Three ultimate frisbee scenes...

1. There's just been an opposition throwaway and a quick turnover. I run to the grounded disc, lying just inside the playing field several metres from my own endzone. My team reacted quickly and there are a couple of boys running long, they're pulling away from their defenders who were caught off guard and didn't react quickly. From the right corner of my vision I see a defender running towards me to get a force on. As far as I can see there's no choice, I have to throw one hell of a huck - it will be a beautiful inside out backhand - one of the longest I can throw to hopefully make the endzone and safely into the hands of my team-mate without being snatched by the defence. I line it up, almost as though I'm pulling off the line except this time i don't have my three steps. With my pivot foot planted i lean to my left and wind up, I pull my arm from the shoulder and extend my right arm for the release...

2. I've got a hard backhand force on my offender. I'm well positioned on the balls of my feet, my legs are slightly bent, bit more than shoulder width apart (I have long legs...), bouncing a little with good arm positioning.
"NO BREAKS!" I hear called, I jump slightly further around as he turns to look for what I assume to be an easy dump pass. But something isn't right. As his body turns I watch his eyes and head and they don't seem to turn with the body, he's faking! Just after I land further around his side he completes his fake motion and quickly rotates back to his backhand throw position. I see it now all in slow motion, he's wound up, stretching right out and looking to make a low, wide backhand throw to a receiver now free, there's only one part of my body that can reach that low and far away in such a short period of time needed to get the block...

3. It's a standard offence against a junk. I'm the middle handler and I've just received the disc from my left handler. I quickly look upfield and notice one of my deeper team-mates cutting back under his wing defender to get free. With my right handler a little further up field I realise we can make some good metres with a swing-upfield series of throws, I line up for a mid-height backhand throw to my right handler...

What happens after all these three scenes? Well...



1. I am jerked awake by the ferocity of my huck. I look to my side milliseconds afterwards to realise that I've narrowly missed hitting the woman sitting beside me on the train in the head with my elbow. She's not overly aware of it because her focus was on the book she was reading off to the other side of her body from me. She looks around anyway but by now my head is no longer in my arms, rather I am now totally bolt upright, having been down there shortly before while dozing off on my train trip home...

2. The only body part I can get to block such a low, wide throw (since I'm forcing quite strongly) is my lanky right leg. I throw my leg out hoping that I get a sweet foot-block. I wake up immediately with a pain streaking through my right foot. I've just fallen into REM on my bed and by throwing my right foot out I've kicked my piano...

3. My mid-height backhand throw also jerks me awake - milliseconds after the extension of my arm is cut short by the pile of boxes that live next to my bed. It's been around 4 minutes since I started to fall asleep the first time. Within the space of two of those minutes I've now hurt my right foot and my right hand.

I think this four nights a week of ultimate frisbee and an extra night of pulling/hucking practice is really starting to control automatic muscular functions...

back to the beginning...

Where to start. I can't remember what got me on to Wuthering Heights in the first place, but my friend Jess bought the actual book for me last year on a visit back to Sydney from my time in Melbourne. Having already listened to the song prior to reading the book I eventually looked up the film clip on youtube. There are two versions, the "white dress" version and this one, the "red dress" version. Either way they're amongst the finest example of how bad expressionism can be!
It's hard for me to see it now, but at the time I was convinced that the red dress version was used as the basis for Jon Heder's impromptu dance scene in Napoleon Dynamite. I watched it again recently and can only find reference to the sign language dance that he and happy hands do in the classroom (the butterfly bit).
The new BBC series was on TV tonight and last weekend and my brother watching it and asking me who wrote it reminded me of the song for this post...
Anyway, try and enjoy! (I'm unashamed (mostly) to say that I love this song!)

