Smooth Moves With The Gentleman - Catch The Fever!

With Mother Nature playing another terribly mean trick on us by depositing 3-4 inches of fresh, hateful snow I've decided that today is a day for The Gentleman. So grab a glass of fine bourbon, pull up a chair next to the fire and enjoy the latest installment of Smooth Moves With The Gentleman. Sure to be one for the ages.

It’s the Midwest and It’s winter and it’s awful-tastic cold outside but there’s still plenty of hot, sweaty, shirtless action to be found- Welcome to GYM SEASON 2010-2011!

We’re pulling into the prime time of indoor climbing, what with all the comps going down and I’d like to recap {bitch} about all that was wrong and unbearable about the 2010-11 indoor season.:

1) I paid I can do whatever I want

Climbing gyms are businesses (unless you’re smart Minnesotans and create a private climbing Co-Op not open to the public) and businesses need to make money, lots of money. How do you make money? By selling yourself to people with money. Some call this whoring, I call it commerce. What do the people who have rented you for the evening want to do to you, a climbing gym? What-ever-they-want. Climb barefoot with your athlete’s foot gnarled hooves? You bet! Use the ropes to Tarzan swing around the gym? Most definitely! Climb over a crew of your slack-jawed friends without roping up then falling like a jackass onto the crowd below like a retarded meteor striking a herd of cows? Who wouldn’t!

Making money is a necessary. I know this. Hopefully most of these people will Darwin themselves shortly after buying a membership but before polluting the gene-pool.

2) Show Time

Yo, check this out! Hey, hey you! HELLO watch me do this! Everyone, attention please! For real. Look at me!!!! SHOW TIME!

Guys do this infinitely more than the ladies do but every now and then a someone with XX Chromosomes pulls it off. You know the people. Regardless of what’s going on around them, whether someone(s) is/are already climbing in the immediate vicinity or, dare I say on the same problem, it’s go time and Showtime is going to climb. Everyone better get out of Showtime’s way because this is the exact moment that they’re going to do something awesome and we’d all better witness.

Oh, excuse me, were you waiting patiently to climb, well, allow me to jump in front of you.

Hey, were you brushing those hold for a reason? Oh, that reason was probably me. Allow me to sweat those hold back up for you.

Pardon me, I see that we’ve inopportunely crisscrossed paths, kindly get the hell off my wall and out of my way.

Hey, is that your foot on my foot chip, well, no problem, I’ll just step on your foot.

3) I got this.

Last week I was working a problem that I set. I wrote V6 on the problem because if you know our gym, you know we sand bag (i.e. V5 means hard, V6 means real hard, V7 and beyond means probably won’t get done). I gave it a good, hard effort, pushed it to the crux and burst off. Alright, got the start dialed, I though, now to work the crux section. I sat down.

Enter McNewb and his trusty sidekick Gunz McHasnome , enticed by a double-dyno problem next to my project. Gunz was up first on the dyno. Gunz was up and Gunz was down. No sooner had Gunz pulled onto the start holds then he was crashing to the mats unable to hold said start holds. Cue McNewb. To his credit, McNewb did hold the start holds and was able to manage a fairly impressive dry fire/ejector maneuver landing himself five feet away from the boulder. I laughed. It was funny. I’m kind of a dick.

Humbled, McNewb decided to try a new problem. My problem. This I had to see. McNewb chalked up, loosened up the ole’ shoulders and climbed on- in the middle of the problem, on the only two decent holds, and chucked for the crux hold and held it- for about two seconds before crashing off. McNewb proceeded to do this about to more time as Gunz’ cheered. After the third failure at snagging the crux hold McNewb walked over to me to ask about the problem. He’d seen me working it. He thought maybe there was alternate beta but I didn’t get what he was telling me he wanted to do. Then he did it. He said it.

Mcnewb: You know, really,for V6 it’s not that hard, if I catch that hold and put my foot on I got it.

Me: So you can cruise it to the crux can you?

McNewb: Actually, I can’t do the first three moves so I skip them. Is it really V6?

Me: Linking all the moves into the crux makes that move harder. It’s probably more like V7 or V8.

McNewb: The tape says V6.

Me: Yeah, but I set it and that was just a guess. It’s pretty hard.

McNewb: Nah, I got it. It’s not that hard.

Me: Oh Really? You got it? You can’t do the first three moves! You can’t do the crux! You can hold two holds. Con-grats! Sure, you got it!?

I wish the conversation had went further. I wanted to flame McNewb. I think he realized the scary look I was giving him and he walked off without say anything else.

These people make gym season suck. Usually they are also the same people mentioned in #1 and they lead to number 4.

4) Where is the manager. I want to complain.

This has marred GYM SEASON 10/11 and I put blame solely on people in category 1 and 4. New people, paying money to treat the gym like their personal playground. And when the playground situation isn’t exactly the way they want it…. They complain to the manager.

Our gym manager then has to try an explain why the playground situation is as it is then attempts to appease the complainer and finally sends out emails passing on the complaint.

I hate this. So to end this rant, here are a few little complaints that were heard in 2010/11):

-The 5.8’s aren’t 5.8 enough.
-Why do the setters have to set when I’m here? Can’t they set after hours (hours of operation 10am to 10pm).
-The problems and routes aren’t changed over fast enough
-Someone took down my project that had only been up for 6 months.
-I was climbing under a setter’s ladder and a wrench got dropped on me. Tell them not to drop things when I’m under the ladder.
-I don’t climb in comps so I don’t want them closing off the gym for comp setting when I am here.
-Why does it cost $11 dollars to climb? Can I pay less?
-Why is it so chalky in here?

Please feel free to add any others in the comment section. This is an open forum peoples.