You Might Be A Mountain Climber If...
© 1997-2004 John N. Meyer, all rights reserved. Used with permission

• "just say no to crack " means setting a bolt instead of using a cam.
• You have ever clipped a 3 ounce set of keys to your belt with a 25 kn. carabiner.
• You own a $75 dress suit and a $1000 dollar Goretex suit.
• Your favorite shoes look like Nike ballet slippers.
• You have more summit pictures than wedding pictures.
• You've ever fallen so far that you've run out of adrenaline before you ran out of rope.
• "Bomber" is not a noun
• "Sending" something does not involve the USPS, UPS, or Fed-Ex
• Every time you drive under a bridge on the highway you almost pull over to try and arch it.
• fast food tastes better with chalk on it.
• It doesn't make sense to unpack your car, because you're just going to go on another climbing trip soon...
• Not only is your Nalgene scratched and covered in climbing stickers, but the stickers are so sun-bleached that you can't tell what they say.
• The clothes you are currently wearing have chalk on THEM
• The only books you own are guides to climbs
• The scent of sweat, and chalk gets you excited.
• V8 is a tough boulder problem not a drink
• What you call cold is not on the thermometer scale.
• When going to the Gym doesn't involve weights or treadmills.
• When typing you think about how your actually training your tendons.
• When you hear the words 'nose', 'captain' or 'aid', your hands start hurting and swelling.
• You aerate your lawn with your crampons
• You are a cashier and still have hands rougher than a carpenter.
• You arrive at a climbing gym with stoppers and friends still in your bag.
• You ask your dad if you can bolt your parents' sandstone fireplace.
• You begin buying your shoes 2 sizes too small out of habit
• You brag about taking a whipper
• You can't understand why people keep asking you why your legs are always so scraped up
• You can make it from your car to your attic w/out touching the floor once
• You can scratch yourself with just your fingers, without using the nails at all.
• You compete with your friends to see how many doors in your dorm you can drytool before you fall or tear the frame apart
• You convince a buddy to be your climbing partner for the day and hike 4 miles with 40 pounds worth of gear in your pack to some cliff that doesn't exist 'cause you overheard a logger in a bar talking about this "big thing back in the woods" that he almost fell off of.
• You crimp and pull up on every door jam you walk under
• You describe the time you fell, buildering on your friend's balcony, as "that horrible climbing accident"
• You don't walk down stairs, your rappel them
• You drop something at work and yell "Rock !"
• You get confused when someone says they're rapping gifts for somebody.
• You have had to get rings resized to accomidate "finger biceps" you didn't have before.
• you have one of those "falling" dreams and on your way down you scope out the cliff to see if it will go.
• You hear the word "flapper" from across the room and quiver.
• You introduce your girlfriend/wife as your belay partner
• You know how to get on your roof without a ladder
• You look at every vertical surface you see as a potential climb.
• You mark your pens at work with colored tape.
• You moan and complain about people getting gear placement wrong in the movies and not when a single bullet blows up a car.
• You placed anchors on the side of your 5th story apartment building so you could sleep on your porta-ledge on the weekdays.
• You put you boss on hold because you have a call from you climbing partner to plan the next climbing trip
• You seriously considered turning down Dartmouth to live with your parents forever and climb and then live off their inheritance when they die.
• You spend three evenings cleaning the crap out from the storage place under the stairs so you can campus them.
• You think chalk is the answer to everything duct tape isn't
• You tie your neck tie with a figure 8 knot
• You use a piton as a bottle opener, can opener, spoon, fork, and knife
• Your bed is no longer slept in because you need somewhere to sort your gear.
• Your climbing gear is the only stuff you own that is neatly put away, and organized.
• Your coffee cup at work has a sling attached with duct tape.
• Your escape plan in case of a fire is rappelling out the window
• Your forearms are bigger than your biceps.
• Your tow hitch has only been used as a rappel anchor
and the number one reason you might be a climber....
• You understood all the previous lines. If you even laughed, you should get back to work...