black fly beta
luke
I know long sleeves, long pants, smoke, but what time of day is best
out there at Pawtuckaway this time of year? Whats the best DEET?
Thanks -
Fred
> Whats the best DEET?
Watkins lotion, by far.
They now offer it in spray too, but I've not tried it yet.
Cheers,
--
Marc from Quebec
http://pages.infinit.net/emah
Home of the Rec.climbers' Personnal Pages Directory
and the Climbing in Québec Page.
Guido
It depends [TM].
Black flies are attracted by heat and carbon dioxide. That pretty well
defines you.
The Microsoft of the black fly, PWay creates rolling hatches throughout May,
June and July. Locals consider PWay's season August through April, signing
off come May Day, aptly named.
For those who frequent May through June, the heat of day is your best bet
(12- 2). Warm mornings and ANY evening are the toughest. I am reminded of
a timber cruiser in Maine who said of black fly season that "you could lose
your mind out there."
Better to drop a rope on taller crags' highest pitch, and hope for a wind.
G
^,,^
>>I know long sleeves, long pants, smoke, but what time of day is best
>>out there at Pawtuckaway this time of year? Whats the best DEET?
fwiw, there is in my experience no such thing as _a_ black fly. just as
there is no such thing as "an ant." rather the smallest unit of "black
fly" is 10 cubic foot black cloud. a black cloud that inexorably
rockets past legions of other mammals straight to the back of my neck.
always. one of only two constants in the universe. i'll save the other
for another day.
brother Guido responded, in part:
> Black flies are attracted by heat and carbon dioxide. That pretty well
> defines you.
huh. it took me a moment, but upon reflection i came to recognize that
you are right, brother guido. for brother luke, like me, like most all
mammals, are attracted by heat and carbon dioxide. that explains such
otherwise unintelligible rituals as proms, central heating, and television.
> For those who frequent May through June, the heat of day is your best
> bet [...] Warm mornings and ANY evening are the toughest.
eh, perhaps. my own experience in NH is that the sticky sweat of the
sticky midday heat is frighteningly effective black fly chum. and the
blue of the morning and blue of the evening were generally best. 'blue'
as in first light and last light of the day.
the latter is by far my favorite time of day. everything seems to pause
for a precious moment. and it has hint of a melancholy to it. fwiw,
the blue at the cusp of nightfall is also yahweh's favorite time of the
day, at least according to old testament accounts. i've long wondered
why. for i presume that an old powerful creator of the universe type
would sweat. i bumped into (literally) an ancient rabbi on the lex line
in manhatten awhile back and after apologizing for bonking into him as
he read we conversed for a few stops. and i asked him about this. he
responded that yahweh always chose the blue of the end of the day for
his rare visits among mankind not for his own comfort but the comfort of
those he walked with. a lovely thought thought by a lovely man.
the conversation u-turned off to the subject of why yahweh only appeared
to men. he told me, among other things, that devote jewish men of the
more conservative sects are to say a one sentence prayer immediately
upon waking, in the first moment of consciousness: "thank god i am not a
woman." i was surprised at this, and embarrassed to hear it in the
presence of the rabbi's wife of 54 years. i asked her what she thought
of this and she responded without hesitation: "what do you think my
first prayer upon waking is?" delicious.
but i digress. and massively. what is the connection between yahweh
and black fly beta? (don't dare me on this, for i'll come up with
something - albeit ridiculous.) after decades of trying to squelch this
bad habit i've become convinced that its something neurological in me.
likely the sequlae of sister michael cordelia's powerful right hook
to my left temple. dropped me in a heartbeat. she had overheard me
referring to her a "wilt chambernun" and "lew alsister." for she was at
least 6'4" without the nun shoes and towering habit of her conservative
order. oopsy...
before that, i am told, i was a quiet and contemplative kid. but from
the moment i regained consciousness there has been this ceaseless stream
of consciousness. well, something remotely akin to consciousness. this
is like that which is kinda like this other thing which reminds me of
something else. pingpong ball in a paint can on a shaker machine. only
time it pauses is when i climb. when i am finger tips and toes and
nothing more.
i should in good conscience admit to those non-climbers who ask why i
climb. but i almost never do, perhaps because my few attempts to relate
this have resulted in this dazed look on the face of the person who made
the mistake of asking. they look like they just walked into a pane of
plate glass.
so i tell them tidbits that are true, but secondary. things like
"hillary said he climbed 'because it was there' - me, i climb because
you're not there" and "it's like dancing at the beach - an ecstatic
motion in a beautiful place." i say the same about fly fishing, which
i've come to do without a fly. i just cast and listen to the water. i
figure the trout have enough on their plates without being on mine. i
read long ago in a scientific treatise on salmanoids that even the
largest and most successful of trout who live in mountain streams live
at the cusp of starvation.
trout eat black flies and yahweh made them both. and black flies always
find me, i always find trout, but i've yet to find yahweh. but i do
sense him in the blue of the end of the day. especially when i too
pause on a climb as all things pause at that moment. as i must.
but i digress. but its ok. i yam what i yam. and i can take solace is
the knowledge that every keyboard ever made has a [Del] key on it.
