Athens downtime

8 hours till my flight to Kalymnos leaves and I am happily ensconced in a comfy seat with a power point to charge my laptop and gratis wireless internets. In short, the Greek model is the way forward.

A great deal of not very much has been happening recently (except Christmas, I guess that counts as being important). Since my last diatribe, besides a beautiful day scrambling around the An Teallach ridge in full winter conditions, my only notable achievement has been to haunt the climbing centre often enough to rouse paranoia in even the most stable staff members.

Oops, actually that is a lie. I have spent an entire month working my cotton socks off teaching children in a secondary school. Didn't realise how long ago the last post was for a moment there, how terrible.

Secondary teaching, it turns out, is just as hard as teachers like to claim. Assuming I get enough sleep, concentrating for every moment of every lesson seems to be doable but the paperwork.... GOD, what a pain in the arse! Prepare 2 pages of A4 for every lesson, prepare plans for personal development, prepare targets for professional development, evaluate every lesson in writing, keep a diary, noting down things to reflect on every day. And from the top of my head, all I can think of, that is.
On the plus side, teaching children as civil and well behaved as those at my current school is actually quite good fun and every lesson feels like a new challenge. Throwing the lesson plan straight out the window 30 seconds into every lesson does make one wonder about the wisdom of creating one in the first place however!

Enough about children, it's nearly climbing time! If 10 hours or so counts as "nearly".
I think I already mentioned how awesome Athens airport is (and you can add a further congratulations to KLM for their superb service and a violent kick to the bollocks of luggage handlers for their vandalism of my bag). I have often been told how amazing Kalymnos is and, dear reader, I shall be sure to let you know exactly how good I think it is, or not, for if there is one thing I consider worth blogging about, it is climbing.
Apparently I will be learning to ride a moped with a rucksack and passenger too, so I'll probably furnish the next blog entry with visceral pictures of my flesh after tarmac assault.
Last thing that leaves me to do is stick a grade out there that I will aim to climb. In memory of how effective this was last time and after several people telling me how nice and Andrex (kill, Kill, KILL!) soft grades on the island are, I shall, wholly unrealistically, aspire to on sight 7b or redpoint 8a.
If you want to check how awesome climbing is in Kalymnos, look no further than:
http://www.dailymotion.com/video/x50892_petzl-roctrip-kalymnos-english-vers_sport#rel-page-4

With an apartment and laptop, there might even be a half time update during this holiday. (No, I am not getting soft, I was told there isn't any camping, besides, the apartment was booked already, sort of.... no, I didn't really look very hard for camping.... no, I don't care, sod off)

CELEBRATION!!

After 8 days of sunny Spanish climbing, I return to soaking Scotland after what feels like a quantum leap in my climbing ability.

Siurana

It all started out rather ignominiously however. A warm sun, a few polished, slabby, technical nightmares and I was falling off 6b+ with tips about ready to submit for a modern art exhibit. Siurana was hard then... So how about a change of scene and a different kind of pain at Margalef? Well, either Margalef has the softest grades in Costa Daurada or my carefully structured pocket practice program (i.e. Never having climbed on pockets before) was uniquely suited to this conglomerate pocket pulling paradise and I was able to flash or on sight every route I tried bar one.

With some grades (if not perhaps hard routes) under my belt, I decided the winning formula was a to steer clear of slick sandbagged Siurana so swung by El Falco, near Arboli. Wow! "Technical" and "pumpy" symbols adorn the Rockfax guide to this 45m face like some bad splurge on 2 for 1 offers. Climbing on this wall was the finest day of my trip, culminating in clipping the chains on Chanidanger after a long fight and an epic amount of shaking out. I'd like to thank Dave MacLeod for telling me to work my weaknesses (I trusted microscopic footholds like I never have before) and Chris Sharma for his near religious use of the powerscream (the pump twisted, finger uncurling howl that escaped my lips while on the crux a metre from the chains would have scattered a pride of lions at 100 paces).

Harhar, thought I, with my new found fleet, fairy feet I shall conquer the land of Siurana. The only thing to land was me, with a thud, accompanied by the sound of air whistling out of an overinflated ego. I can highly recommend investing in as much technique as you can beg, copy or invent before reaching Siruana but none of this changes the fact that the grades there are as solid as a gold plated lead brick. I didn't flash any hard routes at Siurana but even when I was falling off (or more likely shouting "take" through a red haze of fingertip agony), I still often felt surprised by what I was able to stand on in quite a conscious manner I have rarely experienced before.

If you remember my last post, word for word, then the title to this one will make perfect sense (and also, you must be quite bored, so get up from your computer right now. _RIGHT NOW_ and go outside and do something new, anything!). Otherwise, here is a tick list to confirm that Dave MacLeod will shortly be relegated to second best climber in Scotland:

Grade	Style
7a+	1 flashed, 1 on sighted
7a	2 on sighted
6C+	2 on sighted
6C	3 flashed, 3 on sighted
5+ to 6B+	15, mixture of on sights and flashes

Now, the million dollar question: Can I convert anything I have learned to trad? I suspect that weather considered, that question is wholly academic.

Recommendations
I might as well give a few personal recommendations about what you should do if you would like to climb in Costa Daurada. Skip this if you are not going because it is BORING!

