Jeremy wrote:Sounds like you met the wrong people. The dirtbags I've met have been probably the nicest, helpful, and non-annoying people I've ever met. Poor/homeless (living in their trucks), working two days a week just to afford what they need to keep climbing.

Yeah, I found much of that true, too (except the non-annoying part). I just couldn't go all-in, and thus everyone else seemed obsessive. Climbers I knew had a blinkered, sort of solipsistic attitude towards life. I've really enjoyed spending time with climbers, snowboarders, backcountry skiers, mountain bikers, surfers, etc. In fact, I was with a climber/mountain biker for several years. Her facebook profile pic:



We skipped our high school grad banquet thingy to repel off a local bridge at night.

It's just not my milieu at all. The people annoy me. I get all "stop saying 'gnarly!,' and enough with the Manu Chao and Sublime! Why does every conversation have to revolve arond the same self-referential topic!" Etc. The living-out-of-your-vehicle thing is commonplace, I agree. It's an enviable if, in my opinion, a far from admirable approach to life. Although, when pressed, I often defend my surfer/climber/boarder acquaintances from chargers of leading selfish, hedonistic lives (my old friend Greg Hill embodies the general ethos of this lifestyle well).

I much prefer bouldering to other forms. Can I get me some of that hand-me-down Patagonia wear?

Yeah, I still boulder a bit in the summer but I recently moved to the midwest, and I seriously miss the outdoors. Would never settle in Chicago for this reason alone. Anyway, my brudder's old gear is all mine, dammit! Hands off.

All of this is beside the point though: climbing is not crap. Beautiful activity. Beautiful.

I definitely see your point, but I'd take any outdoor obsessive over your average college student/businessman/drummer any fucking day of the week. I've met a lot of climbers in my day and they're generally repulsive, but at least we can share a joint and talk awkwardly about nature. And as a rule you gotta respect people that spend more time outdoors than indoors. In the final analysis climbers earn a decidedly relative NOT CRAP.

Climbing itself I've done twice. First venture was a first grade field trip; I was the only one to make it up their pussy little kiddy wall at the gym. Second attempt I was 14 I think, and I remember somehow having some preternatural Spider-Man skills. Oh, and another time when I got stoned and free-climbed some boulders in the Sierras with my brother--got bored after about an hour. Anywho, climbing itself is NOT fucking CRAP sans waffles because I am genetically engineered to be badass at it.