Gerry Rafferty Rip, here link of baker street
That was the hit then, how many girls i had a nice slow dance on this one, how many parties ended quietly in sunrise playing this one, nostalgia...
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WkS169P_Eeo
Chris Dale - English mountaineer
Mountain of a man with alter ego
March 4, 2011
https://teakdoor.com/images/imported/2011/03/644.jpg
Cross purpose ... "Big Chris" Dale was a trailblazing mountaineer who hated skiing but loved pink things and "sparkly stuff".
Chris Dale, 1962-2011
Chris Dale was a 198-centimetre-tall mountaineer with a passion for solo climbs among the hardest peaks of Scotland, Wales and the Alps. He was also an equally enthusiastic cross-dresser who went by the name of Crystal.
His long reach allowed him to establish several bitterly tough routes that have rarely, if ever, been repeated. Where climbers today often prepare first ascents by abseiling down a rock face and practising the moves in stages, Dale preferred to lead ''on-sight'' and ''ground-up'', with no preparation.
In 2003 he climbed what he believed to be Britain's last unclimbed mountain, a rocky pinnacle called Dun Dubh - Gaelic for black fort - on the Quiraing mountains on the Isle of Skye. The 300-metre face took Dale an hour to ascend. ''If you slipped, you would fall to the bottom,'' he reported afterwards. ''It's quite precipitous. The rock is absolutely atrocious.''
Dale's other passion was women's clothing. On one occasion he was in drag when introduced to a Frenchman as ''Chris Dale''. The Frenchman misheard ''Crystal'' and the name for Dale's alter ego stuck.
As a mountaineer, the name held other resonances for Dale. A keen rock hunter, he would often climb the north faces of the Aiguille du Grepon, Grand Charmoz and the Aiguille du Plan in the Alps, in search of precious crystals to sell. In recent years he was proud of his transvestism and Crystal became a familiar, memorable sight at parties. Friends joked they did not want to meet the woman he bought clothes from.
His appearance in drag at an annual mountain guides' dinner, however, proved a step too far. When an inebriated member groped under his skirt, the long reach that served Dale so well on rock was put to devastating effect. The ensuing disciplinary action was severe; many felt he was treated harshly.
''Big Chris'' Dale was born on January 14, 1962 in Penrith, England, and educated locally until he ran truant at 16. He turned up four days later, having soloed the Old Man of Stoer, a 60-metre sandstone sea stack off the west coast of Scotland. The achievement is all the more remarkable as he had no knowledge of the route or its grade and and carried no rope.
A few years later he travelled to Australia, where he made a bold first ascent up a 180-metre sandstone face in the Blue Mountains he named Big Glassy. The upper half was entirely overhanging on soft and crumbly rock; the feat took three days.
Dale was a keen adherent to informal rules that attached great importance to ascent style. Hammering in pitons or leaving gear behind was frowned on; using a drill to place bolts a sacrilege. He was less traditional when it came to naming trails he blazed. Mountaineers studying his guides have to contend with the routes ''Vive Les Unbathed Pinkos'', ''Dog Breath in the Year of the Plague'' and ''Brain Death and Bad Craziness''.
He trained as a mountain guide but was slow to qualify owing to his difficulty with skiing. After he passed his exams, he threw his skis away.
In recent years injury prevented him from guiding and he found employment introducing disadvantaged children to the outdoors and in a climbing shop. He never boasted: his Facebook page listed the interests ''pink things, sparkly stuff and mountains''.
Chris Dale, who died of cancer aged 49, was divorced from Anita Grey. There were no children.
Telegraph, London
'60s LSD figure Owsley Stanley dies in Australia
'60s LSD figure Owsley Stanley dies in Australia
By ROD McGUIRK, Associated Press – Mon Mar 14, 4:20 am ET
CANBERRA, Australia – Owsley "Bear" Stanley, a 1960s counterculture icon who worked with The Grateful Dead and was a prolific LSD producer, died in a car crash in Australia, his family said Monday. He was 76.
Lyrics sung by The Grateful Dead, Jimi Hendrix and Frank Zappa reference Stanley and his brushes with the law, underlining his influence.
Stanley produced an estimated pound (half a kilogram) of pure LSD, or roughly 5 million "trips" of normal potency of the hallucinogenic drug, after enrolling in 1963 at the University of California at Berkeley and becoming involved in the drug scene that underpinned the hippie movement, according to the BookRags.com website.
He was an accomplished sound engineer who worked for the psychedelic rock band The Grateful Dead and inspired the band's dancing bear logo.
Sam Cutler, a firm friend of Stanley since 1970 when Cutler became the band's tour manager, described him as was "a wonderful man and a great teacher."
"His death is a grievous loss to his family and the tens of thousands of people from the '60s on who were influenced by his work with The Grateful Dead," Cutler said.
Stanley, who adopted Australia as his home country in the early 1980s when he became convinced that the Northern Hemisphere was destined for a new ice age, was the son of a U.S. government attorney and his namesake grandfather, Augustus Owsley Stanley, was a Kentucky governor and U.S. senator.
Stanley was driving a car that swerved off a highway and down an embankment before hitting trees near the town of Mareeba in Queensland state Saturday. His wife was treated for minor injuries from the crash.
Stanley remained unrepentant about his pioneering role in Californian drug culture that made the name "Owsley" a slang term for quality LSD and landed him in prison for two years in the early 1970s.
"I wound up doing time for something I should have been rewarded for," he told the San Francisco Chronicle in a rare media interview in 2007.
"What I did was a community service, the way I look at it," he added.
A family statement Monday described Stanley as "our beloved patriarch."
He is survived by his wife, Sheila, four children, eight grandchildren and two great-grandchildren, the statement said.
Stanley was born Augustus Owsley Stanley III in Kentucky, a state governed by his namesake grandfather from 1915 to 1919. He served in the U.S. Air Force for 18 months, studied ballet in Los Angeles and then enrolled at UC Berkeley. In addition to producing and advocating LSD, he adhered to an all-meat diet.
