It's not just you. Two climbing systems really opens the door for not only higher safety, but more positioning options. Also, the older you get the more aware you become to just how busted up you could get from even a short fall, and just how much longer it will take you to heal up if you get...
Amen, brother. I'd add that you can also explain to them that climbing trees, no matter how you do it, is not something that you automatically figure out. Your natural fear of heights isn't something you overcome, it's something you learn to deal with until your brain figures out that you can be...
We could put a hot tub in a tree... get a bucket of beer... put up a sign (Darwin Awards Tree Climbing Competition this Wednesday! BYOB!)... and give away tiny DMM Vaults as prizes...
Before mechanicals, it was glazed ropes, glazed hitch cords, mis-tied hitches and burning ropes right to the ground. In the 90's, I watched a climber trying to raise his TIP hit at least four limbs on his trip to the ground. In the early 2000's another one, who only lives a few blocks from me...
Let me check...
"Honey, you ever think it's too big, and wish it was smaller?"
"Yes, all the time!"
"Well, you're just going to have to suffer, baby."
"Unless your mouth shrinks."
I'd kill that woman, but she knows where I buried the bodies and might have left a note somewhere.
That's all I was doing, as well. Trying to ascertain how people arrive at the strange notion that fancy, newfangled stuff is somehow inferior to old school technology. It's like being happy climbing on sisal rope because those modern, plastic ropes could melt or turn into Chinese noodles.
Seems to me the splice takes the most abuse in the tree, and I don't like running a mechanical device into the splice... that's just my way of fixing both problems. That used to be a 150' hank, at one time. It had an unfortunate encounter with a chainsaw before it ever saw a tree.
Why on earth would you think that any modern climbing mechanical would bend, or break, or jam up... or in any way be less safe than a little piece of rope? They're not made out of beer cans and coat hangers.
Speaking of asylums... I actually spent a year and a half of my life working at one. Can you imagine? Something about a fox blah blah and a chicken house yada yada. Fun times.
No, sorry... will have some 1/2" rigging stuff listed within the next few days, I believe. Still have a bunch of climbing stuff to work my way through. Heading out to get more boxes, packing tape, etc. right now.
I apologize for getting on here so late, but I had a long night and didn't get to bed until early this morning. I got several PM's about this item.
I will deal with them in the order that they were posted, and then update the thread title accordingly.