Rope Work on the Road

Rope Work During Covid

As the covid virus continues to ravage our country, our social bubble of the polyamorous quad continues to look for ways to stay sane and enjoy what we can of the lifestyle. Since we all still have older children living at home, this can be challenging. So we have adopted a pattern of finding a place to rent, about once every other month so far, to take a 3 day weekend.

Have Rope Will Travel

Doing this provides us the nice occasional opportunity to indulge in our hobbies with a freedom that is positively energizing. Without kids, and quite honestly, without all of the other distractions of being at home, and with not much to reasonably do while we are away since our stance on Covid is very conservative, we end up with a good bit of time and opportunity to indulge our rope hobby.

Rope on the Nude Beach

One of our favorite destinations is Apollo Beach, a “clothing optional” beach near Cape Canaveral. By the time we got into this travel groove and that location bubbled up to the top of the list, the weather had already begun to shift. So our time at the nude beach was chilly, and there was no swimming involved. But that just gave us even more time to work with rope, on the beach even!

We decided to try a new tie, an image I had found online a long time ago and thought was very classy. It was a fun day, but very cool, very windy, and we had to dodge the occassional rainshower. As we were working, we collected a small audience of curious onlookers. By the time we finished up and got Myrina out of the ropes, our show led to a couple of really nice conversations with that audience. People are always interested and curious, and this day we were doing just simple artistic rope work for a photo, so the sexual and kinky aspects were very toned down. This is very much in keeping with our entire philosophy here at SwinkyLife, which is, in part, to de-stigmatize and de-mystify the entire kink experience, and make it more interesting, more accessible, and more attractive.

Rope by the River

This last weekend, we took a different direction and rented a small house on a canal that feeds into the Halls River in Homosassa, Florida. It had gotten far too chilly for a beach trip, and we wanted a change of scenery. Also, the pictures of the rental property on the website showed a lovely tree in back, with big branches overhanging the river, and I was very interested in the possibility of doing some nice ropework there. Right before this trip, we decided to buy a portable framework for doing rope work. The framework is actually designed and marketed for aerial silks yoga, which Crimson Dragonfly also practices. But it also looked like a great rope framework, and we bought it because we believe (teaser) that in our future, having a very portable framework that we can do amazing rope work on will be important to us. This was our first trial by fire for the new framework.

The Rope Framework

The house was awesome, a small, cozy, quiet place right on the water, and we all had a lovely time. Myrina and I put the new framework together on the deck overlooking the river. It was fast and easy, and is very stable when assembled. So far, so good!!

The First Rope Session

Since it was our first evening, and our first attempt on the dock, and our first official suspension with the framework, and our first shot at this particular tie I had wanted to do, we went very casual and easy. It went wonderfully well. We were both very pleased with everything about the evening. Myrina said the tie was very comfortable, and she could have stayed in it much longer. It was an awesome experience, and got the adrenaline going for our weekend.

The Second Rope Session

The next day, Crimson Dragonfly and I repeated the entire scene. We assembled the framework, did the tie, took some great images, and then undid it all and packed it away. The framework continued to be a huge hit, and the rope session was awesome. Another wonderful day, with great pictures to show for it.

The Rope in the Tree Over the River

Our next goal was the oak tree in the backyard. The main branch I wanted to use was higher than I had anticipated, and getting to it was more challenging. We found a ladder, but opted not to go as far out on the branch as intended, for many safety reasons. We created a hard point on the branch, and Myrina and I began planning out what we wanted to do. We have some new hip harnesses we are designing, and decided to try and use them here. We began the rope work, and then got to the point where we were ready to begin the suspension. Very quickly, Myrina let me know that going face down was very uncomfortable, due to the waist line being the main support in that moment. We discussed several alternative ideas, and finally decided to keep the ropes in place and work towards a face up suspension instead. This required redoing the upline on her chest harness, but that was a single simple change and required no re-tying on her. Once we got past that, the rest of the tying, suspending, and photo shooting went wonderfully, and we got some awesome images from that as well.

Rope on the Road is Awesome

These trips have been amazingly good for all of us. Not only is it a bit of a mini-vacation, but specifically, with regards to our rope work. We are carving out time to focus on the rope. We are isolating ourselves from the distractions of everyday life that keep us just a little too busy, or a little too constrained (kids), to fully engage with our hobby. We go somewhere new, and every new place is full of new ideas and inspirations for new ropework. Putting all of that together, the typical conversation sounds something like this… “Wow, look at this lovely place. I have an awesome idea! Here’s our rope, let’s try this!!” … and what happens next is a magical blend of sharing, engineering, inventing, creating, and experiencing… rope just becomes the medium. The magic is in what is happening in our minds, and our hearts, and our experience. We stumbled upon this very organically, but I must say, if you are in a similar situation… you love rope work, but you still have family at home… a weekend getaway at a well chosen location opens many doors.Stay tuned for more of our adventures with Rope on the Road. And, stay tuned for more information about where that framework may be traveling to soon.

~Phoenix Phyre

Rope on the Road will be an ongoing series at SwinkyLife. Stay tuned for our next episode.