Apparently it's been obvious for awhile, to the ladies I climb with, that I have a favorite climbing shirt. I thought no one would notice that I love love love my old, beat-up, soft as silk, used-to-be-black Depeche Mode Violator shirt. I painted the kitchen in it, I wear it for pj's, and I boulder, top-rope and lead in it. See, I have this issue with getting rid of clothes, even when they're worn out. (That sound you heard was my mother's eyes rolling so hard they fell out and went under the fridge. She used to sneak around the house at night with a garbage bag, collecting holey Vans, ink-stained sweatshirts and paint-stained sweatpants to stop me from returning to school in them. As you might imagine, I was not quite the belle of my high school scene.)

But I finally might have to give in on the Depeche Mode shirt.

Earlier tonight I was belaying Lisa on Henry Winkler, which is not half as dirty as it sounds, given that Henry Winkler is a 5.7 route at PetraCliffs. And while I had given her out some slack to make the third clip, I noticed that things up near the clip did not seem to be going according to plan. Lisa's relationship with that clip was rapidly deteriorating and I, as her belayer, was torn between leaving her hanging on to all that slack she needed to make the clip, and being ready to yank it all back and hit the deck, so that she didn't take any more of a fall than she had to. Lisa and the clip parted fairly amicably at last, and in my enthusiasm to Take! as directed (several times)(in an increasingly worried voice), Depeche Mode got sucked into the belay device.

Which is fine, really, because it in no way emperiled climber or belayer, having this swath of shirt trapped in a metal vise with a climbing rope; however who do you think won the fight between a climbing rope, an atc and Depeche Mode?

That's right. Belay device 1, Depeche Mode 0. My shirt pulled free with a ripping noise, which turned out, when I looked down at my chest, to have been a ripping motion as well as a noise. And that's pretty much how everyone at PetraCliffs now knows I wear an orange bra. It was a clean bra, Mom, I swear.

So at this point, I'm still belaying, with most of a shirt still on, and my orange bra (with fuschia cups--I mean there's no point in being shy after the fact) and kind of turning to face the wall and sort of leaning forward a little bit, arm up, thanking the climbing gods (glingleglingleglingle) that Wednesday nights Petra's pretty empty.

Then I turned the shirt around and kept right on climbing.

Which was probably a bad idea, although at that point I think the rip was just showing part of my back, and maybe some of the exciting orange bra band, and I really, really wanted to try a new route in the cave section. Let everyone cope with my shirt while I cope with the first four clips. In this way I managed to actually double the misfortune, because having made those four clips, on the new green cave route (5.9), when I thought for sure I was heading for a big whipper of a fall, the Depeche Mode shirt is now The Lucky Leading Shirt. Perhaps I can patch it.