My comment about Hetch Hetchy being more peaceful on the Memorial Day weekend than Yosemite Valley provoked a comment chiding me for not supporting restoration of the Hetch Hetchy to its origianl, pre-damming condition. I had no idea that anyone was proposing restoration of that flooded valley, but learned with a bit of internet research that an organization called "Restore Hetch Hetchy" is proposing exactly that. It's an interesting idea. Check out their website (find it by serching one the organization's name).
Marc and I finished his week here by climbing Munginella and making an attempt on Royal Arches. I managed to turn the relatively tame Munginella (3 pitch, 5.6) into something of an adventure. After Marc led the first pitch without incident, I started up pitch two as a thunderstorm threatened. Not content to climb the obvious corner, I headed right to have a look around an arete. As I got twenty or thirty feet up, it started to sprinkle. I realized I was off route, but I spotted a bolt and two rivets on the arete above me. I decided I had a better chance of beating the hard rain to the top if I kept on up the arete than if I took the time to go down and get back on route. So, up I went.
I'll just get up and clip that first rivet. Hmmm. This is pretty thin. Ahh. There's the rivet; got it clipped; that's better. But its still might thin on this arete, and the raindrops aren't helping the friction on these smears. But here's the bolt. That's solid. Now for the last rivet, Got it; but now where do I go? No more pro above, better traverse left to that big crack. This is a bit thin, but then I am Traverso Man. Yep, there is the crack, nice big cam goes right in. Whew! Its getting wetter and wetter; I better get this rope up to the top before things get too slippery to climb. Those cracks at the top look good. I'll head for them and combine pitches two and three.
I got up to the cracks (nice 5.7 hand ones), but the rope drag created by clipping the bolts and rivets on the extreme right edge of the face and then putting that cam into that crack at the left edge is horrendous! I can barely pull the rope up. And it's really raining hard now, making the hand cracks very slippery. I decide it's time for some imprompt aid (aka French Free). I plug a cam into a crack, clip myself to it, lean back, and pull for all I am worth to get 4 feet of slack so I can make a second, higher placement. As the rain pours down, the second cam goes in and I repeat the process, achieving another 4 or 5 feet of slack. I fumble a bit and then get the third and final cam in. Using my legs to lift, I get just enough additional slack to top out and sling a tree. I'm up, but very wet and cold. Looking down, I notice that Marc has found and donned the rain jacket I brought along in our pack. Well, no point in both of us getting hypo thermia.
After a bit of discussion as to whether Marc should follow me up or I should try to rap back to him, Marc heads up. I am surprised at how quickly he is able to climb the very thin arete, which is now running with water. He explans that some tugs on the draws I had attached to the rivets and bolts helped his progress. He soon joins me at the top and we make haste down the walk off as the rain starts to let up.
The next day, Marc's last in the Valley, we get up at 4:30 am to attempt Royal Arches (5.7, 15 pitches). We make it slightly less than half way up before the buildiing thunderheads persuade us that we sould rap off. it's a fun climb and I really want to go back and finish it.
The partner I had lined up for the next few days had car trouble and had to bail.
So I did some touring about and a bit of solo aid practice. My aid skills are really improving.
Valerie flew into SF and she and I drove back to the Valley yesterday. Ezzie's alternator cdrapped out near Sonora. Fortunately, witrh the help of a spare battery we limped far enough to find an auto parts store that sold us a replacement. We installed it in the parking lot, with some help from two mechanics who were passing by and hlep us get the serpentine belt back on. Ezzie ran great the rest of the trip.
While I was gone there was a pretty good storm in the Park, with enough snow to shut Tioga Pass briefly and turn the ground white at Crane Flat (6000 feet). The floor of our tent got wet, so I bought a tarp to cover it. I had a good time showing Valerie the Valley and taking pictures of the sights. Today was cold and cloudy with afternoon rain. We managed to do some top roping in the morning, including a couple of tough cracks (5.8/5.9??). This afternoon in light rain we practiced aid on the overhanging LeConte boulder. Val was a star, sending her first aid route in fine style!
Showing posts with label Valerie. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Valerie. Show all posts
Saturday, June 6, 2009
Thursday, February 19, 2009
The Remorseless Old Foe
Wolfeboro, NH. February 15. 2009. The bedroom is dark. My sister’s house, quiet. The big red digits on the night table read “2:00 am.” My wife Lois lies next to me, breathing regularly. I don’t have to get up for two more hours, but I am too excited to sleep. Today is the day! The day my younger daughter Valerie (23) and I are to attempt to climb Mount Washington. As I lie in the dark, I think.
Returning to climbing after a 35-40 year layoff has gotten me to thinking about time and what its passage means. For physicists it’s the fourth dimension, but a peculiar one in which we can travel in only one direction and cannot (at least in a low-speed Newtonian world) affect the rate at which we go through it. I know a ballad in which time is “that remorseless old foe” that robs us of youth and strength, inexorably leading us to our graves. I am still the same person with the same legs and feet who in the 1960s could run a mile in 4 minutes and 30 seconds and climb Mount Rainier without bothering with rest steps. But time has, without my consent or choice, changed me. Now I am happy to run 12 minute mile pace on the tread mill in the gym and the rest step is my salvation on even modest hills. Still, I have been repeatedly surprised at how much climbing I have been able to do in the last two years. This attempt to make a winter ascent of Washington will test again how just how much I can still do.
In one sense, this climb had its genesis at Thanksgiving just past. Lois, Valerie, our older daughter Karen and I spent the holiday visiting my 97 year old mother in New Hampshire. We took one afternoon to drive up to Pinkham Notch where we walked about a half mile up the Tuckerman ravine trail and then stopped in the AMC lodge. As I wandered around, checking out the weather reports and books for sale, Valerie studied the large molded relief map of the Mount Washington and the Presidential Range. The map shows not only the configuration of the range but also the locations of every one of the more than 150+ deaths that have occurred there, most on Mount Washington itself.
Valerie came over to me. “How hard is it to climb Mount Washington?” I told her that in summer it is just a long uphill hike as long as the weather is good. But she explained, “No, I want to climb it in winter.” Before I had time to think that idea through sensibly, I offered to do the climb with her. She enthusiastically accepted.
I soon began to wonder if I were physically up to the climb. Would that remorseless old foe let me do it? As described here in an earlier post, I conducted a test climb part way up with acceptable results. Val reassured me that I was underrating my own toughness. “You’re forgetting the grit factor, Dad. You’re the best I know at ignoring physical pain. You’ll be fine.” I still had my doubts.
In a second sense, this trip, or at least its meaning for me, had its routes in my childhood in the 1950s. My sister and I spent most of each summer with my mother at the cabin she had built with her own hands on the shore of New Hampshire’s Lake Winnipesaukee. My father joined us for his two-week vacation from the plastics factory. There were pine woods to play in, a lake for swimming and boating, and nearby hills to hike. It was during those summers that my mother taught me how to swim, to swing an ax, to build a campfire (even when the wood was wet), to paddle a canoe. It was a time and place for a boy to imagine great things.
