TOTD 2022

8/1/2022

Another year, another week of hanging out with degenerate motorcyclists and Miata bros. I only had 4 days with the crew this year, but it was still great. Instead of daily blogs, I have random stories and pictures. You're welcome lol.

Tuesday I was following the crew out to Fontana Dam when I made a wrong turn. I decided to just go with it though, and did 200 miles out across the Skyway, where I visited Bald River Falls.  At this point I was hot and sore from riding, and decided to just chill out in the river for a bit. This turned into climbing the rocks at the side of the waterfall, which then turned into helping some rafters haul their raft up the waterfall. And then, well, this happened:

Wednesday I woke up very sore so I did a shorter day, hitting the Tail, the dam I missed yesterday (It has massive spillways that are very very tempting), and the parkway - which was repaved, empty, and glorious. When we got back to the house we discovered my front tire was dangerously worn. I'd been keeping tabs on it, but an afternoon of hucking it around the mountain pushed it to the end of it's life. But that can be tomorrow's problem, now it's time to eat, drink, and watch the thunderstorms roll in with the crew.

Thursday morning I called a local bike shop to see if they could sort out my tire. He said he had an opening if I left immediately, so I threw the bike in the van (no time to pull off the wheel), and left for his shop.  It turned out to be a blessing in disguise, as the old-timer who ran the shop felt compelled to give the bike a complete once-over after replacing the tire. Tire pressures, suspension alignment, chain tension, lubrication points, and he advised me on where rust was starting and what may need attention in the future. I took copious notes and tipped generously, and after lunch (and waiting out a rainstorm), I set back out to run the tail.  It was so much better, I should have visited PJ as soon as I got to the Tail. The bike now dove into turns instead of being requiring me to force it into turns, and it was now relaxing and fun instead of a full-body workout.

But it wasn't all sunshine and rainbows: an old civic locked up their brakes, slid across the double-yellow, and hit one of our crew. They both bled off a lot of speed before impact, and his bike was in one piece, but unfortunately his wrist wasn't.  His wife took him to the hospital while some of the guys went back with a pickup to grab the bike. Meanwhile, the rest of us went for a swim in the lake, jumped off bridges, paddleboarded, and just generally chilled.

Friday, my last day, it was time to really get into the Tail. That was my plan at least. I had a great trip out across the Tail, went to see the bottom of the Dam, and then headed back to the Tail to take another run. But the road went from full sunshine, to some damp spots, to full downpour over the span of a mile. So I ducked into the gas station to hide from the rain. I met up with some of the crew and once the rain let up we went down to the resort at Tapoco for lunch, pausing to snap a few pics while the fog settled on the river.  It dried out while we ate lunch, and then it was back to ride the tail again! I made it several miles into the middle of tail this time before the road did it's dry-damp-downpour trick again, so there was no escape for me. I accepted being soaked to the bone and causally rode back towards home. 

Once I made it over the crest of the mountain and to the overlook, it had stopped raining.  So I pulled off to chill and chat with motorcyclists from all over the world. Baltimore, Quebec, Amsterdam, Mississippi, New York, Florida, and locals who live 5 miles down the road. After giving the road an hour to dry out, I went to take one last run. A few miles in the road was back to being damp and I felt my front tire slip just a bit... but I decided I didn't want to play those game again. So I headed back to the house for barbecue night, and spent a few hours trading stories with an emergency surgeon who climbs, motorcycles, and wrenches in his free time.

Saturday was just packing and the drive back. It was great to see everyone come together for our injured brethren, loading his vehicles, smoker, coolers, everything - onto his truck/trailer,  before he even finished his morning coffee.  Turns out there's a lot of expertise in rigging in a motorcycle club.  And then, just for good measure, it rained the whole way home. Thank God for audiobooks.

From the archives: Rappelling into Glory

4/8/2012

Warning: This post isn't as fun. Mom? You don't want to read this one. Another decade-old incident but this time recounted from memory, since my notes at the time were "My femur and my boot both really wanted to be in the same place at the same time, they had a 40' race to get there, and my boot won.  Other than that great weekend." 

I spent a long weekend with urbex buddies, climbers, rope-nerds, and all-around great people. We hit up a nuke plant, we slithered through paved-over waterways, we climbed a handful of factories... one of the best weekends of my life.  But Sunday was the crown jewel. We had a 300' rappel down into a dam spillway, and I'd spent months preparing, going so far as to purchase a 400' rope just for the occasion.