• Fly to Barcelona or Reus, hire a car, save money by avoiding the freeways with designations starting AP (toll roads). Go in Spring or Autumn.
• There are two Siurana guides, Toni Arbones' old guide has been superseded by a very colourful new guide that is really superb and available in the tourist info in Conudella de Montsant and probably elsewhere too.
• Limestone gets polished pretty quickly, to avoid polish, head to newer crags and avoid the "total classic" lines (the line just next door is probably as good and less worn).
• There are lots of foreign climbers who speak English but in most of the villages the locals speak little English spoken so some Spanish is useful.

AirFrance = better

I like to think of Ryanair in particular as a company who have spent many hours listening to advice from the very worst people in the world on how to perfect the fuckyou factor (FF). Besides enduring Ryanairs entire approach, by the time all the FF charges are added, it is only marginally cheaper than a lot of their considerably more sanitary rivals. I paid a little more to fly with AirFrance and avoid Ryanair and consequently:
- Nobody tried to sell me scratch cards or duty free on the plane.
- I had enough room to sit in a seat in reasonable comfort, even without an emergency exit row.
- I didn´t have to pay extra for luggage or attempt to check in wearing 3 coats with pockets crammed full.
- I was given free water, juice, coke, wine, biscuits.
- When an emergency exit row seat was available I was put in it for free and without any argument.

Now, as everything went as smoothly as a good 18 year old scotch, I cannot rightly comment on AirFrance´s problem solving abilities but I would be stunned if it wasn´t better than Ryanair´s standard response to problems which, from bitter experience, roughly equates to "Now, if sir would like to drop sirs trousers and bend over for one moment...".

If you are reading this now, I would like to urge you too to avoid Ryanair like the plague, spend slightly more on your flights and luxuriate in the lack of FF you enjoy as a direct result.

Climbing

Oh, suppose I´d better mention that I am in Spain and about to start sport climbing! Last time I wrote a grade aim on this blog it worked out quite well so I will go ahead and state that There will be dissapointment if I don´t manage to on sight at least one 7a at Siurana (and surrounds) and outright celebration if I should get a 7a+ in the same style. I have been sieging hard indoor routes for a couple of months, so with only a maximum of 9 days on the rock, I shall be trying hard not be lured into failing to redpoint a likely looking 8a all week long!

The Sound of the Surf

There is something about the sound of the sea eternally etching new patterns on a rocky shore, isn't there? Perhaps the peace it brings harks back to some prehistoric era, an Easter egg hidden in every mans subconscious for him to find. The sea to me is like unto a fire in the manner under which it snares my attention and draws me into a place where an eternally unique pattern of sight and sound are the limits of my perception and time has no meaning.

Yesterday as I hung in the amphitheatre of Orchestra Cave, surrounded by the sounds of the sea, I felt extrodinarily peaceful and relazed. It made me wonder if the sea could ever mean as much to me as mountains do.

October = winter

As I predicted, on October 1st there is a meteoric shift in weather patterns from "warm mixture" to "cold wetness", under the circumstances I am very happy to be leaving for sport in sunny Spain in a weeks time.

Starved of outdoor rock, I have had to resort to internet trolling and today I even fell as low as eating comfort food. For dinner alone I managed to guzzle a bottle of Dr Pepper and an entire New York cheesecake, adding up to a whopping:
154% of my energy RDA.
352% of my sugar RDA.
222% of my fat RDA.
420% of my saturated fat RDA.
Actually, I am now wishing fervently that I had not worked that out. It certainly helps to explain why I feel completely horrendous now that I am dealing with some of the side effects.

Perfect Day

I just realised that I have had a perfect day. A day in which everything went swimmingly well. Strange thing is that it was so similar to many other days I have that I nearly missed it. It almost seems unfair that I have good days almost every day while other languish in misery, is this because my glass is half full and other peoples glasses are half empty or is it because I really have fashioned such a wonderful life for myself? (Or am I deluding myself perhaps!?)

I should probably emphasize that it was a perfect day in the sense that everything that happened, more or less happened perfectly, not that every possible good thing happened on the same day.
I kicked off with arriving in good time for my tutorial where I successfully blagged the whole session in a haze of complete ignorance about the reading material which I hadn't had the time of inclination to look hard for. I spent a protracted lunch laughing at a comedy and avoided what turned out to be a snore inducing nightmare first lecture (I was tipped of by its title), only to turn up for the second lecture which was the single best lecture in the course so far by an order of magnitude. The third lecture was cancelled on the spur of the moment and thusly was a day of university concluded.
A quick session down at the climbing wall saw me dispatch my project and figure out all the hardest moves on the hardest route in the centre which had stymied me previously. Everything was rounded off nicely with wine and meatball bolognese.

A life of simplicity is a life of happiness and I hope I never forget that. If you are reading this and I have, then please remind me.

Teaching is Hard

 ....but rewarding!

Finished my first week in a school. An eye opening one might call it. Teaching is not an easy job, in fact it is probably the least easy job I have ever done. Trying to maintain the right level of challenge, keep the pupils engaged, not lose the slower pupils, not bore the faster pupils, maintain discipline, teach the material in a way they can relate to it, ask questions which tell you how much they actually really understand the topic.... Pretty full on and I imagine easily challenge enough for a few years before it becomes in any way routine or boring.

And the experience? How does it weigh up? The usefulness of my time spent in school? Well, put it this way, I feel like a parched plant enduring a monsoon. With the way my interest in the university side of this course is currently going I think I will have taken more away from a week at school than the rest of the year at university.

I have certainly been privileged to start in a school where essentially 98% of the pupils are motivated and quick to pick up concepts. Bad behaviour and lack of comprehension are so rarely a problem, it feels like working inside some sort of simulation of the ideal school! Compared to the dire predictions of pupil inability and bad attitude handed down at university, the whole experience feels positively surreal. After teaching only 2 lessons I feel as though the first building blocks of good practice are almost settling together.

