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dingus
Jun 7, 2007, 3:43 PM
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A recent thread about retrobolting brought out several caustic and snide comments about the 'climbing lifestyle.' The basic thrust of these comments was that this lifestyle was based on freeloading and dirtbagging and living on the fringes of society, mostly in the 60s and 70s. It suggested that since none of us here really live that way this climbing lifestyle doesn't really exist (for us.). They assert the climbing lifestyle is bogus, an image and nothing more.
Interesting notion, so I gave it some thought. On the surface these comments seem accurate. But I've concluded they are myopic to the extreme... focusing on ONE sort of lifestyle to the exclusion of all else.
I recall a much different conservation, again several of them really - about the same subject. A friend and I were discussing life and climbing and the choices we all have to make and how they affected us.
My buddy, we'll call him Stu, started climbing in the Boy Scouts back in the 70s. He lived the dream for a while, lived in camp 4 for a year (while living off the dole from, get this... Royal Robbins, who had fired him and everyone else from his gear shop in Modesto, hahahahahahaha!). He climbed hard, but he also worked for a living and had kids at a young age. So he was raising a family too.
Me? Climbing since I was 13, fairly active the whole time except for some stretches in the military where cypress trees in the swamps of south Georgia were my only consolation.
Anyway, what we were talking about was 'the professional.' This in the context of work.
It was my contention (still is as a matter of fact) that to be very successful in the business world, to be a CEO or a president of a big company, to rise to those sorts of positions, one must BE that professional 24/7. You have to live, breathe and work the angles all the time. Nothing escapes inclusion either... what's the point of a golf game or a cocktail party unless some deals can be moved down the field at the same time?
I think the reason these folks do what they do is twofold, the first is because that's what they're competitors are doing, and 2ndly, and more importantly, because they love it, or at least think they do.
They live for the deal, get a rush closing a big one and they count coup with their houses, cars, vacation homes (they rarely visit) and the jet set lifestyle.
There's that word again, lifestyle. See, being the BIG DEAL is a lifestyle, its a series of choices that puts one on a certain path. Everything one does from that point is always in reference to the Big Deal, the thing that makes that peson tick. She doesn't have to live and look (thank god) like Donald Trump to be a Big Deal either, there are a billion ways to get rich I suppose.
Now back to climbing and my conversation with Stu. I said, "I can't do that." In reference to the Professionals. "I'm not wired that way. I guess I'm not hungry enough. I don't WANT to be rich. Oh it'd be nice, don't get me wrong, but to GET RICH (legally) one has to be Professional for the most part. HEY! I know there are exceptions, but to be at the head of the line you gotta beat out all those other sonsabitches ya dig? Dog eat dog and all that.
NO! I told Stu,
"I don't want to run a company. Don't want to manage a division. I don't want to manage other people at all, NO REPORTS! I just wanna do my job, make a decent middle class living, not set myself up for obsolescence in my 50s (may have missed that mark, we'll see...), but I did not, do not and won't sell my soul for work.
I'm not that Professional 24/7 kinda guy. When I go home from work? I GO HOME FROM WORK. I leave it all behind. I don' want to worry about making payroll next week, or finding a benefits package our company can afford and our employees can actually use. I don't want to fester on all that work shit every weekend (it intrudes from time to time, I admit it).
What I wan, and what I've always wanted, is to go climbing.
And here's where our conversation turned to lifestyle.
See, for at least 2 decades of my 3 decades of climbing, I worked for the weekend. And on the weekend I went climbing; summer, winter, spring, fall, it didn't matter. All over too, east coast to west.
I'd schedule work in such a way as to maximize 3 day weekends, for climbing. For 20 years my vacations were spent climbing, sometimes ONE ROUTE.
Now I never aspired to rule the climbing world either. I'm a punter quite frankly, lower middle class in climbing as in life. But it was every weekend with lots of bouldering and skiing (skiing is climbing too, in a mountaineering sense), whatever.
My ONLY reason to go to a gym was to stay in reasonable enough shape to climb,
I didn't pursue other sports, couldn't afford them. COULDN'T AFFORD THEM????
Right. I could not afford the TIME they took. The time they would take away from climbing.
All my personal friends are climbers, all of them. I have so little in common with my neighbors we really have nothing to talk about. My garage is chock full of climbing shit.
Stu was like me only worse. We often would get off work at 3 or 4 pm on a Friday and start driving. Sometime late Sunday night we'd come back, tired, worn out but happy.