And, above it all to excite that imagination hovered Mount Washington, highest peak east of the Mississippi and north of someplace in North Carolina,. The top thousand feet are bare granite. It has the worst weather in the world (they say); the highest wind speed ever recorded on the face of the planet occurred there. It has a cog railroad to its summit; my Dad, whom time claimed 5 years ago, told of hiking up the tracks when he was a boy. As of about 1960, over 50 people had died trying to climb it.
I didn’t get the chance to try until I was 14 years old. That summer, on a trip from summer camp, I hiked the Presidential Range from North to South. The day we traversed Washington was bright blue, sunny and warm. It was the best place I had ever been, high up among the crags where I could look down on the rocky bones of the earth covered in all but a few places by a blanket of trees. I fell in love. I wanted to climb mountains, big ones. In later years I climbed Washington quite a few more times (several in winter), and took trips West to climb the Grand Teton, Mt. Rainier, Longs Peak and a bunch of other mountains. I also climbed rock in the Gunks and Yosemite, and did a little ice climbing (we cut steps).
But by the early 70s I had gotten busy with law school and then my legal career. I stopped climbing and for almost 35 years ate and drank too much and exercised far too little. I got seriously out of shape. In the mid 90s, when I was in my forties, Lois and I took Karen and Valerie up Mount Washington via the cog railroad. I remember looking out the window of the train at backpackers making their way to the summit and thinking, “I’ll never be able to do that again.” I had surrendered to the old foe without a fight. Even though Karen inspired me to get back into rock climbing two years ago, I have remained unpersuaded that I have the aerobic endurance to climb a real mountain. Washington in winter would make a good test.
I look again at the clock; it’s 3:58 am. I get up and turn off the alarm before it wakes Lois. I pull on my clothes and hear Valerie moving around in the next room, getting ready too. Downstairs I flip on the coffee maker; heat the Gatorade and fill the water bottles. We finish stuffing gear in our packs and climb into Ezzie the minivan. Val drives because, as she says, “Dad, you drive too slow in the morning when you’re trying to wake up. If we want to stay on schedule, we need me to drive.” She gets us to Pinkham Notch at 6 am, right on schedule despite my repeated warnings about the speed traps I imagine the local constabulary have set just to delay us. Our schedule is to make the summit by 12:30 pm. At 1 pm we will turn around and head down even if we have not reached the top.
From Pinkham our route heads up the Tuckerman Ravine trail, a narrow bumpy dirt road that is covered with packed snow frosted with a layer of dry, squeaky powder. We plan to follow the Tuck trail until its junction with the Lions Head Winter Trail about a mile and thre quarters ahead. From there we will follow the latter trail to tree line and then climb west along the Lions Head ridge, cross the Alpine Meadow, and turn toward the north to ascend the cone. The elevation at Pinkham is 2000 feet above sea level; that at the summit, 6288 feet. We have a climb of almost 4300 vertical feet in front of us.
At about 6:30 am, just as the light of day is beginning to improve visibility, we set out, stopping briefly to take pictures of each other at the beginning of the trail where a sign displays the level of avalanche danger ahead. As the light strengthens we see around us a beautiful day. The powder snow covering the ground and clinging to the trees is pure white. The sky is above us is blue, with a few clouds near the tops of the surrounding hills. Our crampons squeak in the dry powder as we walk.
I had stressed to Valerie that the secret to staying warm in the mountains in the winter is not to get hot and sweaty. I start with three thin layers, she with five. Ten minutes up the trail I persuade her to shed one. I had also explained that while I thought I could do this climb, I was going to have to set a slow steady pace, with the emphasis on slow. So we walk slowly and soon are passed by two groups that had started just after us: a couple and a ten person group from New Hampshire College.
Despite our slow pace, after an hour or so we catch up to the college group for the first of several times. They are taking a break and we decide to do the same, being sure to eat and drink to keep our energy and hydration up. Another half hour of steady walking brings us to the beginning of the winter Lions Head trail. There is also summer trail, but it is too prone to avalanches for acceptably safe winter use.
I tell Valerie, “This is where the fun begins. It’s going to be the steepest part of the climb.” True, but it starts harmlessly enough as a path through a quiet world of snow covered fir trees. Shortly though it starts to climb. Soon we are using the French flat foot technique I taught Valerie a couple of days before. One walks sideways up the hill, crossing one foot over the other and using the ice ax on the uphill side for balance. We are moving well until we came to the steepest section, where we catch up with the college group again. Some of their members are having trouble negotiating what they describe as very steep ice covered with powder snow. I’m glad that I included a little technical ice climbing in Valerie’s training. When our turn comes, we have no problem front pointing up the ice using our axes and some handy tree routes for hand holds. After a little less than an hour on this steep stuff, we come to tree line.
The wind, which had not been much of a factor while we were in the trees, is blowing quite briskly here. The sky above us is still clear, but there are clouds sitting on the summit. They worry me a bit. I tell Valerie, “Welcome to Mount Washington in winter.” To myself I think, “It’s just the same as it was back in 1965.” Yes, I can be the same person in the same three-dimensionsal spot as I was years ago. But the passage of time, or my travel through it, means it's not the same at all. What is time that it can separate me from my younger self and from the memory of a place in which I am standing?
We snack again and put on our alpine gear: balaclavas with face masks, dark glasses, wind shells and hoods. Conditions don’t seem severe enough to warrant our Gore-Tex wind pants. I had worried about the snow conditions above tree line. Will the powder snow have collected in deep drifts that will slow our progress? But the footing seems fine, hard packed snow and occasional ice. I take a compass reading and check to see if my GPS device (my best Christmas present – thanks Lois) is working and fixing on the right waypoints. It is. I remind Val to keep looking back to fix the descent route in her mind, and we start up.
In less time than I had anticipated, we climb to the summit of Lions Head, a small rock outcrop with great view into Tuckerman Ravine. We take a few pictures and push on across the Alpine Meadow. The wind is blowing hard here, but not so that we can’t talk to each other. The hand signals we had agreed on the night before aren’t needed. At one point the trail gets quite icy and runs near the edge of Tuckerman ravine. I worry that Val might get blown off her feet and over the edge. I point out to her that neither of us wants to fall down that way. She says nothing, but is probably thinking, “Gee Dad. I sure am glad you mentioned that. I was just about to jump over the edge. Good thing I brought you along.” I also check her face for frostbite several times and remind her to keep her nose covered. At this point I am very anxious to make the summit and don’t want to have to turn back because my daughter’s nose is frozen. A better father might worry about his daughter’s nose; I worry about making the summit.
We come to some a steep snowfield. As I lead up, I am briefly transported to back Mount Rainier in 1968. I use my feet to kick steps into the snow and my ice ax for balance on the uphill side just as I had then. For a monument I have travelled backwards through that fourth dimension. But just as quickly I am back on Mount Washington, stopping to catch my breath as other parties climb past this tired old man.