Had a superb weekend near Dingwall getting some lines done on crags I have admired in the pouring rain before. Glenmarksie Crag turned out to be rather lichenous and seeping somewhat, worth a climb if it was thoroughly cleaned but probably a little overrated. The remaining crags nearby looked pretty grim, too few people in the north of Scotland to keep routes clean. Creag Ghlas on the other hand was superb, a two hour walk in is rewarded with immaculate granite multi-pitch slabs. Regrettably a single route was all we could squeeze in before the rain arrived but this venue is well worth a visit if you fancy a better protected and a bit shorter version of the Etive slabs.

Astonishingly I managed some semblance of a climbing regime through the week, winding up with a quite a destructive bouldering competition at Transition Extreme this evening. I am now physically broken and mentally comatose, so will be taking the sensible option of yet another session tomorrow.... how appalling.

Quick post

Had an amazing episode of selfafirmation yesterday when I basically cruised up an E4. A exception, an undergraded route or a sign of increased performance? Perhaps this weekend will tell. Off to Glenmarksie crag for the first time and perhaps a day on the Moray firth coast, oops, my lift is here o/

End of Silence

What a dramatic title for what is about to be a fairly mundane post. I have not felt particularly psyched to give a blow by blow description of anything I have done in the last while because none of it has been particularly spectacular but I suppose now is as good a time as any to get a load of updates in.

Life has moved on and up... well, geographically that may be true but perhaps sideways would be a more accurate holistic description while downwards would certainly be an apt financial description! I have finished go kart riding for the council in Edinburgh, moved to Aberdeen and commenced my PGDE teaching qualification. So far I think things are going fairly well (though the department is doing their best to expose my weaknesses by providing a forum for discussion of education styles, content, etc. I've never yet managed to use a forum without trolling but I guess now is the time to change that). The course requires 2 days a week of lectures when not on placement but we have been sternly informed that it will be an exhausting year with an epic workload... go figure, I guess.

So far the course seems a bit chaotic and I've started well by rubbing my supervisor/director of studies/lady in charge up the wrong way and possibly irking my classmates with a less than professional attitude. While I'm on the subject of professional attitude in fact, I am confused by the paradoxical attitude of simultaneously encouraging us to, on the one hand, be dynamic and think outside the box and, on the other hand, trying to factory press us into the societal "teacher" mold. First placement in a school is only a week from now and I will be spending my time in a very high achieving and well-to-do school, I'm quite worried about whether I will have the etiquette to blend in.

Transition Extreme is the indoor wall at Aberdeen and is quite a good facility. The routes are certainly interesting and most are quite well set but the numbers and letters written after each bear no resemblance whatsoever to the actual difficulty of the routes. As a consequence or arriving in Aberdeen with zero partners immediately available to climb I found myself contemplating the campus board. After 2 sessions of fairly strenuous contemplation I had managed a 1 2 3 and had a blister and a flapper to show for it. I've now been to the wall a number of times, accrued some partners and had a few outside sessions. The only firsts I can really report are my first Brit tech 6b lead which really doesn't could as I simply reached past the move and my first font 7a boulder problem, which does count wahey! Though as it is a 20 metre long traverse it is rather out left field for the bouldering definition.

Finally, I am off to Spain! This is assuredly for purely professional reasons, I would have severe trouble concentrating on my texts during reading week if I was not reading at the base of a sunny Spanish sport spot.

Smoke and Water

Box or Rizla papers - £1.38

Packet of tobacco - £3.57

Disposable lighter - £0.50

Smoking your rollup too close to the door so the fire alarm goes off, suits and dresses alike are evacuated from an entire office complex to stand in a tropical deluge punctuated by thunder and lightning and fire engines screech up sirens blaring and lights flashing - absolutely priceless!

Big thanks to the pretty fire safety officer who escorted me under a nice big umbrella to my car where the entire scene could be observed in comfort while set to a beautiful score, part Classic FM and part hammering raindrops and rolling thunder.

Looooonnnnggg post

I have been alerted recently to my idleness on the blogging front and it's time to change that before I go an entire month without posting. First the short but sweet:

Mowing lawns for the council is remarkably good fun, it essentially boils down to being a paid gocart driver. Government work is often seen as easy work with fat contracts and much as it would entertain me to give detailed information on the work ethic of council employees, my contract forbids it.

I have been accepted for a teacher training position in Aberdeen! I think I did well in the interview a fortnight ago, the presentation certainly went well and the questions that had real meaning went well also. Towards the end I probably did less well on a few mumbojumbo garbage questions where the brutally honest answers might have been "wtf are you talking about??". Lets hope my interview panel never reads the blog what what? :D

As an alternative to the course I had been eyeing up a winter of dirt bagging and sport climbing in Spain but the motivation to get on and create some sort of career has been surfacing with ever more persistence recently so I was very glad to be accepted. I can only hope this worryingly rational side to my nature does not start harping on about marriage and children or I might need help extricating myself from the swamp of respectableness and middle age.

Now the episodic and bittersweet...

