a boy lost in life

October LWE in Kosciuszko

2011-10-24T22:21:00.000+11:00

The snow season started a little late this year, but got into full swing around the third weekend when a 5 day storm starting on a Wednesday brought over a metre of snow to the resorts and more to the main range. I happened to be down that weekend, the Saturday was very windy with low visibility but fairly good snow. Little skiing was achieved. The Sunday was substantially worse - it was so windy and the snow so thick I retreated to Sydney when a guy in a Land Cruiser told me he was struggling in the conditions as he drove out.
I went down the following two weekends to some of the best conditions I'd ever experienced. I skied across the snowy river instead of needing to use the bridge. We skied some amazing virgin powder, amazingly dry, soft and fluffy. We went further out than I'd ever been. I managed to tele-turn. So it was a bit of a let down as the season continued and the conditions deteriorated quite quickly as a result of little follow up snow, seemingly resulting in a short season - most NSW resorts down to half their runs with more than a fortnight before the official end to the season.
So it was with great delight that with a week until the official end I spied a forecast containing claims of between 10-20cm for a few days in a row - coinciding with the long weekend. The closer the weekend drew the more promising the forecast looked, so with no dry bushwalks to be had anywhere in the state I managed to convince Ans that if we were going to be precipitated on anywhere, we might as well do it where we could use it to our advantage - Kosciuszko!
The only way it would happen is if we had a leisurely drive down on the Saturday and spent the night in Jindy. It was done, and great pizza was had at a local establishment. Sunday came and with ominous clouds still lingering we headed off up the mountains and out to Guthega. We could barely see the peaks for the snow and cloud, leaving me a bit uncomfortable at the thought of staying in the backcountry that night. As a result we kitted up for a daytrip and left Guthega for the main range. There was enough snow to ski (and skin) all the way to the snowy river, but the short season also made short work of the previous snowbridge across it. It was back to using the swing bridge.
As we skinned up Twynam Creek, snow falling lightly on us and the winds nowhere near as bad as the 30-45km/h that had been predicted, I felt even worse about my decision to not stay in the backcountry that night - at least 8 tents were set up in various points on either side of the creek. Still, we made the best of a bad situation and continued up the hills towards Twynam. The higher we got the stronger the winds got, and with more than a kilometre to go we could see no more than 100m at a time. We bailed on the idea of making it up to Sirensong catchment and peering over the western end and decided to go down. We skied down and skinned back up several times. Each time we came down we had fresh snow to ski on - snow was light, fluffy and continually falling. After a bite to eat and more snow eating we did one final run - from the very top of Twynam creek all the way to the swing bridge back across the snowy. We skinned the final section as our muscles fatigued and made it out before the sun dipped.
We spent an uneventful night in the van and woke early to a bright, cloud free and freezing sky - so cold that the van had frozen locks, windows and all but one door. I eventually boiled enough water to unstick all these before we headed up the ridge across the dam from Guthega. I was only in a t-shirt and waterproof pants for most of the way up. The sun was bright and hot, hot, hot. We made it to the top of the ridge by around 10am where I had a (bad) attempt at some tele turns. After returning from a short run Ans and I both headed down - a sensationally fun 1km run back to the dam. She lay and sunned herself while I had "one more run". By the time I stopped to again run down it was just after 11am, hotter again in the sun. As I skied down, more than once I almost ground to a halt, the snow now wet and very slow. Well before I reached Ans I had to use my stocks to push me down the hill. Now the day, and the season, was truly ending. We skinned back to the van and were out of the national park before midday. Regardless, the weekend had been fun and relaxed with mostly excellent conditions.
I am already looking forward to the 2012 season when Sirensong, Little Austria and various other beauties will be skied by me.
I put some photos up on g+

Pantoney's Crown

2011-09-25T13:33:00.000+10:00

We bailed from Sydney on Friday night around the 7pm mark, heading straight out past Wallerawang power station and on towards "long swamp track". Using the (now very out of date) topo maps I started worrying about how long the track seemed to be. The only information I had about the walk and this track was from other people's trip reports, and they weren't explicit enough for me. The only TR I found this road mentioned in referred to them having to rescue the car from a frigid puddle in the dark using a jack and a lot of pushing for an hour.
Luckily, no such trouble befell us and we managed to get to the end of the road with only one bottom-out and a few slow sections over "big speed humps" (of sorts). We came to a fork in the road with a little fireplace. To be sure we were in the right place, I attempted driving further down the road another 20m, but found only darkness, and the tree canopy suddenly at our eye level. "You'll know you've reached the end of the road when it looks like you're about to drive off a cliff!" Andrew said, referring to the sudden need for a heavy-duty 4WD. With such a drop it could only be the place, and we were soon sleeping at midnight.
I awoke to my alarm in the darkness at 5:15am. We had planned to head down the other branch of the fork to attempt to get a view of Pantoney's Crown in the rising sunlight. With no food and only my camera and a map we headed down the road. After 15 minutes we peeled off the road and into the bush, the sky quite bright by now, sunrise was getting close. I figured that we'd be somewhat close, so a typical, gardens-of-stone national park rock-pagoda was climbed. Upon reaching the top we could see nothing that resembled Pantoney's crown, nor anything on the map around it, for that matter. With only the map of the 10km around the crown we had no idea what area we were looking at. The sunbeams reached us while we were trying to make heads or tails of the map, so with no hope of any sunrise photos, after posing for a quick photo (or 10) we headed back to the van to start the walk to the real deal, so much for it being easy to find...
We ate and were on our way at 7:40am, down the "cliff-line" of sorts. It certainly was 4WD-only territory, with massive ruts and channels, metre-high rock ridges and a loose sandy surface. The packs weren't too heavy, with only 5.5 litres of water (that point comes back to haunt me) and minimal other gear, including a tripod for the camera. We didn't go the usual way via Baal Bone Gap and the pressure reducing station. As mentioned, I'd only read about this walk on trip reports so I picked what I thought would be the best way based on the maps. We headed along Moffit's Trail before turning north and making our way to the cliff-line. By doing this we inadvertently missed "the big boot" rock formation, and ended up doing a bit too much bush-bashing for our liking. Next time it will be via the Gap. Regardless, almost two hours out from the car we burst out of the bush and onto the cliff-line, with near panoramic views to the crown, back to BB Gap, Pt Cameron and far into the distant Capertee Valley. We took the happy snaps we needed and walked on, following the cliff-line towards Baal Bone Point (which was incorrectly marked on the ... 70s topo map).
The ridge edge is not as straight as imagined and we often had to head directly west to get away from the cliff edge and onto decent walking pads, but the closer we got to Baal Bone Point, the closer we ended up to the cliff edge regardless. The track comes within 2m of a 50m (or more) drop, more than once, in the final 1-2km before the point. Some chossy cliffs above us had disintegrated, leaving a fine dusty chalk of various colours at various points. Perfect for aboriginals to create art with, it seems. We continued along the track and ended up arriving at Baal Bone Point before midday. It was getting quite hot by this point and we were drinking a fair bit of water, something the meaning of didn't really hit us yet, so we sat in the shade and had lunch, gazing out towards the Crown and back along the cliff where we had come from, taking happy snaps all around.
After Ans had a short 15 minute snooze we clambered out along the final ridge before doing a 180deg turn at Anvil rock and down a steep chute and off the ridge proper. The track that took us away from Anvil rock and towards the crown was obvious enough, but very steep and loose! When we neared the bottom of the saddle between the two rock features it became apparent exactly how hard this walk was going to be. Pantoney's Crown seemed miles away, and what was worse, seemed miles higher than where we were. We plodded on regardless, losing and regaining what track(s) was around to get us to the base of the crown. We merely headed for the most southerly point of the crown and when we finally hit the cliffline we found the ascent gully right in front of us. It looked quite exposed, towering some 50m above us.
After a short break we climbed up. Sure enough the exposure was amazing, but luckily the higher we got the larger the ledges below us were, to stop a fall right to the bottom. We got up to the top with some chimneying skills and pounding hearts, spending the next 15-20 minutes drinking, taking in the views and committing them to digital format. It really was spectacular.
It was barely past 3pm at this stage so we wandered around the top checking out the views while keeping an eye out for a campsite, which was to be found directly east of the summit cairn, a flat rock that we were going to lie on with the stars as our roof. Faffing, reading and writing in the logbook, more photo taking and checking out map features rounded out the daylight, and we cooked some food before heading for the flat spot at 7:30pm. It was dark, there was just the two of us and we really were quite tired - very little reason existed to stay up late into the night.
As we were lying there, quite tired and hot, since the expected drop in temperature never occurred with the setting of the sun, I realised the problem we now faced with water. We were still really parched yet not even two litres existed between the two of us - and there were no puddles in ironstone bands like in all the other photos I'd seen. I tried drinking as little as possible, but at the end of the hot and bothersome night I now had just one litre while Ans had little more than half a litre. Not good. We sparingly used some water for porridge and set off for the northern descent of the crown around 6:20am.
Again, the only information I had (from Andrew again) was "You have to find the hole first". The hole? What hole?? Having gone as far north as possible and not finding any decent descents, we started backtracking. Eventually on the northern end of a shallow gully (that spewed off the east face down 150m+ cliffs) I discovered an 8m chimney. We de-packed and I dropped the 12m rope I had down for Ans to descend in (relative) safety. She hadn't looked around when sitting down preparing to head down as I had suggested, so when it came time for me to nervously attempt the descent I happily noticed the hole Andrew had been talking about to my right, with the start some 2m behind me. I quickly stood up and took the hole option. Ans was a bit miffed she missed it so clambered back up through it and down again. We continued on fairly decent terrain and wide ledges until several steep scrambles landed us at the base of the northern point of Pantoney's crown. Terra-firma! I was quite relieved as I hadn't wanted to have to reverse the Southern end ascent and the northern descent wasn't anywhere near as exposed, but still enough to worry about.
We headed pretty much north down faint tracks that disappeared and reappeared until we ended up at a fairly open camping area with a fire-pit and a couple of big rocks for seats. We were quite far north by now and were it not for a wide, pleasant track heading further north, I really would have started on the south-east bearing we needed to take. Instead I made the dumb decision to follow the track. After a fair amount of walking the folly of my lack of trust in my own judgement dawned on me. It was now around 11am, we were clearly a ridge away from where we were supposed to be, 3km from the road and a further 6km of road away from a supply of water. To make things worse, Ans and I finished all but 100ml of water that we had left. We struggled down into the creek line and back up the other side. The ridge was wide and long enough to prove that this was indeed the correct one, so Ans' mistrust was lost and the world was a better place. Almost.
At midday we landed on the trail where we rested. We ate lunch and prepared ourselves for the long trudge ahead. We set off at a fair pace, but not even 1km along I realised we were going much slower than I had anticipated and it was clear that, especially with the sun hitting us, we were in temps much higher than the 26 that had been forecast, it was easily over 30. The road continued undulating for another 2km before a steep incline landed us a hundred metres higher again. This continued gently undulating for another 2km before the final kilometre climbed another 200m or so. I was nearing the end of my tether. I hadn't had water in three kilometres, having started partly dehydrated anyway. I hadn't gone to the toilet since 3am and my pace was shockingly slow for someone "fit". Regardless, the final locked gate came into view and that spurred me on up the last 150m of road to the pressure reducing station. Once there I drank a litre of water within 3 minutes, water had never tasted so good! We poured water over ourselves, took shoes off, sat around and enjoyed life again. Filling up with two litres of water we headed off again for the final 2-3km of track back to the van.
Several hours later, when I finally did manage to relieve myself, I was quite shocked at the colour, and concluded that yes, this had been the most dehydrated I'd ever been in my life.
Regardless, it was an amazing weekend with spectacular views. Pictures can be found here.

Coming Soon!

2011-09-20T06:33:00.000+10:00

With one bushwalk down and several already planned, it's time to turn this place into a trip report depository.
Pantoney's Crown walking should be up soon! It's a given since I'm still unable to run properly after the trip. Back shortly!

A terrible Australian Ultimate Championships 2011

2011-03-25T13:39:00.000+11:00

A week to go until the end of what has been a terrible nationals campaign for me. Fresh faced and excited to have halved our seeding at Mixed Nationals last October I came home with a niggling shoulder pain after too many layouts over the weekend, to decide that it was the reinjury of my 2009 Christmas injury. The source of the pain, the determination of the injury never happened in either instance. It took 3 months for me to be able to throw a backhand normally in 2010, and I wasn’t able to do pushups until August, just before the mixed nationals came around.

Having returned to Sydney after mixed nationsl Tom quickly decided he was going to raise another Sydney team for the opens division, with me at his side. The main problem is that my shoulder didn’t actually get better over the training period. The pain has been hanging around, it’s now at the five month mark from injury and I still wake up with a sore shoulder depending on how I sleep. Re-tweaking and re-tweaking of it occurred just about every time I threw my arm up in defence in the league season, which kept setting me back.

Well, it’s only been in the last two or three weeks that I’ve been able to flail my arms around with relative pain-free action during the day, but I’m still going to struggle in the air against the better guys, and laying out will be frowned upon, especially if I want my bid for the Australian Mixed team to be realistic.

Unfortunately this hasn’t been the only problem with my season. Around 6 weeks ago I tweaked my upper hamstring/lower glute, and, in true Steven style reminiscent of my ignorance of injuries when I first started climbing, it has actually turned out to be quite a debilitating injury rather than just “Muscular soreness”. Again, having continued to use it I’m now at the end of training and it’s exacerbated to the point that I’m unable to sprint at all.

The combined effect of shoulder and hamstring means that I’m heading to the big four days next weekend with no ability to sprint, barely any ability for aerial defence, a low confidence level in my defence and throwing and a lower level of fitness than most of my team. I’ll still be expected to step up to the plate next week, and I’ll try my hardest to do that. Whether sitting around on ice packs, sleeping on my back with my arm tied to my body or visualisation of motions for the rest of the week will be able to “fix” me will only be learned on Friday morning.

As said, I intend to step up to the plate, to the point of completely destroying myself again if that’s what’s needed, but I know that this time once the finals on Monday are over, I won’t be pressuring myself to do any exercise other than ride my bike to and from work for the rest of April.

Lazy Sod

2011-02-09T13:44:00.001+11:00

It has indeed been quite a while since I've updated this site. The occasional photo has gone up on my flickr account but having officially quit climbing and started falling into a depressed state my ability to get up was reduced when I re-injured my right shoulder playing Ultimate Frisbee Mixed Nationals shortly thereafter.
It's now 3 months on and we're knocking on the door of Regional Championships for the Open Ultimate Frisbee season here in Aus and I still don't have 100% use of my shoulder. Depressing times indeed.
However, there was some good fun had in Tasmania over Christmas/New Year (For a fourth year in six) and new adventures had down there.
When I finally get on with being positive I'll get around to writing a trip report and getting some more of those photos from the trips uploaded to flickr!
-s-

End of a lifestyle

2010-10-15T13:09:00.000+11:00

NSW. October long weekend, 2010. The plan? Head to Mt Arapiles in Victoria for my climbing career retirement.

And that's what I do. Myself and a few friends fly down to Melbs and drive out in a hire-car to Araps. My climbing staple. Arguably the world's best crag. A mecca for all levels of trad, hard sport, climbing of all styles and lifestyle choice.

Once my staple diet for climbing. Short weekends, normal weekends, long weekends, short weeks, long weeks. Interstate, local. I've spent so many days there. Hundreds, in fact. Hundreds of climbs too, from a lowly 2 to the hardest of my leads on 21s, some worked, mostly onsighted, two lead falls (both on Chinese Algebra, 21).

It all started in Easter 2004, my first climb on Diapason (7), 10pm start, 11pm finish. My second climb, The Bard (12), 5:30am start the next morning. By the fifth day of the trip I hated Arapiles and its smooth rock. By the ninth day I loved it, now loving its smooth rock, subtle features, amazing protection and funky climbing provided. It was now certain it would capture my heart and desire too, like so many thousands of climbers before me.

Breakfast sometimes consisted of a packet of tim tams and three of four cups of tea. Never coffee until the last trip. 6am starts, 11am starts, 11am finshes, 11pm finishes. Dinners were mostly pasta with some form of vegetable concoction for sauce. Lunch? Junk food to Nati milkshakes to salads to the standard tin of tuna and crackers.

Rain, cold, shivering in the dark on the top of the bluffs, the pharos, the watchtower faces. Wet pines, windy pines, dry pines, 45 degree days, stifling, stuffy pines. Splashing around in the fire dam, skiing behind a car on the fire dam, catching noisy minahs in plastic boxes baited with jam on toast, watching the Grampians burn to the ground. Lying on bouldering pads with friends, with lovers, with myself. Hammocks with myself, slept in, sex in, friends in, touching the ground due to weight. Tents, bivy bags, bouldering mats, -15 sleeping bags, summer sleeping bags, no sleeping bags, no mats, no tents. Eagles, hawks, stumpies, echidnas, kangaroos, skinks, peregrines, ants, bullants. Friendships, climbing partners, infidelities, enemies, brief encounters, mental screwarounds. Water, wine, beer, berocca, vodka, rum.

I have a million memories and an unending longing. But alas, the climbing is over, the career is gone, 10 weekday hours and most weekend time now has to be reallocated. A thousand memories of moves, sequences, techniques, grades, descriptions ( If you fall off at the crux, sever a rope, spear into the ground and sustain major injuries... you may wish to remove a star ), names, crags, directions, must be replaced or forever haunt my smouldering desire.

The blueys are now for walking and Araps for reminiscing. The Gramps for somewhere in between. Time to find a new lifestyle, or some major developments in stem-cell research.

