Dah Gone Uh - A Yankee's Perspective

I've never watched movies around a campfire, let alone while schwilling margaritas in a coffee mug. That is, until I went to Alabama.  Our adventure would have been a very different story if we were to have not met Terry.

The dude had a banjo tattooed on his knee, as well as a moon on one nip and a sun on the other - things he showed us the first night we hung out.  He cooked some damn good food too.  Never did I have boiled peanuts, fried green tomatoes, or "gormet" hotdogs (hotdogs with bbq sauce cooked on a fire, he said the sauce was homemade and that he just reused the Piggly Wiggly sauce bottle..debatable) on a climbing trip.  Uncle Terry was a good guy to have an in with, although getting his little revolver pointed at you right when you woke up could be a little unnerving at best - he meant no harm.

We picked up a bunch of sweet new vocabulary too.  Add these to the dictionary, I mean "Dinictionary":

Dah Gone Uh - an extremely useful filler expression, use it like "um".
Hugger - we know them as coozies up here.
Annarchiologist - what you call an Anarchist when you can't remember/pronounce the word.

We were in true dirtbag form.  Our campsite had so much spilt food and swisch that it was infested with a swarm of bees from day one.  They almost were like pets.  Only once was anyone stung (Alex), despite our swatting, yelling, etc.  We had another "nature experience" with a coon that Terry claimed to weigh 70 pounds.  Every night we left our food out.  And every night that damn thieving coon bastard ran off with some sort of grain product..bread, tortillas, oatmeal.  The following mornings were met with talk of learning our lesson, putting the food in the car - but we never did, against better judgement.  When I told Terry my thoughts on training our friends the bees to kill the perpetrator he responded with..

"Last time a Yankee tried to tame a southern bee, he ended up dead..took him to the coon's lair."

Knowing that the swarm was on the side of the enemy, we forgot about the plan.  There were other bees up on Chandler Mountain, or should I say B's.  We had reverted to primal grunting and chest pounding when in the presence of a female, any female.  I apologize to any that actually caught on to our antics.  There was some pretty low brow humor thrown down around the campfire, some that we should all forget.  Some we definitely should remember.

Uncle Terry

Swisch was almost as much of a part of the trip as was the climbing.  It's a wonder how we managed to get up around six almost every day to make use of the crisp morning temps.  One memorable incident involved a post session draining of a bottle in less than half an hour.  I've never had a stranger request concerning whiskey than Dawson asking me to pour some in a plastic water bottle half full of wine..at eight in the morning.  Clearly things went downhill from there.  I thought I'd be a great slackliner with the inebriation and all, "lost" my boots (next to the slackline), and proceeded to think I could wear PBR boxes as shoes into the liquor store.  I don't know what makes less sense - the preceding actions or Dawson letting Terry drive his car to said establishment.

I can't wait to get back down South.  Horse Pens will always have a special place in my heart.  Rocktown and LRC were also both pretty sweet too.  Even though I'm just a dumb Yankee, I can appreciate Dixie's charm.

-Ryan