AF Get-Togethers

[rexbeccarox]

There aren't a crap-ton of planned activities for the wedding I'm attending, so I should have a good amount of free time.

Well cool. I have almost nothing but free time. I mean it's 1:30 on a weekday and I'm on Atheist forums.

Haha! Ditto!

[Whateverist]

Careful if he takes you climbing rexbeccia.

[Violet]

Can't glide down on the thermals if you don't climb the Epidermals.

Just be sure to wear a harness, dearie.

[Ravenshire]

Well, I'm putting the cart well ahead of the horse, but I'm going to try to make it out to the PacNW for the week of Memorial Day. I'm giving the PacNW bunch plenty of warning so there will be no excuses for not meeting up!

I'll post more details/confirmation as it gets closer.

[CapnAwesome]

I'm going to be backpacking through eastern Australia for the next two months, if anybody wants to meet up I'd be into it.

[Whateverist]

Watch your back, mate. Pretty much anything you don't throw on the barbie is likely to bite you, sting you and/or kill you. If you have a near death experience be sure to come back and tell us all about it.

[CapnAwesome]

Watch your back, mate. Pretty much anything you don't throw on the barbie is likely to bite you, sting you and/or kill you. If you have a near death experience be sure to come back and tell us all about it.

Haha, thanks. Near death experiences are my specialty. I've almost died a few times in my relatively young life (I'm 32) I actually think very few human beings have been as close to death as I was this one time.

True story: I was free-solo (ropeless) rock climbing in Yosemite national park on what was a very easy route for me and was on the very last segment (with a 1500 foot fall underneath me.) Well lo and behold it was wet. At this point I could climb down the whole thing or do a few easy moves on wet rock to get to the end of the climb. I committed to the moves and slipped and started sliding down the rock face to my certain death. Out of desperation (or rather instinct) I put my foot out and stopped myself on a ledge maybe the width of a couple of fingers that was coated in pine needles. By all accounts it shouldn't have even stopped my fall. I stepped from there to the end of the climb and walked down the trail. Now I had a friend who was also soloing the route in front of me, he watched me slip and was certain that he was about to watch me hurdle off the cliff to my death. In a weird way this experience has always given me a false sense of invincibility.

[TheRealJoeFish]

In a weird way this experience has always given me a false sense of invincibility.

Hey, now, you don't know that it's false...

[Whateverist]

Had a similar but very much scaled down experience when I was very young, maybe five. My family occasionally visited this one park in San Diego where there was a steep trail up essentially a jumble of shattered rocks. I don't know its name.

Given my age at the time I'm sure it was no where near so tall as it seemed at the time. Anyhow, my two years older brother and I were scrambling around off the trail on some bare rocks below which was a clear fall which I suspect might have been fatal. We were out on some smooth rock with a thin layer of grit when my brother slipped and started sliding down the rock to the edge. There was one crack with a little dirt and grass in it which he succeeded in pulling out without stopping his slide. I was still standing nearby so I extended my hand and he pulled me down with him. But I was able to get my little fingers into the same crack and hold on. So he climbed up over me and we both went back down the 'mountain'. To this day, if I bring it up, he still remembers and he hates it that he needed his little brother to save his ass.

I too suffer from over confidence in myself.

[Cinjin]

I travel all the time, but in truth I'd really only be interested if I could meet up with a larger group of say - 6 or more.

But hey, I do get around.