1) The Deer Episode (4 weekends back)
The whole weekend could essentially be surmised by saying that it was misty, cold and sometimes drizzling but we managed to get a few nice routes in the Cairngorms on mountain crags (which is victory in itself when you know anything about Scottish mountain weather at all). Up, that is, until the point we were driving back down on Sunday evening (after an epic 17 hours on the hill) and the car in front of us hit a roe deer*. I went to look for the animal brandishing a sizable rock and feeling a little intrepid only to find it was already dead (first time feeling for a pulse on a deer!). Not being a wantonly wasteful individual I quickly hefted in into the boot and sped off. This is how I came at 3am in the morning to be in my bathtub up to my elbows in deer blood and entrails attempting to follow gutting instructions issued by google. Top tips would have to include being careful with intestines, they break easily and when they do they made rather a horrible mess! I briefly considered keeping the liver and testicles but I dislike liver and decided that I actually didn't want to eat testicles so the only organ I kept was the heart. Having satisfied my need to prove my manliness I located a butcher to finish the job in a more professional manner and was rewarded with 8kg of free range wild venison for 20 quid. I am eating a dinner made from it this very moment infact :)
*NB. We did not hit the deer and take it home, that would have been illegal.

Me on Needle, E1 5b, Shelterstone.

Evening light over the Cairngorms.

...and the simply bitter.

2) The Helicopter Episode (2 weekends back)
Butchering a deer and eating its heart is a hard act to one up but I managed to all the same. Once again the weekend started peacefully with an ascent of Supercharger at Neist on Skye. I was in the mood for adventure however and quickly found an awesome looking line on the same cliff that was unclimbed (though it turned out to share a fair amount of ground with an unrepeated E6/7 from a quarter of a century ago). So it was on Sunday that we made the 100 meter abseil and committed to the line. Lasma led the lichen, grass and bird infested first pitch and we arrived at the base of the hard climbing on a soaring arete. I valiantly chickened out of the crux pitch (despite declaiming on abseil about how superb and within my capabilities it looked) and persuaded Topher to take the sharp end. He led a stellar pitch with a 6b crux to a hanging belay but alarm bells should have been ringing when, on second, I pulled a sizable hold off and found a big loose block. I was far from confident starting my pitch but after some well protected 5c/6a climbing, I was just moving onto easier ground near the top of the route and feeling success at my fingertips, then there was rather a different feeling at my fingertips.

The block I removed was the size of this hole

The block I pulled off was huge, as was my fall. Of all the lead falls I have taken, none has lasted long enough for a train of thought, always I have thought "shit!" then "oh, I'm off and hanging on the rope". This fall was slightly different, "shit!" was followed by "shit!!! I'm still falling", then "fuck!!!!!!! I bashed bits of myself, I think I'm spinning" and finally "I've stopped but I can't have gotten away with this, start body inspection, what is broken". I had fallen 15 metres, was hanging a metre below the belay and what was broken became immediately obvious - Tophers femur. I can thank my lucky stars that the block didn't land on his head, that the abseil rope was hanging right by us and that there was a veritable crowd of tourists watching us who were able to quickly summon rescue services and persons capable of dispensing morphine. I decided the least I could do to make up for dropping half the cliff on Topher (and thank him for holding the ropes through blinding agony) was to try a bit of rescuing. After a bit of faff and clusterfuckery I had him attached to me and abseiled to sea level platforms at the base of the route. Lasma joined us, shortly followed by a coast guard helicopter, a paramedic and a syringe containing morphine. I was told later that the pilot was flying particularly close to the cliff to effect the rescue but I didn't notice at the time because I was far too busy clinging to the ground under hurricane force winds while trying to breath through a salt water deluge.

When the excitement had subsided, our rescuers had left and Topher had been flown off to Inverness I probably accrued a fair amount of negative karma by returning to the cliff and abseiling a short distance to recover most of our equipment that the rescue services had been unable to reach.

My back will heal, the belay
device will not

Topher is recovering from surgery as I type and I am slowly healing a bruised back caused, I assume, by my belay device which definitely came out of the altercation worse:

There is a video of our rescue and hopefully I can post it in the coming days if I can obtain a copy.

...bringing us to....

3) This weekend
.... I sat in my flat all weekend...
Yes. Really. I mean, if things were spiraling out of control that quickly, what would you do? Sign up for the french foreign legion?


(3 weekends back didn't fit into my narrative but essentially involved watching rain and playing hangman at Creag An Dubh Loch for most of a day... Oh shit, that actually means the pattern demands that the four horsemen come for tea _next_ weekend!).

New Job

New job starting tomorrow. Cutting grass for the council will be a change of scene and hopefully riding around on a mower should be quite good fun! As always seems to be the case, it's not what you know, but who you know. I look around ineffectually (and somewhat halfheartedly if I'm honest) for a job for a few weeks and then a friend mentions he is leaving a job where they are looking for a replacement and boomshakalaka, full time job a few days later.

I spent yesterday trying Silk Teddies at Dunkeld on a shunt. By the time I was done I felt like I had been trampled under a rugby scrum. Trying about a thousand improbable moves in search of the correct sequence and thudding repeatedly onto a minimally dynamic system, it turns out, is quite masochistic.

I have been training indoors somewhat sporadically but now that I have a job in place and some kind of scheduled framework to my life once more, I shall endeavor to climb enough to get properly strong. And if I write this claim here then I can hold myself to it!

Memories

In my adult life, I recently glimpsed something from my childhood, and it was changed. I find that a memory, cherished over many years has lost its focus, the details of the memory have fallen away like so much old paint in the wind and rain. The memory, carefully stored, polished, worshiped and ultimately twisted by my own love of it now feels every bit as false as any storybook myth.