Its a schizo existence and the very worst one I endured was getting off a wall one day late, huffing it home, packing my suitcase while pondering broken fingernails and aluminum oxide embedded in my skin. And bing bang boom the next morning I was giving a presentation to about 100 people at a major corporation in LA. Made my head swim it did.
But my work choices, where I live, the cars I drive, the clothes I wear, how I married my wife - ALL OF IT centered first on climbing. I've literally turned down promotions that would take me physically from climbing, or worse, threaten the time.
TIME! Its the key component and the thing Stu and I really cyphered on. Time is money. So you're a Big Deal and you're trying to close the next one. Its Friday evening and the proposal is due Monday morning. You're a Big Deal so I already know what you'll be doing this weekend. Spending your time closing that deal.
Me? I don't give a flying fuck if we close that deal or not, not really. And even if I do, I only care 'this much.'
No, this weekend? I'm going CLIMBING!
If that is not a life STYLE then I simply don't know what the term means?
DMT
(This post was edited by dingus on Jun 7, 2007, 3:44 PM)
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shorty
Jun 7, 2007, 3:54 PM
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Ruh-roh, Rastro, here we go again. Place your bets on "XX" number of pages of drivel on what we "subescribe" [sic] to.
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angry
Jun 7, 2007, 4:01 PM
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I read it like it was written by me. I'm currently on the job-hunt. My only criteria center around time off to go climbing and money to go climb new places. Everything else is trivial.
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caughtinside
Jun 7, 2007, 4:07 PM
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dingus wrote: Its a schizo existence
Boiled down all the way, this is the kernel (or corn on the steamer.)
It's a balancing act, and some times its really, really hard to pull off and be both with success (whatever success means.)
But that doesn't mean it's ok to retrobolt.
Good post dingus.
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svilnit
Jun 7, 2007, 4:12 PM
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Bravo sir! Bravo!
I place my bet on 8 pages... Dingus is in another league from these 4 post trollers!
(This post was edited by svilnit on Jun 7, 2007, 4:14 PM)
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bent_gate
Jun 7, 2007, 4:20 PM
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I subscribe to a climbing magazine. Does that count?
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ddt
Jun 7, 2007, 4:32 PM
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Great post. (I don't see this as a troll at all!)
Dingus, I think you articulated the "middle class" climbing lifestyle very well. One does not have to go to the extreme (freeloading, dirtbagging, living on the fringes of society) to really be 100% into this lifestyle.
Not surprizingly, the same is true for the "professionals". Many (most?) people are 100% into the "professional" lifestyle without quite realizing it. They never become CEO or close the big deal, but their entire existence is ruled by that lifestyle and its demands.
DDT
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angry
Jun 7, 2007, 4:35 PM
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svilnit wrote: Bravo sir! Bravo! I place my bet on 8 pages... Dingus is in another league from these 4 post trollers!
Seems like the word "troll" has been getting overused lately. In the ferver to use the word "troll", it's meaning has been lost.
Dingus posted nothing inflammatory, untrue, unjustified, or ignorant. The post was made to shed light on choices he's made. It was genuine, no trolling here. If Dingus was a 13 year old waxing philosophic about the climbing lifestyle I could see the word troll getting used.
To call something a troll simply because people will respond is utterly retarded.
That is all.
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svilnit
Jun 7, 2007, 4:36 PM
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ddt wrote: Great post. (I don't see this as a troll at all!) Dingus, I think you articulated the "middle class" climbing lifestyle very well. One does not have to go to the extreme (freeloading, dirtbagging, living on the fringes of society) to really be 100% into this lifestyle. Not surprizingly, the same is true for the "professionals". Many (most?) people are 100% into the "professional" lifestyle without quite realizing it. They never become CEO or close the big deal, but their entire existence is ruled by that lifestyle and its demands. DDT
No no... I'm not saying he did this message as a troll. I'm saying this one will elicit 8 pages of legit discussion where the trollers, that are trying to get the pages of useless garbage, can't do it
I have been in that professional lifestyle for years now and I'm actually trying to revert to the more care free lifestyle. "Work to live, not live to work".
(This post was edited by svilnit on Jun 7, 2007, 5:41 PM)
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dingus
Jun 7, 2007, 4:48 PM
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Its not a troll but every post is a troll of course. I'm perfectly happy mixing the two, throw in a dash of story telling.... its my gig!
