The Yellow Shirts

So, what’s up with the yellow shirts? Are y’all like a team or something?

This masterpiece of complete buffalo dung has been written by Kirk Fuson in the 3rd and 1st person for the sake of vanity, grammar professor nightmares and unfounded bias in all things. Smart people call that style of delusional writing:  illeism primo overconfidentii vulgaris. Not to set the bar too high with my befuddled intellect, I shall simply preface this rambling with a mental capacity reduction warning. You’ve been warned.

It’s probably easiest to explain this very “Seinfeld” – A show about nothing kind of thing that we are doing by starting from the beginning. The beginning would be two climbers geeking out to Patagonia’s film, “Rot-Punkt”. Jon, ie: Little Megos, Jon Jon, Shameless Sheila, and High Clip Jon, is one of my climbing partners. He’s a college level dude that I’ve known since he was in middle school. He worked at a professional haunted house that I was part owner in and has been part of my friend group ever since. We have always talked a lot of nonsense and thoroughly enjoy saying things out loud in public that would make those in ear shot turn to see what type of human would say something so idiotic. This has and will always bring joy to our warped sense of humor.

Fast forward to the age of COVID-19 and the reopening of our local climbing gym, inSpire Rock Climbing Center. Jon has been climbing off and on with me for the past two years. With the new way of life that only pandemics can deliver, we decided to really focus our training and get strong. This goal was going to get us out of the 5.12’s and push us into the 13’s and up. It was a foolproof goal that had zero metrics and a lot of fuzzy ideals about what it takes to climb as hard as the German machine that can only be Alex Megos.

Okay, now that I’ve set the table, chilled the champagne, and set the drapes on fire, it’s time to dive into the land of the “Yellow Shirts”. Speaking of diving, did you know that Tenaya is a lake in Yosemite, CA? Yeah, so Jon and the rest of you goofs wearing Tenaya should know that you’re basically wearing swim flippers. Come on! I’m embarrassed for you. If I had more than an ounce of intelligence, I’d flog you with my prized petrified liquid chalk. Perlative! Wait, what? Oh yeah, Yellow Shirts.

To speed things along we should probably travel by map. I’m kind of an outgoing dude that likes to talk to people. If they don’t know me, it’s that much better. I can get away with this non texting behavior because I’m like as old as most climbers parents and it’s endearing to see a man in my mental condition wearing pointy, rubber shoes and playing with chalk. Between the time that Jon and I got stoked over Alex and his beast like strength, we met and befriended more cool climbers that didn’t have the foresight to turn and run after I started rambling nonsense about climbing hard.

These dudes would soon become the first ambassadors of the Yellow Shirts. Jon texted me late one night and we were spewing the usual bullshit about getting strong, working on front levers and getting enough protein to pack on that climbing power. I mentioned to Jon that I was contemplating getting a “Yellow Shirt” like Megos wears in Rot-Punkt. Jon laughed (in text) and said that he had been eyeballing the “Carrots For Power” Megos shirt. With the combined power of complete idiocy, we both decided that we would wear yellow when climbing. This simple and completely meaningless decision to wear Yellow was the beginning of something great. 

Jon and I showed up to the gym dressed in the same yellow shirts. It wasn’t really picked up on by any of the staff or other climbers. However, Nick, one of our new climbing partners was intrigued and took it upon himself to find and purchase a yellow Patagonia shirt. Now we were three. Wait, it gets better. On our way to climb at the Cypress location for inSpire Rock Gym, Gavin and JJ saw how awesome we looked in Yellow and ordered their shirts on the fly. They used the magic of something called the internet while we were driving. We were driving!!!! What type of voodoo magic did they possess? What’s next? Miniature flying helicopters with cameras! What? Yeah, that will be the day!

So, you’re getting the gist of how this is going to play out. Fast forward a few more days and now we have six dudes of varying age and intellect all wearing Yellow Shirts and walking around the gym like a class of elementary students trying not to get lost. It was fantastic!!! The questions were fast and immediate. Why? Why are you all wearing yellow shirts? The response couldn’t have been better. Now we could make up any answer we liked because really there wasn’t an answer. We just started doing it because we could and we did. It’s a thing of beauty. The only thing left to do was to ramp up the intensity. It was time to go official and create an Instagram account to promote our shenanigans. 

