Training for Climbing at Work?
The General
The Last place I worked had its own climbing gym.
My new job does as yet not. But my office has a fine 15 foot high, by
10 ft wide wall.
I see a bachar ladder, crack machine, american triangle, bolt on holds,
and aid seam.
Anyone else convert their work space into climb gym?
Peace and Love
The General
Jeffrey Octrooi
windows. Perfect for climbing, but I don't think they would be happy if I
did....
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"The General" <gen...@aol.com> wrote in message
news:b1cqht$mgb$1...@slb6.atl.mindspring.net...
Ryan Pfleger
slow at work. Definately an endurance "route", as we'd constantly try to
break each others record for the most laps. Difficulty was included as well
when we started making rules like no pinching, only sidepulls, and then the
one arm traverse. Sidepulls only it was probably about a v3. Never could
make it more than one window pane with one arm.
Ryan
"Jeffrey Octrooi" <xyzoc...@swbell.net> wrote in message
news:Dgm_9.24$ux1.27...@newssvr12.news.prodigy.com...
Todd
and it is, unfortunately, entirely true. Take from it what you will.
I wrote this a couple of weeks back trying to cheer up my younger
brother who is about to graduate from high school and has no idea
where he wants to go to school or major in, doesn't want to give up
his current friends and hobbies, not because I was trying to record
this as an actual achievement.
THE STALL
In the four years since I have graduated college I have done traveled
around a bit, and now as I wait for grad schools to reply to my
applications, I am sort of in the same boat as you. "What the hell am
I doing with my life, do I want to stay in this career, do I really
want to go back to school, do I look fat in these pants?"
Well, no matter what you chose to do professionally/academically, you
will make time to do the personal things you really want to if they
are important enough to you, even if the timing/place is
inappropriate. Exhibit A: TR of the Fourth floor bathroom far end
stall.
After beginning my job here with *A Financial Services Company* three
years back, I found that I was spending most of my time trying to find
new ways to avoid actually doing work. The old tried and true methods
never fail, and majority of my non-working at work hours were spent in
the can, reading the paper, napping, organizing my wallet, etc. One
day while not going potty while sitting on the potty I realized that
the double industrial roll toilet paper holder would make a pretty
good sloper when gripped in the right fashion. Looking around the
stall, I realized that this one had a unique feature compared to the
others: The toilet seat cover dispenser is on the tile wall opposite
the paper holder, not behind the can like the other 7 on my floor
(really, I have amassed a lot of time in them). Peering behind me, I
noticed the reason for this anomaly was a metallic door located in the
place where the cover dispenser should be, but I did not think to
investigate the purpose for this door. Instead, I gripped the sloper,
crimped the cover, placed my wingtips on two bolt heads, and managed
to levitate myself a couple of inches off the throne.
My mind raced: I knew that I could now easily combine my two favorite
hobbies: Not working at work and climbing. I spent the next several
weeks planning a route: toe jams and finger locks in the gaps between
the stall divider hardware, edging on bolt heads, smears off opposing
walls. My goal became clear: to complete a "lap" of the stall by
turning 360 degrees and re-depositing myself on the depository.
The challenges facing this task were many. Work picked up and I had
less time to not work. My office went from suits to casual, and I had
trouble locating casual shoes that edged as well as my leather soled
wing-tips. I dislocated my finger, became engaged, got married, got
promoted, etc.
The dangers of this route were greater. Quickly after starting this I
found out the hard way my biggest obstacle was other co-workers. The
first time I was "walked in on," I was mid way through the route,
doing a no-hands stem on two opposing walls. The individual came in
and took a seat in the far stall. I was pretty hosed. I didn't know
how to dismount from my position without causing a ruckus. I couldn't
reach the handle to flush the toilet to create some noise. My legs
started to elvis as lactic acid build-up began, I started to sweat,
and un-intentionally, I began to emit a strained grunt from the
exhaustion. As the time slowly passed by (20 seconds?), the grunt
grew louder until I heard the other individual start to paper up,
flush and quickly exit the john. I guess my grunt became a little
louder than I thought.
My two biggest close calls happened on subsequent events, and made be
put the project on an indefinite hold. On my first attempt of that
day I felt good. Fresh, limber, full of life. I began the route,
levitating, then toe jams, fingers locks, big stem, started to make
the turn around the back of the toilet (crux of the route). My foot
slipped off of my tile smear, I blew the over the stall jug, nearly
put my foot in the toilet, and put my head squarely into the mystery
metallic door on the wall behind the can. The door swung open into
the wall (not into the stall) and for a brief moment, my head stuck
halfway into a new mystery shaft that the mystery door had previously
concealed. My head would have remained longer, but I noticed a very
large object coming up to me. I yelled "crap" and pulled my head out
of the shaft as the back side of an elevator car pulled up, stopped,
then continued up again. Fortunately the metallic door had laid flush
with the wall completely open. I pulled it shut, cleaned myself up,
and went back to work with a large red mark on my forehead.