But I'm perfectly serious about the weekend worrier lifestyle thing. Other sports have it too of course.
I know people who will not consider living away from the surf. I can see some of them from my hotel window RIGHT NOW. They surf in the morning before work, or right after, summer, winter, whatever. Its THEIR gig.
More responsible folk about be appalled at some of the decisions I've made. But for them, humping 100 pound loads into a wilderness wall for an FA attempt without compensation is about the stupidest thing they could imagine!
"You could be MAKING money, instead of WASTING IT!"
Time. Its worth MORE than money.
DMT
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zealotnoob
Jun 7, 2007, 4:50 PM
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Thanks for writing that Dingus. I strongly identify with your words. In the past two years I've spend 95% of my weekend in the manner you describe.
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svilnit
Jun 7, 2007, 4:57 PM
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Exactly.. when I say I'm going on vacation to do some climbing people look at me like I'm crazy. I then ask them how many people go to scuba diving resorts. Same thing. It's all about what you are passionate about.
What's the sense of busting your ass 100 hours a week just to have a pile of money at the end? By that point you've pissed away all of the good years of your life and you have missed what it truely means to live. Well, that is my perspective lately...
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dr_feelgood
Jun 7, 2007, 5:00 PM
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If this isn't subscribing to the climbing lifestyle, i'm not too sure what is.
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boymeetsrock
Jun 7, 2007, 5:24 PM
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I would say that I subscribe to a climbing lifestyle. It is not the lifestyle of old, but I have a feeling it might be the new one.
Fact is, I want to be RICH. Filthy, stinking, rolling in it rich. Probably won't ever happen, but I'm going to do what I can to accomplish that....
...One day, back in high school, I already new I wanted to be an outdoors-man. Truth is I've come to find religion in nature, and i can't walk away from that.
But I've grown up middle class, and am accustom to certain lifestyle traits, that I am not willing to give up. At the same time Joe Jones is flashing his flashy 'whatever' in front of me, and frankly I have my material wants too. But how, in the modern world, do you balance consumption and the environment.
Seems to me the only way is with money, and f'ing lots of it. I want my cake and eat it too, damn it!
And so I have resigned my self to a desk job and the professional life. I would like to own a company (not sure I want to run it, but...), I do want to close the big deal, and if it take a weekend then that's what it will get.
But I still make the 1.5 hour drive any time I can. I look for ways to get closer to the cliff, and stay in shape. And I still feel like "God" is walking with me when I'm in nature.
I am a weekend and armchair warrior. I day-dream of rocks and vistas and fresh air. I struggle to make those dreams come to life.
The old lifestyle might be unpopular today, but climbing lifestyles definitely abound. And even if dirtbagging is "uncool" that still doesn't give anyone the right to retro!
Dingus, I trully hope to meet you on the trail one day. It's people like you who keep the spirit of the outdoors alive, while gymnasts like Fracture strive to divide and conquer.
-Boy
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granite_grrl
Jun 7, 2007, 5:38 PM
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Bravo Dingus! One of the best posts I've read in a while! There's nothing trolling about it, but I know it'll generate a lot of response.
I am starting to be comfortable in my mediocrity. I get stuck with the boring work, but I'm not important enough to get called at home when there's a problem, nor am I involved in any weekend projects. I have thought about climbing the ladder, but truth is, I'm pretty happy here.
Oh, I'll want to move on from here sooner or later, but since I’m stuck in the area for a while I'll stick with this job. Just got to my three year seniority date and they've increased my vacation time, you know ;), plus its hard to beat all the 4 day weekends I get.
Yes, I work to go climbing. I have a car for climbing, climbing friends, climbing husband. Where to put the climbing wall was important when looking at a house and our first apartment. I am living for climbing.
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j_ung
Jun 7, 2007, 5:39 PM
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All that could have come from my own fingertips, dingus. But it didn't and I loved reading it. You give voice to those of us for whom climbing is far more than mere entertainment, but something less than a 100%-of-our-time kinda thing. Like you, everything I do eventually circles around to the common ground of climbing. I met my wife when I hired her to work part time at a climbing gym I managed. We moved at the New to be closer to climbing. Blah, blah, blah. But, I also work my 40, pay my taxes and make my mortgage every month, because I have zero interest in tossing it all away to live in the back of my truck at some trailhead.
