who use treats to lure animals and other people into white econoline vans, but the six-o’clock news usually calls them something other than Fraternity Brothers. And the photos of such people are usually taken in front of courthouses while officers shove the photographers out of the way.
But as usual, I digress. I sat serenely, quietly, and happily as I speculated what would happen when the guys got that deer into their van. There were three or four guys in the van holding out chips and things. There were two other guys (presumably the driver and the shotgun) who were luring the deer closer to the wide van door.
I figured that if the first part of the Frat Guys’ plan worked out (“Dude, WE just hold out food until it gets in the van, then YOU close the door, dude”) then the second part of their plan (“And we just drive away with our own deer, dude”) would not come off so well. I assumed that if the deer went in, and the driver got the sliding door shut, that the van would then rock, roll, and generally be kicked into pieces from the inside, and then I could watch as the driver and shotgun piled in to do something about the blood, hair, teeth and limbs that were flying around inside the van. …Then I could tell the police what happened. That was MY plan.
Neither my plan nor their plan worked out. Their plan depended on the deer being hungry, gullible and docile. My plan depended on the deer being hungry, gullible and homicidally panicked. The deer, being none of those things in particular, took one look at the van full of grinning guys holding out Doritos, then turned and left.
Nuts.
I was very grateful then, when the truckload of my friends came for me. Good timing. I don’t know the odds of another vanload of guys showing up to entertain me with their untimely demises were, but probably not so hot.
My boat wasn’t on the truck. Damn. Now, I’d have to get another one- either borrowing from someone else on the trip or buying a new one outright, which is an expense I hadn’t budgeted on. Oddly, I worried that I could drown on such a trip. But knowing the expense would be paid by life insurance, the money didn’t worry me. Being alive and needing a new boat worried me, though.
I lamented the loss of the boat out loud a couple of times on the way to the restaurant, until Dennis broke down and admitted that they were playing a joke on me. He then told me of the sharp-eyed find of my boat, wedged on a rock- the white bottom of the boat nearly lost in the white froth covering it. They’d loaded it on the OTHER truck and were going to spring it on me later. I laughed, relieved… and happy to be part of a gag. After the day I’d had, I was happy to be part of anything fun- meaning anything that didn’t involve finding my way out of a gorge.
My paddle, it turns out, had been spotted too, though not retrieved. Dr. Alan ‘Sonny’ Salomon, who hadn’t felt up to paddling on flood-stage water that day (the man’s a genius), was the one to spot it. He was at the take-out awaiting us. He said it went by, out in the middle of the river, turning end over end . Waving buh-bye, as it were.
It has been uncharitably speculated that it’s probably holding up a clothesline in Mexico now.
The tough part is pretty much over. I’ve done all the confusing, frightening, stupid, dead-ended things that can be done, and now, I’m ready for the part that, while maybe not EASY, is at least straightforward. Climb a ladder. Out. No more questioning the options. This was it. Just one long climb and I would be out.
So I climbed.
The Royal Gorge Incline Train’s incline is, I see at http://royalgorgebridge.com/about/facts.php, 1,550 feet long. I had to have been a little better than halfway up after all this nonsense, so let’s say I had maybe 700 feet to go. 230 yards or so. Rounding up, maybe a quarter of a football field. It seems like longer in my memory, but you know how I exaggerate.
I would now like to point out that the tallest ladder you’re likely to run across in your life, or more specifically in MY life, is one of those 24 foot jobs that reach to the top of your two-story house to let you reach, say, the wasp nest that has been built in some inaccessible and frankly vertiginous corner where you wouldn’t normally go on a bet, especially since it’s full of wasps. But I digress again and the commas are getting plain silly. You ever climbed on one of those 24 foot things at full extension? No, because at full extension, they bounce like trampolines. But that’s not the point. The point is 24 foot ladders. What about 29 of them, end to end? Right. You haven’t climbed 29 fully extended 24 foot ladders because you’re not an idiot. Hardly anyone is, or could even imagine getting oneself into the position to climb that far. But let me tell you that such a climb uses muscles that boot camp workouts don’t reach. You use neglected, dehydrated, twanging muscles that are wobbly from bathing in old adrenaline that went sour in your bloodstream four or five chapters back.
But there is very little incentive to stop, because numbers of feet and dehydration aside, you’re nearly OUT.
My wish for you and your life is that one day, you can have a task that has such single-minded purpose and such dawn’s-awakening results. I won’t say it’s like seeing a child born because saying so can get you killed by some woman who remembers her own purpose and results and knows damn well if you try to equate climbing a ladder to it, she’ll kill ya. And because it’s not really the same anyhow. Frankly, though, it’s affirming to just climb along as best you can,counting missing bolts on the ladder (98 in case you’re wondering) and knowing that you’re on a straight road out of Dodge.
By the time I got to 98 missing bolts that should have been holding my ladder in place, it was no longer my ladder.
It now belonged to the guy whose face suddenly popped over the end of the ladder as I approached the top. I was now the interloper and I was on HIS ladder. He had a genial face, a work-smudged face, a suspicious and a baffled face. He said, “What was you doing down THERE?”
“Kayaking.” I said, “I lost my boat.” After a brief thought I added, “Please don’t tell me that I’m the first dumb son-of-a-bitch to have to climb outta here.”
