I've been busy the last few days so it took me a while to get caught up.
Bluefin,
I love the parody! That's cute! Seriously
Now, here's the story. A while ago I found that after I worked and taught with friends we had to take too much time to sort out our gear. Since there were common pieces of hardware we sometimes couldn't tell who's was who's. I wanted to mark my gear some how. When I was looking at the rainbow of colors in spray paint cans I was stumped. At first I thought of orange, yellow or red. But then I realized that no other manly-man would used PINK! Most of the paint wears off but there are always some nooks and crannies with little scraps of paint.
This has lead to kind of an inside joke now. Tim Walsh worked for me for a week and when it was time to square up I traded him a couple of stainless steel Gibbs that I didn't use and he needed. Later in the year Tim was doing a rigging demonstration with Don Blair. As they were setting up, Don tells the group, " A friend of mine in Minneapolis paints all of his gear pink so that he knows if anyone steals his gear." This got a few chuckles out of the group. At the exact moment Tim reaches into his bag and pulls out one of his, pink, Gibbs...this brought the house down. Tim didn't even remember that the Gibbs used to be mine. Don and Tim couldn't have set up a funnier moment if they'd scripted it. Tim was sucking air trying to explain that he bought the Gibbs and it wasn't stolen
Tim wrote an article on ascenders for TCI magazine. There, at the bottom of the page, is a pink Gibbs. Cute...
John Sanborn wrote the limerick for me. Since it doesn't show up when I post, I forget about it. I realize that it does get a little stale.
No offense taken. Generally, I have a pretty thick skin. Good to have you on board.
Tom
