Climbing To The Top Again

"At a Grateful Dead concert, I'm telling you," says Walton, playing Dave to the hilt.

Dave snaps his fingers. "Were you at the concert in Pauley the day before New Year's?"

"Yep."

"Were you one of the guys dancing around on the stage when that Egyptian guy was singing?"

"Yep."

"That's where I saw you!" says Dave, satisfied.

Shortly afterward, Walton picks his way down a precipitous mountainside so narrow and strewn with loose rocks and boulders that three Japanese hikers—a man and two women—at the bottom have to wait for him and Dave to get down before they can go up. They stare at Walton. "Does your size help you?" one of the women says politely.

Walton pulls himself up as tall as he can get, breaks into a huge grin, and says with a most definitive nod, "Yes."

Walton walks on, laughing. "What do you do when you're not walking up mountains?" he asks Dave.

"Well," says Dave, "on September 15 I have to go back to Santa Cruz and become a college student."