It's not loose, you fucking losers!

2010-09-13T09:32:00.001+10:00

Amongst many other stupid spelling errors, I hate people that ramble on intimating their lower-north shore educations and opinions are better and more current than well-respected journalists and academics and then use the word "loose" instead of "lose" while berating them.
Get off your high horses and learn to spell. Losers.

Closet Cross-dresser

2010-09-09T12:53:00.000+10:00

NSW Regionals is over. Has my team made it? Well, it's likely but not confirmed. After the Golden Oldies consumed too many beers and allowed a much younger team to run all over them we three teams were put into a tie for spots 2-4 in our pool. Due to points difference we were spat out into fourth place relegating us to the 7-12 pool. After many more games that were played in Sydney due to the extreme weather in Wollongong, we eventually came 8th in the tournament. There are 7 firm spots allocated to NSW with an extremely likely chance that an 8th will be awarded, thereafter diminishing chances of getting up to 10 spots, so we're all but going to Australian Mixed Ultimate Championships 2010!
On the Sunday morning in Wollongong prior to moving up to Sydney, as legions of young frisbee males and females huddled behing the frisbee central building, shielding ourselves from the 60km/h wind and 80km/h gusts, I noticed a curious thing that I've seen before in many of the males. Makeup. Mascara. Eyeliner. What?!
It instantly jogged my memory of instances gone by. The Nationals party in Adelaide earlier in the year, Bathurst Stampede tournament. Both Halibut tournaments I've been to. Cross-dressing! These parties are an excuse for the boys of Ultimate to cross-dress. The sport seriously seems to be the meeting place of an underground legion of cross-dressing boys. Makeup. Women's dresses. Skirts. Tank-tops. High heels. This is an underlying theme that just seems to come out at the parties again and again, and the boys lap it up while they can. While I didn't attend the party, and thus can't confirm, the theme of "Two sizes too small" and the amount of makeup indicates that many boys turned it into a "Two sizes too small and from the opposite sex" theme.
A lot of players are of the younger persuasion, University age and barely ouf of school Regardless, I probably just have to face the fact that boys will be boys. Whether we cross-dress at Ultimate parties or behind closed doors with cameras and a legion of women, we're all bound to be modelling women's clothing at one stage of our lives or another... or several.

**post edit - the 8th spot has been awarded to NSW - Mr Burns' Casino is going to nationals!

Moving around in life

2010-06-12T17:47:00.000+10:00

My trip to Europe is fast approaching and almost everything is set for the trip. One major point of activity before leaving, however, is the readying of the new residence for my return. When arriving back in Australia my home will be inner city Sydney, around Redfern. I'll be taking a friend's house for at least 9 months, assisting them by also keeping their furniture out of storage by keeping it there and using it, and taking care of their pet.
In my true style I knew it was likely that I wouldn't actually bother to do any moving or cleaning in the weeks leading up to the Europe trip so earlier in the week I canceled all my weekend plans that involved a journey of more than 30 minutes. I am indeed a smart man. I've spent the better part of 6 hours today moving all my belongings to the new residence. All that's left for tomorrow is to clean the house I'm leaving and prepare myself for the exciting adventure that is Europe.

Joining the (w)hor(d)es

2010-05-31T11:09:00.000+10:00

After much desire and drooling I finally went out and bought myself a Macbook Pro to replace my ageing Toshiba laptop. I'll have to admit it from the start - the main reason I considered this computer related to the sleek design, the sexy back-lit keys and the shiny screen that really does have some very deep colours compared to other screens around - ah design, the Apple staple.

For once in this buying process I actually considered my budget. While I had been looking to get a 15" they started at some $2300. Quite a lot. Even though it was only 15" they were quite large (due to the widescreen aspect) such that the keyboard fitted on the metal with inches on either side of empty space. Regardless, the $2,000+ price tag made me think twice about the need for such a beast.The 13" started at $1500 and came in two models, 2.4GHz Core 2 Duo or a 2.66Ghz Core 2 Duo. The price difference between the two, $400 more for the faster model, only had one other advantage - an extra 70GB of HDD space. Now, call me naive but I am not going to spend $400 for 70GB of hard-drive and 0.26GHz of speed - certainly not for what I intend using it for.

So there it was, the option was sealed, the slower 13" model.

While it's certainly an amazingly fast machine that's just consumed $1500 from my bank account I've not really used it for much other than web-browsing and iTunes listening. It's probably best that I didn't buy a more expensive version. I love the simple pleasures like being able to eliminate tedious mouse motions or keyboard clicks simply by leaving more (or less) fingers on the trackpad than usual. I'm sure there are close to thousands of simple keyboard combinations or mouse tricks left to learn. I've also yet to get my DSLR camera into full-time use but apparently these suckers are good for processing that sort of thing - or so I'm led to believe. Because that's one of the reasons I wanted a new laptop (the old one was WAY too slow - minutes to convert a single Canon RAW image into a full-sized jpg) I'd better start clicking, processing and getting myself an unlimited and full-powered web-based image-library and a decent website.

In the interim, I'm just going to continue to derive simple pleasures from, what is to me, an aesthetically pleasing object.

A little macro problem...

2010-05-13T22:52:00.000+10:00

For quite a while at work now, in between pretending to do work, I've been staring at that pesky Alt-F11 macro screen in both MS products, Access and Excel. Being on the fringes of the Business Risk team I have access to all the company's data and, due to my moderate programming history, have been writing macros and functions to present certain aspects of this data to the rest of the team in a much more simple Excel environment (not to indicate that I think macros are "programming" by any stretch of the imagination).
I was recently requested to modify an excel spreadsheet that we are to disseminate to other business groups in such a way that these other users will not be able to alter any underlying data, save it externally or otherwise falsify our output due to the risks involved. So I set to it, searching, researching and coding until I finally found what I needed to write to stop people saving it.
Now, one recent issue I've come across in my new "role" is that I don't know any good version control programs to help my boss and I keep track of changes that we each make to various databases and spreadsheets. As a result, I personally have "MLR3", "MLRisky3", "MLR2", "origML3" saved versions in a spreadsheet-specific folder on my desktop - I'm not even going in to how many different versions I have just on my desktop itself. Finding a specific piece of code or functionality, query or table can often be long and tedious. As a result, it was several attempts of opening different versions of the spreadsheet to realise where my newly entered code had gone to!
To help you save time if you ever need to do something similar, I'll tell you that when you're ready to write an Excel macro that doesn't allow you to save any changes to a spreadsheet, you probably shouldn't enable macros when you first open Excel...

Inconclusive ab-off results...

2010-05-04T19:48:00.000+10:00

The results of the ab-off were inconclusive. Little did I realise that 4.5 hours of frisbee game-time a day would take such a toll. While I managed to get my morning and afternoon ab sessions in until Friday there was no follow-up on Saturday and Sunday due to the level of tiredness after full days of frisbee.
Friday night was also spent at "the Grand" on the esplanade in Glenelg, downing 6 beers in the space of two hours - just what the doctor ordered before a Nationals competition (this would never have happened under Fakulti!). With jelly legs the 4.5 hours of game time reduced me to a panting, tired and sore whinger both nights essentially cutting off my 5th and 5.5th day of ab work. As a result the ab-off was called off, my god-like abs were never worn by me along with the Poseidon costume. I ended up going in pants and a shirt.
Having said all this, I do feel that by starting with a washboard stomach, 6-7 days of intensive ab work will result in definition appearing! There was some definition there, however this could have be contributed to with intense training and playing frisbee...
Regardless, I may get around to doing more ab-work over the next few weeks (I'm off to Prague in July for World Ultimate Club Championships!) and may document those efforts!

5.5 day abdominal challenge

2010-04-21T07:25:00.001+10:00

The date: 26th April
The event: Ultimate Nationals Party
The reason: I'm going to be dressed like Poseidon
The goal: Have a great set of abs for the outfit!

So, I've short-changed myself for time, but regardless my girlfriend and I are having an ab-off. Yup, you heard, just before the 2010 Nationals Ultimate Championships she and I are going to have an ab-off.
While the theme of the party is, in fact, "op-shop", I have plenty of other excuses to wear $5 dresses, but not enough to wear only a sheet (oh alright, maybe I'll wear undies too!). Anyway. So, in order to appear as the god, Poseidon, I need a set of abs to match. I intend doing a workout every morning and night until Friday, after which I'll (hopefully) do a more intense workout on both Saturday and Sunday evenings after gametime.
We'll get our housemates (teammates) in Adelaide to judge who has the "better" set. She claims she has the perfect genes to obtain them in such a short period of time, and (At least at this point in time) I intend just working my way to glory. I don't have too bad a base to start with, though, just a board, waiting to have muscles sculpted into them.
Here's to the ab-off.

A victorian alps weekend

2010-04-14T16:51:00.000+10:00

On Good Friday, having spent the day losing track of time climbing on the Horn at Mt Buffalo we decided that we'd tackle the Mt Feathertop walk on Easter Sunday, leaving Saturday for more climbing up on the Buff itself.
On sunday we were up before sunrise which was now 6am given the change from daylight savings time, had a cold breakfast and headed down the mountain. The previous night my stove had given out, resulting in a cold dinner and the prospect of no more hot food or drink for the remainder of the long weekend. Our tardiness in getting down Mt Buffalo and out towards Mt Feathertop meant that, at 6:50am, we were able to stop into Bright and pickup a hot coffee from the bakery that was technically due to open at 7. We were on our way shortly after to Harrietville where the Bungalow Spur walk to the top of Feathertop begins.
We eventually set off in cool conditions at 8am at a rough altitude of 600m, wearing only a t-shirt despite the single-digit temps. From many past experiences walking up hills, I knew that wearing anything longsleeved would last half an hour at most before it was ripped off in a lather of sweat. The walk snaked its way around various spurs and ridges, ever-climbing towards the peak, but always in the shade at this time of the morning. The walk was essentially all uphill, however it was rare to be out of breath as the gradient was constant and rather easy given the altitude gain needed.
We plodded away, enjoying the surrounding bushland and chitchatting to each other, occasionally passing others who had either large, overnight backpacks, or just those who'd pulled over for a rest. We, however, didn't like the idea of the 11 hour walk, quoted on other websites, and decided to push on. It was to our great surprise that we came upon the old Feathertop hut site just under two hours into the walk. This is around one and a half kilometres before the current hut, and has a large flat area that is now used for camping out of the inclement weather path. We stopped for a quick drink while watching people pack up their tents.
It wasn't much longer before we were up at the current hut, Federation Hut. There had been plenty of people around the previous evening, with half of the packing up their tents while the other half prepared for the day's adventures. The hut is to be slept in only under emergency situations, and as such there was noone inside, functional as the interior was.
We ate our "lunch" before 11:30am in the sun near the hut, before heading off for the final slog to the summit. This final section is the steepest, with many steps made out of the local rock to assist ... well, anyone walking it. The peak is quite prominent and, at 1922m, is Victoria's second highest mountain but most likely the most defined peak of all. As we ascended the ridge we had amazing views down 1000m+ into the valleys below, across to other ridges (the MUMC hut nearby line-of-site, but not by path...), across to both Mt Hotham and Mt Bogong and of course, easily back to the massive plateau that is Mt Buffalo.
We briefly ate fruit on the top at around 12:30 until we were overrun by jumping jacks, european wasps and an assortment of smaller, wind-borne insects. A couple of mandatory photos ensued before we departed for the hut in full sunlight. Our descent from the hut took just over one and a half hours, and we were back at the car before 2:30pm. We had spent just over six and a half hours doing the walk and thoroughly enjoyed every minute of it. On the way back to the Buff we hung around Bright, making use of parks, swimming facilities and hot food!
We woke the next morning a little stiff, however after a short climb we soon warmed up and I found the energy to jump on my bike near the park entrance and ascend most of the way up Mt Buffalo to Mackey's Lookout in 35 minutes. 12 minutes later I was back at my car and the long journey to Sydney began.

Guilt

2010-03-25T16:46:00.000+11:00

I do somewhat feel guilty, although some would argue there's no real reason to. Towards the end of 2009, with much discussion in the frisbee scene relating to World Ultimate Club Championships my girlfriend indicated her annoyance that she would be unable to get time off work to play with her former Dutch team in Prague. I dismissed such a missed opportunity with a philosophical wave of my hands while dribbling on about how it's not that bad, there would be other chances later and that it was probably over-rated anyway.
Well, I've just secured time off work and my spot on the Sydney "B" team - the Redbacks - to play in just that tournament to be held in Prague, 2-9 July. I'll be off to Europe on the more beneficial of 20th June with my job's blessing, or failing being given leave by this stage, the 15th of June when I tell my work to jam their current employment arrangement with me.
Until this point (worlds), however, there is the issue of my unknown shoulder ailment being rehabilitated and being able to last such a long tournament. As always, the mantra of "I have to take time off and rehabilitate it" has fallen by the wayside of late. Climbing in the gym is probably not as beneficial as resting it and doing easy weights, however while the climbing bug in my system has atrophied, it hasn't died yet. Somewhere between a Grade-III shoulder separation and a SLAP tear, I'm hoping that R&R is going to do the trick.
Prior to worlds, there are plenty of opportunities to gauge how my shoulder will hold up. Nationals in Adelaide is now 5 weeks away and, while the team I'm on is hardly "strong" in anyone's language, i'm really looking forward to it.
So here's to a good year filled with a lot of frisbee!

Upper body problems

2010-03-02T19:27:00.000+11:00

The end...
And there is the final buzzer... on my climbing and swimming career. The final nail was sent home last Tuesday, the second shoulder specialist essentially agreeing with the first about my left SC joint injury.
The prognosis? Not very good.
Could I expect to climb again with my damaged SC joint? Not without further and accelerated damage causing arthritis later in life.
Suggested action? Behaviour and activity modification. ie - don't climb, don't swim. Activities that involve raising my arm above my shoulder will cause the damage to the joint.

Further to this, x-rays of my right injured AC joint/shoulder caused by laying out at beach ultimate were briefly examined. The diagnosis for that joint? Grade III shoulder seperation - x-ray labelled incorrectly, left and right switched - 5mm lower injured shoulder. Prognosis? Use it until it hurts. When it hurts, see someone.

The essence of what is going on in my SC joint is that I perforated my disc of cartilage between the sternum and clavicle which causes the bones to sit close to each other and grind. Arthritis, basically. Shaving bits of bone off won't help - the medial end of the sternum already brittle and it is unlikely the bone densities are actually interfering with the muscles. Any pain that I'm feeling are in fact just the effects of arthritis.

Can't keep a good thing down
While this should stop me, I just can't see the end of my climbing career just yet. I have done some behaviour modification - I've stopped climbing, I've stopped swimming. More to the point, I've been doing a lot of riding and frisbee hasn't looked better. I've decided that I'm going to look into exercises that work my arms and back that don't require the elevated use of my arms. Climbing time will be kept to a minimum (hard, I know). Other styles of climbing will have to be undertaken - slab climbing, vertical climbing trying to lock off my left arm more. These are all strange concepts, but until I'm able to participate in a cartilage stem-cell trial (they do exist!!) I just have to do something to enable me to continue climbing. The fact of the matter is that I've never climbed harder than after my injury. Another fact relating to that is that the joint never hurt more when I succeeded in nailing that 25. Yet another fact is that just over two months after that feat there was little to no pain associated with the joint. I'll continue to monitor the aches and pains associated with the joint and review my position every 3-4 months, it's all that can be done to someone so addicted to an activity...
sniffle - let's hope it's not the real end to my climbing career...

Organisation

2010-02-05T18:59:00.001+11:00

Most inconveniently the second month of the year is well under way, barely noticing the first month in its brief flight past my consciousness. The feeling seems to be creeping up on me again that given the brevity of the first month the rest of the year is likely to be as 2009 was - short, unproductive and unfulfulling - another "gap" year as it seems.

The last few weeks, however, I've been thinking about what I want to achieve this year - not being burdened by debt, recovery from my injury and stellar progression in my chosen sports, triathlons, ultimate frisbee, rock climbing and mountaineering and mental growth in languages and my career, all dotted in amongst the other smaller things that are too numerous to list. More and more, especially the last few days when I've attempted working on my goals have I realised where my failings are coming from: a lack of a clear plan and organisation.
Financial? Where's my budget; my debt repayment schedule, my list of upcoming expenses, interstate travel, car maintenance and sporting purchases? What of my shares? Changing my portfolio composition, maximising profit and reducing my interest? What of my income changes as I take time off work?
Rehabilitation? What days am I supposed to be relaxing or doing strengthening? In all my frisbee training that I know of, how much riding or strengthening can I do on the in-between days? Once I'm there with my equipment, what injuries am I treating? Shoulder? Collar? Knee? Back? What exercises and how many reps and sets should I do? Should the weight increase weekly? What did I do last week??
Advancing my sports? Have I read training and coaching books and started a schedule for when I am able to use my shoulder for climbing? Frisbee tactics, I have 300 pages of them on my bedside table - have I developed a systematic and progressive programme for myself and my team-mates in order to be the best we can be by the time nationals are upon us? Have I taken stock of all my equipment lately, climbing, frisbee and cycling?
Mental? What of learning Spanish? Pod-casts of news and lessons? Enrolling in a course? What of my career? Am I going to start a Journalism degree or will I make an effort for financial courses? Am I even interested in continuing finance? Will I be able to study between all my sport and work commitments? Will I have to pare back some of these activities?
Yes, all these things need to be sorted out and quickly, lest the year go by in another flurry of inefficient time allocation to activities that aren't beneficial. How?
Excel? Check!
Electronic year planner? Check!
Daily diary for 2010? Check!
Paper for the list of everything I want to achieve? Check!
Sure, I'm going to spend a fair amount of time drawing up all these plans, sorting through all the data and making defined progression charts, but once they're complete it will take a very short period of time to make back any time lost - it's all about efficiency!
So here's to planning, and getting things right the first time I try them.
Oh yes, and here's also to a great year!