~~~~
in a likely hopeless attempt to bring this mutant back to within a
parsec of its purported topic, i'll leave you with this proven but
dangerous tip:
when the black flies swarm on and in you with such ferocity that you
start untying from the rope so you are free to hurl yourself to the
scree and with it the relief of blessed and complete extinction, you
might try this. beg, borrow, steal (or, yahweh forbid, reach into your
own pack and extract) a cigarette. pull the filter off, take a teeny
swig of water and chew on what's left of the cig until you have a dark
acrid juice. now spread this toxic horror all over your bitten bloodied
carcass - starting with the exposed black fly G spots (F spots?) on
your body: back of your neck, below your armpits and groin, behind your
knees and just above your shoes or socks. re-apply on these same spots
as the stream of sweat working in conjunction with gravity moves the
tobacco juice down your arms, legs, and torso.
for it is the only toxin i've ever found actually works when a black fly
unit (cloud) is in full feeding frenzy and you are lunch and are
choosing between bleeding to death slowly or a quick suicide.
BUT BE WARNED (ie, you must remember to never forget) THAT NICOTENE IS A
VERY POTENT AND EASILY LETHAL TOXIN. really. despite what eight or
more CEO's must swear and/or affirm to before a cluster (unit?) of
congressmen and women.
tried everything else. all manner of toxins forbidden by the Geneva
Convention (but surprisingly available off the shelf at the local paint
store), cigarette smoke, cheap cigar smoke, Skin So Soft (a popular myth
at the time, since entirely refuted by science - turns out it actually
attracts carnivorous bugs), and pushing "Margaret" well past her limits
in an hopeless attempt to flee.
margaret was my climbing partners 71 MG, well what was left of it.
other than styrofoam, margaret is the only thing i know of in the
universe that is immortal (and as such should be worshiped - well, i
kneel before both). margaret simply would not die. though she did
exist in an endless state of death throes; ie so much rust we had to put
plywood all over the floor so as not to poke a foot through at hwy
speeds (again), and never daring to open the doors (which was likely
impossible anyway). margaret had no clutch (you had to get it rolling
to speed shift it, with a horrible grinding sound) into 1st and every
gear thereafter (except 3rd, which Margaret simply didn't have).
so how did we use margaret as black fly repellent? two ways. first,
simply starting her produced a thick blue cloud of oily smoke that left
anyone within 30 meters looking like a welsh coal miner coming home
after a shift. that would confound - though not disperse let alone kill
- any black fly unit within 30 meters. temporarily, for 30 seconds or
so. of course that pause in the action only seem to piss the bugs (bug
unit) off and superheat their appetites such that they came back at us
with renewed ferocity.
the other thing we tried with margaret, once, was simply roaring down
farm roads adjacent to north conway at truly stupid speeds down.
cyclists, tourists, children, law enforcement officers, and/or farm
animals be damned.
this on a rare day off back when my pal and i were guiding out of north
conway as teenagers. hell, i was still a decade away from puberty.
seems i still am, but that's another story for another day. anyway we
decided that rather than plan A (go to martha's vineyard were my pal
would romance his DAR earth mama sweetie while i emptied her parent posh
west chop bungalow of every particle of food and every molecule of
alcohol i could find) we'd go with Plan R - renew our pilot licenses on
camber (using someone else's rope, of course.) we did both. and i came
up with this swell idea of moving the belay up to the bolt near the crux
(i have no idea what manner of rock jewelry the route sports these days,
then there were 2 bolts _way_ spread out).
so i'm hanging on way too short a sling off this suddenly teeny looking
bolt and something hilarious like the smallest size rp with just its
head stuck in a itsy bitsy flaring seam (which is precisely what i
wanted to do with my teeny head as my pal intentionally - or so i claim
and he denies to this day - carefully aimed his butt over my gaping yaw
and only then came howling down at me EB first). all this while 'some
guy' working on what was to my eye a pretty contrived route a few feet
to my right kept 'accidently' hitting the top of this tea saucer sized
flake with the wrong end of his chouinard hammer while 'placing a bolt.'
