Christmas and the New Year

So, it's now 2008 and I've already put the wrong date on a form (at a climbing wall I put that it was the 04/12/07...)
I drove south in pretty much one go, it took almost an hour for my front wipers to fully defrost, until then I was getting out every 10 miles or so in the Cairngorms to manually clean the windscreen. When it did run fully there was a little but of water collected on the top of the rubber of the wipers which had frozen and lifted the blade out off the screen. Quick to sort out, just had to flick off a narrow strip of ice.
Went to see gran and some of the others in Swansea, which was great, but I have covered alot of miles over the days. I also went to the gym with my mum.
Now, as those that know her will be aware, mum has been a bit over-weight for a number of years and wants to get fitter generally, but also so that she can walk up Cairngorm next time they come up. She originally bought a rower, which broke down (as apparently all of that make did) and so I recommended that she visit a couple of gyms, not just the one at the local Cascades swimming pool because that one is basically shite. It's also filled with OAPs that go for their "gym and swim" which consists of 5 minutes on a bike then an hour in the jacuzzi. I finally got her to go up the hill to the gym at the hotel and speak to a personal trainer for a bit. She was so impressed she's joined up and is going three times a week.
Good for her.
Saw loads of old friends (and St Trinian's - great fun film), and I've been blamed by a mate for him loosing time when he's supposed to be writing a report. Honestly, he asks for a lava lamp then blames me when he gets hypnotized by the wax!
For new year I drove back up to join a couple of friends (and three others) for a week in the Highlands. While driving through the Cairngorms I got my first flat tire. This, I learned, is not the joyous experience one would expect. I had to get advise because I still had about 60 miles to go and only a space saver to use. I knew you shouldn't go over 50 mph, but I'd thought that there was a distance limit. Turns out no, there isn't. Two random members of the public did stop to offer help, which was nice. Got home to un-pack, sleep and pack at about midnight. Joy.
So, into the Highlands and cue a week spent walking, ice-skating, rock climbing, sledging and mountain biking. Have some great bruises and more great memories, saw many stag (including the one in the dark by the side of the road. Driving along thinking "aha, a dog by the road, I'll slow down, hang on, ANTLERS!!!!"). Also cooked for us all, which is a rarity as anyone that knows me will testify, and it appears that the cooking went down well. Got a bit further on guitar hero as well.
There's a few more bits that happened but I think that's about the it for the highlights. I've still got to try out Assassin's Creed, couldn't play it last week because Zack (Chris' cousin's Carin's son) was too young to watch the game, so that'll probably be my Sunday sorted, and then it's back to mundane Monday tomorrow for work.
I hope you all had a good holiday season and to quote Neil Gaiman:

May your coming year be filled with magic and dreams and good madness. I hope you read some fine books and kiss someone who thinks you're wonderful, and don't forget to make some art -- write or draw or build or sing or live as only you can. And I hope, somewhere in the next year, you surprise yourself.