I base my life, actions and choices on memories, experiences, knowledge learned and stored. What if my every memory is warped slowly by the weight of time building ever upon it? How can I hope to endure when my memories morph like quicksand beneath my feet and the world around me makes a thousand tiny attempts each day to bend me to its will? Am I destined to be washed away in a tide of conformity?

Back to school

I have spent the week in various schools acquainting myself with what passes for teaching these days :p. I was lucky enough to attend one school near the top of the league tables for my city, one in the middle and one close to the bottom (I'm not going to debate the validity of 'league tables = school quality' argument). The visits were certainly insightful and viewing the process from the opposite side of the battlefield revealed a wealth of information I don't remember from my school days or simply never knew. The behaviour of children for starters was much better than I had expected in all the schools I visited, discipline was well organised and, while I only visited long enough for a snapshot, even disruptive children seemed to respond to moderate measures. I regret that my ignorance of the real state of classroom behaviour has been horribly coloured by watching too many Hollywood films. I was surprised that I actually relished the task of helping children to focus and progress with their work more when they struggled to concentrate (ok, when they were messing around and distracting others!), perhaps there is a challenge in persuading a recalcitrant pupil to work and achieve that simply is not there when the class quietly and obediently progresses with their assignments. The questions pupils ask are frequently very entertaining, one that comes to mind concerned diamond bullets and infinitely thick walls.

Observing teachers in different schools of differing ages and experience it rapidly becomes clear what a disparate profession it really is. In a few days I witnessed adherents to the traditional teaching methods with decades of experience, students with only a few months of experience and all else betwixt the two. In many professions there is such a dogmatic adherence to the accepted norms that trying to change the method of accomplishing a task becomes a titanic struggle with the established doctrine and it was refreshing to note that this is not an accusation that can be levelled at the teaching fraternity. The freedom enjoyed by every teacher to formulate their own lessons and choose the manner of delivery is encouraging and I think must contribute to the enthusiasm that almost all the teachers I met possessed (in varying quantities of course!). The tendency to complain about ones job/salary/boss is certainly a phenomenon in all walks of life and teachers are no exception but I did feel that almost all derived a great degree of satisfaction from their occupation and genuinely cared about the pupils under their tutelage. Overall I am left with a strong conviction that teaching is the career for me, now all that remains is to persuade a university interview panel that I am suitable for the role.

The Shelter Stone trip didn't come off after a late bailing by my climbing partner but I was able to invite myself along to Glen Coe instead and had two superb sun kissed days on the mountain crags of Anoach Dubh. The drought meant everything was in condition and I was chomping at the bit to get on some hard routes, in the end though, my partners were a little more reticent at the prospect of brit tech 6a climbing and I scaled my aspirations back slightly. I still did some superb routes, including the excellent line of Crocodile where the finger jams are so solid I almost stripped my fingers trying to rip them back out of the corner crack. Sadly the idyllic weather broke and I fully suspect that Glen Coe will remain seeping and wet till next May!

Scotland - the new Australia

When did it last rain? I honestly don't think I could say. The weather has been almost as good as my procrastination has been long. I have finally sent off my application for teacher training so fingers crossed that I will get accepted and be able to start in September. Trying to write a personal statement is probably the most unpleasant and lengthy task I've had for a while!

Well, I did manage to rise to the occasion at Glen Clova and on-sighted an E4 called Wildebeast, did several other climbs in the E2 to E3 range and had a good look at Cinderella from the ground... I'm glad all I did was look because while Gary Sandbag Latter thinks it is E5 and "adaquately protected", everyone else seems to think its more certain-hospitalisation-E6 territory.

Also had a superb 4 day trip around the east side of Scotland but substituted "on-sighted" for "fell off" a number of routes up to E4, including, to my eternal embarrassment, an "HVS" called Fingerwrecker. If anyone is considering trying it; don't. There is nothing to recommend this route to anyone except perhaps an aid climber.

I'm going away this weekend to the Shelterstone... I know what you are thinking, "Shelterstone in _April_??" but apparently the mild spring has dried the wall out about 2 months early so here's hoping the weather holds long enough to get a couple of the classics done up there. Rumor has it that Slime Wall is also dry (though I'm doubtful because if the sun had gone supernova, I'm sure I would have noticed) and if this is true it is an opportunity that should not be missed and I will have to see if I can clock up Lechers Superstition and maybe even dare to venture onto New Testament to make aquaintance with the slime factory itself.

I have arranged to observe some school chemistry classes next week but I think concentrating on children being taught chemistry indoors is going to sorely test my limits of self control when there is wall to wall sunshine, no midges and I know every crag in the kingdom is dry. I might try sacrificing the neighbours cat to mother nature in return for the good weather lasting another week.

The faff that is life

Coming back from a life of itinerancy to the land of get-you-life-sorted-! has been a a bit of a shock to the system. Actually having to deal with tax, insurance, job/study and everything else that entails makes me want to just turn into a hippie or a hermit and live in a cave.

After due consideration, I have decided to embark on a career (yeah yeah, enough of the sarcastic comments) and by process of elimination, it appears that with my qualifications, abilities, lifestyle, etc. It would be best for me to become a [drumroll] secondary school teacher of chemistry.

...Now I know that in the past I have greeted suggestion of this career in what might optimistically be called a lukewarm manner but it turns out on objective consideration to be the best option. Fortunately there are a still some institutions accepting applications for this years course, unfortunately none of them are in Edinburgh.