By the time we start up the cone proper, the clouds have lifted off the summit and it is, at least temporarily, that much sought after thing: a bluebird day. I turn to Valerie and say, “You know, we are going to make it.” And we do. The last quarter of a mile is hard for me. I think the altitude is finally starting to affect me, so I set an even slower pace. But at 11:24 am we climb onto the summit of Mount Washington; Valerie for the first time, I for the first time in 40 years. The wind is blowing about 30-40 mph. The temperature is +8 F. The sky is bright blue and the snow is white. There are no other colors. We put on our puffy jackets (mine a relic from the 60s) and find a friendly climber to take pictures of us by the summit sign. In the lee of a building, we eat and drink again and then head down.
It takes us three hours to make the descent. It’s easier on the heart and lungs than the climb, but much harder on the knee and ankle points. At Lions Head we walk down into the clouds. It's 1:00 pm and people are still coming up in the fog. They are less scared of this mountain than I. We arrive at the bottom almost simultaneously with the college group. I am tired and beat up, but happy. The old man actually climbed Mount Washington in winter! The remorseless foe had a bad day. Valerie is tired, but not as much as I, and much less beat up. She is trying to persuade me to take her and Karen out for some technical ice tomorrow. I am thinking about a hot bath and bed.
At some point on the ride back to Wolfeboro (Val drove again) I talked about time, how its passage changes some things and doesn’t change others. I have known Valerie since she was born 23 ½ years ago; I hope to know her for another 20 or more. For all of that time, each of us has been and will remain at core the same person. But our-one way trips through time have changed not only our physical attributes, but also our relationship. When Valerie was three, I was in charge and she, dependent and physically limited. I made her angry then by refusing to take her on a hike up a small hill called Mount Major. I didn’t think she was old enough to make a trip I and her older sister Karen could do. Val still remembers and resents my refusal. In a few years she will be visiting me, likely in a nursing home, and will have to help me get in and out of bed. She will be the capable one, the one in charge, and I will be the dependent one. Time will have made all the difference. But our trajectories through time allowed us, on this day, February 15, 2009, to be climbing partners both able to make a winter ascent of Mount Washington as a team. I am so very grateful.
Returning to climbing after a 35-40 year layoff has gotten me to thinking about time and what its passage means. For physicists it’s the fourth dimension, but a peculiar one in which we can travel in only one direction and cannot (at least in a low-speed Newtonian world) affect the rate at which we go through it. I know a ballad in which time is “that remorseless old foe” that robs us of youth and strength, inexorably leading us to our graves. I am still the same person with the same legs and feet who in the 1960s could run a mile in 4 minutes and 30 seconds and climb Mount Rainier without bothering with rest steps. But time has, without my consent or choice, changed me. Now I am happy to run 12 minute mile pace on the tread mill in the gym and the rest step is my salvation on even modest hills. Still, I have been repeatedly surprised at how much climbing I have been able to do in the last two years. This attempt to make a winter ascent of Washington will test again how just how much I can still do.
In one sense, this climb had its genesis at Thanksgiving just past. Lois, Valerie, our older daughter Karen and I spent the holiday visiting my 97 year old mother in New Hampshire. We took one afternoon to drive up to Pinkham Notch where we walked about a half mile up the Tuckerman ravine trail and then stopped in the AMC lodge. As I wandered around, checking out the weather reports and books for sale, Valerie studied the large molded relief map of the Mount Washington and the Presidential Range. The map shows not only the configuration of the range but also the locations of every one of the more than 150+ deaths that have occurred there, most on Mount Washington itself.
Valerie came over to me. “How hard is it to climb Mount Washington?” I told her that in summer it is just a long uphill hike as long as the weather is good. But she explained, “No, I want to climb it in winter.” Before I had time to think that idea through sensibly, I offered to do the climb with her. She enthusiastically accepted.
I soon began to wonder if I were physically up to the climb. Would that remorseless old foe let me do it? As described here in an earlier post, I conducted a test climb part way up with acceptable results. Val reassured me that I was underrating my own toughness. “You’re forgetting the grit factor, Dad. You’re the best I know at ignoring physical pain. You’ll be fine.” I still had my doubts.
In a second sense, this trip, or at least its meaning for me, had its routes in my childhood in the 1950s. My sister and I spent most of each summer with my mother at the cabin she had built with her own hands on the shore of New Hampshire’s Lake Winnipesaukee. My father joined us for his two-week vacation from the plastics factory. There were pine woods to play in, a lake for swimming and boating, and nearby hills to hike. It was during those summers that my mother taught me how to swim, to swing an ax, to build a campfire (even when the wood was wet), to paddle a canoe. It was a time and place for a boy to imagine great things.
And, above it all to excite that imagination hovered Mount Washington, highest peak east of the Mississippi and north of someplace in North Carolina,. The top thousand feet are bare granite. It has the worst weather in the world (they say); the highest wind speed ever recorded on the face of the planet occurred there. It has a cog railroad to its summit; my Dad, whom time claimed 5 years ago, told of hiking up the tracks when he was a boy. As of about 1960, over 50 people had died trying to climb it.
I didn’t get the chance to try until I was 14 years old. That summer, on a trip from summer camp, I hiked the Presidential Range from North to South. The day we traversed Washington was bright blue, sunny and warm. It was the best place I had ever been, high up among the crags where I could look down on the rocky bones of the earth covered in all but a few places by a blanket of trees. I fell in love. I wanted to climb mountains, big ones. In later years I climbed Washington quite a few more times (several in winter), and took trips West to climb the Grand Teton, Mt. Rainier, Longs Peak and a bunch of other mountains. I also climbed rock in the Gunks and Yosemite, and did a little ice climbing (we cut steps).
But by the early 70s I had gotten busy with law school and then my legal career. I stopped climbing and for almost 35 years ate and drank too much and exercised far too little. I got seriously out of shape. In the mid 90s, when I was in my forties, Lois and I took Karen and Valerie up Mount Washington via the cog railroad. I remember looking out the window of the train at backpackers making their way to the summit and thinking, “I’ll never be able to do that again.” I had surrendered to the old foe without a fight. Even though Karen inspired me to get back into rock climbing two years ago, I have remained unpersuaded that I have the aerobic endurance to climb a real mountain. Washington in winter would make a good test.
I look again at the clock; it’s 3:58 am. I get up and turn off the alarm before it wakes Lois. I pull on my clothes and hear Valerie moving around in the next room, getting ready too. Downstairs I flip on the coffee maker; heat the Gatorade and fill the water bottles. We finish stuffing gear in our packs and climb into Ezzie the minivan. Val drives because, as she says, “Dad, you drive too slow in the morning when you’re trying to wake up. If we want to stay on schedule, we need me to drive.” She gets us to Pinkham Notch at 6 am, right on schedule despite my repeated warnings about the speed traps I imagine the local constabulary have set just to delay us. Our schedule is to make the summit by 12:30 pm. At 1 pm we will turn around and head down even if we have not reached the top.
