Jag mötte Lassie

Back in the early 90's, Swedish-pretty-women-group Ainbusk Singers had a hit with their song "Jag mötte Lassie" (lit. "I met Lassie"). I don't even remember what it was about originally, but the phrase soon morphed (via a column in a local tabloid) into slang for meeting/seeing/being-run-over-by a celebrity. Preferrably it should be a B-list celeb, and even "meeting" them third-hand qualifies ("my sister's boyfriend ran into Siegfriend and Roy the other day!"). Lately, it seems I can't turn around without accumulating another "Lassie".

First off, I've been drinking and watching hockey with Bryce, a man who is not only the world's foremost expert on Bigfoot photography, but who also actually works for Jane Goodall. The one condition is related to the other, bizarrely enough. Being a famous scientist, and specifically an expert on primates, Goodall was once asked in a radio interview whether or not she believed in Bigfoot. She replied in some way that didn't completely and vehemently deny that Sasquatch is lumbering around somewhere in the Canadian woods, and because of that she was quickly turned into the darling of the Bigfoot "research" community. A great way to legimate any "sighting" would be to have Goodall endorse it as real, and before she could say "Yeti" twice she was being buried in blurry pictures and shaky-cam videos. Bryce, who was her webmaster at the time and as such the go-to guy for any digital audio/video work, got tapped as the man who should weed out the obvious fakes. So the way he tells it, he's probably the most experienced man in the whole wide world when it comes to identifying Abominable Snowmen -- or rather fraudulent versions of the same.
As an aside, it took me quite a while to figure out who his boss actually was. He'd just mention a "Jane", who did some sort of charity work, but that didn't exactly register as unusual. However, phrases like "She used to work for National Geographic: they needed someone who looked cute in a pair of shorts on TV" and "It's amazing how human those chimps seem" started to make the rest of us a bit suspicious, and eventually it all came together. Bryce is still fighting the good fight for both animals and people online, by the way -- check out the Jane Goodall Institute Community for Social Change.

Second up to bat is someone who's more legitimately famous on his own... but only if you're a climber. And possibly only if you're a climber with a perverse fetish for climbing the man-eating offwidth cracks. Bob Scarpelli's fame is steadily morphing from legend into myth in Wyoming, and I'd bet my bottom dollar that his reputation as a fearsome crack climber extends all over the Front Range. He's spent better than 40 years climbing at Vedauwoo, and what he doesn't know about the intricacies of jamming body parts into rock isn't worth knowing. He's also almost inhumanly strong, especially for his size (he's my weight but six inches shorter), and seems to be one of these Old Hard Men who just get tougher with age. The gigantic hands that are attached to his tree-trunk-sized arms don't exactly hurt him, either -- he can fist jam what us mortals need to shove two hands and a knee into. I was out with Jen (more on her below) and him one fine Saturday, and got absolutely schooled on their warmups. But I probably learned more that day than in the whole previous season, and it's inspiring to watch him go. He's twice my age, but somehow he's mastered the art of just flowing -- seemlingly without effort -- up sections of rock that either spit me off immediately or eat whole pounds of my flesh on every attempt. I've got something to shoot for now...

Descending into not-even-C-list-celebrity, I've started climbing with Tom and Jen. Both of them achieved some sort of fame-by-proxy about two years back, with an article by Pete Takeda in Alpinist about climbing with Scarpelli in Vedauwoo, and a number of very nice photos by Greg Epperson. I actually read the article prior to moving here, and quite enjoyed it, but I certainly didn't recognize either Tom or Jen from their descriptions in Takeda's fine piece of prose. Tell me, does this look like someone who "mixes the physique and dark good-looks of Franco Colombo and a PhD intellect"?



On the other hand, I do buy his characterization of Jen as "cute spunky lawyer [...] who herself uses language that would make a sailor blush". Indeed, she's by far the most foul-mouthed woman I've ever met -- and a good friend and amazing climber:



As usual, I don't have any pictures of myself doing anything particularly heroic -- I can't very well take them myself, and my belayers are blessedly concentrated on keeping my fat ass off the ground. Possibly my greatest achievement so far this season has been learning how to really tape my hands, although it hasn't stopped me from donating more and more blood:



With my shiny new tape job, I've managed to pick off some Vedauwoo classics in the moderate range, including Plumb Line and Lower Progressive:





Those climbs aren't long, but they are "more deceptive than imposing", as Takeda puts it. I've also flailed about on some harder stuff, like Beer Crack:



But of course, post-climbing beers are almost the best part of the day, regardless of whether you sent or not:



With these people sheparding my ass around the three-star climbs of Vedauwoo, and providing motivational speeches like "You don't get any beer if you fall off this, doofus" and "Oooh, is your vagina hurting a little bit?", I'm sure to improve by leaps and bounds this season. Now, if the goddamn snow would just stop falling...