Setting up, all our nerves were setting in. Even though we know what we're doing, this is a slippery 300' hyperbola on wet ropes that would be happy to end any or all of us. So we confirm our knots and backup knots, anchors and backup anchors, I mentally rehearse the tricky bit step-by-step, and just like that it's go time. I'm confident, I've been training, so I take on the split-rope. Rappel 150 feet, then pass a knot and rappel the second half. I leave my straight-shot rope for those with less experience, figuring I can support anyone having issues from the other rope.

Once I get over the gradual lip and the floor is finally a vertical wall, I'm pretty happy. I've rappelled hundreds of times and the sketchy bit is over. Amazing and surreal views both up and down, watching teammates descend across the gorge, everyone was doing well and it was a great time.  Passing the knot was tense, but I'd practiced this, and I safely transferred my weight between ascenders, bights pre-tied for this purpose, and the rappel rack maintaining 100% locked-in

I continued down and finally touched down 300 feet later, excited to explore the internals of this dam, but I didn't want the fun of the rappel to be over yet.  The reports over the walkie-talkie were that the rest of the abseilers were going to take the straight rope, so I decided to ascend back up the two-piece rope to hang out with them, snap some pics, and enjoy the spillway.  I ditched most my gear to save weight on the climb and headed back up the rope with only some ascenders, webbing, and an ATC for the return trip.

I ascended 30-40 feet and it was indeed a super fun encore. Finally ready to explore the rest of the tunnel, I switched over to the ATC to head back down. I put the brake on, kicked my feet free of the rope-wrap I'd been resting on while switching over, and immediately knew something was wrong. My exact thoughts were:

LOCK! NOPE.
This is very bad.
How bad?
Not sure. We'll know soon

And I slammed into the concrete at the bottom. Right boot tucked under my left thigh. The ATC did not grab the wet rope at all. That's not a standard warning for the ATC, believe me I checked. I still don't understand why it let go, and to this day I will use a rack or a figure-eight (Rescue 8s are my favorite) every time. 

Anyways, there I am at the bottom of a 300 foot hole, wind knocked out of me, with my leg in the wrong direction, afraid I ruined everyone's trip by dislocating my hip. I know it should hurt but there's only minor pain, so I tried to move it gingerly back into place. There's the pain, bad enough it's impossible to gently push through. I know I only have one more shot at it before the pain ramps up further, so I kick that fucker back in front of me.

The pain instantly ramped all the way up. Nothing went into place. Just pain, an order of magnitude worse than I've ever felt, and I've done a lot of dumb shit.

At this point, my friends had ran over to me. I only had one (stupid) plan and it had failed, so I surrendered full control to the team, which fortunately included two EMTs.  They're super calm, so I'm super calm. It's not like I can do anything about it anyways. They cut my clothes away for a better look ("This is my favorite T-shirt, can you cut around the no-climbing logo?" "Of course!"). They know what happened, but they just tell me they can't pop it into place and I need to go to the hospital.   Unfortunately, we're deep within the earth and even if we had cell signal it'd take any rescue crew a day to get to us. No worries. They're cool and collected.  The trip organizer is freaking out slightly, but productively. He's deferring to the EMTs and assisting where he can.

They craft a surprisingly decent splint out of tripod legs and donated belts, locking my femur in place. Giving me my now-shredded shirt to bite down on, they load me into an inflatable raft that became my stretcher, and the full crew carried me down to the waterfront of what could have been my sepulcher. My raft was gently placed in a second raft, and two of them climbed into a third raft that had been tied to mine, and towed my bier out of the mountain to a service road.

Now that I'm stabilized, their priority is not getting arrested. I was fully on board, they saved my life, I'm doing ok but thought I ruined the trip (later they told me it was an amazing experience and we've all bonded over it), I figured it was the least I could do. Leaving me one raft to support my leg, they ferried the whole crew out of the dam and evaporated into the woods. With three of us left, we (they) called 911 to send an off-road ambulance to rescue a poor hiker who slipped on some rocks.  As we heard the ambulance approach, the organizer reclaimed my splint and melted into the terrain, leaving me with only my EMT friend who'd originally taken charge. Dear OrangeDrank: I still don't know your real name, but I love you.