From Pinkham our route heads up the Tuckerman Ravine trail, a narrow bumpy dirt road that is covered with packed snow frosted with a layer of dry, squeaky powder. We plan to follow the Tuck trail until its junction with the Lions Head Winter Trail about a mile and thre quarters ahead. From there we will follow the latter trail to tree line and then climb west along the Lions Head ridge, cross the Alpine Meadow, and turn toward the north to ascend the cone. The elevation at Pinkham is 2000 feet above sea level; that at the summit, 6288 feet. We have a climb of almost 4300 vertical feet in front of us.
At about 6:30 am, just as the light of day is beginning to improve visibility, we set out, stopping briefly to take pictures of each other at the beginning of the trail where a sign displays the level of avalanche danger ahead. As the light strengthens we see around us a beautiful day. The powder snow covering the ground and clinging to the trees is pure white. The sky is above us is blue, with a few clouds near the tops of the surrounding hills. Our crampons squeak in the dry powder as we walk.
I had stressed to Valerie that the secret to staying warm in the mountains in the winter is not to get hot and sweaty. I start with three thin layers, she with five. Ten minutes up the trail I persuade her to shed one. I had also explained that while I thought I could do this climb, I was going to have to set a slow steady pace, with the emphasis on slow. So we walk slowly and soon are passed by two groups that had started just after us: a couple and a ten person group from New Hampshire College.
Despite our slow pace, after an hour or so we catch up to the college group for the first of several times. They are taking a break and we decide to do the same, being sure to eat and drink to keep our energy and hydration up. Another half hour of steady walking brings us to the beginning of the winter Lions Head trail. There is also summer trail, but it is too prone to avalanches for acceptably safe winter use.
I tell Valerie, “This is where the fun begins. It’s going to be the steepest part of the climb.” True, but it starts harmlessly enough as a path through a quiet world of snow covered fir trees. Shortly though it starts to climb. Soon we are using the French flat foot technique I taught Valerie a couple of days before. One walks sideways up the hill, crossing one foot over the other and using the ice ax on the uphill side for balance. We are moving well until we came to the steepest section, where we catch up with the college group again. Some of their members are having trouble negotiating what they describe as very steep ice covered with powder snow. I’m glad that I included a little technical ice climbing in Valerie’s training. When our turn comes, we have no problem front pointing up the ice using our axes and some handy tree routes for hand holds. After a little less than an hour on this steep stuff, we come to tree line.
The wind, which had not been much of a factor while we were in the trees, is blowing quite briskly here. The sky above us is still clear, but there are clouds sitting on the summit. They worry me a bit. I tell Valerie, “Welcome to Mount Washington in winter.” To myself I think, “It’s just the same as it was back in 1965.” Yes, I can be the same person in the same three-dimensionsal spot as I was years ago. But the passage of time, or my travel through it, means it's not the same at all. What is time that it can separate me from my younger self and from the memory of a place in which I am standing?
We snack again and put on our alpine gear: balaclavas with face masks, dark glasses, wind shells and hoods. Conditions don’t seem severe enough to warrant our Gore-Tex wind pants. I had worried about the snow conditions above tree line. Will the powder snow have collected in deep drifts that will slow our progress? But the footing seems fine, hard packed snow and occasional ice. I take a compass reading and check to see if my GPS device (my best Christmas present – thanks Lois) is working and fixing on the right waypoints. It is. I remind Val to keep looking back to fix the descent route in her mind, and we start up.
In less time than I had anticipated, we climb to the summit of Lions Head, a small rock outcrop with great view into Tuckerman Ravine. We take a few pictures and push on across the Alpine Meadow. The wind is blowing hard here, but not so that we can’t talk to each other. The hand signals we had agreed on the night before aren’t needed. At one point the trail gets quite icy and runs near the edge of Tuckerman ravine. I worry that Val might get blown off her feet and over the edge. I point out to her that neither of us wants to fall down that way. She says nothing, but is probably thinking, “Gee Dad. I sure am glad you mentioned that. I was just about to jump over the edge. Good thing I brought you along.” I also check her face for frostbite several times and remind her to keep her nose covered. At this point I am very anxious to make the summit and don’t want to have to turn back because my daughter’s nose is frozen. A better father might worry about his daughter’s nose; I worry about making the summit.
We come to some a steep snowfield. As I lead up, I am briefly transported to back Mount Rainier in 1968. I use my feet to kick steps into the snow and my ice ax for balance on the uphill side just as I had then. For a monument I have travelled backwards through that fourth dimension. But just as quickly I am back on Mount Washington, stopping to catch my breath as other parties climb past this tired old man.
By the time we start up the cone proper, the clouds have lifted off the summit and it is, at least temporarily, that much sought after thing: a bluebird day. I turn to Valerie and say, “You know, we are going to make it.” And we do. The last quarter of a mile is hard for me. I think the altitude is finally starting to affect me, so I set an even slower pace. But at 11:24 am we climb onto the summit of Mount Washington; Valerie for the first time, I for the first time in 40 years. The wind is blowing about 30-40 mph. The temperature is +8 F. The sky is bright blue and the snow is white. There are no other colors. We put on our puffy jackets (mine a relic from the 60s) and find a friendly climber to take pictures of us by the summit sign. In the lee of a building, we eat and drink again and then head down.
It takes us three hours to make the descent. It’s easier on the heart and lungs than the climb, but much harder on the knee and ankle points. At Lions Head we walk down into the clouds. It's 1:00 pm and people are still coming up in the fog. They are less scared of this mountain than I. We arrive at the bottom almost simultaneously with the college group. I am tired and beat up, but happy. The old man actually climbed Mount Washington in winter! The remorseless foe had a bad day. Valerie is tired, but not as much as I, and much less beat up. She is trying to persuade me to take her and Karen out for some technical ice tomorrow. I am thinking about a hot bath and bed.
At some point on the ride back to Wolfeboro (Val drove again) I talked about time, how its passage changes some things and doesn’t change others. I have known Valerie since she was born 23 ½ years ago; I hope to know her for another 20 or more. For all of that time, each of us has been and will remain at core the same person. But our-one way trips through time have changed not only our physical attributes, but also our relationship. When Valerie was three, I was in charge and she, dependent and physically limited. I made her angry then by refusing to take her on a hike up a small hill called Mount Major. I didn’t think she was old enough to make a trip I and her older sister Karen could do. Val still remembers and resents my refusal. In a few years she will be visiting me, likely in a nursing home, and will have to help me get in and out of bed. She will be the capable one, the one in charge, and I will be the dependent one. Time will have made all the difference. But our trajectories through time allowed us, on this day, February 15, 2009, to be climbing partners both able to make a winter ascent of Mount Washington as a team. I am so very grateful.
Sunday, January 25, 2009
Valerie's Climb
Valerie wants to climb New Hampshire's Mount Washington in winter. She's my younger daughter (23) and a fine athlete, although not really climber. I think she has fastened on this goal because it's hard. Mount Washington is only 6288 feet tall, but it is renowned for fierce winds, low temps and terrible storms. This morning I checked the web site for the summit weather station; the conditions are typical: temperature -11 F., wind 60 mph from the west, wind chill -47 F. Atypically, it is one of those rare days when the summit is not socked in with freezing fog.