The pain of it all...

2010-01-19T16:48:00.000+11:00

Being just past the 4 week stage of my AC joint injury it is fairly obvious that it was a "severe grade I joint separation". With some major pain (most likely relating to nerve impingement) late last week came two physiotherapy appointments helping to ease the pain. Of course, even though I claim to understand when to limit myself in order to heal, this is clearly a load of bollocks. I have no understanding. Had I any understanding I wouldn't be back to four evenings a week of frisbee training. Throwing a forehand causes some pain and I've modified my technique to deal with the pain, and without the ability to lift my arm dead-vertically above my head, all thought of climbing is out for another two weeks at least.

Ultimate Frisbee Regional and National season is just around the corner and this year I've decided to head out with Umlaut, a southern Sydney team of varying abilities. While being on this team will not guarantee us getting to Nationals (in fact ,it's more likely that we WON'T make nationals due to a NSW state allocation of 4 teams) it will guarantee that I'll be in a more friendly environment than the cliquey and (in my experience) arrogant Fakulti team. We train regularly on Wednesday evenings, and with Bondi Beach pickup on Sunday nights and two weeknights of league I'm doing 4 nights a week of AC joint workout!

Sprint training is also on again, with Umlaut managing to obtain the Fakulti sprint training schedule from several years ago. With the first session now two days in the past I'm still unable to walk properly, such is the pain in my quads. However, having stuck to my vow of lowering my alcohlic intake this year so far recovery and future gains in ability is high on the cards.

And so my "free" time has come back to this, climbing is off the cards for the rest of the month (having not climbed in the last one and a half of them anyway) and frisbee is all on again. With my quads sure to swell again this season, the only tune that springs to my mind starts with "Thunder! ah-a-ahh-a-a-ahhha Thunder!"

The month of excess...

2009-12-31T14:43:00.000+11:00

And so finally December, my month of excess, has come to an end. With only one night of excess left I don't believe I can outshine any of my earlier efforts. All that's left in the armoury are two six-packs of Barefoot Radlers, something like 4.5% alcohol content - nothing compared to other nights this month!
Now that I'm at the end of the month I only have defined memories of six days without alcohol. Three of those were due to sport commitments at night (Ultimate) and the remaining three have been the last three days, and abstinence then was due to possible liver failure if I drank any more.
It started on the 4th of December, my work christmas party. Recollections are of five beers, around two bottles of wine and two double vodkas. Drinking ended when Christmas day drinking spilled over into Boxing-day-morning. The tally stands somewhere around the "10 beers, some wine and many strong G&Ts" mark. In between these two events include mid-week-after-work drinks, mid-week-during-work drinks, work-sanctioned-during-work drinks, after-work-but-before-after-work drinks and weekend drinks. Admittedly, some days were only filled with two beers, but this was the smallest amount had on any drinking day.
I have single-handedly managed to reduce my "otherwise-almost-sticking-to-my-New-Years-Resolution" (average of less than one per week) to "somewhere around 1 drink per day over the year" in the space of 26 days. That I am still alive and can mentally function is beyond my comprehension (hmmm, maybe there's a clue in that statement...).
However, it is the end, and with my level of sickness that I feel just trying to comprehend that I'm still functioning I have decided to take on a new tack for alcohol in 2010.

First 2010 resolution:
No more than 5 drinks (a drink being a glass of wine, champers, single shot of spirts or a schooner) in any one week, being spread out over a maximum of two days per week, abstinence not to be accrued over weeks.

Second 2010 resolution:
Should I be in the position in which I have consumed all 5 drinks in the one night, I am NOT allowed to give in to peer pressure and should refer First 2010 resolution.

The five drinks is an arbitrarily determined number, however I don't think it's that impossible (famous last words). Adhering to these two principles during this month would have saved many brain cells, however what is done is done, and we can only influence what the future holds.
Thank god December, the month of festivities and excesses, is over.
Happy new year!!

More woes

2009-12-20T22:27:00.001+11:00

I played "The longest day" beach-ultimate tournament in Sydney today, up at North Narrabeen, a fairly northern beach in the grand scheme of Sydney. The name would derive partly from the fact that tomorrow (21st) is the summer solstice, however I wouldn't be surprised if it also refers to the extremely tiring and taxing effect beach frisbee has on the body.

I was quite fit for it, playing sunday beach pickup for most weekends in the last two months, however a lot of my teammates hadn't. The difficulty with sprinting on sand and turning (which I find quite easy) experienced by most of my teammates kinda led to our downfall. We ended up with the wooden spoon.

This wasn't taken too badly by my team. We've hardly played as the team we were and a lot of fun was had regardless. Somehow being at the beach, being able to swim between games and all that sand down our pants really lifted our spirits no matter how badly we sucked.

One definite positive of the tournie was the food - 80% of the food was fruit, simple wholesome fruit. Boxes of cherries and mangos, kilos of rolling watermelons, honey dew and rockmelon, crates of apples, oranges and bananas filled everyone up. Despite the tournament being played by at least 200 people there were still boxes of fruit left over at the end.

However my run of bad luck at tournaments didn't seem to end at my last one, where I was corked so badly in the first game of the weekend that I didn't play again and walked with a limp for three weeks after, no no, this one had more bad luck. In our second-last "suckiest bunch of sucks that ever sucked" playoff game I injured my good shoulder!

A long huck was put down the 40m field and I was chasing it down. I'd been so psyched over the past week about being able to layout on the "nice, soft sand" that I figured this was the time to try it out! The front line of the endzone appeared under my feet and the disc was within reach. I dived forward, ever so slightly rotating my body in the process so as to land on my side - a big mistake! I landed on the outside of my right shoulder with an almighty thud. I had caught the disc however I wasn't interested in seeing if I was still in play. I swung my arm side to side feeling something "wasn't quite right". I stood up fully and swung again - yes, definitely something not right, what IS that? Some sort of pain, somewhere. Swing. Weird. Swing, swing, yup, pain. Swing, swing, swing, more pain, growing with each swing. Feck!

"Injury sub!" I walked off. By the time I reached my team-mates on the sideline it was definitely time for ice. I iced it for a long time with the pain still getting worse. While I have been told by a frisbee-playing doctor that I have most likely sprained my AcromioClavicular joint (AC joint) I still believe that I may have popped my shoulder out and then back in again. However, I have no proof, and am finding it very hard to diagnose the pain I'm experiencing using Google.

And so I will go to work tomorrow with a sling on - another injury story to tell Christina, another shoulder to write off. If the pain persists through the week I'll be back to the doctor for an x-ray to properly diagnose the injury, but even if the pain subsides enough climbing on my Christmas holiday will most certainly be out, but as always I'm still hopeful. After injuring my pulley last year I did nothing on it for 12 days before going out for a 2 week climbing trip to Tasmania without any issues. Hopefully this time my body's recovery system will be even more efficient...

slip up

2009-12-09T22:15:00.002+11:00

i got home relatively early. i was going to go to ikea, but the thought of battling shit weather, lanes of traffic and stores filled with idiots shopping put me off the idea for another week.
instead i sat on my bed. i got really depressed for a short while and i stupidly sent her a text message asking her for coffee next couple of weeks. well, as usual, i got no response, so it didn't help. i still can't figure out why she's so hell bent on completely ignoring me. surely no sane person does this to someone they "loved" for two years?? or am i the insane one. she really hates me? it makes it easier for her to deal? she's going out with someone already and moved on? whatever the case, it's becoming more and more obvious that i'm really, never ever going to interact with her again as she wanted. again, might be tough keeping friends if i never interact with her and they know her too.
either way, i should've gone to ikea. would've helped my state of mind, and would've helped the state of my room. *sigh* another week of wading through crap...

(Originally posted mid-July 2008 with a photo from my Melbourne room - resurrected because... just because)

Three ultimate frisbee scenes...

2009-11-21T00:23:00.005+11:00

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...

2009-11-01T22:16:00.000+11:00

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**

2009-10-25T20:01:00.015+11:00

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

2009-10-20T21:44:00.004+11:00

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?!

2009-10-16T21:21:00.003+11:00

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

2009-09-19T20:14:00.005+10:00

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!

2009-09-04T22:25:00.005+10:00

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...

That fcuking useless phone book!

2009-07-18T21:33:00.006+10:00

So after losing sunday's climbing partner to the booze I went ferreting through my phone book to find a replacement for the day.
Well, what can I say about my phone book. FCUKING USELESS. I have more phone numbers of climbers in Melbourne than in Sydney. The combined total of Adelaide, Brisbane and Tasmania (!) climbers almost outnumber Sydney climbers.
Fcuking useless.
Time to start chatting up the outdoor climbers at the climbing gyms this week...

Regina Spektor

2009-07-12T20:27:00.007+10:00

So my latest fancy is Regina Spektor, and it started first with her new album "Far".
Apparently a Muscovite till the age of 9 who did most of her growing up in New York, she's a wonderful singer/songwriter who still retains that Russian accent in most of her songs. If not the Russian accent then it may be some fusion of Italian, Austrian and Russian accents she would've picked up while living in those countries during her transition from Moscow to NY. Whichever it is, it's again different to a lot of voices out there and I can't describe it, but with certain words losing their last letter or being shortened or having a different pitch put on certain letters it is really a voice I love. Of course, most people would notice that she has another one of those wonderful sweet, often highpitched voices that i've come to love so much in my female musicians of late (not to say that i don't love Abby Dobson's or Amy Winehouse's voices).
From what I've paid attention to I've not noticed a song that doesn't have her beloved piano as the main instrument. A lot of photos I've seen of her involve her in front of a piano - a good sign that they were all taken at performances. Certainly in her latest album she has very unique and quirky lyrics, some of which probably wouldn't go well with a guitar as the lead. She doesn't seem to sing about the usual things current females sing about, which is what I like about her. Boyfriends, love, breakups, troubles in life, none exist in her lyrics, she almost takes an abstract view on life. An imitation of the "Dolphin Song" (an interesting rendition, i must admit!), a good allusion to our dependence on modern technology, the lake that turned as thick as porridge overnight, they're all different lyrics to anything around, really.
I often find myself see-sawing my head while walking down the street listening to ms Spektor, such are the ryhtmic melodies of her music. They're not all like that, but many of the songs are upbeat in tempo and as always, sweetly melodic, in places with great changes in tempo and some of the best tunes coming to a backdrop of staccato piano playing. Anyway, her latest album is very good, with lots of catchy songs and unique lyrics.
I have had a listen to her previous "Begin to Hope" album, but not in as much depth. The latest album follows on from that style, with her big jump in style being from "Soviet Kitsch" to Begin to Hope. Soviet Kitsch, an even earlier album has also had a couple of songs played on my muzak machine, and they are quite different, almost grungy in parts, but still with her refreshing voice and for the most part, her piano playing skillz.
Anyway, she'll be getting a lot more playing time on my ipod over the next few weeks, and hopefully I won't get sick of her anytime soon.

Swine Flu

2009-07-01T11:43:00.006+10:00

As a workmate gets carted off by the Government to be tested for swine flu that he may have had two weeks ago, I still continue to suffer. My five day bed ordeal caused me to lose between 5 and 6 kg. I'm now down to a woeful 77kg, a figure I've not seen in the last decade at least. My last major weight loss was when I had my wisdom teeth out, and had a similar effect. Some 7 kg was lost in the week after they were pulled, and I never recovered that weight. I'm hoping that this isn't the case this time around because 77kg is seriously an unsustainable weight for me.
I went to Brisbane for the Ultimate Development Camp on the weekend just gone, weak and tired, not even managing to make the entire first day's worth of exercises and drills. I stopped and rested at around 2pm for the remainder of the day. I managed to last all of Sunday but was having serious trouble keeping my eyes open on the drive home from the airport that night. The weekend was good, presenting new points and tactics for both individual and team offense and defence. I've not written any thing down yet, but that should be done because there were some good points that wouldn't naturally come to a player.
So with that training just gone there's a new tournament to look forward to - Halibutt, also up in Brisbane. I managed to pick up with a team based in Melbourne, but I'll have to get better soon and get my arse into fitness gear cause at this rate I'll barely be able to make the fields, let alone play for two days AND party in the middle...
The major problem that I'm currently facing with any form of "training" or even just "physical motion" is that I'm exchausted by the time 7pm rocks around just in the normal routine of a day. There has to be some serious rest before I can be normal again - but that's just about out the window already anyway, with climbing training planned for thursday night and the weekend expected to see me meeting up with some Melbourne friends in the blue mountains for climbing.
But as always, everything with me is always a plan, and this time will be no different, a plan on how to recover and return to my former fitness in as short a period of time as possible - but if I ever put a plan into action that would be a real milestone in itself. And so along with the Ultimate fitness training I have to start climbing training again. The one major positive to come out of this sickness is that with 6kg of muscle all but gone from my old stature, all my training can be directed at regaining those 6kg in just the right spots to make the perfect climber physique... here's hoping!

Swine - it's a bitch!

2009-06-22T14:59:00.003+10:00

No, i'm not going to claim that I have swine flu, but the flu that I do have is a real bitch! I've not been this sick since... well, it's hard to remember since when. The last 72 hours have been truly horrible. Bed-ridden for a good portion of that, I spent 2 hours at the hospital on Sunday afternoon just to make sure I wasn't terminally ill, and two car trips to the station to pick up my brother. Otherwise, time crawled by slowly. Every position in bed was uncomfortable, every "sleep" was only 2-3 minutes long, day was night and night was day and I didn't know it. Anyway, it's now been 72 hours and i'm still walking dizzily (?) up and down the hallway, headache still present, throat still sore (I apparently most likely have an infection as well as influenza - great!) and still weak as a kitten!
So I'm shovelling food down my throat as fast as I can keep it down , hoping I'll suck enough back to give me some energy/ability for this weekends ultimate development camp in brisbane. And speaking of all things ultimate, I'm bankrupting myself some more by heading to Brisbane again at the end of July to play at the Halibut tournament with a team of Melbourne players! Thanks for the heads up!
So if the fitness doesn't increase much between now and this weekend, I can redeem myself by being fitter and better still at the 'butt!

Homeward bound

2009-06-12T20:15:00.002+10:00

Having spent quite a while outside of the home environment since returning from Melbourne (around 3.5 months out) my freedom is up. The list of people I know who have a room that I can house-sit has come to an end so I'm back out home out west.
In a way this is a blessing. With the mother figure heading to England for two months and Gilberto having exhaust issues, I can return to driving trusty old Emma around, with all her 225,000km (about 200,000 put on her by me!). Nothing wrong with a 6'5" guy driving a Holden Barina around, nothing at all...
The cost of fixing Gilberto's "emission control system" is sure to be very similar to the cost of 7 weeks rent in a Sydney house given current rental rates and the cost of having a car serviced by an "Authorised dealer". So just before I got to the home straight, the 3 paypackets going directly to paying off my credit card debt theory, I get slugged with a 75,000km service and an ECS overhaul. It's always the way, just as you're getting to your knees something comes along and wallops you on the top of the head again, sending you plummeting back down.
In other good news, the stockmarket is also up, though, and with a few SPPs and rights issues floating around, I'm actually recovering some of my losses - so THIS is what it's like to make money on the stockmarket!
So returning to the home saga, I'm not going to openly whinge this time, it's not justified. While at home I'm going to enjoy the relative comfort and convenience of internet and a fast computer, blogs will be updated, photos uploaded, music downloaded and Spanish at my fingertips. Life can take a step back for a few weeks and i'll keep my rental money (dead money, remember?) and put it to good use. Who knows, by the time the old fogie returns from motherland, I may be able to step out in style again.

Lost for words

2009-06-10T07:12:00.002+10:00

The words still don't form sentences, the ideas are still not coherent.
I'm enjoying reading the book "Everything is Illuminated" by Jonathan Safran Foer. There are a lot of premium ideas and thoughts floating around in it in premium fashion. One in particular that I relate to is the concept of always talking with my friends. Always talk, talk, talk, talk, but no conversing. I'm lacking in conversation. About the only thing I can currently converse in fluently is climbing, and so few people converse climbing that I think my damage is slowly being brained due to the lack of stimulated thought and diversity in its use.
I might have to take (yet another) step back from physical life and get a grip on my mental state of mind. Blergh!
And now that I've gone on about taking a step back from physicality, I'm soon to plan a trip down to the Grampians and Arapiles. And maybe Melbourne for a day if I can convince work I deserve a day off (I do!).

Old man take a look at my life...

2009-05-31T21:06:00.002+10:00

It's the closest I've come to a successful shopping trip in a long, long time. I managed to pick up this tres-impressive old-style cycling hat on Friday night. It's made from some nice wool, and after wearing it on my head with a bit of rain around my forehead is itchy as buggery!
Sunday climbing was washed out so after heading back from the mountains I went out shopping with C. I eventually got around to actually buying my striped, very long wool and cashmere scarf. Wearing the two at once I look like quite the old-codger!
I'm getting impatient with people amongst other things, so who knows, maybe I am aging before my time! With luck the impatience won't fully kick in until after I buy a new wardrobe, it was so hard just commiting to those two purchases!!!