The professionals walked up casually. "Well, I guess you're the man we're looking for!" 

"Yes. Can I have some drugs?"

"Of course!" And they shot me full of morphine. It was wonderful. I stopped shivering, I could relax, I was acutely aware of the pain, but I thought "Damn, that hurts way worse than I realized. Sucks for that dude!" 

...That dude being me. I actually made small talk with the medics as they drove me over trails that barely qualify as roads. They were in a good mood, since it was a rescue and not a recovery. I was in a good mood. I'd made it through the hard part. I survived. 

I'm sure the drugs helped.

At the hospital they informed me that my femur was completely snapped. They scheduled me for surgery to replace my bone-marrow with titanium in the morning, and strapped me into a tensioner to align all my broken bits overnight.  The crew showed up to wish me their best and drop off a couple books, but they had to head home to their respective states in the morning.  Xrays done, I finally called my parents. "I want you to know I'm ok. I'm in the hospital and I have surgery scheduled for tomorrow... because I broke my leg pretty bad."

It wasn't until several years later when I realized what a close call I'd had. A violent femur break can go two ways... inward or outward. Outward, it sucks. Inward, it slices the femoral, and you bleed out internally before you even realize what happened. And I tried to kick that bitch back into place. 

Amazing diptych by Avius, who automatically clicked the shutter when I screamed.
Like every good photog should.

From the archives: Climbing NYC

I wrote this account for an anonymous magazine article. Unfortunately my co-defendant panicked and forced us to cancel the article, but after a decade in my drafts folder I think it's finally time to post it, as written in 2013:

Life becomes what you make of it. The government - spooked by a prank back in college - denied my security clearance. This set me off on a course of events that ended with me sitting down for a discussion with Homeland Security. The lack of a security clearance meant I was suddenly free of the threat that had restrained my adventurous tendencies for the prior year, and I dove back into my passion with a vengeance.

Losing my fear of career fallout opened a world of possibilities. I immediately set about crossing off my personal "big 3" - The three things I wanted to climb before I died... or worse: turned into a responsible adult. [2023 Me: Lol]  I took care of #2 [cooling towers], and #3 will be easy enough to take care of  [Bethlehem Steel, still unclimbed], as they are both sweet climbable things in the middle of different nowheres. Number one was less easy... my ultimate dream was a piece of infrastructure in the heart of post 9-11 New York City.

A friend was selling a sweet wide-angle lens, and his personal grail was also in New York - which conveniently happens to be right between our homes! I'd buy the lens, we'd kill some time, and then cross off the top of our lists. Simple enough plan, but being realistic, we knew it might have some complications. So we prepared... I gathered some bail money: a few hundred cash, a blank check left with a friend. I prepped my camera, electrical tape pinning my flash down and hiding the front-facing led indicator. I psyched myself up. I picked out clothes in dark greys and blues.

The day started perfectly. We met, made the sale, and scouted his target quite thoroughly and without arousing suspicion. My partner-in-crime deferred on his climb, spooked by cameras and security guards. I offered to climb with him, but only after we did my climb... just in case.   When we went to scout my goal we found police cars.... ... ...closing down half the road for construction! This meant traffic was only flowing one direction, which halved the likelihood of being spotted by a driver. It was just past midnight and hours before anticipated, but there was a gap in pedestrian traffic too opportune to pass up, and we sprinted for it. Up the cables of the most iconic bridge on the east coast, if not the country.

The Brooklyn Bridge became our playground. We swung around opposite sides of the cable-guards, barely a hiccup in our manic ascent.  As we neared the top the cables steepened and we finally slowed our ascent. This is when the sheer stupidity, the sheer awesomeness, and the sheer drop off the side of the cable all became real, but we were committed to it, and to whatever consequences entailed.

The summit felt like a dream. The highpoint of my exploring career and one of my main goals in life achieved! During certain climbs the summit feels like the summit of the world, with the entire earth spread out at your feet. I highly recommend it. In hindsight, I recommend it elsewhere.  We shot a number of pictures, I hid my memory card in my sock, and took a few intentionally too-blurry pictures so that if we were searched they wouldn't look too hard for a memory card.  My secondary goal for the night was to get these pictures home. Not being arrested was at least third on my list.