In a rash moment, I told Valerie I would do the climb with her. I climbed to the summit (these days I guess I am supposed to say I "summited") several times in the '60s, but have not been up there since. As I thought about this little adventure, I began to wonder if I have the strength and stamina to make it up. After all, in 1968 when I was last up there, I could run a mile in 4 minutes and 30 seconds. Yesterday I was happy to finish a three mile run with a burst of 12 minute pace.
I decided a test was in order. Last week, while in NH for ice climbing lessons (see below), I took a day to see how I would do on the mountain. I got my gear together, including my mountaineering ice ax, crampons, warm clothes, balaclava, etc., etc. and set out up the Tuckerman Ravine trail from the AMC Pinkham Notch camp. My sister had considered going with me. But she, poor thing, still has to work for a living, so I wound up going solo. My plan was to hike up the relatively easy Tuckerman trail and then follow the Lions Head winter trail up to tree line at about 4500 feet. I figured that by timing how long it took me to climb to tree line, I could tell if I move fast enough to make the summit and back in a 10 or 11 hour day.
The day was sunny and bright, with the summit predicted to have a high temperature of 6 F., wind at 60 miles an hour, and wind chill -20 to -30 F. A decent day. I started at 9 a.m. and walked slowly up the Tuck trail, stopping occasionally to sip hot Gatorade from my sock enshrouded water bottle. The only other person I saw all day was a hiker who started about a minute before me; he soon disappeared up the trail. By 10:30 a.m. I was at the junction with the Lions Head trail, where I took a short snack break. So far so good.
I followed the Lions Head trail through the woods. In short order it got quite steep. This being the winter Lions Head trail (the summer tail is deemed too prone to avalanches for safe winter use) it has no switchbacks angling across the slope. No. It just goes up! I used the pied a plat or "flat footing" technique I had learned in my ice climbing lessons until the trail got really steep. Then I switched to single-ax front-point technique, which got me nicely through the steepest parts. In reasonably good time I was at tree line, where the wind started to pick up and the light snow left by a recent storm, to blow horizontally. I felt pretty good, so I decided to go on a little farther to see what conditions on the bare, rocky slopes were like. The temperature was probably about 10 F. and the wind blowing at 20-30 mph. I soon pulled my balaclava over my face to protect against frostbite, but felt no need of either my down jacket or wind pants.
After a little less than an hour of slow climbing through drifting snow, I reached a spot about 5000 feet above sea level from which I could see up to the tops of towers on the summit, and down into the magnificent Tuckerman Ravine. I thought about going farther up, but decided it was not a very smart idea to go solo too far above tree line. I checked my watch -- it was 12:30 p.m. -- and headed down.
I glisaded most of the way down the Lion Head Trail, down-climbing only the steepest parts. As I neared the bottom on the Tuckerman Trail, I saw a cute little Pine Martin bounding along in front of me. He was only the second mammal I had seen all day (the first being the hiker who left me in the dust).
The time was 2 p.m. when I arrived at the Pinkham notch camp. The climb from Pinkham at an elevation of 2030 feet to 5000 feet and back had taken me 5 hours, leaving me 6 hours out of an 11 hour climbing day to do the top 1200 feet up and down. The last 1200 feet are without doubt the hardest and slowest, due to the thinner air at 5-6000 feet, much worse footing in drifted snow, and the cold and high wind. But, based on handling the first 3000 feet in 5 hours, I think I can make the rest in less than the remaining 6 hours of my 11 hour day, providing Valerie and I can find a day with decent weather.
I called her and told her the trip is on. We are planning to try the climb in mid-February, after the North Conway Ice Fest I am going to attend. I'll report.
In a rash moment, I told Valerie I would do the climb with her. I climbed to the summit (these days I guess I am supposed to say I "summited") several times in the '60s, but have not been up there since. As I thought about this little adventure, I began to wonder if I have the strength and stamina to make it up. After all, in 1968 when I was last up there, I could run a mile in 4 minutes and 30 seconds. Yesterday I was happy to finish a three mile run with a burst of 12 minute pace.
I decided a test was in order. Last week, while in NH for ice climbing lessons (see below), I took a day to see how I would do on the mountain. I got my gear together, including my mountaineering ice ax, crampons, warm clothes, balaclava, etc., etc. and set out up the Tuckerman Ravine trail from the AMC Pinkham Notch camp. My sister had considered going with me. But she, poor thing, still has to work for a living, so I wound up going solo. My plan was to hike up the relatively easy Tuckerman trail and then follow the Lions Head winter trail up to tree line at about 4500 feet. I figured that by timing how long it took me to climb to tree line, I could tell if I move fast enough to make the summit and back in a 10 or 11 hour day.
The day was sunny and bright, with the summit predicted to have a high temperature of 6 F., wind at 60 miles an hour, and wind chill -20 to -30 F. A decent day. I started at 9 a.m. and walked slowly up the Tuck trail, stopping occasionally to sip hot Gatorade from my sock enshrouded water bottle. The only other person I saw all day was a hiker who started about a minute before me; he soon disappeared up the trail. By 10:30 a.m. I was at the junction with the Lions Head trail, where I took a short snack break. So far so good.
I followed the Lions Head trail through the woods. In short order it got quite steep. This being the winter Lions Head trail (the summer tail is deemed too prone to avalanches for safe winter use) it has no switchbacks angling across the slope. No. It just goes up! I used the pied a plat or "flat footing" technique I had learned in my ice climbing lessons until the trail got really steep. Then I switched to single-ax front-point technique, which got me nicely through the steepest parts. In reasonably good time I was at tree line, where the wind started to pick up and the light snow left by a recent storm, to blow horizontally. I felt pretty good, so I decided to go on a little farther to see what conditions on the bare, rocky slopes were like. The temperature was probably about 10 F. and the wind blowing at 20-30 mph. I soon pulled my balaclava over my face to protect against frostbite, but felt no need of either my down jacket or wind pants.
After a little less than an hour of slow climbing through drifting snow, I reached a spot about 5000 feet above sea level from which I could see up to the tops of towers on the summit, and down into the magnificent Tuckerman Ravine. I thought about going farther up, but decided it was not a very smart idea to go solo too far above tree line. I checked my watch -- it was 12:30 p.m. -- and headed down.
I glisaded most of the way down the Lion Head Trail, down-climbing only the steepest parts. As I neared the bottom on the Tuckerman Trail, I saw a cute little Pine Martin bounding along in front of me. He was only the second mammal I had seen all day (the first being the hiker who left me in the dust).
The time was 2 p.m. when I arrived at the Pinkham notch camp. The climb from Pinkham at an elevation of 2030 feet to 5000 feet and back had taken me 5 hours, leaving me 6 hours out of an 11 hour climbing day to do the top 1200 feet up and down. The last 1200 feet are without doubt the hardest and slowest, due to the thinner air at 5-6000 feet, much worse footing in drifted snow, and the cold and high wind. But, based on handling the first 3000 feet in 5 hours, I think I can make the rest in less than the remaining 6 hours of my 11 hour day, providing Valerie and I can find a day with decent weather.
I called her and told her the trip is on. We are planning to try the climb in mid-February, after the North Conway Ice Fest I am going to attend. I'll report.