Later that day, after the embarrassment subsided, I gave it another
shot. I moved tenuously past the tile foot smear, came around the
corner, and nearly completed my project when tragedy stuck. I tried
positioning my rear-end over the commode, but was "off center" a
little bit. I moved over to my left and weighted the toilet seat
cover dispenser I was crimping with the majority of my mass. The
plastic dispenser gave under my load, and ripped from the wall. Now I
had actually been placing a seat cover down as I worked the project,
as it was a "sit start" and I couldn't work it with my pants around my
ankles. I shot my foot down to catch myself, and my foot landed on
the seat. Actually, it landed on the cover, which slid off the seat.
In doing so, my toe found that gap in the front of the seat, and I
managed to roll my ankle. I continued down, trying to keep from
landing in the toilet, I straitened my arms out. I landed on my
knees, arms on the floor, with my head about 3 inches from smacking
the seat. I once again cleaned my self up, tried to restore the cover
dispenser to its original state (unsuccessfully), and limped back to
my desk with a bum ankle, bruised knees, a red forehead (still), and
no pride. I didn't use that stall again for another year.
Two days after Susan and I learned we were expecting, I found myself
sitting in that same stall, contemplating life. "Will I ever have
time to go climbing again, will Susan let me go climbing, will the kid
like me enough to climb with me?" This was the first time I had used
it since the "fall." I guess you return to your comfort places when
you need. I took in the scene in the stall: the plastic cover
dispenser had been replaced by a nice new metal one. Thinking it was
a message, I sent the problem, almost in perfect form. I rate it a V
negative 2, and have named it "the stall."
You'll keep doing what you want to do, if you want to do it. You'll
keep your friends if you want to. Just look for the signs, they'll
help you find your way.
David Kastrup
> Here is my experience with trying to combine climbing with the office,
> and it is, unfortunately, entirely true. Take from it what you will.
> I wrote this a couple of weeks back trying to cheer up my younger
> brother who is about to graduate from high school and has no idea
> where he wants to go to school or major in, doesn't want to give up
> his current friends and hobbies, not because I was trying to record
> this as an actual achievement.
>
> THE STALL
Outstanding. And as big as life.
--
David Kastrup, Kriemhildstr. 15, 44793 Bochum
stinkwagen
Chuck
--
http://home.attbi.com/~cspieker/
"Todd" <zet...@yahoo.com> wrote in message
news:70d18b73.03013...@posting.google.com...
Chiloe
> Here is my experience with trying to combine climbing with the office,
> and it is, unfortunately, entirely true. Take from it what you will.
Fine story! Should be among next year's Best Of TRs.
I have someone to send it to, too.
A. Cairns
Todd wrote:
> Take from it what you will.
> THE STALL
Nothing for me, thanks. Great story though. ANAM? Helmet? Matches taped
in helmet?
Mad Dog
>THE STALL
I'd like to step back here a moment and not only thank Todd for his sure-to-be
best TR of 03, but also to our man Jeff Batten. Once again, Batten has trolled
out a masterpiece. Go look back in the google archives and you'll see that I
awarded him the Master Baiter award about 7 or 8 years ago. His bait must still
smell sufficiently bad these days to grab the bottom feeders.
>One day while not going potty while sitting on the potty I realized that
>the double industrial roll toilet paper holder would make a pretty
>good sloper when gripped in the right fashion. Looking around the
>stall, I realized that this one had a unique feature compared to the
>others: The toilet seat cover dispenser is on the tile wall opposite
>the paper holder, not behind the can like the other 7 on my floor
>(really, I have amassed a lot of time in them).
Todd, you probably do not need me to tell you that you are a sick man. But I do
not advise therapy nor anti-depressents. No, my good/bad man, I recommend that
instead you let this illness linger. Foster your sickness and perhaps, if we
are all extremely lucky, it will continue to grow. We might even find you
amongst the 2007 Darwin Award Winners. Go fer it, dude.
----------------------------
I also will accept Batten's bait and also would like to ask Jeff not to let his
AOL expire after the 30 day/7 trillion hour free offer. Go ahead and pay for
another month or two until we've re-bombed Iraq and terrorists have poisoned a
few hundred thousand innocents worldwide. I look forward to your trolls in the
heat of the battle. Maybe I'll be laughing when the Sarin takes hold.
Anyway, I have a long history of climbing in the workplace. As an undergrad, I
once completed a difficult FA on the campus of Southern Illinois University. A
beer bottle I'd thrown at an asshole professor's office window glanced off and
landed in a planter about 12' above the sidewalk. I smeared up a brick dihedral
and mantled onto the planter, retossed the bottle only to see it glance off the
glass again. Running along the edge of the planter 12' off the deck, I was
amused in my intoxicared state when a diving catch kept the bottle from a
shattering fate. On my third attempt, I decided on a football-like spiral and
was rewarded with an incredible result: The bottle punched a perfect round hole
in the window that went un-noticed by campus cops while the offending professor
was on his semester break. To my delight, I later found that the bottle had
shattered inside the office and, combined with the potted plant it displaced, it
had festered into an incredibly disgusting brew on his desktop, fungisizing the
pages of his soon-to-be submitted textbook manuscript. I'm only relating this
now because my attourney has insured me that the statute of limitations has
since expired.