The money one has to pour into a car seems unending these days so I have done my first home made car repair in an effort to staunch the flood of cash leaving my wallet! It turns out that clamping a baked bean can round a snapped exhaust pipe is actually quite easy, cheap and effective.... and by the end of the weekend, I should know if I can add the adjective 'long lasting' to that list.

So, on to climbing, or lack thereof! Since returning from the golden land of eternal sunshine I have failed pathetically on a number of hard routes while seconding and led absolutely nothing of any degree of difficulty. Writing this is actually making me depressed so I will say no more, except that I am going to Glen Clova tomorrow and if I return without at least having tried an E4, anyone who reads this can berate me in public for being a pansy-assed weakling.

Home Again

Largely with the assistance of my unreasonably voluminous jacket pockets, I managed to take a total of 49kg of kit onto the flight home despite the 37kg hard limit. Apart from check in shenanigans, the journey was remarkably stress free, marred only by my superb organisation skills that left me essentially travelling without a nights sleep for 60 hours. Still I guess I can think of it as training for my next epic!

I had to make a decision in the last few days about a rather unpleasant matter. The question is whether to report something to the police when you are unsure if a criminal act has been committed and you are unsure if, on balance, it wouldn't be better for everyone involved if the matter was quietly ignored. Should you contact the police only if you are sure it is in the best interests of the majority? Is contacting the police the "right" thing to do even if, after the smoke has cleared, it is likely that most of those involved will be unhappier than they were before? If the act or actions are unchecked, might they be repeated in future? I don't pretend to be a particularly moral or righteous person but if I were, is there an absolute moral answer to this question?
(I am referring to something that should be considered seriously, not an unimportant "oh, that bloke in the pub is only 17" or "my mate stole a mars bar from Tesco")

Now comes the uphill struggle of finding a job, flat, mobile phone and hopefully returning my car to the road... and probably 100 other things I have forgotten. Best get back to it in fact!

Airports, airports, airports.

What arbitrary and ridiculous places airports are! Check in for a budget airline and they don't want to weigh of even look at your hand baggage, check in for a relatively nice airline and suddenly we are quibbling over a few hundred grams. 7.9kg is ok but 8.0kg is not (unless of course you have a laptop in which case you get more... I didn't inquire how much). 30kg is ok but 32kg is not. How much "not ok" I hear you ask, well, not ok to the tune of 70 dollars per kilogram. So back we go to try the packing game once more, the waterproof jacket has its pockets filled with yet more books, my trousers are stuffed with batteries, cards and guff till they are falling down and I decorate myself with one more fleece. Once more into the breach dear friends, once more... Now everything is fine, the asinine rules have been satisfied, the hold luggage is whisked away and the hand luggage is fully rule compliant for about 20 minutes until security is passed and everything can be safely put back in it.
And to what end? To what benefit? What comes next? Presenting each passenger who boards with empty bowels 100 bonus air miles? Letting me have 10 grams extra luggage if I bring a helium balloon with me? I'm not actually angry, I'm quite entertained, it helped that the pretty young check-in girl seemed almost apologetic. Well, that's enough tempting fate to smite me for one day. Time to face security and continue my journey.
If you are reading this in the UK then I'm looking forward to seeing you again soon :)

Ups and Downs

I have been putting off writing anything for some time now because of the total dive my mood went through after I arrived in Tasmania. I got half a days climbing done in a week, spent most of my time remembering Billie and became pretty despondent. I guess I have moved on into a flagrant attitude of casting around for some sort of replacement intimacy with generally negative fallout on all fronts. Thankfully the weather has been better and I started a slightly more healthy approach to life with a good deal of climbing on local crags and then went to Hillwood where I had an amazing day of sport climbing and remembered again what it is to love climbing enough that everything else ceases to be important.

The grades in Tasmania, I have been discovering, are somewhat unbalanced! Broadly speaking they seem to be 1 grade harder than in Victoria but there are also a fair number of climbs that leave one wondering if the grade was chosen in the same kind of whimsical manner as the name.

As I write this, I have just arrived back from a trip to Freycinet, 3 days which have left me with a grin wide enough to wrap round my head. Beautiful granite sea cliffs and warm clear ocean were the order of the day and the group from the university that I went with were a lot of fun to climb with. I even ticked off swimming butt naked in the ocean amongst the fish (sadly no dolphins). With a pair of goggles, the view under the water was awesome and, while no coral reef, the fish, kelp and rock were more than enough to get me excited. By the time I finally decided it was time to get out I had a hard time of it and discovered I couldn't really walk any more and shivered uncontrollably for about half an hour in the bright sunshine!

The weather forecast shows wall to wall good conditions for the coming week so I hope to get plenty more climbing done before being forced back to a rude and bitter reunion with the tail end of the Scottish winter.

The calm after the storm

The wonderful thing about suddenly finding your strings cut is the ability to do whatever the hell you want. No need to dance to someone else's tune any longer, I can just kick the loudspeaker till it cuts out. Anyway, enough wanky metaphors, after a whirlwind day or two of phoning, booking, planning and packing I have arrived in Tasmania to spend the remaining 3 weeks of my holiday climbing.


Tasmania feels almost like Scotland in many ways and as such, arriving here felt almost like going home (but it took about 19 hours less flying time!). The weather in Tasmania is cool, the clouds feel wet and scottish, not plastic and fake, the greenery is really green, not muted brown and yellow and maybe even the feeling of suddenly having hills all over the place and being in a small city, not a mental metropolis brings me calm. It also feels positively fun to be back in the middle of student town at my ripe old age, for I have been generously given free run of Johns flat here right by the university.