We descended the same way we came up, waiting for a lull in pedestrians on the wooden walkway 100 feet below us, before silently creeping down the cable behind the last group.  Near the bottom we were back to sprinting, vaulting the final dozen feet to the deck before sauntering off of our neo-gothic jungle gym.  We were down, safe, and relieved. It was one of the coolest things I've ever done.

But it was still early in the evening and we were hyped up on endorphins. So we went for another bridge. We justified it to ourselves "The Williamsburg is easy!" - not knowing that a story on bridge climbers had been published earlier that week, about that very bridge.  We told ourselves it didn't matter if pedestrians saw us. We convinced ourselves that it was reasonable to take the built-in staircase, even if it was an obvious route crisscrossing over the roadway.

But we were young and immortal, making our lives interesting. We climbed with gusto, skipping across the plates crossing above the rail tracks and threading through girders thirty feet over traffic, then trudging up a dozen flights of stairs.  Yet another Olympian summit with the city beneath our feet. Despite the endorphins the exposed climb up left me feeling a little naked, so I immediately started snapping pictures, calculating response times in my head. The bridge itself was a beautiful counterpoint to the Brooklyn, steel latticework replacing solid stonework, identical functions and opposite form. I stepped over the railing, across open space, and onto a steel plate on the edge of the tower, a smooth expanse just under two feet wide, just over two feet long, fifty yards over pavement, and a perfect platform for a tripod. As I lined up a shot of north Manhattan a helicopter crossed into frame. I smiled, picturing the artifact it would produce swooping in front of the open shutter.



Then the helicopter turned. And began to circle.  I vaulted the railing and packed my bag in seconds, memory card joining it's brother in my sock. We frantically whispered (as if the helicopter could hear us) theories back and forth, and hid from the assumed thermal-imaging. I lowered myself beneath the plate I was previously shooting from, using the massive I-beams to keep out of sight, oblivious to the fatal fall beneath, solely focused on the "ghettobird" still circling above.  My partner paced the catwalks, keeping the columns of the bridge between him and the chopper.  We hoped that, seeing no-one, they'd assume it was a false alarm. They didn't. They assumed we had jumped, and began playing the searchlight over the surface of the water.  Then it got worse.

Before I go any further, I want to assure you that I am not exaggerating.  A police boat came up the river under us. It was joined by a dozen police cars, a police truck, another boat, and a few more police cars for good measure. Facing insurmountable odds, I give up. It's ridiculous to be risking my life to avoid the surely-inevitable arrest.  Announcing my intention, I swing back up to the catwalks and motion to the helicopter that I would climb down. Said helicopter is too busy searching the river to notice me. My future co-defendant discovers an open maintenance hatch on one of the corner pillars and climbs inside, beckoning me after him.  Having no better idea, I follow. I begin closing the grate behind me when visions of being trapped in the tower and dying of dehydration stall my hand. I leave it cracked.

We descended a quarter of the way to the road surface and then tucked in behind the ladder, blending in to the walls.  Having exhausted all other options, I prayed while we listened to the officers climb the tower, their metal carabiners clanking off every railing as they make their way up.  There was a moment where I thought we'd succeeded. We heard the officers joking, claiming that we disappeared... but then one asked the fateful words "Did you check the towers?" "Nah, they're all locked" "That one isn't." I should have let us starve to death.  An officer poked his head in, shone his flashlight down, and pulled back. I was finally exhaling when a new sun ignited at the top of the tube, followed by a pause, then "GET OUT HERE NOW, ASSHOLES. BOTH OF YOU."  Apparently someone had a better flashlight.

We emerge to a crowd of amused cops, with our spotter - still apoplectic- offering to escort us down nicely or throw us off the edge. We know he's not going to do that, he knows he's not going to do that, but we humor the officer and request the option involving stairs.  They only have one harness so I'm forced to walk down the stairs backwards as a sort of manwich between two officers, both of whom are torn between admiring the view and bemoaning our stupidity.

Back at street-level we were unceremoniously lifted over the railing - because obviously, a railing would be too difficult to climb. We were then put on our knees and cuffed to wait for yet more cruisers to arrive, driven up the sidewalk.  To our surprise, we were placed in the same car, unsupervised. I guess they figure they have us pretty dead-to-rights on this one. To be fair, they did. We briefly made sure our stories line up (this was the only thing we did tonight), and then cracked weak jokes to keep tensions low.