Without missing a beat, he said, “Well, son, I got bad news.” And he grinned. Ass.
That wasn’t adding insult to injury. That came a few minutes later, and we’ll get to it in the Conclusion Of Boy Gorge, next time.
Because of the stupidification of the United States, we no longer use the word ‘protagonist’ much. Unless you’re an English Lit major or just want to be made fun of for knowing words, I guess. Anyhow, it is completely useless to call me the ‘hero’ of this story, even if the general population now calls any main character of any story the ‘hero’.
So our intrepid PROTAGONIST is now climbing out of an incline train, clinging like an insect (a sweaty, nervous, panicky, non-hero insect) to the cage walls with a grip that could have cracked walnuts. I didn’t want to swing out all gracefully, miss my footing, and fall twelve feet or whatever it was that looked suspiciously like fifty feet at the time. So I clung like one of those slow-motion stickbugs the kids find in the yard and call their friends and parents over to see. You know the ones. They spend hours laboriously navigating some hosta while the kids “Oooh” and “Aaahh.” Then the kids move them right back where they started and they begin thinking of suicide just for the relief of it.
I digress, but now you get the feeling of the situation. There was a footstep mounted on the rear of the train. I got a foot on it. I reached my hand around and found firm grip. I went around the end of the train and found myself standing on that wire-grate foot tread, looking down through the tracks, past the cables and past the ladder I’d now have to climb. I would, once I started, be staring down at a drop below me for the whole climb. Or I could crank my head back and look up the ladder, risking neck strain.
I chose the neck strain, perfectly happy in that decision.
Now we all must digress for a moment to discuss Dry Tops. Mine was new. I got it because I don’t usually paddle in Colorado. I had always made do with a few layers surmounted by a splash jacket. For this trip, though, I whipped out the plastic borrow-money-from-the-evil-corp card and got me a Dry Top. It was (and is) a Stohlquist jacket in the godawfullest purple and teal colors. The colors I assume they don’t make any more because everyone finally wised up and realized that the Eighties were, at the time, a decade past and we should retire those colors forever. That’s not important to our story, though. What’s important is that
1) The top was, as stated, a dry one. Meaning it has rubber gaskets for the neck and wrist holes. The upshot of this is that you stay dry on splashy rivers, even when upside down. The downside is that you must hold your breath while struggling out of it at the end of the day, because the insides of the top smell like the insides of a marmot that have been outside the marmot for too long.
B) The top also sported a natty collar lined with fluffy polartech. This has come in handy since, but only in the water. Never climbing up a ladder in full sunlight on a warmish day.
III) It was expensive.
The drytop in question, still extant, though gorilla tape is currently holding the neck gasket in place.
I hadn’t wanted to tie the top around my waist or anything for fear that it’d work itself loose and fall where I couldn’t retrieve it.
Now, I didn’t want to keep dragging the sleeve along a gritty, greasy cable and mess it all up, while simultaneously straining myself to the point where I was probably sweating a prehistoric ocean into the thing. Primordial Soup and the inevitable results were cooking up inside this thing, while on the outside the Primordial Goop that resulted were smearing on and piling up. I was a history of biology lecture in action.
No way Colorado Kayak Supply was taking this thing in as a return, y’know wha’m sayin’?
My exertions partly came from the fact that I was hurrying. Gollum’s voice echoed in my cooking brain, “Less haste, more speed, my precious.” I had to get some distance between me and that damned train in case it fired up again. There was plenty of distance to be had, if I could only make use of it. There was a long climb to go, and it wasn’t the kind of climb you can make with your head cranked back to watch for helpful faces at the top of the gorge, as it turns out.
Looking down at the track (“Look at the track, not at the drop. Look at the track, not at the drop”) I couldn’t help but notice that there were, every so often, missing bolts. The first time I noticed, it was a little funny. “Oh, there’s a bolt missing there. Glad they didn’t miss any more. The ladder might not be sa… oh, there’s another missing bolt. Three… four. %$#@>” After a bit, it was easy to see that the ladder didn’t actually NEED all its bolts at the moment. Even with my two-hundred-plus weight on it, it wasn’t moving around or sagging or anything alarming at all. Which isn’t to say that I wasn’t INTERESTED in the missing bolts. What kind of penny pinching misers had made the decisions on this ladder? Enquiring minds want to know.
I’ve read that there are a great many activities you can do while counting. Counting is a job that our brains can carry on while our bodies do any number of familiar tasks. You can, for instance, climb a ladder while counting. And if, while counting missing bolts in a very important ladder, you reach 36, and find that you’re growing tired of limb, and no longer climbing over a drop, but are very close to a rock shelf, you stop and rest.
Which is what we’ll do here. I did, and you can too. We’re a little over halfway to the top. We’re standing on a handy boulder right beside the tracks, we’ve counted 36 holes where bolts should have been that some accountant somewhere was glad to have provided me, and we’ve wrecked the right sleeve of my formerly very nice dry top. I’m keeping a wary eye on both the top of the gorge above and the immobile train below, knowing that I’ll soon have to get back on the ladder where it leads up and away from my boulder while outpacing that train if it starts moving again.
And so, I’ll meet you here for part 9.
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