So somebody says "climbing lifestyle?" I say, "Which one?"
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rogue10186
Jun 7, 2007, 6:34 PM
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QFT! Dingus!
That's basically how I'm trying to aim my life at this point in time, I could care less about being rich, once I'm done with college, I'd like to get a job that pays me enough that I wont have to worry about money to much, but to where I can actually go climb any weekend I want... Thats what I hate about Louisiana, nearest climbing is 6-8 hours away...
Speaking of which, how's the climbing in Tennessee?
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phillygoat
Jun 7, 2007, 6:34 PM
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I always say after the last trip that I'm going to allot an extra day off just to get my bearings before re-entering the working world... then the next trip comes along and damn it if I'm not (once again) getting home with mere hours before punching in.
You see, every time I want as much climbing as possible. I don't think I'm 'core' so much as a silly man who can't help himself. If either my partner or I suggested that we come home early so that we're not so sleepy Monday morning, the other would probably respond, "Are you fucking kidding me?" The reality might very well be that we DO come home a day early, but it'd most likely be from getting our asses kicked.
The point is: for some of us, the climbing lifestyle is matter-of-fact. It is devoid of pretense, posturing, or delusions of grandeur. That said, why would I ever pretend that something that occupies such a huge space in my life is no big deal? In the grand scheme of things, of course not, but that could be said of most things.
Identifying with a climbing lifestyle doesn't benefit me at all. I simply go climbing whenever I can. It seems like this distinction is lost on those who criticize the mere mention of it.
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chossmonkey
Jun 7, 2007, 7:20 PM
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rogue10186 wrote: Speaking of which, how's the climbing in Tennessee?
STEEP
Nice post dingus.
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alpinismo_flujo
Jun 7, 2007, 8:19 PM
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Great post dingus!
To answer your question - I subscribe too...I know if I spent as much time and effort as I do climbing I could be a rich fuck. But instead I aim for balance...climbing, being a dad, a husband, etc.
I downshifted my life to driving a Subaru, bought a condo (cheap and minimum repairs required) so all my "extra" time and money could be spent on climbing/traveling...
It's going smoothly so far and I love it!!
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majid_sabet
Jun 7, 2007, 8:45 PM
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DMT
(This post was edited by majid_sabet on Jun 7, 2007, 11:49 PM)
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mottaaa
Jun 7, 2007, 9:07 PM
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nice post dingus, almost makes me want to cry, seriously. i got into climbing kind of late, 27 or 28, and already married. i had it hammered into my head that financial success was the end goal. so i busted my ass figuring i'd make enough money to do ,whatever, and still have time to actually do it. it took me 20 years to realize that financial freedom, in its accepted form, was not for me. i understand now that one has to choose a lifestyle and choose a career that will support it. its never to late though. im working on realigning my life and i see the light.
shawn
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caughtinside
Jun 7, 2007, 9:43 PM
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Well your guidebook collection looks shiny and costly,
how much did you pay for your guide to the needles?
And how much did you spend on that #6 camalot?
Is it you or your partner in this income tax bracket?
Now time off for roadtrips, and money for gas,
Sometimes to places halfway cross the country!
And how much did you pay, for bolts on your F-A,
that proves you were there,
that you climbed that thing first?
How do you afford your rock climbing lifestye?
How do you afford your rock climbing lifestyle?
How do you afford your rock climbing lifestyle?
Ah, tell me!
How much did you pay for that fancy 9.6, the one you ruthlessly whipped on at the end of the day?
And how much will you pay, for a brand new 9.4, that you'll ruthlessly whip on at the end of another day?
And how long will the workers, keep weaving you new ones,
As long as they're getting their time on the rocks too
and how long will the workers, keep weaving you new ones,
As long as they're getting THEIR TIME ON THE ROCKS TOO!!
Aging nylon slings, and peeling sticky rubber,
scab removal, and car repair bills,
Your joints pay dearly now with youthful magic moments
But rock on completely with some brand new bong-bongs!
How do you afford your rock climbing lifestye?
How do you afford your rock climbing lifestyle?
How do you afford your rock climbing lifestyle?
Sport climbing ain't rebellion
You're climbing what they've bolted,
Your proud sends won't impress them,
Your bouldering posse only disgusts them
they're so happy to keep searching
for more rocks to play on
you're climbing what they've bolted
Rock climbing ain't rebellion
You're climbing
you're climbing
you're climbing what they've bolted!
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