But the real job abuse for a few of us during that period of time was bouldering
on the wall just north of the chemistry/physics/math building. While employed
by the State in the pollution control lab, I'd take bouldering breaks about 5
times a day. I've taken my kids there a couple of times to play on the easy
slab problems and relive those old memories.
As a grad student, I turned the basement mass spectrometry lab into a training
facility. A double-wide door was framed in foundation blocks that only reached
one block above the door, then was open to the ceiling. Atop the upper block, a
length of conduit was fastened. I wrapped the conduit with a towel and used a
wooden box as a one step ladder to reach the padded hold. Viola! A perfect
pullup station. I'd start a sample, which took 30 to 40 minutes to run, then do
3 or 4 sets of pullups. Back in those days of the dinosaur climber, we believed
the bullshit that doing pullups would improve your climbing. The truth is that
they do, but it's just not an efficient training scheme. However, as oblivious
as I was, I worked the pulls for 3 years, overtraining to the max. I commonly
did 20 to 30 sets of 15 to 20 pulls, 5 or 6 days a week. I have scar tissue in
the elbows and shoulders to show for these efforts. On one monumental marathon
day, I managed to do over 600 pullups off that damn conduit. Damn, climbers
were stupid back then. Many still are.
But climbing indoors is boring. Our most fun work breaks in grad school were
buildering. Mark VanArendonk, Hubert Heyworth and I spent countless hours
climbing all over the Chemistry building, and other buildings at Colorado State
University. Hubert eventually got into an acid-heavy crowd and got out of
climbing, but he never was too focused on climbing anyway. I got many FA's on
the Chemistry building, including a roof problem that supposedly still has no
repeat. The building has flagstone trim in places, making for easy 60' tall
problems that could probably be led with Aliens, but we'd just solo up and
mantle onto the roof, then walk down the stairs or downclimb. But the rest of
the exterior is made up of ~4x8' panels of cement. The joints (plenty of those
to be had up on the roof) are flared cracks about 2.5" deep in the off hands/off
fists width. The panels also had ~1" diameter, 1" deep holes you could stick a
fingertip into. We enjoyed numerous scary climbs and injuries on these cracks
and monos. I once thought I'd left a fingertip in.
Since graduating and becoming a working stiff, I've always found ways to train
at work. Doing laps on stairs is an obvious perk. One building nearby has 9
floors of stairs that ascend about 110'. These days, I avoid the downclimb and
instead do the elevator. Mini-timetrial up the stairs, drink water while
hyperventilating on the elevator. It's a trip to see one of the exec VP's
talking to some bigwig from another company while I'm reeking with sweat on the
Exec elevator. Helps to make me a real popular guy with management.
But we have numerous climbing opportunities in our building. Near the loading
dock, the concrete wall fractured, leaving a 15' tips to fingers splitter
problem I call the LabLightning Bolt Crack. Very painful, it has my blood. If
one can somehow get ahold of a key to the airhandlers, then one can climb up
inside these tall metallics tubes. Unless there's maintenance going on, one
would never get caught. Uggh, I was looking for a sheet of paper that got
sucked into the vent...
Every few years, the union workers contract expires and the threat of a strike
looms. Last time, I built a modular climbing wall that would fill my office and
smuggled the parts in the night before the deadline. It was a cool little wall.
8' tall, 6' wide, 25 degrees over with a vertical sidewall. Lugged in about 200
pounds of holds, did I. But we would have been locked in for a month if there
had been a strike, so it was worth the effort. When it didn't happen, I gave it
to Marty and he added to it to make his current apartment climbing wall.
Hey, guys and gals, one needs peace of mind in the workplace. Do whatcha gotta
do.
A. Cairns
Mad Dog wrote:
> long history of climbing in the workplace
Say, one of rc's strong silent posters has said that he would never let on to the
people he works with what he does for recreation outside the workplace.
> I was looking for a sheet of paper that got sucked into the vent...
Any other creative misdirection out there?
Timmy O'Neil: "I'm looking for my Terrier." Or, "I'm practicing for burglaries.
Don't tell me your address."
Crotch Robbins
Surely the Best of Rec.climbing 2003.
Crotch
zet...@yahoo.com (Todd) wrote:
> THE STALL
TajL
> Here is my experience with trying to combine ...
<cut> a truly inspirational TR
Todd,
Often in hard times (like now) I receive these absolutely amazing
dopesmacks to push me back on track (coincidence?)... your tr made an
atheist question his resolve.
Thank you, thank you, thank you
more, more, more