like 5 or 6 times in a row. remarkably, the route finally went the
same day. but that is a story best left to some guy rather than a dog.
that and my uiaa certified 'how not to do it' belay demonstration left
me with a broken finger and a gash such that you could see the white of
the tendon as if it was an uncooked chicken leg. pigeon leg would be
more to scale. got hammered into the bolt knuckle first when my parter
decided to go for an especially long king swing below me. and i'm
sweating, and bitching, and peeing my fool self, and trying to shake out
all the blood red lumps now in my chalk bag as i was using as a septic
pencil... and i'm thinking why oh why didn't we go with Plan A. oh i
could be full of bif and muffy's smoked salmon and capers and heinekens
chasing rich betty butt up and down the beach at gay head. but no. 'it
couldn't be worse than this' i whine.
as most of you most certainly have known since infancy but i learned
late, never never say 'it couldn't be worse than this' or yahweh will
surely visit just long enough to demonstrate to you that it could and
massively. the penance He applied to me for my whining, in addition to
my partners butt still repeatedly hammering me in the face, came in the
form of a black fly cloud the size of a zeppelin. and it/they of course
come right at me and its like blood everywhere and tears from the 27
black fly electrons in my tear ducts and so many up my shorts i'm
wondering if this, finally, is puberty (my partner assured me it wasn't).
so out of sheer piss-ant summit-or-plummet (read: leap) rage i said to
my pal 'you! belay! now!' and didn't even take the rack (granddad and
his pals used to wear it over their shoulder, kiddies) but just bolted
up that pitch and jogged towards Margaret (remember her from a few
chapters ago) whom we had left up on top and rapped down (we had learned
_something" in all those months). yet i jest went right for the car
thinking if she doesn't start i'll just suck a few gallons of gas out
with my lips then incinerate myself - and that fookin black fly cloud
with me.
do i tie off? or set up a belay for my pal who is now planked as i was
on a 2 foot loop cut off an old (or someone else's, or both) double rope
smack in the middle of the face? or even remember he exists? nope.
hell i am in such enraged agony that i loose track that there is a rope
tied to me. i can't figure out why i have to lean so hard forward and
my thighs are straining so hard as i'm just feet from margaret and my
much anticipated blessed self immolation. (a thought i suspect i have
now inspired in anyone fool enough to still be tied to this mutant
post.) yeah, i'm straining like a draft horse in the concrete slab
pulling contest at the duke county fair (the one that had a heart attack
at the very instant i took that picture - you can still see his heart
exploding, captured forever on film.) i'm positively grinding the rope
so tight it sounds like a violin string. well... close.
meanwhile my fool partner (fool for climbing with a rapid dog)
interprets the positively hydraulic pull on the rope as some whacked out
variation on a belay, about as whacked out as the last belay i gave him
when i was looking up at his butt. so he unclips and head out into the
fingery dicey terra incognito. and now, of course, there is no pro at
all other than the friction potential of my butt and the pavement of the
parking area. and sure, whatever it is graded (i forget - 5.something,
that much i do remember), remember kids that this was before the dawn
suction cup sticky rubber, winters spent hanging from plastic in the
basement, and all manner of ephedrine and steroid laden 'power bars'.
well, let's try to at least aim this shuttle back towards earth. pause
a moment (i will too, phew!) and picture this scene. i tugging like a
draft horse on this rope that goes over the top bar of the railing.
meanwhile a couple winnebagos worth donut eaters (turistas) are chirping
"oh look Bubba Joe, a climbo hippy freak" and someone, presumably Bubba
Joe responds "he's repelling, Martha Jo, that's how they do it. i know
'cause i repelled in the marines. yup, just like that." and with that
the flash cubes (remember those?) are popping like the O rings on the
challenger.
meanwhile my pal either climbs (his contention) or is simply dragged
like a sack of rocks (my contention) up past the crux and tops out --
where his eyes positively bug (sic) out to realize that the belay is no
belay at all. that his partner has completely lost his mind and is now
just a mad dog on a tight though hardly short leash. so he charges at
me to either beat me to death (my contention) or put me out of my misery
(his contention) but is interrupted when he realizes that he too has
walked face first into the great mother of all black fly clouds. now
the spray of blood includes both type O (mine) and type B- (his).
and as he charges towards me the rope suddenly goes limp so i face
plant. i stumble crawl towards margaret then jump from 6 feet away
into the drivers seat to find my pal is already in it. and we're
bitching and cussin at each other and all of creation. i'm screaming at
him "get out and push you idiot" at the precise moment that he screams
the same at me such that it comes out in stereo. so i either jump out
(his contention) or am thrown out (my contention) onto the asphalt and
run around to the front of the car to push (we had stupidly forgotten
that margaret performed best when positioned ass end in). and do just
that.