Jon and I launched @the_yellowshirts Instagram account and we all shared the login so we could post to the story and account. I wanted to keep pushing the envelope so I suggested that we create a t-shirt for our new YELLOW movement. Pure genius!!! The heat was on. I needed to make something that said everything someone might want to know about the color Yellow. This was going to require a serious amount of jackalope excrement and graphic design.

Here is the first ad that we ran along with the highly coveted inaugural “Yellow Shirt” branding.

So you want to climb like a wild Viking strung out on Nordic wild-berry juice for the past 90 days? Trust us, we’ve all been there! Climbing at that level requires a serious commitment to damaged taste buds and damaged toenails. Are you picturing those toes? Good! Now stop that and start thinking about wild-berry juice! That’s better.

Wearing “Yellow” while climbing or while pursuing anything that requires copious amounts of energy and peer ridicule is the secret. When did you last wear yellow? Probably not for a while. Why would you? Who wears yellow? Seriously!

Well kids and members of the Komitet Gosudarstvennoy Bezopasnosti, this is our one freebie of the day. “Yellow” is a send color. Don’t believe us? Just Google search for climbers that send hard in yellow. Go on. We will wait…………………………

Did you find anyone? Probably not. Shhhhhhhhh! This is the secret of the “Pro”.

Now you know. Now you have the power! So what are you going to do with this new found knowledge? Might we suggest, purchasing @the_yellowshirts Silverback Gorilla shirt? It’s ridiculously lemon yellow and will have you sending hard routes and / or hard ridicule as soon as  you don the shirt.

Wearing the Yellow shirt puts you in an elite class of people guaranteed to get questions like:

* Why are you wearing yellow?

* What’s with the yellow shirts?

* I want to wear yellow. Where do I get a shirt like that?

* Can I give you all of my money and buy you a steak dinner?

* Will you give the opening ceremony speech at the Olympics?

* etc…. You get the idea.

So, lets make you an officially Yellow sponsored climber. Officially sponsored by a color. The color is Yellow and when you wear it you will be sponsored by real synthetic genuine color yellow. That’s impressive! Impressive as wearing any other color; except it’s the color YELLOW!

The link to get yours is in the @the_yellowshirts Bio on Instagram.

Join the nonsense. Wear Yellow and represent the complete nonsensical rational that is @the_yellowshirts .

— Oh, you might have guessed that this has something to do with Alex Megos and his yellow shirts. We are shocked at the obviousness. 😜 #alexmegos

——

The movement was official. Climbers, minivan moms, beer drinkers from Rick’s emporium and pony rides, as well as the swell inmates of Encino State Prison /  cell block six made purchases the first day. We were now in the business of clothing strangers and becoming role models for the future generation of Yellow Ambassadors.

What started as a vain pursuit in strength and glory has turned into a world wide effort to clothe and inSpire (See what I did there?) the wonderful people of everywhere. Our numbers are growing and the entry fee to join is a Yellow Shirt and the ability to poke fun at yourself. We do have a few more requirements. I shall now list them for you in order to prevent any hurt feelings or synaptic breaks:

1. You can’t wear anything made by the North Face. Sorry. We’re normally not mysterious in our ways, but this is a non breakable rule of thirds. North Face, if you’re reading this, we don’t apologize. Your company name doesn’t make any sense. North Face? Watches have faces. People have faces. Compasses have needles! Seriously. Change your company name to North Needles and then maybe.
2. If you wear Tenaya, Kirk, JJ, Nick, and Joseph will constantly ridicule you. You’re going to have to accept this. 
3. You have to be nice and open to all people you meet. The more acceptance and empathy we can show our “Non Yellow Shirt” humans the better. Shake a hand, encourage a stranger and always say things out loud that make no sense at all. Trust us on this one. The more you can make a goof of yourself, the more open people will be to befriend you. #magic
4. Lastly, and certainly not least, …………………….

I know what you’re thinking right now. What the H.E.Double Hockey Sticks did I just read? I warned you at the beginning of this vomitatious pool of words. That being said, you are now that much wiser and slower for having read this rags to ridiculousness story. You’re welcome.

You can get your Yellow Shirt by following the Bio link on @the_yellowshirts Instagram account.

You can find all of us climbing at the best climbing gym in Texas: inSpire Rock Gym

Thanks for being awesome!