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Interesting Afternoon

From: BH
Activity_Date: 4/12/01
Remote Name: 4.33.112.238

Comments

Walter: Just got your message this morning (I was out of the office Thursday and Friday in Paso Robles). You missed an interesting afternoon yesterday ("interesting," not to be confused with "pleasurable" or "fondly memorable" or "hoping ever to be repeated").

After leaving you in the canyon to return to SB at a reasonable time and pace, we drove back to Pine Mtn. and the LZ I pointed out to you as the "sand pile." With heavy bags and too little water, we struggled to the top of the rock escarpment that runs parallel to, and towers above, highway 33, in the naive belief we could launch into the newly formed cumis marking a convergence directly overhead. After suffering numerous puncture wounds from yucca and various barbed and thorned, nearly impenetrable varieties of nasty, thoroughly hellacious towering chaparral, we arrived on a pencil-thin ridge above a 200' cliff face, itself perched above another 100' or so of nearly vertical rock fall. (You should pardon any exaggeration. The experience is still too fresh in my mind).

While the rest of us nervously paced back and forth along, but not too close to, the edge, Tom Truax tried to launch from a truly scary face into a cross-wind that threatened to pitch him head-first into the abyss. I finally told him he had no business committing suicide in the company of the rest of us and refused to aid him further. He ignored me, of course, and tried one more time before conceding defeat.

Presuming disaster had been averted, Benson, Ron, Bill and I headed down the back-side of the cliff and found a much easier route to the highway. Tom Beidler stayed behind to help Truax pack-up. As the rest of us broke out onto the highway 40 minutes or so later we spied a lone wing several hundred feet above launch, boating around above the van. It was Truax, of course. Beidler had discovered another, only slightly better but no-less precarious face from which to launch about 20 yards further down the ridge. After recovering from a huge collapse on his first pull-up, Truax managed to survive another leap from mother earth and landed as we stumbled to the beer cooler, successfully completing an unbroken string of never backing down from a challenge.

Beidler paid whatever karmic debt he accrued for his role in the whole affair by losing his wallet on the way down a shorter but much steeper route to the highway. If any of us ever succumb to the insanity of yesterday and attempt to retrace our steps, we'll no doubt find it lying intact and unsullied by human hands because it is for sure that the trails we blazed were never before and likely will never again be traveled by human or anything remotely resembling human form.

We arrived home about 9:00 p.m. last night after dropping Truax off at a party in "east Ventura" (more like western Santa Paula). I've been afraid to call anyone this morning, fearing that one, two, three, four or maybe all five wives (mothers, all) are still steaming over the events of yesterday.

By the way, the airport is reporting winds from 230 at 4; if velocity improves, I'll call you. Otherwise, I think I'll finish up here at the office and catch part of the Laker game before taking Sara to the movie she was expecting to see yesterday afternoon.

Bob

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