and due to either his much-honed speed shifting skill (his contention)
or my mike tyson torque level pushing (my contention) we actually get
the car into reverse _and started. so he of course just keeps going.
the engine screaming as he accelerates to 30mph. in reverse. doing
this in reverse is apparently just fine by my pal - which kinda makes
sense as there is no clutch after all so going nose first would require
stalling out the engine and push starting it again. which might not
work this time. that and at this point he's as blind as i am in the
midst of that black fly cloud and with all those black fly electrons
burrowing into his tear ducts.
but the problem is that i'm not in the car and i can't run 35mph (gotta
catch up to him, right?) 25mph, absolutely - but not 35mph. but now my
eyes are buggin out as i realize i'd better learn to run 35mph and fast
- 'cause we're still roped together. and apparently all my fly chum
chum can concentrate on is: "drive fast! faster than bugs! never stop!"
nanoseconds before the rope pulls type and i become some kind of
extruded dog product my pal suddenly tacks (or jibes, i forget which is
which) hard and is soon coming at me. backwards. i can't see why
'cause i'm still mostly bug blind but suddenly i'm focusing lest on bug
blood-letting (bug-letting?) and more on not getting run over. i'm
screaming at him but he can't hear over the margaret's screaming. he's
coming dead at me at speed but at the last second fear inspires me into
a Toro! matador move and i jump to the side then into the car face
first. face in my pals crotch as it turns out.
and, well, once the vehicle of satan that was heading up into the
parking lot passes (this turns out to be why my pal suddenly tacked
rather than dragging me off the hill) off we go down the switch backs
and down this road then that road then another road until we're just
about in maine. all backwards. and all at speed. as someone once
wrote "roaring down farm roads adjacent to north conway at truly stupid
speeds. cyclists, tourists, children, law enforcement officers, and/or
farm animals be damned."
and it didn't work. when we finally came to a jerking stop the vampire
bug cloud from hell was still there. ended up jumping into a creek. at
least then all they could chew at was our puckered lips for that's all
that we pooked above the surface.
so, uh, yeah. cross the '71 MG option off the beta list - it doesn't
work.
go with the tobacco spit. just be careful not to poison yourself. for
nicotine is a powerfully poisonous vaso-dilator. or vaso-constrictor.
well, it's bad for your vaso, that much i do remember from org chem.
'course pro baseball players chew tobacco and spit it on their
themselves and each other. and their not dead. well, they are kinda
dead. i guess one should worry about the possibility that chewing
tobacco will damage you in such a way that end up with a bad haircut
repeating mindless phrases like "gentleman on and off the field" and
"just swing the bat and take what i get" and "it ain't over til its
over". hell, that would suck.
you know, the more i think about it the more i'm convinced you should
take tobacco spit off the beta list. which leaves, uh, lemme see...
huh, it leaves nothing.
so uh, no luke, i don't have any black fly beta for you.
erp. oopsy.
> Better to drop a rope on taller crags' highest pitch, and hope for a wind.
that keep to the west end of pawtuckaway. as in the tetons.
canis pooped est,
^,,^
~~~~~~~~~~~~OB:OtrPplQuoteWad Follows~~~~~~~~~~
"If everything's under control, you're going too slow." -Mario Andretti
"I know I am intelligent, because I know that I know nothing." -Socrates
"God is a comedian playing to an audience too afraid to laugh." -Voltaire
~~~~~~~~~~~~OB:OtrPplQuoteWad Ends~~~~~~~~~~~~~
don't anthropomorphise...
A. Cairns
"^,,^" wrote:
< >
hadn't heard *that one* before
But at the Springville station of the Roswell Park Memorial Cancer Research Lab
one summer afternoon in 1966, in a circular underground room which had
cannisters of post-atomic war food and water stacked along the wall, a man in a
white coat took a single cigarette and ground it up in a blender with a little
normal saline. Then he drew some of the solution into a syringe and injected it
into the peritoneal cavity of a white rat, which twitched and died,
demonstrating not quite what may have been intended to the summer students in
semicircles in the audience.
Andy Cairns
kellie
among many other wonderful things:
>
> trout eat black flies and yahweh made them both. and black flies always
> find me, i always find trout, but i've yet to find yahweh. but i do
> sense him in the blue of the end of the day. especially when i too
> pause on a climb as all things pause at that moment. as i must.
>
Gorgeous. You mentioned you're Irish, right? Did you perchance OD on
James Joyce when young and impressionable?
Please do carry on.
Kellie