One hot lap

2009-05-25T12:30:00.003+10:00

My last event for Sunday night was a hot lap around Mt Panorama. Wowsers, what a smooth ride that was! After a slow cruise up the mountain taking corners slowly and being prudent my machoism got the better of me and my foot depressed further through the corners as the altitude plunged until a hot 130km/h off the mountain into conrod straight had me worried, only because the speed limit is 60 km/h. It's quite a steep descent but the surface so smooth the kms rose without noticing a bit!! (Go the Astra!)
The weekend event prior to that was, of course, the Ultimate Stampede III ulti-tourny which was hosted by CSU and held in Bathurst. I went along to Bathurst to play with a team that had three queensland chicks, while two others and all the guys came from Sydney. Four games played each day resulted in us coming 5th out of 10 which we were a little disappointed with.
On a high note Nationals did definitely help my game. Now that I've had a few weeks off from that high-intensity training and playing the moves, skillz and fitness comes quite naturally. The first day I had a blinder series of games, with lots of good Ds, great catches and quite a few points playing as handler, all in windy conditions. The second day was a little slower for us, being convincingly beaten in two games if you looked at the scores only, but there were still a lot of good points, and I had a couple of 3/4 length hucks to end-zone scores. Woo-woo!!
So while climbing is definitely #1 in my life the weekend's tournament has probably cemented ultimate as the #3 force in my physical life (Triathlons = #2) and I am now looking foward to Brisbane world's training/skills weekend.
Oh, and my performance on the weekend has pretty much cemented my place in a Mixed Nationals team to be played in Tasmania in October. BRING IT ON!

Say only what you mean

2009-05-14T08:06:00.004+10:00

So for a long time I've been posting on here because I felt I needed to, not because I felt I had something to say.
It's a phenomenon not just restricted to my rambling online personality. The last five weeks have been emotional hell, and to the three most influential emotional forces in my life I've told them what needs to be said, what I had to say, the things that were on my chest. Some methods weren't the most socially rewarding, but the message got across. But, as with my online personality, I didn't quite nail it on the head. In two cases I reverted to my old self and continued my monologues and said more than I needed to. Saying things and responding because I felt I had to and not because they needed to be said (or in fact that they reflected my inner thoughts).
So with this "need to say something, anything" now firmly out of my system I'm going to shut up. I'm going to take things as they come and enjoy life for the pleasures of "here and now". I'm going to look to the short- and mid- term emotional happiness that I really need to find. Hopefully in the interim I'll also be able to reacquaint myself with my friends and what they have to offer, however small or large it may be, and make sure that things that I say are meaningful and reflect what I'm feeling.
Who knows, soon enough I might actually find something that needs to be said to the online community.
(Speaking of which, with the success of my climbing rehab i'm going to start updating my climbing journal blog)

Fatigue

2009-04-21T16:41:00.005+10:00

Having done some 6 weeks of frisbee training, "fatigue" is about the only word that springs to mind.
Saturday morning was my last training session before nationals start in perth on thursday, in the form of two and a half hours of warm-up and game time. My team won the first 11-6 but then went down 6-11 in the second. It worries me, we seem to come out firing but screw up after the halfway point, lose a series of points and eventually lose the game. This has happend at canberra, regionals and now training. Very disconcerting.

So to add insult to injury, my fatigue situation is extending to more than just my tree-trunk legs. Fatigue seems to have taken over my body and mind. I woke on Monday morning with a sore throat - today was no better. I walk around fairly slowly, and it's a joy to get an escalator up to the second floor of woolies. With the conclusion of training my muscles and immune system seem to have gone on holiday. Mentally I'm not much better. While I'm reading a fair bit lying in bed at the end of the days the daytimes are spent disinterested in what's going on in the workplace. But this could just be a result of very little work to do and mind-numbingly boring processes on the little work that does come across my desk..

While reading up about climbing training (I've started reading the "Training for climbing" book again) I read something about CNS fatigue (Central Nervous System). They say that this can take 5-10 days for your body to recover from (about 5 days longer than just musclar fatigue) and reading the causes for it - repetitive training methods on the same muscles - I can see that I'm a perfect candidate for it. Regardless of this, I'm going to get my climbing training plan of attack up to speed on paper in the next week and will hope that the rest since sunday will have my muscles and my CNS back up and firing at peak performance in time for nationals.

Two more days!! WooooOOOOooo! GO X!!!

Easter Weekend

2009-04-17T12:28:00.003+10:00

The Easter long weekend was a pleasant one, and I've come out with post-easter-cheer.
Pat and Mel came and visited from sunny Melbourne, flying in on Thursday eve. We went to cafe "ism" across the road from my place on friday morning (who knows why it was open...) and eventually left around 9:30am for the mountains. The traffic was horrific, but we eventually arrived at around 12:30pm.
We did some dancing around on Shipley, followed by some gawking at the nearby crags. Saturday was spent climbing at bardens where, to my surprise, i got up a 23 and a 24. Pat was bullied off "Way of all flesh" by 7 people who were just sitting around the bottom watching him saying little, but enjoyed pulling on a whole bunch of 23-25s instead. I got attacked by a fuzzy-wuzzy caterpillar and ended up with a massive rash on my throat which worried me. A quick trip to katoomba for some anti-histamines solved the problem with no breathing difficulties experienced!
On sunday I shocked myself again by sending a new 23 second shot, but the glory was short lived - i only did 3 laps all up. Monday we bludged around at the glen in terrible weather, having watched the mist blow in through the door of the Victory cafe between 8:30 and 9:30am before braving it and stepping outside.
We camped all weekend, which was a nice change. The Melbourne people have it sorted - their crags are so far away that camping is integral to climbing trips. Sydney people do day trips or sleep at friends' houses, completely different feel. Although we ended up at the Gardiners Inn every night for beers (eek- yes i drank on the weekend!) it was always back down to the camp ground for sleepies.
I also threw in a sprinting training session at the local sporting oval for Nationals training - more on that soon!
A fantastic weekend was had by myself and 5 melbourne people, and they seemed to enjoy themselves too. yay!

Nationals Training

2009-04-06T16:05:00.002+10:00

I ditched the Bra cup on the weekend for a ride on Saturday and a training session with Kai on Sunday, feeling they would be better training than playing competitively on the beach in a tournament. Little did I realise that Kai actually meant TRAINING, not just a few runs and an hour of frisbee throwing.
On Saturday morning I piled my bike into my car at 6am and drove towards Penrith with the intention of jumping on the mountains train there and getting off at Blackheath. Around Parramatta I realise I'd mis-timed my departure and would have to try screaming to Blaxland and get on there. I made it with 30 seconds to go, stumbling down the stairs barefooted with bike over my shoulder as the train was approaching, only to realise that I couldn't buy a ticket with a $50 note.
I jumped on anyway and got out to a dark, windy and cloudy sky at Blackheath just after 8am. I shovelled down a Bacon and Egg roll (price increase from $5.50 to $6 - RIP OFF!) from the Altitude Cafe, and with no climbers in sight I pedalled out in the chilly breeze and on the wet road in the direction of Sydney.
Overall the ride was pleasant, with rolling hills, lovely scenery, and of course, often not having to pedal going down the bigger hills. But I pedalled in places, up hills, along the flats, and just to get out of the way of danger! In the upper half of the Blueys the shoulder is often: filled with dirt, glass or sticks and leaves, non-existent, non-asphalted, and intermittent. The lower half of the mountains is completely opposite, at least 1.5m of shoulder all the way from Springwood to the base of the mountains. After 1hr and 33 mins (A poor effort for 49kms) I rolled into Blaxland, beating the rain with a mere minutes or so to spare. I felt good about myself, and thought the legs were pretty good for the next day's "training" session. I chuckled.
So sunday came, and while wandering around King St Kai called to see about starting earlier, maybe 11:30am, not 1pm "We can do some legwork at my place then head down the fields for some throwing". "Legwork?" I thought. What happened to a leisurely run around the park for warmup?? What about doing the 400 prescribed throws only? What's this "Legwork" business???
Well, didn't my legs and I find out. He had figured that it would be a good idea to train our legs for jumping, and important part of frisbee. As soon as I arrived I was dumped with the 15kg (20kg?) weight vest and he produce three metal chairs of varying heights, 25, 50 and 75cm. I started to panic.
As the pain numbed my brain and I mixed up a lot of numbers and exercises, all I know is that during the next 1hr 45 minutes of torture, I endured something along the lines of:
- sets of 30, 40 and 60 jumping lunges to start with.
- I don't know what to call them, but we did lots of these: One foot on the chair, one foot on the ground. You jump up off the chair and switch legs, so the upper leg lands on the ground, the one on the ground now lands on the chair. I can't remember how many of these we did, something like sets of 30 for each height, as well as sets of 60 on each height on the second round.
- depth jumps (dropping off the chairs onto the ground, holding a squat for 2 seconds) on all three heights. This was broken down into: 3 sets of 30, both legs and on each leg alone 3 sets of 10, from each height.
- interspersed with them we did explosive depth jumps (dropping off the chair onto the ground, then jumping up as high as possible), again broken down into 3 sets of 10 using both legs (1 set from each height), 3 sets of 8 using each leg individually (1 set from each height). If we failed to land balanced after the explosive jump, it didn't count towards the number we'd done.
- for a "warm down" we then did more jumping lunges, 30, 60 and 100. We then threw the weight jacket off and immediately did a set of 60 and a set of 20.
I barely made it. The legs were jelly, the mouth parched, the brain dizzy. We then headed to the fields and threw a disc for 50 minutes. I made no effort to run to get discs that weren't directly at me, and I think I may have managed to jump about 5 times to catch some high ones. What a lesson in leg work. Never again will I underestimate either the amount of pain Kai can cause, nor the amount of pain my legs can endure before complete failure.
I "ouched" my way out of bed this morning. "Ouched" my way up the stairs, I "ouched" as I walked in to work, I "ouched" while I rode in to work. I popped another couple of Vitamin I tablets today at lunch, but I know it will do nothing to remove the "ouch" factor when I line up tonight to play I-beam at training tonight - the current NSW champions...

Darwin

2009-04-05T07:49:00.003+10:00

My journey to the top end last weekend was great. I managed to arrive at the airport to the sounds of "Jetstar flight xxx has now closed...." *gulp* "If you are still to board please proceed directly to gate 33 for check-in" *phew*
I scored three seats to myself and lay across all of them, getting an hour or so of sleep in the process.
As I departed the plane the first thing that hit me back in 1998 when I was in transit in Darwin hit me again now - HUMIDITY. Christine was there, waiting right outside the door, cool! We picked up my bag and headed off for a bite to eat beside the water. Shark fins in the water, bocconcini balls and various other bits later we eventually caught up with some old Sydney friends that now live up there, coincidentally also friends with C.
Saturday was spent waterside breakfasting, Parap marketing, Robin falling and Umbrawarra gorging (with cheese and crackers washed down with wine watersiding). Crocodile watch wasn't really up on my list of things to do, but every now and then when swimming around in the gorge the thought crossed my mind, i looked around, then kept swimming when the coast was clear. A great fire in the evening with masses of Massamun curry put us in a great sleeping mood.
Sunday we were up early, as usual, and I went for a wander down the gorge again (hoping that no crocs swam down during the night) until C woke up. We took some cool photos of our shadows and generally checked out the water again (yes, at 7:30am it's definitely warm enough to swim for a long time). When everyone was up we did 5 or 6 climbs down in the gorge, nice and easy, with food, frolicking and fun interspersed between them.
We wrapped things up at the gorge by 4:30pm and were back in Darwin by 7pm. My flight home was great - I risked no legroom by claiming the three seater that was free at the time of checking in and managed to keep all three seats by the time it came to boarding. As I had done on the flight up, my body took up all three seats and I managed to get almost 3 hours sleep before arriving in Sydney at 6:20am and going (pretty much) straight to work.
Darwin is a nice place and for the most part quite beautiful, but I guess the things that I didn't like most were the humidity, the very small-town feel, the masses of alcohol and the lack of water sporting (without risking death). With a group of friends and a set of local hangouts, anyone who moved there could actually feel that they were really enjoying life.

Enough exercise to make you sick...

2009-04-02T21:51:00.002+11:00

There really is only one word (alright - maybe two) to describe my life of the last two weeks. Exercise. (Darwin).
Apart from the Darwin debacle, I've managed to run at least once a day for every day except Tuesday just gone. Why? Nationals. I've heard it again, "Fakulti are the two fittest teams in the nationals competition".
Who would've guessed it? Well, anyone would've if they'd heard about our training. -My- training since last Monday (There may not be an "i" in team, but there's a "me") started with Monday night group training. Tuesday night sprint training (Followed by a game of Football with seven Irish guys that i could barely understand), a Wednesday lunchtime run, a Thursday night group training session. Friday was off to Darwin for the weekend, so I didn't run then. Monday just gone was group training, but in the cold, raining training session I think I didn't warm up correctly and when getting into the sprints I pulled or over-exerted my right Glute. This cause considerable pain, and after icing and nurofen plus I was able to stand up out of my car on Tuesday without wincing. As a result, Tuesday I did nothing.
Wednesday night saw me out group training at night again. It rained while we were walking from our cars to the "Hill of Death" as I like to call it, some 1.5km away. We were soaked to the bone. As luck would have it the rain stopped for our actual training session. This hill (you know, the "Hill of Death") is around 150m long, but rises around 60-70m in elevation. We ended up running or sprinting up that thing 8 times, with a total of over 8 minutes of sets of 30, 60 or 90 second squats dotted in between. A total of 100 lunges also helped our quads burn just that little bit more.
I pulled up fine this morning, however, and went for a 6km run with about 5 minutes of stair work in the middle with a team-mate around the domain. Oh, and did i mention that apart from Tuesday, I rode to and from work everyday?
I've not completely neglected climbing though, with a gym session last wednesday and tonight, with a leisurely climb on Sunday just outside of Darwin. Yay!

Through all of this (and the nothingness at work) I have contacted the Australian Institute of Fitness to see about their courses. I've decided that I am going to take that next step and find out about personal training courses. The next one I can do starts on May 16, a couple of weeks after my birthday.

But until that point I'm going to continue training for nationals by training 6 days a week. Tomorrow a lunchtime run at work, Saturday a rest, followed by 6 days on. Whew! given some of the sprint training that I've done, I know it can be enough exercise to make you sick!

Ouchies

2009-03-24T22:46:00.003+11:00

Well, I'm quite proud of myself. I have to say that I think I'm finally moving into the "more than just amateur" stage of my frisbee career.
I did my own, independent training tonight. 10X20m sprints, three minutes off, 5X40m sprints, three minutes off, then three minutes off between three 100m sprints. Well, can i just say that by the time I was doing that third 100m i was really, really starting to feel it. So i then started to stretch when 7 irish guys asked if i wanted to play football with them. So i obliged. Well! Didn't that just completely finish off what the sprinting had started. All in all it was a great night, but due to the short nature of the stretching, I'm actually quite sore now, so ice packs on the quads it is.
Tomorrow I am going to try my hand at climbing again. Indoors, of course. The collarbone has held up well over the last week or so and i'm hoping that by doing more controlled climbing tomorrow night it will remain quite healed. There is still a weird lump on the very end of my collar (next to the S-C joint) which I can only theorise is calcification from a hairline type fracture. Maybe, who knows. The point is that the joint is holding up well and the strengthening exercises work well. So here's hoping i keep climbing... well.

Oh the shame!!

2009-03-22T16:29:00.003+11:00

Having started writing the "New Year's resolution progress report" entry, I realised how woefully short of the mark my efforts have been so far this year. So I stopped writing that, binned it, and will write this instead.
I went outdoor climbing yesterday for the first time in a long time. We went to the freezer, and I was out to see how my collarbone handled life in the climbing lane. Well, I wasn't overly thrilled about the day, mainly because i only did the 4 warm up climbs, 18, 19, 19, 20, and I even rested on the 20! However the positive thing is that I did some more climbing on my collar without it actually getting screwed over again, so i'm relatively happy about that. Various moves that used to cause pain didn't, but I did everything well within my limit so I did no snatchy, powerful, throwy moves. They were all controlled (and resulted in massive pumps afterwards - given that I've climbed once in the last 5 weeks), just as they should be when climbing ;-)
And that's about it. The frisbee was quiet this week just gone, with Abby Dobson taking the place of my usual thursday night training, and noone around to throw a disc with today. I'm looking forward to trying to get my climb on again later in the week, but I really pine for... well, the pines, at araps.
I think in my short time in Melbourne I've been transformed irreversibly into a trad climber, scary thought for someone who only has access to sandstone at this point in time...

Regionals - check. Nationals... hmmm.

2009-03-15T21:45:00.002+11:00

Had regionals this weekend for ultimate in Newcastle. I only recently realised that we were organising it, but every suitable playing field in the greater Sydney region was booked out this weekend, and the closest we could get for our purposes was in Wallsend, Newcastle.
So 153km later we were in the fog standing at the fields. The weekend was pretty good. I, as part of Fakulti X, only played 4 games this weekend, three on the saturday and one today, sunday. We won two and lost one yesterday, and lost today. Fakulti Y had three wins and a loss yesterday and one loss today. As a result of our standings, Fak X and Fak Y were supposed to play off for 3rd/4th place, but due to the high number of people that cared more for going home than those caring to play the game, we pulled the pin on the playoff and I bailed with Kai at 3pm.
With Kai's help and pointers, I've discovered a wonderful new vitamin for helping ease the soreness between game days in tournaments - Vitamin I - Vitamin Ibuprofen. I woke up feeling wondefully limber, soreness wasn't part of my vocabulary this morning ("sleeping on the floor for $35 is shit!" was part of my vocab, though).
So, there's still more training to be done, and ice to be applied before nationals in perth (I have booked my tickets!). And of course, that training starts tomorrow night, with some more lovely sprint training and throwing.
In other news, i'm still not missing climbing and wondering more and more whether i'll actually get back into it, and Abby Dobson is playing this thursday at the basement. Yay for Abby!! (oh right, and i'm going to see Abby Dobson this week).