At the precinct we were searched, lost all our gear, money, belts, and shoe-laces, and were taken individually to be questioned by both the local police and Homeland Security. (Example questions: "Who asked you to take pictures of the bridge?" "Which organization are you affiliated with?"). After they decided that we were harmless idiots and not searching for structural weakpoints they sent us back to lockup where we waited for the police to argue about jurisdiction. Manhattan declared that since we were on the Brooklyn side of the bridge and over Brooklyn-bound lanes, we weren't their problem. Unfortunately, Brooklyn didn't decide we weren't their problem either, and instead set about seeing what charges they could come up with. Last we heard that night, they were considering Felony Assault on an Officer - because said officer suffered heat-stroke after 7 flights. Then they searched me again, found half a grand bail money in my shoes, and patted down both my legs. To this day [still] I am amazed they never felt the memory cards in my sock despite grabbing my ankles. Later, my new roommates advised me I should have "cheeked it."

In the morning we were driven to central processing, where we were fingerprinted (again), mugshot (again), and retinal-scanned for good measure. We spent the day bouncing between different holding cells, sleeping and talking to the various other arrestees, who referred to us as the "ganster-ass white n-----s." At the end of the day we went to bed on a cement floor, in a room where there were neither sufficient mats nor floorspace.

[I'm going to take this moment to retell my favorite story from processing. The novelty had worn off by now, boredom had set in, and it was just a matter of surviving until the next step. Lunch consisted of cheese sandwiches. Two slices of wonder bread, one slice of cheese, and mayo. I declined.  One of our cellmates was a hard beefcake of a tatted-up gangster with scars across his face, clearly used to this situation, and he was using his cheese sandwich as a pillow. I saw it, nearly laughed, and turned away to regain my composure. After convincing myself it wasn't funny I glanced his way again, and almost lost it again. After a few minutes of promising myself it was definitely not funny I finally looked his way a third time, coughed severely to suppress laughter and presumably violence, and looked the opposite way for an entire hour until our next shuffle.]

The next morning we spoke to our public defenders. We were facing charges of criminal trespass, criminal mischief, misdemeanor reckless endangerment, and  - the big one - felony reckless endangerment.  After more waiting we had a bail hearing where our lawyers said great things about how responsible we usually are and how we would definitely come back for our trial, the prosecutor asked for several thousand in bail, and the judge declined to give it to him! Thirty-three hours after we stepped into the cop car we were finally free to go.

We went back to the precinct building to pick up our car keys and licenses. Which we were told required photo ID.  Lacking said photo-ID (which they had confiscated), we could wait for the arresting officer, who wouldn't be in till midnight at the earliest. It was 11am. I was furious. Why did they fingerprint me, take multiple mug shots, and scan my retinas if they couldn't use those to figure out who I was? I felt inclined to do various things that, legally, I shouldn't mention here. Instead, I had my first meal in days. It was wonderful, and afterwards I felt much less arsony.  I spent the afternoon napping in a church until a friend got off work- which meant I could finally shower, look myself up on news websites, and sleep somewhere soft. Eventually, I traded my property receipts for my car keys and headed home.

Over the next seven months I took 4 more trips into the city for court dates. The first was the grand jury hearing, where my peers would decide whether to pursue the felony charges. At the last minute I was reassigned a different court room, and after hours of hearing other cases the judge called me forward. The prosecutor said the felony charges were "completely baseless," dropped them, and it was all over in less than a minute.  All of the court dates followed a similar pattern: hours of waiting followed by a brief "yes ma'am understood ma'am" as the judge and my assigned lawyer decided what to do with me. After additional trips to the city I eventually got my shoe-money and camera gear back, although (well over a year [decade] out now), there is still no record for the rest of the confiscated property.

Overall, I'd say it was worth it. I set out to make my life interesting, and even if it wasn't the intended method, it was a success. I had to do 70 hours of community service, in return for which they offered a suspended sentence on all the charges.  My public defender negotiated a change to "Violation Disorderly Conduct" with a punishment of Time Served.  So the only thing on my record is a non-criminal offense, and if I get arrested again the original charges won't come back to bite me.