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2-Sep-2009 6:15:59 PM
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When a trad climber has an aid climbers rack on a single pitch climb you know he's a gear freak.
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2-Sep-2009 11:06:58 PM
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" Climbing guides are little mausoleums. As the writings on a tomb proclaim the eternal success of time over another mortal mosquito, so a climbing guide tolls a resonant sigh of the earth over many a once distant horizon.
Mourn not the nearby steer-chewed hills, their once benign mystery of eucalypt and blood-and-feather-shod kadaitja man run to earth for the MacDonalds gobs of sullen Sydney, the bitch.
Mourn not the first time Ewbank kneeled at the lip of Mt. Vic to think of deeds he might force onto the unwilling.
Mourn not the ache in your head that helps you remember yet another lost night of your wasting life and the dead brain cells that will one day herald a worse conclusion.
Mourn not the swelling of the 20's in the last of the 70's.
Mourn not the chalk that stains the crags forever for it has no meaning.
Mourn not, my young and eager friends.
But sink lower in your sloppy thongs and sweat on the realisation that guidebooks toll, with each name, with each grade, with each "First climbed by.........." , the desecration of our lost horizons.
No more Vasco da Gama.. No more cowboys. No more Burke and Wills. No more new cliffs, no more new routes, no more unfreed climbs. All written up in Stygian binding of the final guid-book.
Mourn you bastard, mourn.
Because the endless energies of restless, searching youth will turn. When there is nothing left then surely they will turn on the known world and poison it fom the inside out. Will turn on the written word that attempts to mock the lost virginity of the windswept face.
And so this tome is a tomb, a script for a crypt, a rave on the grave. And it's the grave of our futures.
Here are some pasts."
Lyle Closs
The forward to the 1982 Climber's Guide To Mt. Piddington
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11-Sep-2009 2:55:37 PM
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"There's a difference between being smart and making excuses, and it's got nothing to do with the level you climb at, what your best send is or any of that bullshit. If you love it, at a certain point the cartwheels stop and you go up."
Kelly Cordes
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11-Sep-2009 3:21:45 PM
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"Those who indulge, bulge."
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16-Sep-2009 3:21:15 PM
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On 16/09/2009 widewetandslippery wrote:
>Looks like a solo mission evan. Its not at all lonely soloing those slabs, all of your little voices have a chance to have a great conversation.
Good one!
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21-Sep-2009 9:36:58 AM
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For all those Victorian climbers from the 80s who felt obligated to try to read Auto Da Fe, from a review by Andrew Riemer in the Saturday Age of Clive James' new book of essays "The Revolt of the Pendulum" :
"Only one writer gets it in the neck without reservation: Elias Canetti, and that makes me feel much better about never having got past page 10 of Auto Da Fe."
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23-Sep-2009 3:02:35 AM
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'I'm a f---ing saint'
-Mikl
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23-Sep-2009 11:00:31 AM
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On 21/09/2009 kieranl wrote:
>"Only one writer gets it in the neck without reservation: Elias Canetti,
>and that makes me feel much better about never having got past page 10
>of Auto Da Fe."
But does it make one feel better about not getting past the first 10' of Auto Da Fe?
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23-Sep-2009 11:37:56 AM
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On 23/09/2009 BA wrote:
>But does it make one feel better about not getting past the first 10'
>of Auto Da Fe?
Well, I didn't have a problem with those moves so I never felt bad about them. But I foolishly went beyond page 10 of the book before chucking it in.
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23-Sep-2009 12:57:38 PM
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anybody read 'Foucault's Pendulum' by Umberto Eco? There's a well-known story that a reviewer got so sick of it that he went to a book store, wrote a cheque for $50 and placed it about 60 pages from the end, to congratulate anyone who got that far through it.
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23-Sep-2009 1:34:36 PM
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On 23/09/2009 gordoste wrote:
>anybody read 'Foucault's Pendulum' by Umberto Eco? There's a well-known
>story that a reviewer got so sick of it that he went to a book store, wrote
>a cheque for $50 and placed it about 60 pages from the end, to congratulate
>anyone who got that far through it.
The cheque wasn't in my copy. Foucalt's Pendulum is too long but has some interesting bits and is not in the same class of Auto da Fe, where nothing happens, the characters have no character and the experience is both boring and distasteful at the same time. I might donate my copy to the Friends of Arapiles book sale though it might scare the punters away.
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24-Sep-2009 7:08:43 AM
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well bugger me, I'd forgotten that one.
Lyle
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24-Sep-2009 8:36:24 AM
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I've got a review for Clive James,
"He's a pompous twat."
His last book (well the last one I read - cos I know he spits them out like most people have turds) I was unable to finish because I developed an extreme case of boredom.
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24-Sep-2009 8:36:41 AM
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Somthing like this has probably already been posted in this mega-long thread somewhere....
Be nice to your Belayer......
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1-Oct-2009 1:23:24 PM
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In theory there's no difference between theory and practice. In practice, there is." Yogi Berra
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1-Oct-2009 3:05:12 PM
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"Always go to other people's funerals, otherwise they won't go to yours."
(another Yogi Berra quote)
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1-Oct-2009 10:43:59 PM
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i thought it was more of a problem if everyone you know is at your funeral, because it means they outlived you
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2-Oct-2009 9:14:59 AM
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"Are you listening to me, or are you looking at the girl in the red dress?"
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15-Nov-2009 9:09:24 AM
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On 13/11/2009 MisterGribble reminded me of something I'd read a long time ago, and worth repeating again here...
>As Don Whillans said :-
>Come back alive
>Come back friends
>Climb the mountain
>in that order.....
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15-Nov-2009 11:54:30 AM
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On 15/11/2009 IdratherbeclimbingM9 wrote:
>As Don Whillans said :-Come back alive. Come back friends. Climb the mountain, in that order...
I like it.
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