Arse

2009-03-09T23:23:00.002+11:00

I must admit I feel like an arse tonight.
So I don't do that again, i'm just going to keep my trap shut and focus on getting the job done.
And will continue to look forward to my darwin trip.
Let the silence begin...

A new tack...

2009-03-08T21:44:00.007+11:00

I've decided (apart from not starting my post with "So...") that, to get me back into the photo phase, i'm going to try and take a photo that represents my week.
Last week's photo will be in this post. Coffee. Yes. Coffee. On saturday i (finally) went to Campo's coffee, given that it is about 6 minutes walk from my place, I decided why the hell not. Well, it was good. I liked it. Is it better than bar bellacino? Who knows. The blends are all different and, just like wine, I've never really had someone taste the same drink as me and say "this is strong", "this is burnt", "this is great", so I can't really comment. I enjoyed it. And I still enjoy bar bellacino. But still, the point is that I drank so much coffee last week. Brain dead, as I mentioned. Hopefully I won't drink as much this week.... such a waste of money!
Two minutes before I posted the last post I received an email from one of the Fakulti chiefs. Maybe I don't suck as much as I think, he asked if I'd play at nationals with them. Of course, they're under the pump because they've had 6 players pull out due to injury, but still, I suppose another 20 people got cut when I did. I declined for now, since I don't actually have any time off owing to me, but I went to fitness training on Thursday and will be at training both days this week. If they ask me to go to regionals this coming weekend in newcastle I'll try harder to get to perth, but I'm still dubious.
and that's that. Sore tendons today from trying too hard to get a flat, high backhanded throw away at a three person training today result in further delays to my return to climbing, but I'm not really missing it...
*sigh* how life changes so much with so little effort..

STILL working for the man..

2009-03-04T17:32:00.002+11:00

Much as I'd like to think things have changed, they haven't. Well, they kinda have. For starters, I'm not to do overtime unless it's absolutely critical, ie, when I'm going to miss a deadline for sure. If I'm not 100% certain that I will miss a deadline doing normal hours, I'm banned from it. But I was told that on Monday morning after doing more overtime last week, resulting in a 48 or so hour week last week. I've been pretty brain and body dead of late.
Frisbee was had on the weekend, an invitational tournament. I was asked to fill in for some injured people on a team that I had been cut from, fakulti, and for some unknown reason I accepted. I hadn't actually run or played frisbee since the "trial training" sessions from which i got cut several weeks prior. So I could barely run on saturday, being unfit, and could hardly participate properly, for I didn't know their plays. My reputation was damaged, probably to the point of being irreconcilable, however on Sunday I made up for it a bit with a couple of winning passes and a couple of hot Ds.. (if i can say so myself). I quip that on sunday morning I couldn 't run, and on monday morning I couldn't walk. It was SO true, it's only today I can walk without a limp or stiffness.
It's been about three and a half weeks since I've last been climbing (I feel like i'm at confession or something). Maybe I should be at confession because i'm not really missing it. Lots of work and eating out during the weeknights and frisbee on the weekend have helped me forget about it. I'm not sure what i'm going to do, wait longer or try get back into it as soon as i feel physically ready.
So with more work on the cards later this week (because i'm about 95% sure i'm going to miss next Wednesday's deadline at the moment) I'm feeling even more brain dead. While I'm not climbing any evenings and just vegging or eating out, I don't really know how to do the real nothing required to get peice-of-mind back. So, I'll just try do more nothing and spend more time in my home's "general living space".
Hopefully that will work for a fresh, clear mind next time I'm on here with coherent sentences.

Workin' for the man

2009-02-23T19:05:00.003+11:00

Well, having been "promoted" to my new role midway through last week, I ended up doing a 55-or-so hour week. The volumes of this job were massive, and being in a new section of the business I didn't know anything about their processes and little about their system. But memory and a lot of people helped and I missed about 5 clients come this afternoon with the deadline.
So I thought that I'd be right to just cruise on into the rest of the week with a nice 7.6 hour day as is prescribed in my terms, only to discover that the clean up of the paperwork and electronic trail will more than likely take in excess of that 55 hours! Adding to my woes is the additional deadlines coming up, including one deadline tomorrow even though I don't have access to the procedures!
So I'm sure another long week is on the cards, but as mentioned on facebook, my bank balance will love it. As well as that, if i'm forced to spend 12 hours in the office there's a much higher chance that I actually won't go climbing those days. I woke up this morning with a sore screwy collar, and I put it down to sleeping weirdly on it. So I've got to focus on sleeping on my back (ho, ho, ho! :-P ), snoring away, helping my collarbone. My tendon and pulley will probably heal by themselves, i'm focusing on stretching and massaging.
Here's hoping these measures will be sufficient to start climbing again the weekend after next....

The Rach 3

2009-02-21T09:48:00.003+11:00

My brother finally bought the household a performance of Rachmaninov's third piano concerto in D minor. We've had his other three for quite a while but not this, probably his most famous one? (depicted in the movie "Shine" with geoffrey rush).
So basically I have listened to it over and over, and over and over, and over and over again, trying to get an impression of the melody or something to catch my attention but it just hasn't happened. If I hear it, I would say that I would recognise it, but I just cannot formulate any more than a bar of the piece at a time in my head. It doesn't seem to me to have any flow or continuation.
Listening to it it's apparent that the piece is bloody hard alright (heard some claims that it's the hardest piano piece ever written), but that's just it, it's only hard - not overly melodic or structured as far as this set of ears can hear. There are some times where it's fast, very fast, possibly notes made of hemidemisemiquavers, who knows, but not only that, it's also quite expansive. Very low on the keyboard to very high, and throughout it a lot of alternating chords one or two octaves apart played in quick succession.
His second concerto is my favourite piece by far, there seems to be structure throughout it and the more i compare the two pieces the more I realise that the second (and possibly his first - though i haven't listened to that anywhere near as much as the second) seems to have a lot more of the orchestra leading the way, with the piano only taking front stage for a minority of the time (not that it's not powerful!). In his first though, it's almost (again) just for show. The piano is much more powerful in the piece overall and makes it known that it leads with the complexity of the music.

So anyway, after all of this neither my brother nor I are overly excited by this new piece, for the most part we're going to stick to his second. As always, "having said that" i'm hella interested in going to see someone play this sucker.
Whew, lightning fingers!!

Turn handle, open door

2009-02-11T21:01:00.002+11:00

You're in a hurry, you're walking at a brisk pace. You get to the door with your arm outstretched. Your hand turns the handle and your arm starts to concertina as your body continues the follow-through motion. By the time your body has reached the door the hand hasn't completely turned the handle. *BAM* you slam your body into the door as it doesn't open and everyone looks at you.
God damn, it was one of THOSE days.

A lifely update

2009-02-04T23:08:00.000+11:00

For all three of you that care, an update midway through my second week of being back at work.
Things are looking up. The basics are that my work is getting more interesting. With my company buying out another I've been asked to assist with the transition of the new team with one of my old teams, good to see that the old team leader still has faith in my abilities... (scary stuff!)
Frisbee, well, there will be no Perth trip for this little black duck. Useless, obviously. The training was hard but i didn't play hard enough, it seems. I didn't make the Fakulti team so i'm unsure what to do. It's possible that I train with a lesser team and just go to regionals (NSW competitions in the lead up to nationals), or that I just give up ultimate until the league season and concentrate on climbing. While this sounds great initially, my fingers are sore and so are my elbows, so concentrating solely on climbing may in fact cause more problems. We'll see.
And finally, i'm moving out! I managed to find a place to stay for the next two months. It's in newtown so close to the climbing gym, running distance to work and home to some of Australia's best Thai restaurants. Mmmmmm! I'm subletting the room from a friend, which means a) i'll finally get to sleep on a real bed again, b) won't have to pay a bond, c)will have to find somewhere else in 2 months time.... hmmm. Well, it's not perfect, but it sure as hell beats living in the sticks with a psycho family!!
Oh right, and I started another blog for climbing, it's http://aclimbingjournal.blogspot.com/ - this is where i'll post all my climbing adventures and maybe some photos (no - I haven't posted anything there yet!)
Yay! Life is good!

End of the longest week..

2009-01-30T19:10:00.003+11:00

So, the first week back at work felt quite long, even though it was only four days.
I was worried all week about whether I'd be employed next week. To my relief I didn't get anyone saying "Don't come back next week" today, the MD did say hi and welcome back, and the HR chick was her usual bubbly self, saying hi and even giving me a welcome back kiss. I have spoken fairly regularly with a lot of the people I used to regularly talk with and especially my old team. However there are still a few people that are steering away from me or interacting as little as possible.
The other worrying thing is my team leader. For starters, she's barely strung an entire sentence together to me all week. When I was being interviewed for a general position last week I asked what roles were on offer. She refused to specify, giving a wishy-washy answer about "new roles" and "company restructuring". I have since found out that they were interviewing someone for a senior role that same day that I could have filled with my experience. I feel that I'm being overlooked or kept out of the loop on purpose. However, I have a job, and now that I'm back (and turning up next week) I have the opportunity to probe more, better roles, both inside the org and out in the rest of the world.
So the week went slowly overall, mainly due to tiredness. After a 3 hour sleep on the first morning of the week (having spent till 1am playing cards on monday night!) I went to work and had a game of frisbee on Tuesday night. Wednesday night was filled with a talk by Sir Chris Bonnington followed by dinner, meaning another late night. Thursday night was spent on the last "trial training" night of Fakulti for nationals followed by gelato that took me to midnight. As for the outcome of my fakulti training, I will find out on Wednesday next week whether I'm successful on making one of the two teams Fakulti intend sending to nationals. So tonight here I am. Exhausted with two more full days of exercise coming up. 9pm is my bedtime tonight, and hopefully progress will be made next week towards cementing a better role!

Groundhog day

2009-01-27T21:21:00.003+11:00

I don't even know how to write this blog. I'm back. Back in Sydney, back to frisbee, back to the blue mountains, BACK TO WORK.
I returned to my old workplace today as a temp. I couldn't help but feel insecure with the lack of actual work I did. Not because I'm (still) a slacker, but there is almost nothing to do. Very little trading, a small loan book, not too much action in general around the stockmarket.
But that was the feeling towards the end of my day. To begin with it felt like I'd never left work. Workmates said hi, the closer ones stopped to chat with me. I walked to the kitchen and did my usual stop to chat to a particular AM, in the kitchen I caught up with the chick who works just outside. The instant hot water tap, dodgy as ever, the tea bags were still where they always were, the sugar next to it with granules of coffee from the tin next to that, and the biscuit tin, ah the biscuit tin, half empty as always! (Yes, I finished them off). Walking out to the bathrooms the same door slamming as ever, the carpet smell familiar and the sound of the squeaky lino floor ringing familiar bells. Yes, I was filled with weird sensations of familiarity all day. But all the management has changed, it's disconcerting. The HR chick doesn't have HR in her title anymore (should I have even bothered her to get me my job back???), names are unfamiliar, my superiors' superiors look, talk and are weird. It all added up to a very weird, unsettling day. Even though they seem genuine and have indicated I'll work until they re-shuffle and find me a newer, better, permanent position, I can't shake the uneasy feeling.
But, after that, I caught the train home. As my hours have shifted to 7am start I was off home early. I received a phone call from an old frisbee friend asking if I wanted to play div 4 with his team. Sure, why not. I packed, grabbed some food and drove. The streets, highways and freeways were all very familiar. I got there just in the nick of time. 2 minutes of warm-up, an introduction to the team (I've never played div 4...) and it was onto the field. I stayed on every point. I'm quite unfit and figured that I should put in an effort before the last "Trial training session" for Fakulti this Thursday. And so the game went, we were losing but came back to win. The fields so familiar, the Div 1 teammates so familiarly sitting by the field at the end of our game, waiting to run on. Yes, Sydney life is almost exactly the same already. As a result the old habits don't die easily. I had a quick chat, said goodbye to everyone, picked up my gear, eagerly looked at my phone for a missed call or an sms. Nothing. Then it hit me. Sydney is not all the same.

In with the new, out with the old

2009-01-21T11:46:00.003+11:00

Thanks to a trusty friend I managed to source some flickr code to display my latest flickr photos on this blog.
Admittedly I use my flickr as a random photo collection, both new and old, good and bad, but hey, I'm no professional photographer (another thing to add to my list of wannabes). So yes, rather than saying (as this post was originally going to...) that I've updated my flickr, I'm now going to use it to say that I've ditched my climbing list (it was too cumbersome, I have too many new ticks to be bothered with, and I have a "thecrag.com" account for myself anywaY) and have inserted the flickr list.
So yes, half way through my half-interesting photos of my NT trip. There are a lot more to come up, so keep your eye on that flickr list there ->

Money, it's a hit

2009-01-20T01:01:00.002+11:00

So, it's done. I'm officially to be employed starting the Tuesday after Australia Day long weekend. It's a shit job, with shit pay, but hey, it'll pay the bills.
In the interim, it seems i've reverted to the old me. I don't sleep. As an example, here I am, it's 1:15am, and even though i'm tired, I won't be sleeping anytime soon.
Oh well, a job, cash flow, not a moment too soon, and something to look forward to.

Heineken

2009-01-16T23:52:00.004+11:00

I found this to be quite funny. Hopefully it doesn't offend too many people... (although in reality, how could it, it's a beer ad!)

Life normality and abnormal frisbee goings on

2009-01-16T22:54:00.005+11:00

I've almost forgotten that I ever left Sydney by this stage.
The last three days and nights were filled with normal run-of-the-mill activities. These included: catching up with "Sexy Pete" at the pub. Having lunch with Mick in Randwick (Thai, of course). Tinkering with, but not fixing any, stuff in the garage. Cleaning the car. Driving around the city and suburbs without needing to use my street directory! Going to the Blue Mountains for a day trip of climbing!! and finally, hanging with Connie, Abel and the crew for Friday night after-work drinks and dinner. It was a great week.

In other (fairly) major news, I ran into an old friend from frisbee who still seems to think I have potential. He's already offered to train me and my sprinting, asked if I want to go weight training with him, do more frisbee training, is trying to get me on his frisbee team for the remaining 3 games in the season and even offered his attic room for boarding in until I get settled and sort my finances out. He's certainly an amazingly helpful and caring guy. I, of course, met him at frisbee training. I've decided to be serious about frisbee this year (diversifying from just climbing!) and so I'm training with Fakulti, and I intend taking my training seriously. I went for a 2.5 hour training session with them last night (weeknight training as opposed to only weekend training like in melbourne!), running training, throwing, set plays and drills. I wasn't sore this morning, but it was only the first session and thus was an easy session. The friend mentioned earlier is the fitness trainer for fakulti, and was whispering in my ear that fakulti hope to go to world clubs in Prague in 2010 and thinks I should be able to easily make the team next year with some training. I like his positive attitude. I'm going to train hard.

Ye olde Sydney Towne

2009-01-14T23:20:00.005+11:00

And I'm back. Back "home". It's been a long, trying 8 months, and I guess finally with the loss of my job my will and strength faltered long enough to move back to Sydney.
As I had bought a few more things since I moved down to melbs, the pack was a little tighter this time around, and it took me until I turned on to busy Lygon St to realise that I couldn't actually see who or what was to the left of my vehicle due to the piles of crap blocking my passenger mirror view. I stayed in the same lane until I stopped at a set of lights and was able to rearrange the bags to be able to see my mirror. This left the piles a teetering wall, and everytime I took a sharp left hand bend I had to brace the wall so it didn't fall down on me.
Even with around 80km of road-work speeds (the new Sydney-Melbourne "Freeway" is coming along quite nicely...) I still managed to make it home in 8hours and thirty-something minutes. Arriving home you could see how tired I was, though, with only two drive-throughs and one petrol stop on the trip. This led to the inevitable fight between my mother and I and though she waited all day to see me, it took her around 11 minutes to storm off to bed and not even say goodnight to me.
So now I'm home. I'm sleeping on a double therma-rest "mattress" in my old room, having had it converted to a study/library/office in the time I was away. Couple this with a grand total of $396 dollars in the bank ($150 of that from my mother) and I'm off to a great start! There are two positivities about me being here, regardless of this situation, and the first is that having just checked out seek.com.au, I've noticed 3 jobs that I can apply for. Here's hoping, I'm not sure how long I can stand living on therma-rests...
As for the Melbourne situation, my mind seems to have sub-consciously deleted most of my memories of my time there. Defense mechanism? Either way, I have to force myself to think of and remember memories relating to my work, my lunches, my climbing at gyms. It's kinda scary how little I remember.
Sitting back tonight, there are certainly two things I do remember, my flatmate and Pat. I miss them both quite a lot. Pat will be around for climbing in the not too distant future, but as for my flatmate, I'm not sure I'll see her anytime soon (not out of my funds for sure!!), however I'm hoping she's still keen to catch up too and that it will happen, at least for my birthday! Regardless of this, they were the two forces that kept me in Melbourne for as long as I did and I certainly hope my dependency on them didn't over-shadow any chance of a true friendship and them discovering the real, fun loving me (which I've almost returned to after only one full day in Sydney!).
Either way, it's due to be around 40 degrees tomorrow and the wonderful beaches of Sydney will be calling me strongly, so I'm going to work on becoming the old, fun me and next time I see them I'll prove my worth to them!!!

Resolutions, 2009!

