Last weekend we travelled to the far northern lands of upstate New York to visit the Rochester Kink Society to give a workshop on Japanese Rope Bondage. Although we were invited to present back in January, we decided to wait until March to avoid having to drive in the snow.

As it turned out, perhaps we should have waited until April. At least three hours of the six hour trip we were driving through moderate snow showers. At one point we had to detour 20 miles around a semi-trailer accident that closed Interstate 90 right in front of us.

Nonetheless, a good three dozen people turned out for the afternoon class, and a slightly larger number came to the evening play party afterwards.

We're pleased to report that the RKS has a very large and well-equiped dungeon space, and the people where fun and friendly.

We didn't take any photos during the workshop. We started with a typical face-down horizontal single-point suspension of Dee. By talking while tying, I was had lots of prompting: "Well, when I get to this point, I do this for that reason..."

The second half of the workshop consisted of hands-on instruction in tying a breast harness and a modified Swiss seat with Lew Ruben-tyle handles.

That night at the play party, I did two suspension scenes. The first was an inverted single-point with hands tied behind. One nice touch that the RKS has is not one but two suspension stations in their dungeon. This scene was from a 1-ton chain hoist with a swivel hook.

I removed the spreader bar from the hoist and used one of Lew's steel rings for the rope. We haven't done a lot of inverted suspension, so I'm still experimenting with minor adjustments to improve the comfort of the tie. In this case, I had the ring too low, so Dee wasn't properly vertical when I was done.

Still, the swivel allowed me the fun of spinning Dee around and around. She likes that.

The second scene was a two-girl suspension of Dee and her friend "S". I tied a breast and hip harness on each girl, then hung them from a horizontal black iron pipe that is the RKS's second suspension point.

The pipe is slung between two heavy-duty steel chains that run from the floor to the ceiling. A turn-buckle at the bottom of each chain keeps them taut and reduces sway.

The bar isn't quite long enough for me to do a sideways suspension in the layout position, but I was able to hang both girls side by side.

Each girl's wrist is tied over the bar to her opposite ankle. That plus the hip and chest harness keep them in the air. I learned this tie from Lew Rubens at Kink in the Caribbean 5.

What's fun is that the girl has "just enough rope to hang herself." As you can see in the photos, she can flip upside-down, sideways, or just twist and turn.

Of course this isn't really a restraint tie...with her hands so loose Dee can easily untie herself. But when she can flip, twist and turn and tease the beatiful naked girl next to her, why would Dee want to get loose?

Thanks to the board of the RKS for iviting us up to Rochester for a fun, if snowy, day.