TR - Where Angels Fear to Tread 263m 17**

In an Herculean effort akin to those I regularly made with my former climbing partner Toby, Dan and I decided that it would be a good idea to head to Mt Buffalo and do the classic climb "Where Angels Fear to Tread"... on a weekend.
For those missing the point here, Mt Buffalo is 1.5 hours from the NSW/Victoria border - in Victoria. As always, we managed to get away "late". I picked Dan up but with no food in the car we had to stop in at my local Woolworths on the way to the freeway. We were on the freeway by 7:31pm, meaning that the 1hr 30 minutes it takes me to get to Goulburn was too long to beat the 9pm sharp closing time of the bakery in Goulburn - which was shut when we arrived at 9:03pm. Damn it. We pressed on regardless, and after an HJ and petrol stop we arrived at the gorge hut at buffalo at 2:15am. We threw our sleeping bags on the concrete floor of the hut and I went out like a light.
The theory was that we would awake at 6am and be racked up and heading down to the route by 7am. After slamming the alarm off and falling straight back to sleep, we awoke around 7:15am. We eventually got going and by the time we were standing underneath the unmissable line it was 9:41.
The first pitch was Dan's - a fist/hand crack that was just off vertical for 5m before it slabbed it up good for around 30m. I watched as Dan used both my #3 camalots and both #4s, managing to also get some #2s deep in the back of the crack where it "thinned". He belayed where the crack turned into a flake briefly, in and amongst some shrubs where the pitch was at it slabbiest. After battling with the first real crack climbing I'd done in a while I was soon at Dan's side - now battling the shrub for the gear attached to my harness as I tried passing for the lead.
The second pitch was supposed to be 30m, a "lovely hand crack flake followed by 20m of offwidth crack". Well, after less than 10m the crack was over and I was staring up at another offwidth with another awkward start. I dived right in to a continuation of the excruciating pain in my feet and the final 3m showed me exactly how hard offwidthing can be. By the time I made it to the belay point the outside of my left leg was scratched ankle to knee, both my feet were in agony and my sunglasses were wedged somewhere above the third piece of gear (to be successfully retrieved by Dan). I was ruing the offwidth crack and seriously wondering how to avoid another 100m of this kind of climbing. Dan followed - grunting, grovelling and cursing his way up behind me to land on the ledge. Even though his left ankle had been taped up there was still a large graze there with blood slowly trickling towards the top of his climbing shoe.
I past the gear on to Dan again for the mega-pitch. A short 3m corner, a 5m slab diagonally left to the start of a 30m offwidth - great, just what my feet wanted, being squished beyond the pain threshold again. He dispatched the slab quite easily, though that was what he had worried about the most. He started the grovelling process again. Up the offwidth. Around the tree, slung. More offwidthing, another tree, another sling. Still more offwidthing, still another tree, still another sling runner. Finally he was above the last tree and had 6m until the crack became slabby enough to belay, however the crack now steepened to provide double the more vertical climbing I'd dealt with at the top of my pitch. So he set off. First started the grunting. Then a curse (almost inaudible under muffled sounds of pain). After a minute of not moving, there was some flurried activity, he rose 6 inches, then panting, more cursing, more muffled sounds of pain. This process continued for another10 or so minutes, inches being won in the vertical battle, until finally he whaled onto the slabbier part of the pitch and set up a belay. I then followed, I was at the start of the offwidth in a minute. I looked up and dreaded it. It was more horrible than the last two pitch combined and seemed almost as long!
The fourth pitch provided some respite. Dan belayed between two steep slabs and what I was now facing was a 2m vertical section to more slabby goodness. The vertical section was quickly dispatched with a thin-hands jam and a solid hand jam over the lip. A high-step and I was firmly in the slabby crack. It thinned from hands to fingers (a welcome relief for my feet!) before petering out completely. Several metres below the top of this crack I had to slab 2m to my right to establish myself in another offwidth crack (not where we belayed, but where I slabbed between the two cracks - this is not us!). Luckily this offwidth crack soon narrowed down to fingers where a long reach (or another move) latched desperate fingers onto a jug and up to the belay. It was easier for me to lead and Dan also followed more easily this time.
The remaining climbing seemed to differ greatly in length and style to what was described in the route description we had. Certainly the "purity" of the line was now over, we'd done in 4 pitches what seems to be described as 5 in the book (about 140m of the crack line according to our topo). In the remaining 60-100m of climbing (it's hard to judge exactly how far we went due to the general disjointed blocks we climbed past) we came as close to face climbing as you can at Buffalo, some slabby cracks, some short cracks, some finger cracks, a bit of a slabby move here and there, and eventually we ploughed into Burston's Crevasse, much to our joy!
I next checked the clock at 5.11pm, meaning it took us just over 8 hours to do the climb. While it was enjoyable now that the experience is over, I'm really dreading having to do climbing like that again. A bit of a problem given the amount of easier climbs at Buffalo that climb similarly...

Spreadin' sin

Uncle John scratched the earth deeply with a long rusty nail. "He knowed about sin. I ast him about sin, an' he tol' me; but i don't know if he's right. He says a fella's sinned if he thinks he's sinned." Uncle John's eyes were tired and sad. "I been secret all my days," he said. "I done things i never tol' about."
Ma turned from the fire. "Don' go tellin', John," she said. "Tell 'em to God. Don' go burdenin' other people with your sins. That ain't decent."
"They're a-eatin' on me," said John.
"Well, don' tell 'em. Go down the river an' stick your head under an' whisper 'em in the stream."
Pa nodded his head slowly at Ma's words."She's right," he said. "It gives a fella relief to tell, but it jus' spreads out his sin."
Uncle John looked up to the sun-gold mountains, and the mountains were reflected in his eyes. "I wisht I could run it down," he said. "But I can't. She's a-bitin' in my guts."

Overall I didn't mind the book, however the dialogue style/spelling really gave me the shits. And the third person, situational chapters of scenes that would have taken place during the great depression, mostly painting an anti-capitalist picture also gave me the shits (again, more the style, rather than the content). Otherwise he's a brilliant writer.

A month?!

