| RavenBlog |
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| Comments on Sunday 30 March 2003: |
| Tsk. You probably know how my blog entries are usually complaining about stupid things people have done. Well today, that would be me. We went for coffee-and-wandering with a bunch of people. The wandering took us up a slope that ended atop a cliff. After several hours I was quite bored. The whole "going outside with several people" thing, after all. And all this time, as the boredom built up, there was a cliff of rocks staring at me. It finally came to be time to leave, and I decided it would be fun to climb down the cliff rather than walking down the winding path. It looked both easy and fun, after all. And it wasn't so high. It was, of course, high, not easy, and not fun. It was about three times as high as it looked. All the nice firm-looking rocky handholds were actually full of loose dirt and slick with watery moss-gloop. All the nice firm-looking trees, spaced at convenient person-height distances, that would be excellent footholds were, it turned out, mostly just large branches with no roots at all. Those that weren't loose branches were trees with just enough roots to support themselves so long as it's not windy. Light as I am, I still don't weigh less than a bit of wind. A couple of fifteen-foot drops later, and with a sprained ankle, I was still about thirty feet from the ground, and entirely out of secure handholds or footholds. Said ground being on a steep incline (thus particularly not good to land on with a sprained ankle) and leading to sharp rocks. After surveying the possible routes (can't go up, going down that way would be dangerous and suck, and going down that way would also be dangerous and suck), two of the group went to get rope. An hour or so later, with a couple of hundred-foot nylon ropes, they returned. These were used cunningly, one to safely pass me the other. I tied that one around myself, and lobbed the other end over the one firm log on the whole cliff (coincidentally, the same one I was sitting on - no, I wasn't hanging off a tiny ledge for an hour; I'd have probably just tried the drop, if that were the case) and down to the companions. A classic simple descent, after that, with three people and some friction holding my weight. And given the mechanism, we didn't have to leave either rope there, which is, of course, a good thing. After all, a 100-foot light rope is worth 20 gold pieces. After that, it was but a short hop-limp-carry-piggyback to the nearest car. A joy and a pleasure. Lessons learned: 1. Never leave the house. You'll get bored and do something stupid. 2. Cliffs are taller and more difficult than they appear. You knew that, you idiot. 3. Cliffs are harder to go down safely than up. You knew that too. Honestly, what were you thinking? 4. Ow. [05:35] |
| Nightshade |
| Teehee. Er, um.. sorry to laugh at your plight. No, really, I'm not. I've done similar. Got stuck in a tree once, 'cuz I was bored and decided to do something stupid (which is, by the way, a great reason to leave the house, not a bad one). I hope your sprained ankle gets better soon. <grin> |
| RavenBlack |
| Well, they sold 50-foot ropes for 10gp. http://www.wheaters.freeserve.co.uk/dnd/rules/equipment.pdf |
| wyndenai |
| The ropes were, in fact, 20gp. If by "gp" you mean "arbitrary numbers signed for on credit that could have been represented by small goldish coins with a lady on them." |
| Nameless |
| Is this an allegory? |
| Kev |
| LOL<\/A>/ :) You had fun didn't you? I guess you should now also learn to not get bored in the first place ;) |
| Tom |
| You should listen to Nick Cave. He holds the answers to all problems: "I thought I'd take a walk today. It's a mistake I often make." This is obviously the sort of advice you need. Never go outside. I vaguely think some people have told you to listen to Nick Cave before. Probably I did as well. It's compulsory listening if you are in Australia and wear any black clothes at all. Really do think you'd appreciate his cynical fucked up destruction of those who believe being Gothic is painting their face white and dripping hot wax around the place. It's amusing to go to a Nick Cave concert and watch all these people in full Gothic regalia pull back from the stage when he goes a little further than they really think is necessary. Sing about love and death with any seriousness, and they run. Gives me space to get to the front in my jeans and Hard Rock Cafe t-shirt. Of course, Nick Cave isn't really Gothic (as it is often thought of today). People just think he is. He's intelligent instead. |
| Nameless |
| Thank you for that tip RavenBlack, I will remember never to leave the house again. I had heard that it was a dangerous place this, "out side world." Any way this sort of thing is why I don't like steep hills, but I still have the problem of wanting to go down them. Each time about ten meters climb to the bottom I realise it was a very bad idea. But next time I see one I still climb down it. Eps – I came for the get prog and stayed for the blog. (Oh crap now I sound like one of those weirdoes’s/geeks I’m always being called.) |
| Eps |
| Well my nick is eps, but the damn input thingy! *It was way too late to be doing anything that mentally involving at the time...* I like being a "freak", well apart from the times when you get payout about it. But I'll show them.... /me goes off to buy an "I read your email" t-shirt from thinkgeek... Any way just posting this to say that my nicks eps, not nameless. And well checking to see if Raven posted again, he has the funniest blog I’ve seen. *Sorry to be finding joy in your misery!* Eps – Over in the corner with the phone cable… |
| kyrin |
| Actually, we though he could make it down the side of the cliff on his own. Sans the twisted ankle he might have. The funny part was that the area he was stuck in was in the roots of a tree, which remarkably resembled a nest built to Raven Black scale. At the time, it was hard to determine weither he was stuck or contemplating the possiblilty of setting up a decent internet connection up there. |
| Eps |
| HA... And you didn't get a photo. Eps - And you call yourself a geek! |