2009-01-11T22:57:00.005+11:00

- Give up drinking. Seriously, I often don't like the way I act when I'm drunk, and these days it seems to take less and less drinks to get me to that state (Why do you think I was given the name McBelligerent??). I think it's time alcohol and I parted (After my bottle of 1999 Moet et Chandon, of course)

- Learn to maximise the benefit/gain from my chosen activities. Often, during 2008, I would start doing something on a day, and after a short while I would give up due to complications, the feeling of it being "too hard", or simply out of laziness. Well, this year I'm going to follow through with the activities until they are done to a satisfactory level (the foremost example that springs to mind is going home from a crag after only 2 or 3 routes - but often extended to things like cleaning, packing, learning and other forms of exercise).

- Find a nice girl, settle down and live happily ever after. .... HA! (although I've found a nice girl, nothing is happening at the moment - and probably never will!) (Yes, this is a mock resolution. As other people are, I think I'll be happy with my own company this year)

- Reduce my debt to $0. Seriously. All credit cards, personal loans and "investment" loans (what shit investments they turned out to be!) I've gotta start saving for this 2010 trip...

- Develop a business plan or two with the help of the appropriate people. I have listed 5 possible businesses I'd be interested in, now I have to (learn to) write the business plan and see which one(s) I can implement

- Develop climbing, triathlon and frisbee training schedules and set goals. The arbitrary "climb xx grade" won't work this year. I'm merely going to focus on training to the most of my ability, rest when injured or tired, and hopefully my grades will naturally increase to a much higher level. For frisbee I think I'm going to focus on getting to nationals in Perth with a Sydney team. Like climbing, hopefully a training regime will help me achieve high standards. And as for Triathlons, at least this is a time, and it is a somewhat arbitrary time. Given my last Sydney half-Triathlon time of some 1 hour, 18 minutes, before the end of this year I'd like to get my time down below the 1 hour, 5 minute mark. Any time below 1 hour flat and I'd be super stoked.

These, of course, are the most "important", measurable resolutions of the year. It is certainly not comprehensive. I guess my main objectives are to live life to the fullest, try and make a better go of things and focus more intently on the things that i do attempt. I guess I've gotta do things that make me happy, 'cause let's face it, I wasn't a very happy chappy in 2008.

Tasmania - a mini-trip-report

2009-01-05T17:29:00.004+11:00

Ok, this is getting beyond a joke, surely i'm not THAT hard to travel with?? This time last year i was having a great time anytime i went travelling, but the last two times things have not gone as smoothly as I'd like.
Not saying that things are going -bad- per se, but they're not great.
The most problems seem to extend from the idea of food. And A and I aren't seeing each other eye-to-eye on the food front. The other problem extends from her not seeming to me to be psyched, or happy, or enjoying herself. She could, and probably is, but I guess I'm very emphatic of my emotions, and she isn't so. This makes me feel a bit insecure about how the trip is going. But we're climbing together well still and she gets excited and emphatic when we/she do/does a great route or a hard one. Things will hopefully smooth out, she's still interested in an Easter Moonarie trip and Blueys trips to visit me, so this is hopefully a positive sign.
No matter, as a great climbing pair, i think we're doing quite well. I've been climbing for 11 days now, and the problem with this is mostly to do with the walk-ins. Blue-Mountains, Blackheath, Shipley. 3 minute walkin. Blue-Mountains, Bell's Line of Road, Bowen's creek, longest walk in to a crag in the blueys proper, 40 minutes. This is compared to: Tasmania, Rysavy ridge, 50 minute walk in, 500m elevation. Tasmania, Ben Lomond, 40 minute walk in, boulder hopping, scrambling. Tasmania, Ben Lomond, descent: 35 minutes, boulder hopping, then 30 minutes of boulder hopping back to the car. Tasmania, The Hazards, depending on where you go, 45+ minutes, elevation, up to 300m.
Anyway, you get the idea. I'm basically exhausted. At a small look my trip so far has been:
Christmas day, Mt Roland and then Ben Lomond.
Boxing day, Ben Lomond
27th, Ben Lomond,
28th, Bar Rock, Fingal
29th, South Sister, St Mary's
30th, Freycinet
31st, Freycinet, NYE in Hobart
1st, Organ pipes, Mt Wellington (snowed on 3 times on a climb)
2nd, Organ pipes, Mt Wellington (snowed on 4 times on two climbs)
3rd, Moai, Tasman Peninsula
4th, Paradiso, Tasman Peninsula.
And so I'm resting now. Though once this rest day is done, I'll be ready to crank hard again until i'm back in Melbourne on the 11th. I managed to pick up three Patrick White first edition books today from a local Hobartian book store. I was stoked! This is in addition to the three meals and three coffees I've already had.
But anyway, time to get back to the trip before I leave this lovely state for quite a while. So until next time, hope the new year was good for you and continues to be so.

Uluru, Kata Tjuta and King's Canyon

2008-12-23T22:41:00.010+11:00

So having done our road tripping up to Uluru, we spent the first evening and the second day at the Olgas. My god. Fantastic. They're sacred for aboriginal men only, women are not allowed to go there. Nor are us white folk for the majority of the structure. There are only two walks around the Olgas, "the valley of the winds" and the gorge walk. No matter, the walks were beautiful and so lush and green were the valleys on the other side of the main view. There is indeed something very sexual about the Olgas. No wonder it was men only, with lots of curves, slender darker and wetter cracks in the rock, bulges here and there. Brett Whiteley got it fairly right i think with his relatively sexual painting of the Olgas. The gorge walk was fairly quick and easy, only an hour all up, with some sketching for E and some photo taking of rock for me. The valley of the winds walk was a little longer the next day, and we stretched it out further with some resting, sun baking and general relaxation, taking us around 6 hours to do the circuit.
Our second evening and third day were spent around Uluru itself. An amazing piece of rock indeed, I was very interested in the free 8am walkie talkie given by a local ranger. He told us the simple story of the Mala tribe of the region, a dreamtime story. There was information about the local region and how the aboriginals lived. It was quite interesting. Unfortunately we were not able to take photos of almost half of UIuru due to the sacred nature of the area, and almost one third of the track was in excess of 500m from the rock itself, making it hard to see the magic of the place. No matter, it's their traditions that we're respecting. We still managed to take several photos of various formations and ancient art that we were able to access on the open walk. The walk around the rock took quite some time, probably also around the 6 hour mark, but I had a snooze in an art-filled cave.
We headed out from there for another 300km drive to King's Canyon. The first day I was quite disappointed by the "canyon" and almost tried to convince E that we should go elsewhere. It was the first "hot" day, forecast to be around the 35 degree mark. As a result of that we were unable to do the longer walk around the top of the canyon, but instead stuck to the short track to the lookout which crossed King's Creek. This was a bit of fortune as we discovered lots of water holes in the creek that were perfect for lying next to or in. Thus the hot day was spent by the creek reading. We later spoke with some Germans who had done the upper walk and said it was magic, so I convinced myself to hang around another day and it would be worth it. And was it ever!
The next day we woke early and started the outer loop walk. It was amazing. Such a beautiful walk with amazing views, amazing rock formations and beautiful water holes. The place truly was magic and my love of the canyon region was cemented and it was only then that i realised that this place got the tag of a "must see" site because you really do have to see it!
After two days in that region we decided we'd brave the 1,500 or so kilometers back to Port Augusta to see if we were now able to head up to the flinders ranges...

Where the bloody hell are you?

2008-12-15T16:30:00.005+11:00

So things on my trip are going relatively "swimmingly". Having spent 8 hours driving through rain from Horsham to Port Augusta we got respite from the water once we arrived there for lunch. We were told in the "Outback" Information centre that most roads in outback SA were closed due to almost a year's worth of rain falling in the last month. However, we've been lucky that the water has stopped falling from the sky since we left Port Augusta, however the temperatures have been in the low to mid 20s as a result.
The 1,000km drive to Ayer's Rock went quickly, mainly as a result of sleeping. Since arriving at the Ayer's Rock Resort campground we managed to score some free park passes, giving us two and a half days worth of park access for free. We have seen both sunrise and sunset at both the Olgas and Ayer's Rock. We spent one and a bit days around the Olgas, one of the most magical places i've been to, especially with all the green grass and shrubs around, and today was spent wandering around the big rock itself.
Something you learn quickly about travelling is whether or not you would get on as a couple. Thankfully, I'd say I wouldn't with my travel partner. Being a taste-budless camper, my food needs are much more simplistic than hers, and as a result there's a lot of toing and froing of what to eat. Give me simple I say. Many times so far i've just essentially said "Sure, whatever" to keep the peace. So with that in mind, we're off to King's Canyon this afternoon for two days, followed by the leisurely drive back to the Flinders ranges before returning to Adelaide on Sunday.
Whew, it's nice, but this sure is hard work!

Away in a manger

2008-12-11T07:25:00.004+11:00

So I'm away again. Off into my own big backyard, the Australian outback. As my life slowly draws to an end in Melbourne, I'm not hanging around anymore. I'm giving up and focusing on what i want and need to do personally. Uluru, Kata Tjuta and Kings Canyon are all on the cards. I'll hopefully be back by the 23rd of December for my departure for Tasmania and more climbing.
The next 8-10 days will be a whirlwind of forearm, finger and collar relaxation, while mentally expanding my memories and experiences. The camera memory card will shortly be cleared, leaving me with 8GB of pure visual bliss (or at least, that's what i keep telling myself). I'll take the scenic route home from Adelaide, via the coast and the great ocean road.
Oh right, and of course this trip entails around 6,000km of driving. Ouch!

Bouldering sucks

2008-12-10T22:00:00.004+11:00

My otherwise fantastic 6 days at arapiles was cut short on the fantastic side around 6:45pm yesterday. I may have blown my, you guessed it, A2 pulley on my left (weak) arm. Of course, aside from the post title, i'm sure you were smart enough to guess that it was as a result of bouldering.
Having spent most of the day in a tent as a result of frequent and relatively heavy showers, I eventually wandered out to finish up with some "nice" bouldering of the V2-V4 range. With the weird grading that the arapiles guide gives it seemed to take me longer to work out the first two moves of a V3 on the gonzo boulder than it did to send a V6 at andersons. Go figure.
Nevertheless it didn't stop me or my two buddies to try an overhanging traverse of the backside of the gonzo boulder, also at V3. I had a go and managed to do quite a long sequence before coming off some 3 or 4 moves shy of the topout within three shots. As it was overhanging and quite a powerful traverse I decided I'd have one last go on the 4th attempt. I moved swiftly and had a quick shakeout mid-sequence, just before the power kicked in. I did a long span to a right hand sloper, got a toe-hook and matched with my left hand. My right hand then popped to a positive sideways edge and my left hand dropped to offset it on another positive hold. I re-arranged my feet, popped right hand to a sideways, but upside-down, crimp. Next was the do-or-die move. I needed to throw my left hand to catch a good two-pad edge, but with my body sideways it would have to arrest almost my entire bodyweight. I threw, I felt my fingers hit the hold, then i felt myself crashing into the pad. Then the pain came in. I'm unsure if i "stubbed" my finger and hyper-extended the joint the wrong way or whether the pulley gave way. Either way it hurt like buggery and an icy-cold beer didn't relieve the pain. Nor did the second beer. Two applications of voltaren gel during the night did nothing either.
Right now i'm just about to pop two nurofen. God I hope i just stubbed it. I've got two weeks of Dolerite cracks coming up in Tassie in two weeks' time.
CRAP. I hate bouldering

Goodbye to all that

2008-12-04T22:03:00.002+11:00

And so I'm off again. Off to escape reality for another 5-6 days. I'm back out to Arapiles until Wednesday, ultimate frisbee final night.
Things I will not be dealing with are:
Finding a job - a good friend of mine was made redundant today in Sydney. Not looking good, he'd been at the company for over a year, and it's supposed to be a big company.
Thinking about which city i want to live in - Sydney vs Melbourne, and of course, many thoughts influence this one.
Thinking about a female partner - I had the perfect opportunity to ask her tonight, but I didn't. It's clear that I'd only ever ask over sms or email - and that's just too lame to allow myself to do that!!
Career prospects - It's almost crystal clear that finance at this point in time is not really sustainable, do I study a new field?

Anyway, so yes. There are other annoying things to think about, like missing out on promotional music. Annoying people. My laptop that makes a funny noise. My Ipod that I forgot to charge.
And so, I'm not going to think about these things with any luck. With luck, i'm going to climb hard. Hard, hard trad (for me). With luck I'll climb with that Anita chick (she's so buff, she's got more muscles than me - she HAS to be a hard climber!!) and i'll send, SEND, SEEENNNDDD!!!!!
My target this time is to onsight at least five 21s, and one 22. Perhaps Reaper. Six days to do it in...
Stay tuned...

kate miller-heidke Concert

2008-12-03T22:40:00.003+11:00

So after all the fussing and bitching, I eventually made it out to Kate Miller-Heidke's concert thingo down at the Prince Bandroom in St Kilda with terrible company (which i ditched as soon as i walked in).
As it was a promotional tour for her new album, Curioser, she did play most of her new album. I was quite disappointed that she didn't play the first song on the album, "the one thing i know", but hey, the performance doesn't revolve around me.
Without going in to too much detail, she did a good job of selling her album. As with all good artists, her stage presence was great. Her voice was as good as it sounds on the cd, I guess the one good thing about having a trained voice is that you know how to hit a note properly, not just make it up like the rest of the pop world. She threw in some impromptu "jams" (with her beautiful voice of course) and threw in the odd anecdote to make us all laugh.
She wore an off the shoulder black sequined dress that was quite figure-hugging, something that I found great being of the heterosexual male variety. This almost entrancement was also assisted by her somewhat sensual movements. She grooved along quite nicely to the songs, even when they jammed out a cover of rage against the machine and johnny farnham's "you're the voice" (I didn't know whether to laugh or cry).
All in all a great time was had, with main commendations going to her for: singing the correct notes and doing a great job of not sounding exactly like the cd, throwing in enough extra bits to make us feel part of the show and having great stage presence. I'd go see her again.

Away in a ... timewarp

2008-12-03T22:18:00.002+11:00

So it would appear that I've not been around much. And I haven't. I've been spending a lot of time at Arapiles and climbing in general. I'm getting strong. Yay.
For quite a long time I've been putting off asking someone a question. It was because of uncertainty for quite a long period of time. Then I thought I was sure. Now that I'm considering taking off from Melbourne, I'm putting it off because it almost seems wrong to ask when I am theoretically set on going back to Sydney. But I'm not. Not just yet, anyway. So it's about time i manned up and asked.
And in the interim, i'm climbing. Arapiles and the Grampians. I've essentially put off job hunting until the new year. I'll start looking in Sydney then. And until that point in time, I intend just enjoying a holiday, and climbing. Grampians, Arapiles and Tasmania are all booked until the 9th of January at this point. After that it will be back to making up for a woeful 2008, by having a fantastic 2009. And going forward for a year, instead of back two.
So, it's back to that question. And that question may very well determine which city I make my great year in. Sydney or Melbourne.

Homelessness

2008-11-27T09:41:00.002+11:00

It's a strange feeling. Almost like being homeless, devoid of any place where I truly feel I fit in.
As I stand in the living room of my home for 7 years, staring out into the yard, everything seems normal and "right". the plants in my view have hardly changed, the balcony is still the same, the sound of the planes buzzing overhead is normal. When I stand here and think about Melbourne, my life, what happened, my experiences and my friends, it all seems so distant, I always think of the past. Another world, and it feels weird thinking I'll be back there tomorrow, and the Grampians on the weekend.
But then, when i'm sitting in my room in Melbourne, with my computer and my flatmate just across the hall, everything there seems normal too. It's familiar to me. The streets I ride down, the pubs I visit, the cross-city trips to the climbing gym, they're all normal then, too. But when I think of Sydney while in Melbourne, while they're still distant, I think of close friendships, many more experiences, good beaches, the perception of good weather and of course, daytrips to go climbing.
The end result of this thinking is that I am only fond of Melbourne when I'm in Melbourne. And maybe that's a strong feeling that I should heed. I'd miss no more than a dozen things or people, and two of them are the Grampians and Arapiles. Perhaps this is the strongest indicator that I should return to Sydney, and now my greatest chance to do what I really want to do.

I wanna be a climber!

2008-11-19T07:48:00.003+11:00

So after some 6 weeks after the accident, my collarbone still hurts. Now, this may have something to do with continuing to ride my pushbike almost everyday, it may be the fact that I climbed 5 days on it in China anyway, or that since returning to Australia i've climbed every weekend and on average two days during the week. Whichever is the cause of it, I've decided that my body is going to heal within the next three days (despite the fact that it hurts now almost as much as it did when i first returned to Australia).
I'm on the "i'm a fat lazy slob" diet. 7 episodes of underbelly yesterday. Today i've lined up the last episode along with Anchorman, Transformers and maybe Dark Knight. Tomorrow is better, with nothing planned, other than a slide show and food in the evening.
So, in and amongst all these actions, i'm going to "heal" myself. I'll be icing my shoulder/collar three times a day. I"ll be doing nothing. I'm also interested in attempting the cold water treatment for fingers. While stopping cracking my knuckles will probably have the same effect, I feel that I should try the cold water treatment for some niggling joint pain in my middle fingers. I don't know how quikly bodies can physiologically heal, but i'm hoping it's quicker, rather than slower. And so as a result, I'm hoping that my resting the next three days will enable me to climb the first pitch of serpentine (hard 24) with Pat so he can send the crux pitch onsight (but with gear preplaced - does that officially make it a flash? We're unsure) this coming monday.
I'm not so sure this plan will work, but here's hoping. After all, I'm sick of being a wanna be climber. I WANNA BE A CLIMBER!