Been so long since I last published. So what's been happening? Bits and pieces, life plodding along.

The main excitement in the last month has been my trip to Melbourne. I went down and caught up with various friends. Some were distant, some were very close, and some were just loving and wonderful to be around now as they were last year. The most enjoyment came from two friends who didn't chat too long about what we'd been doing, but quickly moved on to other conversation. The strange thing is that I no longer remember what the conversations we had were about, nor how to replicate such conversation with others. I guess I'm not a conversationalist myself, I just respond well to them.
Pat and I headed out to the Gramps to dangle around on Taipan wall on the Sunday and Monday. What an amazing piece of rock, in anyone's language. 20m from the top of the wall, 50m above the ground. Two bolts and a cam. Hanging belay looking up at a shield of pristine, orange-and-black streaked rock - in the later afternoon sun, shining bullet-proof rock, smooth, gently curved, constantly overhanging, enveloping most of my field of vision. An amazing feeling just dangling from it, a fly on a wall, let alone climbing one of its magnificent routes.
I'm not going to say the trip was a cathartic experience by any stretch of the imagination. It was cold, overcast, a lot of memories were stirred up, both from places I visited and general nostalgia. No, it has its benefits as a city but it is no more or less my home than Sydney - what I experienced while living down there will slot into various places on my list of life experiences and memories. No greater number at the top or bottom of my list of experiences than those gained anywhere else.

The other thing that has been happening of late is my SC joint. I've finally made the decision to see the shoulder specialist to see about getting collarbone shaved. I'm relatively regularly climbing again - but only with controlled movements, grades less than 21 and only as long as I can feel no pain while in the motion or during the day before I climb. I've done some strengthening however this isn't cutting it anymore. There's something wrong that causes problems outside of muscular atrophy around the area. Two boney deposits on the medial end of the collar may indeed be cutting, rubbing or bruising tendons and ligaments in the area when I raise my arm. Either way, if I'm to continue a life of climbing and actually be successful then I have to sort this out once and for all. I do intend to write a post dedicated solely to the joint, my injury, what happened and what sorted it out. I'd like to keep a detailed record of what I've learned and gone through for others who may be in the same situation.

My only other news is that I will hopefully be off to climbing Mt Aspiring this December. Time to brush up on those mountaineering skillz...

I'd like to think that my photo has captured some of the atmosphere of my favourite coffee vendor in Melbourne, but I know it falls well short.

A (dodgy) man with a van

My fridge had to be moved from its place of residence this morning. Clogging up the hallway of someone else's house was no longer a sensible use for it. Not having my own (yet!), I had to rent a van (Balmain Rentals in this case) to lug the thing across town. While zipping around in that thing I started to notice other vans more easily, some filled with tradies covered in paint or with oversized novelty bandages on the end of their thumbs (wayward hammering, no doubt). Some had three Maoris in the front with insufficient space for all 6 shoulders, a different shoulder hanging out each side through the open window blocking the next lane from other vehicles. Yet other vans zipped quickly in and out of traffic - often being driven by males with dodgy moustaches trying to get somewhere, or more likely get away from somewhere, before the cops showed up. No matter what the content of the front seats the vans all seemed to exude aggression, seediness, machoism, testosterone.
I'm not sure whether it was the stereotype coming over me, some deep conscious awakening compelling me, too, as a driver of a van to act that way, or whether the van had become part of me, but I couldn't help oggling the ladies and trying my best to wolf-whistle while simultaneously tooting my horn as my van and I screamed past the ladies at the traffic lights...

They try to make me go to rehab I say no, NO, NO!

Two weekends ago I sent my first 25 - "Loop the loop" at Shipley Upper (after 9 shots on four days over four weekends - weak!).
Driving home on the Sunday, pleasantly exhausted from the weekend of climbing, but with my collar inflamed and aching noticeably more than prior to the weekend, I realised that I really had been spending way too much emotional and physical effort on climbing in the previous three months. So I decided to take a rest for a week or two. With the collar's inflammation not getting better by mid-week I decided to see an Osteo about it and hopefully have it "fixed" once and for all.
I went to an osteo in Newtown on Thursday and he did some jiggery pokery on me. He addressed the issue of my collar not healing since last October (putting 98% of the blame squarely on the fact that I never rested it after the injury) as well as my back/running/shorter leg issue. I'm happy to say that the prognosis is great! The collar should come around with some rest, more jiggery-pokery and rehabilitation of the muscles around the area. The back/running/leg issue is muscular, not skeletal as I had suspected for a while, I just have a tight/inflexible hip and some muscular asymmetry as a result.
Of course, the downside to this is that there is that "rest" part of the healing process (being a former climber the osteo "suggested" that I not climb anything harder than about 17 this weekend (one little 24 won't hurt, will it?) - ick!). However some balance wouldn't go astray, and focussing on something other than climbing is welcome change. And with that thought in mind I'm going to try find a team for ultimate mixed nats in Hobart next month...