Sunday, February 17, 2008
Johnny Vegas
Wednesday night, my first in Red Rock, was cold and windy. To paraphrase an old Irish/Australian song,
Someone later told me that winds of 78 miles an hour were recorded near here. My expedition parka barely kept me warm as I heated canned stew over my Coleman stove. I retreated quickly into Ezzy and spent a fitful night listening to the wind and feeling my little “home” lurch and rock as the gusts hit her. Next morning, I asked three climbers how it had been spending the night in tents. Two tried to put a good face on it saying it had been “OK.” The third just said, “It sucked.” What was it about this trip that had seemed to me like a good idea?
Despite the wind and still cold temps, I set out Thursday morning to hike in to the base of Johnny Vegas, a four pitch 5.7 that gets three stars in the Hendren guide.
Marc, a local climber I had met through MountainProject.com., and I planned to do it on Saturday. It would be my first Red Rock climb. I had been warned that the approaches and descents at RR can be hard to follow, so I thought I would prove to myself I could navigate around the place. And, I might try the first moves on Johnny just to bolster my climbing confidence.
Well, the expedition can best be described as a fiasco. I managed to lose my new guidebook, strain a muscle in my left calf, and bushwack around for several hours without finding the route. That night, despite somewhat diminishing winds, I was wondering if, maybe, I should just turn Ezzy around and head back east. I persevered, though, and spent Friday getting clean and nursing my injured leg. Saturday morning at 7:30, I met Marc. Fortunately, he knows the approach route, so we headed out to JV.
It was wonderful! Given my injury and misadventures two days before, I asked Marc to do the leading while I “Got used to the rock here.” He agreed. As I followed the second pitch, it hit me: this is just terrific! The sky was bright blue, the sun warm, the rock solid and clean, and the climbing pretty easy. I was ginning, thrilled to be a few hundred feet off the ground, surrounded by gorgeous cliffs and peaks (photos coming when I get back home), with my hands and shoes on the rock. While we were transferring gear on the second belay ledge, my cell phone (which I had forgotten to turn off) rang. It was my daughter Valerie calling to tell me she had read my blog. That was a first for me!
We finished JV without further phone calls or incident (except for repeated exclamations from me about how “wonderful” it all was), and continued on up the first pitch of Solar Slab, which I lead.
We rapped off down Solar Slab Gully, a popular decent route (Gunkies: think Madam G’s, but without the exposure). A party in front of us got their rope stuck, so I rapped down it, and with the aid of a prussic sling, contrived to get it free. In all a wonderful day, one of my best on the rock.
Marc is a great climbing partner, safe and fun. He and I plan to climb again on Monday. Today (Sunday) is rest day for the Old Relic. Gonna take a shower, hit the Laundromat and hope my aches and pains succumb to extra strength aspirin.
Photos from top: Early morning views of the Red Rock Canyons; Approximate route of Johnny Vegas; Bill at the second belay ledge on Johnny V; Bill leading first pitch of solar slab; Marc belaying. All but first three photos courtesy of Marc Jensen.
Twenty-three hundred miles I come,
To freeze my ass like a climbing bum.
Someone later told me that winds of 78 miles an hour were recorded near here. My expedition parka barely kept me warm as I heated canned stew over my Coleman stove. I retreated quickly into Ezzy and spent a fitful night listening to the wind and feeling my little “home” lurch and rock as the gusts hit her. Next morning, I asked three climbers how it had been spending the night in tents. Two tried to put a good face on it saying it had been “OK.” The third just said, “It sucked.” What was it about this trip that had seemed to me like a good idea?
Despite the wind and still cold temps, I set out Thursday morning to hike in to the base of Johnny Vegas, a four pitch 5.7 that gets three stars in the Hendren guide.
Marc, a local climber I had met through MountainProject.com., and I planned to do it on Saturday. It would be my first Red Rock climb. I had been warned that the approaches and descents at RR can be hard to follow, so I thought I would prove to myself I could navigate around the place. And, I might try the first moves on Johnny just to bolster my climbing confidence.
Well, the expedition can best be described as a fiasco. I managed to lose my new guidebook, strain a muscle in my left calf, and bushwack around for several hours without finding the route. That night, despite somewhat diminishing winds, I was wondering if, maybe, I should just turn Ezzy around and head back east. I persevered, though, and spent Friday getting clean and nursing my injured leg. Saturday morning at 7:30, I met Marc. Fortunately, he knows the approach route, so we headed out to JV.
It was wonderful! Given my injury and misadventures two days before, I asked Marc to do the leading while I “Got used to the rock here.” He agreed. As I followed the second pitch, it hit me: this is just terrific! The sky was bright blue, the sun warm, the rock solid and clean, and the climbing pretty easy. I was ginning, thrilled to be a few hundred feet off the ground, surrounded by gorgeous cliffs and peaks (photos coming when I get back home), with my hands and shoes on the rock. While we were transferring gear on the second belay ledge, my cell phone (which I had forgotten to turn off) rang. It was my daughter Valerie calling to tell me she had read my blog. That was a first for me!
We finished JV without further phone calls or incident (except for repeated exclamations from me about how “wonderful” it all was), and continued on up the first pitch of Solar Slab, which I lead.
We rapped off down Solar Slab Gully, a popular decent route (Gunkies: think Madam G’s, but without the exposure). A party in front of us got their rope stuck, so I rapped down it, and with the aid of a prussic sling, contrived to get it free. In all a wonderful day, one of my best on the rock.
Marc is a great climbing partner, safe and fun. He and I plan to climb again on Monday. Today (Sunday) is rest day for the Old Relic. Gonna take a shower, hit the Laundromat and hope my aches and pains succumb to extra strength aspirin.
Photos from top: Early morning views of the Red Rock Canyons; Approximate route of Johnny Vegas; Bill at the second belay ledge on Johnny V; Bill leading first pitch of solar slab; Marc belaying. All but first three photos courtesy of Marc Jensen.
Saturday, January 26, 2008
Silliness at Verizon Center
There appears to be nothing too silly for intermission at an NBA basketball game. If you can imagine it, the Washington Wizards will do it.
I’m 60 years old. My first experiences of professional sporting events came when my Dad and Mom took me and my sister to Yankee Stadium to watch the Bronx Bombers, late 50s – early 60s edition, march through the American League on their way to another World Series victory under the leadership of the Ol’ Perfesser, Casey Stengle. Taking me to those games was a significant sacrifice for my Father. Although we lived in suburban New Jersey, he had grown up in Massachusetts a committed Red Sox fan. He once gave in to my pleas and read me an entire book about the history of the Yankees. But, he so hated the New York team that every time he book used the word “Yankees,” Dad substituted “Oompahs.”
Fine, you say. But, what does this drivel about baseball in the 60s have to do with silliness at NBA games? Read on impatient one, and you shall learn.