Before I stop typing, I should say that if you want to people watch, the front steps of Flinders Street station in Melbourne is a superb location. In around an hour of waiting to meet a friend I listened to a band play better music than on most radio stations, I watched cops come out and try to arrest twelve year old kids who were drinking beer and smashing the bottles directly in front of the "this area is monitored 24/7 by police via CCTV" sign, I smiled a the hare krishnas who arrived as a brightly coloured group and danced and chanted and were eventually joined by groups of girls in green t-shirts and boys in red t-shirts signifying who-knows-what while the whole thing was decorated on the fringes by the comings and goings of a great number of pretty girls wearing almost nothing. Those stairs are also the first time I have seen Muslims recruiting by flyer.

And everything was looking so good

Wow, 48 hours of complete shittiness, first day on the job is probably the most depressing experience I've had in a while and when I come home and drown my sorrows in a bottle of wine I find out my parents could have been caught in an earthquake and my girlfriend dumps me.

I'm going to tell you dear reader, whether you like it or not, how awful and despicable fundraising for charity really is. From the fundraisers point of view, it is like the very worst possible sales position because you are attempting to persuade your clients to buy something which is of no benefit to them what-so-ever and that they are not in the least interested in purchasing and on top of this, every single client will do their level best to pretend you don't exist or just lie to you constantly. Now, clearly charity work is important and charities need funds, so it's a noble cause, right? Wrong; when a client signs on to pay a small donation each week or month, approximately the first 8 MONTHS of the donation a person signs up to give pays for nothing more than the wages of the fundraiser (2 months) and, and this is the despicable part, propping up the pyramid scheme* that is a fundraising company (6 months). The worst part is, that any fundraising company will certainly tell you that the system works, the charities would not be getting their donations at all if they didn't employ fundraisers and it is just a necessary evil in making the world a better place, what a sorry state of affairs. Finally, to the public who sign up to donate to charity. Who ends up donating? The generous and well meaning people, the people who do the most at grass roots level to promote a fair and just society also end up donating the most of their earnings to charity, the people who are nice enough to stop and say what a good job you are doing by supporting the charity are those who end up being socially engineered into signing up for yet another charity. On the other hand, those who have much disposable income but are tight-fisted and mean have no trouble in ignoring fundraisers. And I'd bet a dime to a dollar that no single member of Joe public speaking to us knows how much of their donation will actually end up with the charity and how much will be squandered on the rampant profiteering of the fundraising company involved.

Naturally I'm slightly bitter at being fired but frankly I am also quite relieved. I think trying to force well meaning and often old and kind people into doing something they don't want to do is a pretty horrendous vocation and I hope that on some level, being bad at coercing people makes me a better individual. I did hear one piece of information that helped give me a better conceit of myself, apparently those who already give regularly to charity and are elderly are targeted by those who try to persuade them to put write charities into their will. I already have a pretty low opinion of society as a whole and shit like this just makes me want to stand outside of it completely.

I will probably commit suicide sometime later today to get away from this cruel and twisted world. I will make sure to prove a point however by climbing over the suicide barriers on the West Gate bridge and throwing myself off only after the cockroaches with cameras have taken plenty of pictures.

*Ok, if we are going to get technical, it is probably multi-level marketing but apparently most people consider the latter to be an example of the former anyway.

Work!

...At last! I am now officially employed as a fundraiser, aka street pest. First time working in a position even remotely related to sales/charity donations so it will be interesting to see how good/bad I am at it. Initial signs from the training session on Friday are fairly positive, I talk fairly confidently about the charity in question and don't get as self conscious or tongue tied as some of the other new recruits. Time will tell whether or not I am capable of bullying, ahem, persuading people that signing up to donate to charity every month is a good idea.

Well, I have climbed at four different Melbourne climbing centres in the last couple of months and they are quite a mixed bag. The first, and worst, was Hard Rock (CBD venue) where the routes are repetitive, unimaginative and generally unpleasant, new route setting is non-existent and almost all the walls are at, or very close to, vertical angle. The second location was the Lactic Factory bouldering wall which is quite reasonable if you are into that sort of thing, but bouldering and I tend to studiously ignore one another which is probably mutually beneficial. Lactic could also do with some longer problems, some that traverse a bit perhaps and a few more volumes to add some angles and variation. Next up is the Cliff Hangar which benefits from twenty metre high walls so a climb feels like a proper undertaking and quite satisfying to finish off. There are a good, no, wait, excellent range of angles at Cliffhangar with some good route setting and really friendly and laid back staff, the entry price is also superb at just ten bucks (I know that might not sound good but in Australia, it's revolutionary). My favourite centre however is Bayside, which has good route setting, wonderfully rough wall surface and beautiful holds that were all designed and made in house _and_ air conditioning, the place just doesn't stop giving. Bayside also has a superb variety of wall angles including a lead wall I am just itching to get onto (retard rule: You must pass a leading test in every centre individually before you are allowed to lead there and half ropes are verboten) which sort of resembles a massive prow overhang into a horizontal roof into a very steep wall. And the very best thing of all about indoor climbing in Melbourne? The ease of travel to each centre is inversely proportional to how good it is. Thus Hard Rock is actually in the middle of downtown while Bayside is about ninety minutes drive away :(

Me on Ergonomics (26)

Right, enough about indoor shenanigans, the weather has been more than cool enough (seriously at odds with the seasonal expectations) for some proper climbing out at Arapiles and I have had the good fortune to climb a fair few trad lines and redpoint Station to Station (25) and Ergonomics (26) sport routes. I have had a brief play on the superb continuation of Station which is Final Departure (27) but after doing ergonomics the same day I failed pathetically and only just managed to pull myself to the top with the aid of the rope, ho hum, will have to return with a shunt and a good block of time.