The shittest end

2008-11-07T12:05:00.002+11:00

I think only two people i know actually read this, and i don't mind them knowing. The end of an era, possibly my era in melbourne.
After being insulted coming down to melbourne for my lying whore of an ex-girlfriend, who was the only reason i came down, whom i didn't tell, by being dumped on my arse three weeks later for a guy she denied involvement with when we were together, then enduring months of uncertainty and whatever else i went through, to then be shown a glimmer of hope in the decency of my job, i have now been slapped in the face by that, too.
I've been made redundant as of today. If this isn't the biggest slap in the face of all, of a city telling me to fuck off back to wherever the hell i came from, then i don't know what is. i'm not sure that i'll actually fuck off back there yet though. i'm still pondering. the fact that i can't climb adds more insult to an already solid base of insult upon insult, cause i can't fuck off to arapiles until i get better.
but who knows. if i can't get a job by the time i heal, i might just move my address to "bibler tent, mt arapiles, victoria, xxxx" until next year.

Curious...

2008-11-03T23:45:00.004+11:00

Curiously, i learned about the new album of Kate Miller-Heidke from my ex. But we don't want to go into that sordid story, i'm going to talk about the album, "Curiouser". I believe it's her second full album, having released an inital album and what seems to be a couple of EPs (i haven't actually looked it up properly) in her career.
I listened, and the first song is quite catchy. It initially conjured up images of Janet Jackson music blended with a more mature voice similar to Abby Dobson. However even the (seemingly) most mature of her songs still had the element of pop and, what i consider immature element of, her opera trained voice. The high trills, and quick slides from her lower tones to the high pitches started in the first song. I think there's a time and place for them, but they seem to be placed in every song to add to that pop element as well as to "prove" that she has this ability. You can certainly find the opera trained singers who have moved to commercial music production doing the same thing, just think of the musical output of "George" from a few years back. Many of the high pitch sections of her lyrics are really unnecessary in my opinion and don't add any value to her songs.
The more I listen to the album the more i realise that her lyrics haven't seemed to progress from the level of the inital album and EPs. They are still simple, with ryhmes that make her songs seem more childish than the pieces of literary art that i was hoping for. It's almost like she's a second-rate, female version of slim shady...
Wanting to turn back time, talk about arrogant males, schoolyard regrets and more lyrics refering to men and women in the time before christ light the way through the album. These lyrics combined with more upbeat and relatively high pitched melodies just push the album into the "pop" for me and away from the "alternative" genre.
I was desperately hoping that she could follow in the footsteps of bands like george, leonardos bride and later abby dobson and her solo album, with meaningful lyrics and pleasant, more laid-back melodies, however the latest album seems to follow in the wake of her previous releases.
Having said all of this, there's a time and place for all albums, and it's unlikely i'm going to throw this out anytime soon. Pop has its place in my life, usually to pick me up from lower moods, and i think this does it well. There are enough curious tunes throughout the album to keep interest up, while the high pitch voice throughout with some catchy melodies is surely to pick you up (or drive you bonkers, either way you won't be sitting still moping for very long!). And yes, as a result of learning of this album through my ex, i will be going to see kate miller-heidke play at the prince bandroom in st kilda, whether or not there's a chance that i'll run into her. My itunes play count for songs on this album and those on her older albums still increases almost daily, certainly weekly. Up to 55 in some cases. I owe it to Kate.
eep!

End of an era..

2008-10-27T22:23:00.003+11:00

So I returned to work today. Gone is China. Asked how to describe the trip i respond "It was a great holiday, but not a good climbing trip." The ultimate insult came on the trip came from the town in which I crashed on the first day. On my last day, as I was still hungover at 1:30pm having only had 4 hours sleep I rode back from "The Egg". The crag which I mentioned climbing at on the second last day. It was picturesque enough that I wished to take my camera back and take photos of the locals. Which I did. So, as the egg is the next crag from White Mountain, I rode back from the egg through that fateful town, only to get a puncture within 100m of the town. This wouldn't be so bad if i was a local and could speak the language, or if i had my own bike with puncture repair kit.. or a phone. Or a million other things. But I didn't, so I was reduced to walking for 1.5 hours back to Yangshuo...
Justin, my quasi-partner in crime from Canberra was sitting in a cafe waiting for me to return, I was to meet him at 3pm to go climbing. Well, he was well hungover too, so we opted out of climbing on what was my last day and I just rode around some more.
That last night was wonderful, spent drinking local beer at local prices until 3am until they kicked us out then kicking on some more in a YHA room. It was a great way to finish the trip. 5am and I was rejected from Ireland's bed (probably for the best!), so i stumbled home to sleep for an hour before leaving for the airport. I loved that night. Nothing to care about other than enjoying yourself, meeting new people and caring for all those in your journeys.
I wanna be a travelling bum like that for the rest of my life. I loved it. Not quite a carnie, though. Noone wants to be a carnie...

Progressing

2008-10-20T14:15:00.002+11:00

So only another two days left here in China.
Hopefully i'll get to climb them. The P&T crew have left me to the likes of Newcastle and Canberra people. In actual fact, with the state of my collarbone and bowels, I couldn't actually stand to trudge up those hundred and something steps to Moon Hill to participate in climbing with them, so I opted for the easy climbing version with Justin from Canberra. We'll be heading out to the Egg, an nice, multi-faced, multi-facing cliff which always has one in the shade and has a nice range of climbs from 5.8 to 5.12. The highest concentration is in the 5.10 range, which is about what i'm climbing at the moment.
And so, off I go! braving the 30 degree heat and hopefully not coming down with heat-exhaustion (that would be the ULTIMATE way to finish this trip...)

Getting the shits

2008-10-18T16:26:00.003+11:00

So this is fast becoming the worst holiday/experience of my life. As if i thought it couldn't get any worse, it has. It's not like i mind paying an extra 5 yuan for a meal (a buck), or being hassled by hawkers at every turn, it's more the other things. Like almost snapping my collarbone on the first full day here and being in a lot of pain. Whenever I turn over in bed, whenever i sit up, whenever I turn around, push myself out of my seat, relax my left arm by my side or give a high five, even, it hurts like buggery! Sure the pain is dimishing, but it's still annoying.
So then it happened. Two days ago I heard a stomach rumbling. Ominous. It rumbeld a lot, for extended periods of time, before finally settling down by the evening. I was happy. But yesterday, while the other boys were having a makeshift half-rest day that turned into a full rest day, I braved the 32deg heat with a canberra boy, Justin, to head out for some climbing. I most certainly didn't drink enough. He consumed 5 litres, I almost finished my only 1.5 litre bottle. I'm not sure if this was the catalyst, but when i returned to the hostel I wasn't feeling the best. I was a bit dizzy, the body felt like it was burning up and i didn't really feel like eating. I had trouble getting off my bed, so the others went to the local place for dumplings. I turned up after a prolonged period of time and ate 6 anyway, each one being forced down. Well, they stayed down for around 20 minutes. I rushed home and lay on my bed. After 10 minutes I went to the bathroom and hurled. Violent hurling, my stomach ached afterwards. Then there were the shits. Blergh! Dehli Belly! Noooo!
And so there you have it. It's the day after now, i've spent about 16 out of the last 18 hours either in bed or running to the toilet. What a horrible experience. I'm well too exhausted to actually do anything other than lie down and the thought of eating makes me feel ill. So the boys are having a good time (hopefully) out at Lei Pi Shan while I contemplate going back to bed. Mmmmm, bed and cheesey, non-understandable Chinese daytime drama shows..

Day 5 - climbing finally!

2008-10-16T11:04:00.003+11:00

So for those that don't know, I've been holed up on the ground the last few days. After arriving at the hotel on the first day we grabbed some bikes after a lunch and headed out to the closest crag around to test the rock quality. I onsighted a 10a and then flashed an 11a. I was impressed with myself, and limestone definitely has its benefits.

We woke on the first full day to ride on out to where Pat was most excited about (at the time, it's since changed - twice!!), "White Mountain".

On the way there we had passed over a beautiful bridge and went through a little town. We stopped at the town and tried getting some tea from one of the local places. Well, we hadn't really thought that through, because none of us actually knew how to say "tea" in chinese. So after much pointing and gesticulating we gave up without success. We hopped back on our bikes and rode onwards. As we were nearing the end of this town we had finally caught up to a shitty old, slow bus. Me, being the bike rider I was decided to attack the bus and overtake, so I stood up and slammed down on the pedals. And that was it, the turning moment of my trip. As I was hammering down the second or third stroke the chain jumped gears. My foot was left in freefall and as it rounded down the bottom my weight pulled me sideways. I hurtled sideways towards the ground and sure enough I slammed full-force, full-weight and ladened down with a fucking heavy pack onto my left shoulder. I don't think it could've been anymore perpendicular to the ground. I wiped out. I must've come a whole 1N away from snapping my left collarbone like a chicken bone (re: duncan).

It hurt like f*ck. I yelled and the boys helped me off to the side. For 30 minutes I was pale and bleeding. My elbow had swollen and my shoulder was all bruised. By the end of the day my ribs would also be bruised. Since that day I have rested, knowing that I haven't broken my collarbone. I had an xray taken and was charged 380 yuan (around $85) for it. I showed Lily, our hotel manager, my receipt and she blew her lid! 110 was for the x-ray, 270 yuan was for "treatement". She grabbed me and the receipt and marched on over to the doctor at the hospital. She was infuriated. I watched as a slanging match ensued, male vs female, doctor vs local, the voices rose, lowered, rose again and lowered yet again. The doctor was getting weary, he stroked his forehead with the exasperated look on his face. She finally snapped, grabbed the receipt and me and marched out, "The 270 yuan is foreigners tax!".

She was pissed. Basically the guy tried passing off the 270 charge as the cost of the materials for printing out the x-ray, but she hadn't given up and eventually he just told her they charged it because i was a foreigner. Yesterday she took the receipt to the head of the hospital to try and recover my money from him, but when i returned she only said "He was more corrupt, he said you should've been charged more!!".

So my collarbone isn't snapped, but it hurts like buggery where it joins the centre of my ribs. Pain occurs whenever I do a fly type motion, but it's not too bad. As a result of being able to move it well, today we headed out to Moon Hill. An amazing place, marred only by the 400 steps to get up to the f*cker. It's a beautiful arch of limestone which has climbing up the sides and, of course, right through the centre of the roof. It took me two shots each to do a 5.10b and 5.10d. I finished up with a 5.9 to warm down on. Pat jumped on the 5.10b, a 12c and 12d, second shot each for the last two. Timmy did 10b, 11a and a 12a. Was good all around, and i'm happy to be climbing again without too much pain. Occasionally I pull a weird move, a pain goes through my collarbone and i try and compensate somehow,but for the most part it's fine. I'm hoping tonight's sleep will heal the collarbone issue and i'll just be able to crank for the remaining 6 days of the trip. Here's hoping!

China

2008-10-14T21:46:00.005+11:00

So we left Melbourne at 1pm for our 4pm flight to KL. It was uneventful, but sleeping in 30 degree heat on a metal bench outside LCC terminal in KL in 1.5 hour blocks between 11pm and 4am isn't the best way to rejuvanate the mind and body.

Our delayed flight to Guilin was also uneventful, but the taxi journey to Yangshuo was anything but. Travelling down a wide, dusty, deserted looking 3 lane road which had "50" signs all over it at 120km/h was interesting enough. It became even more interesting when the driver started beeping while overtaking a bus that was overtaking a truck that was overtaking a motorbike (yes, that puts us into oncoming traffic...)

We were worried to begin with but the amount of honking and the understanding that this was the norm soon had us concentrating on the sights out of the sides of the car rather than the oncoming traffic in front of us. And what sights. Interesting. Karsts soon appeared and we were excited, but they just as soon disappeared and we were disappointed. Towns came and went, small villages, deserted ones, partially constructed ones, dirty ones. The level of new construction is almost unfathomable. No wonder Australia's economy is booming on the back of China's boom. Every town, village and city has buildings being constructed (including the two buildings next to our hotel!).

Nevertheless, we finally arrived in the yangshuo area, confirmed by the non-ending array of limestone karsts as we drove onwards. NOW we were excited. As we pulled up to our hotel we were less than inspired. Down some alleyway with two buildings being constructed, wires all over the place, it looked like the worst one of all! But getting inside it was nice, and Lily, the manager, has been the greatest help of all! Definitely would recommend this place to anyone.

Nothing to be afraid of

2008-10-08T13:10:00.003+11:00

...Is the name of a book I'd like to read. But at $55 only in hardback, screw that. So i'll be a tightarse and borrow it from the library when i return... FROM CHINA!!!
WOOHOOO!
My "training" came to an end last night, now i'm "tapering" for the rest of the week until the two week climbing journey begins on Saturday. Of course, it would have been helpful if my training wasn't dealt that horrible alcoholic blow three weekends ago, but, i've still got plenty of climb time left in my lifetime and i've learned something about training first hand (let's face it, noone learns from other people's mistakes, otherwise the first world war would've just been named "The World War" - if that one had ever taken place anyway!).
So the first game of ultimate frisbee in the spring league, a swim and a fair bit of riding between now and Friday afternoon's departure is on the cards. I'm hoping that P's words that you gain the most strength when actually on the trip are true, and given that P and I intend climbing for at least 9 out of the 11 days in China, there's plenty of scope for strength increases given my current fitness base.
It's limestone up there in Yangshuo, something I've never climbed on (well, perhaps i did do almost 10 boulder problems at castle hill two years back). I'm hoping that Saturday afternoon will be spent "learning" about limestone with some nice 5.8s-5.10s, learning the features, the textures, the positions, the holds. I also wish to go for a general scout of most of the crags we intend visiting to get an idea of difficulty, popularity, aspect and general vibes of each of them. That way we can easily choose a crag on any given day depending on the weather forecast. The rest of the fortnight will be spent ticking, and ticking hard!
So, i'm psyching up and getting ready. I have my new camera, with 12GB of memory to burn, baby. I've got some 7as and 7bs to tick while i'm over there.
Here's hoping.

Living with DOMS

2008-10-02T10:47:00.006+10:00

So DOMS moved in with me for the week, overstaying his stay, hanging around for 4 days this time, not just the usual 2, making me quite uncomfortable all through the week whenever i went running or riding, and even while just walking!
I suppose i'm unfit for running these days, but i didn't realise that i actually tried -that- hard at frisbee on monday evening. But it seems I did. After a three game "gala night" type affair playing Ultimate Frisbee, I woke on Tuesday to a great amount of pain in my quads while my left hip flexor was almost useless as well. I guess all that pivoting at frisbee really uses that muscle. Wednesday rolled around and sure enough, as usual, there was still a great amount of pain in the quads and hip flexor. It is a weird pain, it only really occurs while massaging or using the muscle in question. I tried in vain to massage the pain away, and I had hoped that DOMS would be gone by Thursday but no, I woke to pain which has lasted through today as well. But I know that today will be my final day living with DOMS (Delayed Onset Muscle Soreness - in case you didn't go to the earlier link ;-).
It always happens whenever I get back into something, or when i start a new sport. Noone really knows what causes the pain, nor how to get rid of it, but I have experienced it enough times to know that it either lasts 2 or 4 days. It seems that I was particularly unfit before going in to the frisbee games on Monday, or I tried particularly hard at it for it to last all 4 days. For my own piece of mind i'm hoping it was the latter.
Either way, it shows that I definitely am not a runner yet, so tonight i'm going to start by running with my flatmate around the local park (weather permitting). This not being a runner may cause havoc with my plans to be successful at this summer's triathlons.
I'm really going to start running at lunchtimes next week... really!

i'm so tired...

2008-09-30T22:52:00.003+10:00

...i haven't slept a wink. i'm sooooo tired, my mind is on the blink.
i wonder should i get up, and fix myself a drink? no no no!
anyway. i'm tired. too much exercise, and an inability to sleep later than 6:15-6:30am.
it's fecking annoying. hopefully with daylight savings and a darker 6-7am period, i'll sleep more.
until then, here's hoping!

Weak as a baby

2008-09-24T10:34:00.004+10:00

So the weekend of excess seems to have greatly exceeded my body's ability to cope. Whether it be the copious amounts of alcohol consumed, the masses of exercise in between the alcohol, the 6hr sleep on friday night, the 2hr 38min of sleep on saturday night or some combination of all these, I am weak as a baby so far this week.
I went climbing to the climbing gym last night to not even be able to complete the blue "24". I didn't manage to clean lead the "23", a climb I had been doing up to 3 times clean a night only last week, after i'd done the 24!! This morning my 6:30 swim became the 6:45 swim, and I didn't even do half what I did at last week's sessions before being too exhausted to continue. I couldn't even string 7 laps together in a row, copping out at either 200m or 300m sets.
Terrible.
I always say it, I won't ever drink that much again. Then again, I realise that at the time I had no concept of how much I was drinking, I was "caught up in the moment" (and the haze).
Either way, I'm back to the training drawing board this week. China is under 3 weeks away and if last night's effort is anything to go by, I'm going to be very disappointed with my efforts. I can only hope that it is more about the lack of sleep the last 5 days that is affecting my performance, as opposed to the alcohol having a detrimental effect on my muscular ability...
So, more sleep, harder training, better food and DEFINITELY no alcohol for the next 2.5 weeks.
Live and learn.