Baseball at Yankee Stadium in those days was a solemn affair. The sport was the National Pastime. The Yankees were its Gods. The “House that Ruth Built,” its temple. The grass was green, the stands were grey, and in center field, right there on the playing surface, stood tombstone-like monuments to departed deities: Ruth, Gehrig, DiMaggio. There were no dancing girls, not even any ball-girls. There were the umpires, dressed all in Navy blue as befits any self respecting ump, the grounds crew, the bat boys, and of course the ballplayers. No one else; whom else did we need?
As game time approached, the Yankees would take the field in their ever so dignified uniforms: white with Navy blue pin strips, the reverse of the uniform worn by the Wall Street bankers and lawyers who made up much of their fan base. (The blue collar guys had mostly been fans of the Giants or Dodgers, and were in mourning because those teams had betrayed them for filthy lucher on the West Coast.)
Once the Star Spangled Banner had been sung, the stately tones of Bob Sheppard, the Yankees’ PA announcer, echoed through the half empty stands, “Leading off and playing second base for the Boston Red Sox, Pete Runnels” (or whoever it was). And that was it. No fireworks, fancy introductions, mascot antics, or contests. Just a simple announcement of the name of the first batter. It was, after all, a baseball game we had come to see, not a vaudeville act or a circus.
And what games they were! We saw Mickey Mantle and Roger Maris hit homers in 1961, the year that Maris broke the Babe’s record. Tony Kubeck and Bobby Richardson turned double plays right in front of us. The “little lefthander” Whitey Ford struck men out. One day we sat in the right field stands quite close to where Yogi Berra, on a rest day from catching, was playing the outfield. My sister fell in love with him.
Yesterday, my daughter Valerie took me to a Washington Wizards basketball game. She and I go back to the days when the Wizards were still called the Bullets. When she was a little girl, we sat on a love seat in the kitchen after dinner and watched them play on TV. Those were the days of Juwan Howard, Chris Webber and George Muresan, the ungainly, odd-looking 7 foot 7 inch giant who played center. They had a couple of good seasons, and Val became particularly fond of Big George. We went to occasional games back then; more recently Val has taken me to several Washington Nationals baseball games. These trips have taught me that professional sporting events are no longer the somber, almost holy rituals of my youth. There is a certain amount of “entertainment” in addition to the game itself: the Nationals amuse us with racing Presidential mascots and the like. But nothing prepared me for what I saw and heard at last night’s basketball game.
We got there early. As we took our seats in the almost empty arena (named of course, not for the team, but rather after Verizon, the sponsor that had bought the “naming rights”), the faces of two insufferably perky twenty-somethings, a boy with stylish hair and a grinning blond girl, appeared on the giant TV screen hanging over the court. She was holding a microphone and babbling about the “Parent Makeover.” She had cornered to two reluctant gentlemen and was insisting that they put on various pieces of Wizards apparel (game jerseys, hats, sweats, etc.) and jump around like fools (while being shown on the giant, in-house TV screen) to prove they had as much “Wizard Spirit” as their (probably mortified) children. Neither fellow got into the spirit of it. Whom they had pissed off to deserve this treatment I could not say, but it must have been someone awfully important.
As Val and I were shaking our heads over this spectacle, a flying mini-van appeared! It made a slow circumnavigation of the arena. Then, apparently liking what it saw, continued to take laps. I suppose it was intended to advertize something; geniuses, these admen. But, I mean, what does a flying mini-van have to do with a basketball game? Everything, apparently, because the thing made numerous reappearances during the evening. (If anyone reading this ever meets Ezzy, my mini-van, you must be careful not to mention the flying van. I have enough trouble satisfying her demands to be taken out on the racetrack as a reward for pulling the race car and trailer. I can’t afford to pay for her to learn to fly.) After witnessing this aeronautical marvel, all I could suggest to Val was that we go get something to eat. She agreed, and bought me my dinner.
As we regained our seats, the floor filled with smoke, the lights dimmed, strobes flashed and music thundered. I expected at least the reincarnation of Paul Revere’s horse (apologies to Bob Dylan), if not the Second Coming. I was a tad disappointed when an over–excited voice intoned, “Yooouuurrr Waaashiiiingtoooon Wiiiizaaaards” and 11 tall guys dressed in white underwear trotted out. At least they were wearing the home whites and not the gold shirts with black shorts that make them look like a rec league team.
Just as I was settling down to concentrate on the first quarter action, some fool coach called a timeout, which afforded the blond girl the opportunity to inflict “Smile Cam” on the assembly. She instructed that the fan caught on camera with the “best” smile would be rewarded with a prize. It being “H & R Block Tax Preparation Night” at the old gym (sure glad I didn’t miss that one), the prize would be a certificate to have your taxes done for you. (Nothing about them being paid for you, though. Damn!) So, while several thousand eager taxpayers did their best imitation of Ronald McDonald, the camera panned the stands and projected their hideous grins onto the giant screen. Finally, Blondie picked a winner, he was given his much coveted tax certificate, and the basketball game was permitted to resume.
Next up we had “Dance Cam.” Yeah, it’s what you think. The camera pans the crowd looking for the best dancer, who won some prize or other. That really wasn’t so bad. Some of the kids, at least, looked really cute dancing. A fat guy won the prize. He could make his body go one way and his belly, go the other.
After a brief interruption for basketball, Blondie got back to work. The giant TV showed her shoving the microphone in the face of a big fellow slouching on a couch. It seems this piece of home furnishing is called the “Budweiser couch” (no one should be without one). With the unerring instinct of a Washington Post reporter tracking down a political scandal, Blondie asked the guy, “How did you get to sit on the Budweiser Couch?” She seemed at a loss, however, when all he said in answer was, “Drank a lotta Bud Lite.” A sudden resumption of basketball spared us most of her pained silence.
In the fourth quarter, as the game got close and the tedium of watching the players run, pass, dribble and shoot was becoming more than most in attendance could tolerate, Blondie came again to our rescue. She announced “KISSING CAM.” I wish I were making this up. If I were, I wouldn't make up this part. I'd jsut tell you the fianl score and be done wiith it. But Kisssing Cam really happened. She offered another prize, this one for the couple who did the best kissing while the panning camera was on them. We were treated to pecks on the cheek, decorous kisses on the lips, passionate embraces, and full tongue-in-the-mouth action. A young man and woman, who Blondie said were on their first date (how does she know these things?), refused to kiss at all. But they turned a lovely pink as they sat staring forward for what seemed like an hour with the camera on them. Who won the prize? How could you possibly care?
There was more silliness, but I was too numb to remember it. I do know that the Wizards won, holding off a late rally by the Memphis Grizzlies. And Val and I had a terrific time watching the game, laughing at the “entertainment” and chatting about this and that. Afterwards, she drove me home. I love having adult daughters.
I’m 60 years old. My first experiences of professional sporting events came when my Dad and Mom took me and my sister to Yankee Stadium to watch the Bronx Bombers, late 50s – early 60s edition, march through the American League on their way to another World Series victory under the leadership of the Ol’ Perfesser, Casey Stengle. Taking me to those games was a significant sacrifice for my Father. Although we lived in suburban New Jersey, he had grown up in Massachusetts a committed Red Sox fan. He once gave in to my pleas and read me an entire book about the history of the Yankees. But, he so hated the New York team that every time he book used the word “Yankees,” Dad substituted “Oompahs.”