No post would be complete without a rant about something so today's rant will be directed at Melbourne City council, or whichever part thereof is responsible for the 10 foot high barricades being affixed to the sides of the West Gate bridge. The justification apparently being that it should stop people throwing themselves or other people off said bridge....
WHAT
THE
FUCK??
Hands up everyone who thinks its possible to fence off every single high place a person can walk or scramble up to? What, no hands? Ok, now we have that established, assuming one actually wants to reduce suicides, can anyone give me a single reason why the money for said barrier should not have been put into counselling services for the suicidally possessed? No again? Final question, if I can figure this out through idle musing in about 5 minutes, why can't a large group of people whose job it is figure it out? Well done Melbourne city council.

Couldn't resist :)

Still haven't found what I'm looking for

A job, that is. I guess I am out of practice looking for jobs but work isn't as easy to come by in a city of 4 million people as I thought. Still have a few possibilities that look hopeful though.

Mum and dad on the beach, Prince Philip island

I was great to see mum and dad in January. We had a fun couple of days down at Prince Phillip island walking on the beautiful beaches and watching the penguins come from the sea at night. The way the Little Penguins come out onto the sand, wander a few steps up and then freak out and run back to the seas time and again before they work up the courage to run up the beach and scramble onto the dunes was hilarious.

Friction slabs at Buffalo - not my forte.

I had a very colourful climbing trip to Buffalo which kicked off with me forgetting to pack at least 6 different things and finding that even at 1500m above sea level the temperature in the sun is purgatorial. I have never been particularly at home on granite and on buffalo granite I felt about as at home as an American in Iraq. My balance was shown to be sorely lacking by the slab padding pitches and my crack skills were mocked by... well, the cracks. Before I could properly get to grips with the place, I had a severe episode of deja vu when we had an impromptu trip back to Melbourne after someone else was helicoptered there (not climbing related). After we returned to Buffalo I was able to get spanked by a slab 22, then have to rest on a slab 20 and finally take a small factor 2 fall on a crack graded... something like 16 which ended with my girlfriend suffering a nasty hand-meets-belay-device-meets-rope event (gruesome closeup on facebook in fact). After a brief visit to the local doctor we called it quits a day early and vegetated in Melbourne (turns out I am currently far better at computer games than climbing).
And in spite of all this, I am keen to go back and try to improve my crack and slab skills. I think that if I can only get over the humiliation of dropping so many grades to climb there, there are real skills to be learned beyond the train more, crimp harder, get stronger mentality that I have fallen into (although I went to the bouldering [gasp!] wall recently and my arms were in pain for 4 days after so clearly some standard training is needed as well).
[Private note to the Buffalo guidebook authors: Your guide has more errors and misleading information than a WMD dossier.]

I have had a couple of day trips to climbing areas near Melbourne as well. I would particularly like to expound on my experiences at Ben Cairn, frankly, is shittier than then underside of a dry drop toilet, mainly because:

• Of the 40+ climbs, approximately 4 are not completely covered in moss.
• There is an abundance of snakes, horseflys, mosquitoes, leeches and other vengeful creations of a bitter god.
• While advertised as a crag that is "good in summer" it essentially gets burning sunshine all day long.
• It is cloaked in rain forest which keeps everything nice and moist, sorry I meant "disgustingly moist".

So basically, the message is, if you are going to climb near Melbourne, don't bother going to Ben Cairn.

Life in the big city

Midnight and it's time to play with long exposures.
Dry cave, roaring fire, hard climbs, no mosquitos,
what more could a man want??

Well, I had a good time at Bundaleer, camping under a huge overhang where we tried some ridiculously steep routes (45-50 degree overhangs) climbing literally over the top of our tents. I was supprised to find that I can actually crank pretty hard routes on such outrageous angles and monkeying around on them was quite a lot of fun. Sadly both routes I tried had a big dynamic lunge move at some point that I couldn't catch, on the third day of climbing stupid angles I woke up with a back so shafted I could barely walk!

I spent a day seeing the Great Ocean Road, got lots of sea stack photos but they are pretty ordinary, still was fun to do something touristy for a change. I have been living in Melbourne with my girlfriend Billie and trying to find a job (between getting sidetracked by facebook, forums, blogs, etc.). I had fun spending christmas day with lots of relatives in Melbourne and spent new year with a friend of Billies in the country where the temperature hit 40C and we met the new year in an outdoor pool under the stars. I also drove a combine harvester for a little bit which is remarkably good fun (apparently though, that wears off after a month of driving it 18 hours a day every day during harvest).

The crux on Aftermath turned out to be
hanging on long enough to clip the bolt.

In climbing news, I went to Werribee Gorge for a day and was back at Arapliles for a few days also. The weather was a bit too hot to get anything spectacular done at Arapiles but I managed my first 24 onsite (sport though) at Werribee - but honestly it was pretty soft for the grade - and I did a few other bolted lines, all of which were on very nice rock, it was great to find that there is such quality climbing available close to Melbourne as well. While I'm talking about climbing and I can include pictures again, I thought I might add one of me trying Aftermath (24) quite a while ago.

Ok, enough for now, I have to go find a job and get a climbing shop to return my DMM brass offsets (DMM has a rather different opinion of how these items should be used and how long they should last than I do, it turns out.)