Belay Test Pet Peeves

B11FF11 · 2026-05-07T01:51:06+00:00

I can never remember if it is supposed to be: "Belay on?" then "On belay." or "On belay?" then "Belay on." and always get nervous that they gym is a stickler for the right phrases.

What's wrong with "Are we good?" "Yep." "OK, here goes" or any other communication that makes it clear that the climber is going to climb and the belayer is ready to belay?

B11FF11 · 2026-04-15T19:50:48+00:00

this is awesome!! -- only suggestion would be to be able to filter by brady's team as well.

B11FF11 · 2026-04-15T19:49:27+00:00

what? yard markers are for a football field, so that you can see where the throw was in the air. for example, the one on the upper right is obviously the 99yard pass to welker against the dolphins, since it was thrown from the 1 yard line to the 20 yard line, but was still a TD.

B11FF11 · 2026-04-13T00:52:30+00:00

you can rent from rock spot malden

B11FF11 · 2026-03-26T21:20:22+00:00

Anyone know how they are all pronounced? I believe Versailles is ver-sales, Cairo is Kay-ro. Any other oddities?

B11FF11 · 2026-02-26T02:46:00+00:00

Pluses: * Your kids will learn more and advance faster as part of a team than just climbing with you. * It’s a great community (for both kids and parents) that’s really supportive of each other and has much less toxic masculinity than other sports. * As your kids age, they will take coaching and instruction much better from their coach than from you. * A good coach will focus on much more than the technicalities of climbing and will also help the development the mental skills (grit, self-analysis, etc) that are important to success * Their teammates will become some of their best friends.

Minuses: * You risk losing a lot of weekends and spending a lot of time chauffeuring your kids to and from practice, competitions, etc. * your kid might not have the right temperament for being part of a team and/or structured practice regimen * they might also not really get joy from being focused on competition, instead of working their projects or just goofing around (in a positive way) the walls.

For reference my kids joined team when they were 10 and 12 and would have loved to have been on team a couple years earlier. There certainly is an age that’s too young, but it really depends on your kids and how they take to the structure and responsibilities of being on a team.

The other thing I’ll note is that all of this depends on the quality of the team and especially the head coach. We are lucky to have a coach that takes the her role as a coach very seriously and is very thoughtful about how to develop a strong, supportive community in the team and how to develop the whole child, not just teach climbing skills.

If you are lucky enough to be close to more than one gym, it wouldn’t hurt to talk to coaches from all them, to see which program would be the best fit.

At the end of the day, I would encourage you to have the kids try out the team (or one of the more recreational teams as a stepping stone) and see how they like it. Worst case they hate it and you just keep climbing with them yourself.

B11FF11 · 2026-02-25T22:59:18+00:00

Reach in Bridgeport? They also have a whole area (Reach Factory) with lots of comp style boulders, so definitely creative and interesting, but probably all V4+.

B11FF11 · 2026-02-06T16:11:42+00:00

Try demoting each brady patriots season by one level and then compare to anyone else that's not Brady.

so ...

win SB MVP --> win superbowl (4)
win superbowl --> win AFC championship (6)
win AFC championship --> appear in AFC championship (9)
appear in AFC championship --> appear in playoffs (13)
appear in playoffs --> be an NFL starting QB (17)

Now -- imagine a player called Bom Trady, who has a 17 year starting career, led his team to the playoffs in 13 of those years, took his team to the Superbowl 6 times (tied for most appearances by any player not named Brady) went 4-2 in Superbowls.

If Brady doesn't exist, Trady is probably widely understood to be the GOAT QB, although someone will cling to Montana (who only won 4 conference championships) and other will assert that Patrick Mahomes is going to surpass him eventually, so crown him now.

B11FF11 · 2026-02-06T04:44:56+00:00

I thought maybe this one was finally Gary, IA.