From Russia, with love

2008-09-22T13:18:00.007+10:00

What a great weekend. Who would've thought that Melbourne could be so fun when you know people.
I seemingly focused on two activities (actually three ;-)) this weekend. Drinking was the first. That started at 4:30pm on Friday arvo before work finished, and by 10pm last night I'd consumed (no less than) 8 bottles of beer, 2 pints, 4 pots (midis), 2 G&Ts, 2 Mojitos (was "testing" making them with E on Saturday night), 5 glasses of Champagne, 3 shots of.... something and finally, a double vodka-lemon-lime and bitters. Blergh. That's disgusting. No wonder I felt drunk when I woke up this morning.
So, i'm going to can drinking for a while.
The other activity was riding, and more specifically, I had a go at mountain biking. Who would've thought you could have so much fun on a pushbike! After a grand total of 2 hours and 36 minutes sleep (complete with a whopping great hangover) and a large breakfast at St Kilda A and I went out to Lysterfield, apparently the scene of the 2006 commonwealth games mountain biking. Sure enough, there was the commonwealth track. They're seemingly graded similarly to ski-runs, green, blue, black and double black (perhaps triple, but not at Lysterfield). We started on the commonwealth track which was mostly blue but you could do a couple of alternative sections at black (which I avoided). Lots of tight turns, a couple of boardwalks, these random roll-over log things, hills, jumps (which i didn't do!), obstacles and of course loose gravel kept me focused on the job at hand. It was quite disconcerting to have my feet almost bouncing off the pedals when going over rough terrain and off jumps. Next time I go i'll have to see about getting clip-ins, it's just too dangerous otherwise! Having done that we linked together a series of other tracks that essentially tracked the limits of the park. A had a couple of stacks, once her wheels got caught in a tight water-runnel which push her off sideways down a hill and the second time when a rock she cornered on came out of the dirt and sent her down onto the length of her legs. But she was all good and by the end of the total 18km ride when i was completely caned with sore quads, a sore lower back and a very sore arse, she still had enough energy to do the commonwealth track one more time.
And so the weekend ended with me hobbling around my flatmate's house-party very, very drunk.
All in all a great weekend with some good experiences and a bunch of socialising. I'm almost tempted to start looking at the prices of mountain bikes, but I think I should get a couple of other things out of the way first, including purchasing my camera and the final costs involved in the upcoming China trip. I'll stick to keeping it on my "wish list".
Yay for China! (trip)

Hey! 21 onsighter!

2008-09-14T22:24:00.006+10:00

Being crushed by C&A letting me know on Thursday that they'd be spending the weekend climbing with the undesirables, I instead went out with R. He was good value. He had been out of outdoor climbing for almost a month but it was just right for me.
We woke Saturday to a beautiful sunny, still day. We decided that we'd hang around the Pharos. There was an 18&19 to warm up on before I'd try a 21 before he jumped on Trinity Wall (21***). Perfect!
So I started up Transatlantic Crossing, a two pitch 18 that I led as one which finished at the half-way ledge. We rapped down the 40m drop on a 60m rope (!). Following that R jumped on the pointy end of the 19 next to it (name forgotten!) which had a similar feel to it, but less choss/lichen. I followed and again we rapped down the same drop on the same rope.
Now it was the time to jump into the spotlight. Another attempt at getting my first 21 trad onsight! I looked up the line, two pitches, 21 followed by a 19, belaying where the line crosses the first pitch of Oceanoid. I'd try it as one. I started up the slabby blocks tentatively as always, this time deciding to place gear a little lower than usual, and placing more of it. At each slabby, blocky overlap I placed a bit more gear and got closer to the small roof and crux above. Finally I was easily over the roof with the crux sequence in front of me.
I was almost vertical, but with another overlap at my face, the top of my body was forced out a bit and my arms were inevitably being used to hold me on. I threw in a fairly bomber 0.4 camalot, but backed it up with my trusty green alien just to the side anyway. I felt around as much as I could, seeing what holds were available. I went back to the stance, shaking each arm out in turn. It was almost now or never, I thought I knew what was to be done, so I started. A right hand side pull, right foot smear, left foot match, my left arm reached out to an opposing side pull, I tried placing my right foot higher. Shit! What to do now? The new footer didn't allow for me to move my hands, so I had to reverse the sequence!
Back to the quasi-rest. CRAP! If I didn't figure it out soon, I'd be too pumped out to hold those small holds again! I looked for more, different footers. It was really now or never. The arms were getting a bit tired for the required clenching on the small sidepulls. I started with a right side-pull that was closer to my body. I smeared again, my left hand went for the same side pull. This time my left leg moved up first and I stood on it tentatively. I couldn't move my right hand - it was holding me in tension with my left leg. I moved my left hand from its hold, knowing that there was very little chance I'd reverse that move if I found nothing - it would be a plunge with onto my two pieces now below my feet. I reached up and found a crimp, it was small, but I had enough stamina to hold it, I stood upright with tremendous balance and stabbed my right foot out to a sloper. In balance between the crimp and my two spread-feet I stretched my right hand to a good under-cling. My left foot matched my right and I released the crimp and matched the under-cling with two fingers of my left hand.
It was almost over! I looked around to notice a brilliant footer for my right, it went and it was now definitely over. Good holds were within reach of my right hand and my feet were solid. "WOOOOOHOOOOOOO!" echoed off the back of uncle charlie and the sidewall of the Pharos. I waltzed on up the rest of the climb, resting for a minute where I should otherwise have belayed. At the top I traversed another 5m left to the rings, leaving R with 5m of rope. A 55m pitch of 21/19 climbing. Fantastic!
My first 21 onsight, home and hosed!

CHINA CHINA CHINA! OI OI OI!

2008-09-10T13:49:00.004+10:00

ok so that's not the best catch cry, but man i feel like shouting it out to the world.

just organised my visa this morning (taking 3 hours off work to spend half that time getting the visa and the other half sipping lattes with the boyz in toorak) so all that's left to do is innoculations and travel insurance.

I went off to the climbing gym last night again with P, i felt strong. I had no issues sending a long time struggle "24" through the roof with the 23 headwall. not bad, considering I warmed up on the 23. all in all i did around 7 laps of 23 or 24 with only 1 lap on a 21. a good session, feeling very strong. the stamina has developed well over the last x weeks, but my power is still lacking. I might try for a session at the lactic factory tomorrow to get some absolute finger strength developing. a combination of the two would do well to assist in my goal of sending 7b, 5.12a or 25 in china, depending on how you look at it. mind you, P has maintained that if you always start with a good base you gain 2-3 grades while you're on the climbing trip. so S, suck it up and start taking wingers on this trip and you might do well to send even harder than your goals!!

a grampians weekend is planned for this one coming, with a rest and two arapiles weekends follwing planned, taking me to the China trip. i'm hoping to use those two arapiles trips to send multiple 21s. however, i'd planned this the last two trips as well and i fell well short of the mark. no matter, good climbing partners and progression are the key to me doing well (and hard) at araps.

so, back to sucking it up and pushing until i can't grasp climbs no more in the gyms!

persepolis

2008-09-08T23:00:00.003+10:00

went out to see "persepolis" tonight. it was quite enjoyable.
an animated film following the growing pains of a young girl living (marjane/marji) in tehran in iran. the fall of the shah, how it didn't make everything better in iran, as most expected. as the iraq-iran war gets worse and life deteriorates, she's sent over to vienna to continue schooling. things don't go smoothly and having been brought back from the brink of death on the streets several years older, she returns home to her parents in iran. things continue to be problematic with the new fanaticism of the ruling party and eventually she leaves again for europe, her mother forbidding her to return.
with some witticisms from her grandmother thrown in as only a wise old grandmother could, the film has a lot of issues that people face, day to day, even in this modern, non-iranian society. it has messages in it regarding life in general, and how to handle it, we can probably all relate to some of the sub-plots and situations in it.
i liked it, it was a good film, enjoyable, but my reviewing sucks ;-)

Kachoong!

2008-09-08T10:35:00.006+10:00

and so i tried stepping up to the plate on the weekend. and why should i not have. apparently some 24s under my belt on sport, good training sessions of late on steep/overhanging routes, confidence oozing, why not have a go at onsighting the classic, possibly most photographed climb in the world?

-BETA ALERT BETA ALERT BETA ALERT-

clearly, because of a mental blockage that i didn't account for. I wandered up from the ring bolt (recently placed replacing the years-old piton) to the roof, worrying that it would be a difficult "18" as claimed in the guidebook. no such worry, the holds were good, relatively positive and quite straight-forward. i mashed myself up against the roof and looked down the length of the flakes. yikes! fingers, tiny bit of nothing, gaping #6+ width followed by something around the corner and out of sight. the finger section was yearning for my fingers, but not my feet! the wide section was yearning for my feet, but worrying my fingers. so i clipped the piton, rusted as it was, placed a 0.5 camalot as far down the finger flake as possible and started. i reached the mid-point jug and then quickly reversed the section back to the rest. i wasn't feeling it.
i sat around for a bit, trying for a comfortable rest, eventually thinking "screw it" and launching out again. the finger section flew by, i latched the mid-point jug easily, the footers were a bit tricky, but i was used to this climbing now and made the most of my training. the wide section, althought not appearing overly positive was still good for the fingers to easily hold myself upside down. by the time i reached this i could see around the corner and set my hands on target. i latched the last jug on the roof, heel hooked painfully and hung.
the 0.5 cam was now well back, further than i could stretch my foot, so i decided i'd protect the last spot. i grabbed the #3 camalot and tried jamming it in there. to no avail, it was too large! i rearranged my right hand fingers into a nice lock - my first knuckles acted like a nut, i rested all my weight on them. i grabbed the #2 camalot and jammed that in. i clipped it, then pulled up and had a look - overcammed++ and dodgy looking!
"Screw that for a joke! i'm not risking a winger onto that thing!!"
The right hand fingers were starting to get sore, i had been dangling full weight for at least a minute on my right fingerlock and a right foot heel-hook. i grabbed the #1 camalot and placed it far left, clipped a quickdraw to it and checked it again before the rope was clipped. i pulled up and looked again, it looked solid. probably more than two minutes now. i peered over the lip to see what i was aiming for. that right hold. no. doesn't look right. that left one? possibly, it looks a bit deep. i did a bit of a throw with my left hand. i nailed it, the left hold was good. but my muscles were not. my right fingers was now aching due to the lock, and the muscle was pumped as...?, i'd only warmed up on a 10m 18 4 minutes prior to starting up kachoong. typical.
i wiggled my right hand out of the lock and tried matching. it was over. i had mashed my right fingers so much i couldn't grip anything. i dropped off onto the rope and dangled.
"*%^&!" (insert your interpretation here).
i was truly disappointed. i looked at my right hand fingers. they were red, the skin was mashed to within half a millimetre of the bone next to the knuckle. i shook out. i tried clenching and opening my hands. i couldn't clench my fist, i couldn't even close it, i couldn't even get it half-way closed - i could barely move them!
i rested for another three minutes before i could fully open and close my fist. another minute or two later i pulled back on. i matched both hands on the left jug, put one foot on the lip and tried rocking over - christ that's an awkward move. my gangly legs flailed everywhere underneath the roof as i inched my hands up until i could rock all my weight onto my right leg - that's going to be a hard move to do straight after i've done that traverse! i turned the lip and stood up. i'd done the move - off the rope. disappointment filled me as i realise that i'd lost all my trad-leading nerve. a series of other thoughts flew in making the disappointment greater.
I scurried up to the top with my tail between my legs to have a good long think at the top.
I'll be back - it's not going anywhere. I'll send it, taste of honey and chinese algebra all on the same day, just to show them who's boss.
next time, kachoong!!!!

each to their own life

2008-09-07T22:21:00.004+10:00

i feel like i have started to overcome the major issues that have dogged my life the past two and a bit to three months. i have made some resolutions about how i'm going to live my life for the next 12-18 months which i will hopefully be able to stick to before returning to sydney.
of course, now that i've come to these conclusions, i can't help but feel that my closest friends there have finally given up on my happiness and friendship. it's still paranoia, (and a horrible comparison!!) but i can't help but feeling like woody in the movie white men can't jump. for those that don't know it, he fails and disappoints his girlfriend throughout the film, and finally, when he knows he can do it, and can succeed, put things to bed and move on, she threatens to leave him whether he wins or loses. of course, he's so sure of his success that he calls her bluff, but she really wasn't bluffing!
and in this way i feel that i whinged and bitched so much that it no longer matters whether i've sorted my life and brain out or not, i pushed it just that one step too far and it exhausted their help and friendship.
of course, it is most likely paranoia, because there are very few of us that have selfless loyalties that lie outside our own life and they'll still listen if i make the call.

Springing into spring

2008-09-03T07:33:00.002+10:00

it's ever so subtle. a degree here and there, a minute or two of light at either end of the day, more flowers by the day, another bird added to the morning choir.
Yes, spring has sprung, and summer is rapidly approaching. even though the changes are subtle, it's definitely a change that can be felt by me. it gives a good demonstration of how plants are able to judge when to produce new buds and shoots.
my morning and evening rides now have me steaming up inside my jacket by the time i reach my destination. not three weeks ago it would take a 5 minute shower to defrost my purple legs, drill warmth into my icy fingertips and return my nose to a normal colour from the red hue caused by the air.
arriving home in the light is great, as is waking up at 7am to have the sun already streaming into my window. the sun is moving further south and bringing with it a new angle on my work monitor each day.
although it has only been one or two degrees, the centre of the city is changing, the air is different, the shade isn't as icy, the sun is much warmer, the atmosphere is changing, people's attitudes are changing and the mood is lifting.
I have to find more people to socialise with and soon! with this new increase in temperature, more people spilling out into the bars and restaurants of the city, i'll have to jump on the bandwagon and have a good time starting as soon as i knock off from work.
the noticeable difference day to day is most certainly caused by the different latitude compared to sydney, my only other reference point. but the change is exciting, and noticeable, and now i'm off to enjoy the warmer morning ride to work.

Wuthering Heights

2008-09-02T23:15:00.003+10:00

Well, i finally got through it! it took my long enough, with a false start borrowing it from the library only 4 days before moving to melbourne, meaning i couldn't finish it in time nor bring it with me. then I finally got it from Jess when i revisited sydney, but it was read very slowly as a result of the personal events of the time.
so over the last two weeks as emotions have died down i finally read the remainder. interesting, i feel i can draw several parallels. which i don't want to do. as always, i feel that i should re-read it to pick up on its subtleties, but i won't. i've moved on to sartre now, with some of his short stories in the novel titled "The Wall" (actually "Le Mur" since it was written originally in french) getting my attention.

Wuthering Heights:
"About her I won't speak; and I don't desire to think; but I earnestly wish she were invisible - her presence invokes only maddening sensations. He moves me differently; and yet if I could do it without seeming insane, I'd never see him again! You'll perhaps think me rather inclined to become so, .... if I try to describe the thousand forms of past associations, and ideas he awakens, or embodies"

Amongst other parallels...

Plan B

2008-09-01T08:10:00.004+10:00

so i've decided this morning that i'm going to stick to plan B (on one condition). god only knows why. there is a miniscule probability of pay-off. my happiness is at stake here, and this morning i've decided i'm willing to risk it. i did mention a condition, work has to come through with the goods for me first. as i am so directionless at the moment in life that i'm going to call on my work to give me direction. will they provide for me a direction? i'll find out today. i'm going to have a chat with my manager to see about what tasks, chores and ideas she can provide for me to move more into a front office role.
if there are no opportunities to be had or chances to move, then games up. i'll put plan A into action by the time i go on my climbing trip and it will be the end of the whole saga.
Everytime i return from sydney i realise exactly how carefree and fun and happy i can be. it's only the thoughts of returning to melbourne and running into the undesirables that i start to turn again. well, one thing has to change before I snap completely. there are some ties that are holding me here, but the ties are weak, they're string. i have rope-strength ties to sydney. if work doesn't show me an opportunity to further my professional career then i essentially have no good reason to stay here. i came to melbourne for one thing, her. the job i accepted became the first thing when i had her taken from me due to the great opportunities. i can easily sever those feeble friendship strings and rebuild them later in my life. at the moment it's the strings that are holding my sanity together that need far more attention and support.
and so it goes. i'm going to have a shit-busy week, being a new month. nevertheless, determining my career opportunities now is better than later, and come hell or high water, i'm going to find out what they'll provide before the end of the day...

a new beginning

2008-08-28T13:31:00.002+10:00

I remove all my old posts and try starting again.
I have stopped my mourning. it is replaced with bitterness.
i think non-stop about what to do. my sentences are still incoherent and non-sensical. i have little point to what i'm saying.
i decide to think about things for a few days before saying any more.

time out

2008-08-26T07:37:00.003+10:00

it's been a while for me since i last entered. of late the words haven't been flowing well. disjoint sentences, made-up words and unfinished messages have been the hallmark of my recent emails to friends and family, so why would a blog be any better?
my sleeping patterns have become somewhat annoying. i'm constantly waking at 6:40am. whether it's here at home with the blinds down or in a tent at the grampians with no darkness assistance, 6:40 and i'm wide awake. the lids feel heavy, but the brain just doesn't switch off a second time. this tiredness is compounded by my sleeping time - at least 11pm. My night routine is finished by 8:30pm at the latest, with dinner and chores already done. from then until i finally sleep i spend my time seeking company. whether it's with flatmates in front of the TV or facebook or gmail chat, i'm still seeking the interaction with other people.
i don't need to do it though, it seems almost like it's become a habit since the break up. if i am talking with others i have no time to think about my situation. well, the time my brain spends on thinking about my situation is certainly decreasing, however the ability to let it go and just pick up a book and read has decreased. i shall do that tonight, though. a quick gym session at the end of the day should set me up nicely for a 7:30pm dinner, and a relaxing remainder of the evening with wuthering heights.. still! the chapters are almost gone, only 50 or so pages to go.
as always, here's hoping...