Thanksclimbing 2008

This Sunday we'll celebrate, drink, climb and eat,
if you can't be there we'll assume your at home beating your meat.

The WSP climbing will be sick once again,
Luke's homemade grog will make us all grin.

There's a football game on starting at seven,
but the West Saint Paul funmeter will go to eleven.

The air is crisp and the bird has been shot,
missing Thanksclimbing is something you should not.

We all know the holiday season is upon us when it kicks off with the annual Thanksclimbing festival in my garage. This glorious 2nd annual event features food, climbing and fun. There were many sick routes climbed at the West Saint Paul International Climbing Facility and fun was had by all. We fired up the deep fryer and consumed more than one bottle of beer in an effort to properly offset the physical activity the climbing provided. Some highlights of the evening were as follows:

• Best dressed: TJB for his throwback climbing tights tribute to the eighties.....their appearance was brief, and we all needed a shower afterward.
• Rowdiest guest: The dog, who broke a bottle of beer on the floor in a drunken fit of rage....nice, who invited the deaf and blind dog, anyway? However there is some debate that Al actually dropped his beer and then blamed it on the senile dog.......
  
• Best Food: Smorrissey's mini corn dogs gave the event a state fair like feel
• Most Unique Beverage: Noll's 'Simpler Times' beer. Correct, we had not heard of it before either. Top shelf could be overstating it a bit.
• Biggest camera: Once again, defending champion, Jevidon, edges out everyone else, combined, with his Canon Hubble XJ57R unit which provided superior images of the event.
• Topless Climbing Contest is taken by Al who just edged out TJBs more "primitive" look. However, if there were a contest to clog the shower drain, TJB would top the podium.
• Best Dead Animal Brought to the Party: Luke takes it with the beheaded and skinned unidentified fowl in a grocery sack. Nobody knows what happened to the fowl, but there are theories that Noll, in a maddened vegetarian relapse snuck out the back door and consumed it raw under the deck of the house. Reports have not been confirmed, but the fine taste of meat has.
  

By the end of the night all hands and arms were pumped, lungs were white from inhaling chalk dust and the recycling bin was markedly more full than when the night started. Thanksclimbing to all, and to all a good night. Click on the images for the Thanksclimbing gallery.