Fine, you say. But, what does this drivel about baseball in the 60s have to do with silliness at NBA games? Read on impatient one, and you shall learn.
Baseball at Yankee Stadium in those days was a solemn affair. The sport was the National Pastime. The Yankees were its Gods. The “House that Ruth Built,” its temple. The grass was green, the stands were grey, and in center field, right there on the playing surface, stood tombstone-like monuments to departed deities: Ruth, Gehrig, DiMaggio. There were no dancing girls, not even any ball-girls. There were the umpires, dressed all in Navy blue as befits any self respecting ump, the grounds crew, the bat boys, and of course the ballplayers. No one else; whom else did we need?
As game time approached, the Yankees would take the field in their ever so dignified uniforms: white with Navy blue pin strips, the reverse of the uniform worn by the Wall Street bankers and lawyers who made up much of their fan base. (The blue collar guys had mostly been fans of the Giants or Dodgers, and were in mourning because those teams had betrayed them for filthy lucher on the West Coast.)
Once the Star Spangled Banner had been sung, the stately tones of Bob Sheppard, the Yankees’ PA announcer, echoed through the half empty stands, “Leading off and playing second base for the Boston Red Sox, Pete Runnels” (or whoever it was). And that was it. No fireworks, fancy introductions, mascot antics, or contests. Just a simple announcement of the name of the first batter. It was, after all, a baseball game we had come to see, not a vaudeville act or a circus.
And what games they were! We saw Mickey Mantle and Roger Maris hit homers in 1961, the year that Maris broke the Babe’s record. Tony Kubeck and Bobby Richardson turned double plays right in front of us. The “little lefthander” Whitey Ford struck men out. One day we sat in the right field stands quite close to where Yogi Berra, on a rest day from catching, was playing the outfield. My sister fell in love with him.
Yesterday, my daughter Valerie took me to a Washington Wizards basketball game. She and I go back to the days when the Wizards were still called the Bullets. When she was a little girl, we sat on a love seat in the kitchen after dinner and watched them play on TV. Those were the days of Juwan Howard, Chris Webber and George Muresan, the ungainly, odd-looking 7 foot 7 inch giant who played center. They had a couple of good seasons, and Val became particularly fond of Big George. We went to occasional games back then; more recently Val has taken me to several Washington Nationals baseball games. These trips have taught me that professional sporting events are no longer the somber, almost holy rituals of my youth. There is a certain amount of “entertainment” in addition to the game itself: the Nationals amuse us with racing Presidential mascots and the like. But nothing prepared me for what I saw and heard at last night’s basketball game.
We got there early. As we took our seats in the almost empty arena (named of course, not for the team, but rather after Verizon, the sponsor that had bought the “naming rights”), the faces of two insufferably perky twenty-somethings, a boy with stylish hair and a grinning blond girl, appeared on the giant TV screen hanging over the court. She was holding a microphone and babbling about the “Parent Makeover.” She had cornered to two reluctant gentlemen and was insisting that they put on various pieces of Wizards apparel (game jerseys, hats, sweats, etc.) and jump around like fools (while being shown on the giant, in-house TV screen) to prove they had as much “Wizard Spirit” as their (probably mortified) children. Neither fellow got into the spirit of it. Whom they had pissed off to deserve this treatment I could not say, but it must have been someone awfully important.
As Val and I were shaking our heads over this spectacle, a flying mini-van appeared! It made a slow circumnavigation of the arena. Then, apparently liking what it saw, continued to take laps. I suppose it was intended to advertize something; geniuses, these admen. But, I mean, what does a flying mini-van have to do with a basketball game? Everything, apparently, because the thing made numerous reappearances during the evening. (If anyone reading this ever meets Ezzy, my mini-van, you must be careful not to mention the flying van. I have enough trouble satisfying her demands to be taken out on the racetrack as a reward for pulling the race car and trailer. I can’t afford to pay for her to learn to fly.) After witnessing this aeronautical marvel, all I could suggest to Val was that we go get something to eat. She agreed, and bought me my dinner.
As we regained our seats, the floor filled with smoke, the lights dimmed, strobes flashed and music thundered. I expected at least the reincarnation of Paul Revere’s horse (apologies to Bob Dylan), if not the Second Coming. I was a tad disappointed when an over–excited voice intoned, “Yooouuurrr Waaashiiiingtoooon Wiiiizaaaards” and 11 tall guys dressed in white underwear trotted out. At least they were wearing the home whites and not the gold shirts with black shorts that make them look like a rec league team.
Just as I was settling down to concentrate on the first quarter action, some fool coach called a timeout, which afforded the blond girl the opportunity to inflict “Smile Cam” on the assembly. She instructed that the fan caught on camera with the “best” smile would be rewarded with a prize. It being “H & R Block Tax Preparation Night” at the old gym (sure glad I didn’t miss that one), the prize would be a certificate to have your taxes done for you. (Nothing about them being paid for you, though. Damn!) So, while several thousand eager taxpayers did their best imitation of Ronald McDonald, the camera panned the stands and projected their hideous grins onto the giant screen. Finally, Blondie picked a winner, he was given his much coveted tax certificate, and the basketball game was permitted to resume.
Next up we had “Dance Cam.” Yeah, it’s what you think. The camera pans the crowd looking for the best dancer, who won some prize or other. That really wasn’t so bad. Some of the kids, at least, looked really cute dancing. A fat guy won the prize. He could make his body go one way and his belly, go the other.
After a brief interruption for basketball, Blondie got back to work. The giant TV showed her shoving the microphone in the face of a big fellow slouching on a couch. It seems this piece of home furnishing is called the “Budweiser couch” (no one should be without one). With the unerring instinct of a Washington Post reporter tracking down a political scandal, Blondie asked the guy, “How did you get to sit on the Budweiser Couch?” She seemed at a loss, however, when all he said in answer was, “Drank a lotta Bud Lite.” A sudden resumption of basketball spared us most of her pained silence.
In the fourth quarter, as the game got close and the tedium of watching the players run, pass, dribble and shoot was becoming more than most in attendance could tolerate, Blondie came again to our rescue. She announced “KISSING CAM.” I wish I were making this up. If I were, I wouldn't make up this part. I'd jsut tell you the fianl score and be done wiith it. But Kisssing Cam really happened. She offered another prize, this one for the couple who did the best kissing while the panning camera was on them. We were treated to pecks on the cheek, decorous kisses on the lips, passionate embraces, and full tongue-in-the-mouth action. A young man and woman, who Blondie said were on their first date (how does she know these things?), refused to kiss at all. But they turned a lovely pink as they sat staring forward for what seemed like an hour with the camera on them. Who won the prize? How could you possibly care?
There was more silliness, but I was too numb to remember it. I do know that the Wizards won, holding off a late rally by the Memphis Grizzlies. And Val and I had a terrific time watching the game, laughing at the “entertainment” and chatting about this and that. Afterwards, she drove me home. I love having adult daughters.
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