> My palms and soles are breaking into a visible sweat. Also a residue from
>> climbing days!
>>
>> Andy
>>
>>
> Tell a story or two.
>
Heights started giving me the regular willies (not that that in itself slowed me down) after I dropped off a wall -- by which I mean the outside wall of the dining hall -- while trying to layback unprotected up a channel to the 2nd floor. Almost made it, too, and then didn't, plopping some 20 feet onto my ass on the thankfully unpaved ground. First thought was, oh, good, I can feel my toes. But it hurt too much to stand up all the way, so I did that wounded animal thing and hid for a while. I wasn't thinking in those terms at the time, but that's what it is, no?
Eventually friends cajoled me into getting driven to the hospital, where they determined that I had a hairline fracture in a vertebra and ordered no solid food for three days in case the shock to my nerves shut my bowels down. Six months later while going for a walk I realized it didn't hurt any more. Now, 25 years later, if I neglect my Robin McKenzie exercises, it hurts again.
> So where did you climb? It was occasionally Pinnacles in winter, then
> Yosemite in Spring and the Meadows in Summer. Later sometime in the 90s we
> used to go to Owens. I never liked the Gorge because you never got to the
> top of anything except an awkward rapple. Well and the long walk back to
> the car up the hill.\
>
In the Midwest, before the proliferation of climbing walls, you had to extract your fun where you found it, hence the venue of my accident. There was a lot of "spelunking" through steam tunnels and underbasements, which led up crawlspaces to the roofs of buildings. River cliffs in Iowa tend to be short and dirty, and the best climbing I experienced around there was at Devil's Lake in Wisconsin. It was just plain difficult to get hardcore about it, and I had to leave the leading to my more coastal companions.
I had more fun in Bohemia, where you could catch an early train out of the city while gawking at the Czech "tramps" (a cultural tale for another time), spend time on good granite overlooking a river, and finish the day with beer and fried cheese in an ancient pub. They had a well-cultivated climbing culture, which seemed to be helped by giving a shit about your job being kind of optional.
I keep meaning to get back into it while I still can -- got a practice board, still have to mount it in a landlord-assuaging manner....
-- Andy