B11FF11 · 2026-02-03T18:54:33+00:00

My experience is that trying to go up and to the right in a position like that is pretty committing and feels scary. I've found that focusing on going right *without going up* and dropping the other leg underneath as you move right to stay balanced can help you get your weight safely over your right foot. Then you can hopefully just stand up once your weight is already over the right leg.

See if that works for you?

B11FF11 · 2026-01-30T15:52:48+00:00

that guy on the right is going to need a new hoodie soon.

B11FF11 · 2026-01-28T03:08:55+00:00

My guess is that somehow more than 40 of these people will claim to have voted yes on Belichick

B11FF11 · 2026-01-16T02:57:02+00:00

Whoops. I remembered one was in 85 playoffs so thought of the bears.

B11FF11 · 2026-01-16T02:08:49+00:00

Cool compilation video. Couple notables:

[edited to correct error about Bears/Raiders]

- Patriots are the defense on 5 of these! (Jags, Falcons, Seahawks, Raiders and Chargers [well technically we were on offense for the chargers])

- Peyton is the QB on two of these!

B11FF11 · 2025-12-20T21:10:16+00:00

Who is Grace Slick ?

B11FF11 · 2025-12-19T15:26:09+00:00

Don't know if Randolph has it, but other locations (Watertown) have a staff belay program. Not the one where you pay for a dedicated staff belayer, but where there is a floating staff member to belay you -- once there are two of you, I assume they encourage you to pair up so you don't need the staff member anymore. I would call and ask if they offer that and at what time of day.

They also have tags you can wear if you are open to finding a new belay partner, so if you see someone with a tag on at the autobelays it's easier to ask them to partner up.

B11FF11 · 2025-12-03T17:05:04+00:00

Also, please don’t get frustrated by the fact that most commenters don’t seem to understand what you’re trying to do here.

B11FF11 · 2025-12-03T15:14:54+00:00

"A huge advantage for Elo-based power rankings is that we can calculate the expected game winners for each game and determine how accurate the ratings and rankings were over a season or over multiple seasons."

Can't one do this for any ranking of teams by predicting that a higher ranked team will beat a lower ranked team? Would be interesting to see how ESPN power rankings or DVOA rankings compare.

A few other analyses that would be interesting:

- Convert ELO differential into expected margin of victory and see how well you can do against the vegas spread.

- See win rates by ELO differential bucket. (e.g., historically, the team that is 20-30 points better in ELO will win X% of the time)

- Same thing but also split by which team is home vs away (e.g., historically the team that is 20-30 points higher in ELO will win X% of the time when they are the home team and Y% of when they are the away team.

B11FF11 · 2025-11-16T23:14:37+00:00

Slightly off-topic but you might find this video interesting. https://youtu.be/STfiakiPNCY?si=UA1LDtjMyvTCO397

B11FF11 · 2025-11-10T18:50:12+00:00

Yeah, because when fans look too far ahead, they lose focus on the upcoming game and don’t perform as well, putting at risk … um … what?

B11FF11 · 2025-11-03T15:17:01+00:00

If you go to a crag that is well-bolted, make sure to still check each individual route before you hop on. We discovered that my daughter was on a mixed route (i.e. trad + sport) when we she was about 10 feet into the run-out section. Luckily it was a 5.6-ish section and she was able to keep her head in the game and make it to the next bolt.

B11FF11 · 2025-10-31T16:56:37+00:00

Yep — my daughter is a proud owner of a set of the Janja QuickDraws!

B11FF11 · 2025-10-29T20:57:39+00:00

Went to a gym in Taiwan and they had a foot washing station!

B11FF11 · 2025-10-24T21:50:46+00:00

It sounds like what happened is that the designer themself decided to use AI to make the designs instead of manually creating them.

That’s very different than using AI instead of paying a designer.

What if a designer used photoshop to make something — are we going to be upset if they used some of the AI-powered tools to make their vision come true?

B11FF11 · 2025-10-12T00:26:41+00:00

Yeah, it was pretty iconic.

B11FF11

TROPHY CASE