*edited for ease of Neil Gaiman quote-age - cheers for the comment Pam!*

A good weekend

This weekend my good friend Tasha drove up, with dogs. It was good to see her and we got out to do some proper outdoors stuff.
Friday we went out to Cairngorm (starting out at 7:20 - way before sunrise) and started walking up the hills with head torches until the sun came up. We ended up doing two Munros and a few extra tops (peaks above 3000 ft only count as Munros if there's 500 ft drop between the highest named point and the peak you're looking at, otherwise they're tops) and went up Cairngorm itself at the end. This was pushing me to the limits of my endurance, Tasha was bouncing ahead and "encouraging" me. On the way down we stopped off at the Ptarmigan restaurant and asked the nice bloke outside if the furnicular railway was running, although we knew it wasn't supposed to open until the next day. It wasn't but he said to hang on and sorted us out with a free ride down on the railway. That saved us about 90 minutes to 2 hours worth of walking so I owe the mountain guys a few favours I think. While we were out Tash convinced me to wander over to have a look at the Larig Ghru (sp?) which is a HUGE glacial valley. It's hard to describe the size of the valley, we were sat in the snow level with the top of the valley and, no, I just can't describe it. Google it and have a look and any Colin Prior type photos, it's just immense and beyond what I can put into words.
Well, that night we went to take the dogs out for a walk on the beach, mainly to stretch our legs out a bit. Next day we went to take the dogs for a walk in the local woods, in this case Culbin Forrest, and the little 3 and a half mile walk tired out the dogs nicely and almost stretched out all the muscles. Not quite though, today (Sunday) we went to the Inverness climbing wall and Tasha once more showed that she can climb a grade and a bit higher than me, although I managed to boulder to the same level as her HAHAHA.
After a few routes I knew that I wouldn't be able to drive safely if we climbed to my limit so I called it a day, or to put it another way, wimped out like a little girl.
Showed Tash to the A9 (main route south) and drove home, wincing when changing gear, but that's the fun of climbing.
Weeked after next she'll be back up, as she's agreed to be my +1 for the mess ball, and just found out that there's a possiblility that Matt (EMB) may be up in the mean time, although it may be too short notice. Hope Matt can get up, would be great. I'd like to get all, or at least most, of my friends up here at some time, but that may take a few months to organise.......
Put my Christmas tree up as well, all 3 FT of it, drunk a bit tonight (enough to feel happy) and the Jameson's advert with the harp is back on, so happy at the moment. If I can keep my weight loss on track and get a few more forecasts right I'll be even happier. Or, failing that, if I can beat Guitar Hero II or III on medium, let alone hard.
Must stop blogging drunk though, may have to edit this for spelling or excessive honesty.

Dear Santa...

For Christmas I would like...

An Amazon Kindle. When I was at uni one of my friends and housemates, Sally, told me about some developments in electronic paper. The stuff she was looking into used duel coloured molecules/units that could be turned with an electrical impulse, and as it was pretty much solid state, once the page was set there wasn't any more power needed until your wanted a new page. (Apologies if I've got the details wrong, or explained it badly, it was 5 years ago we had the conversation). The Kindle isn't that sort of electronic paper, but is a form of digital book/newspaper/magazine. First time I've seen it was on Neil Gaiman's blog and after watching the video on the amazon.com website I think I want one. Maybe not first gen but looks like the future.

New arms. Been bouldering today at Inverness, my arms and hands ache. Pulled a muscle in my leg as well, hopefully all will heal in time for climbing at the weekend with Tasha.

A new (or second hand) car. Need a bigger one, maybe then the arseholes in BMWs will see me when they're pulling out into traffic and not smack me in the back bumper! No damage apart from scratches but annoyed me. The sod didn't even stop! Now, I know with advanced driving I'm supposed to look ahead and expect things to happen, which is why when the car pulled out I was already trying to move out of the way but why the hell didn't they stop? I know that my car is small but when it's in front of you it's visible, REALLY visible. Argghhhh!

An iPhone. Okay, it doesn't do as much as the Viewty but like most Apple things, what it does do, it does really well and really easily. Had a play with one in the O2 store and I'm now desparately telling myself that it's too expensive (it is), I don't NEED one (I don't) and I don't want one (ah, but I DO!!!!). I'll hold out for a while, mainly as I can't afford one....

Playing catch up..again

Sorry I've been lame at updating this thing, I'm rubbish.
And for Pippa, yeah, not sure why the instructions have gone all Danish...

So, what's been happening? Well, went down to see Swiral and EMB in Brum, also Dajousephine and Jules and Ulrich da dog. Was brilliant seeing them all again, and we went to a great rock pub in Birmingham. We need one of those up here ,there aren't any rock clubs up here as far as I can tell. I'm planning to get at least Matt, and preferably more of them, up here at some point in the near future, there's plenty of Scotland to share and I want to get friends up here. While I was down Matt gave me a memory stick, which was cool, and Sian filled it with mash up tunes, which was amazing. Was sat in a service station uploading from a laptop to the iPod then plugged it in and had the best trip north I've ever had. Motorways were pretty clear then the A9 was beautiful. Any slow traffic I came across moved out of the way, signaling nicely and the music was superb.

A couple of weeks later I popped down to see Tash and Chris. We're going to be going climbing in Inverness around New Year's with a few others and both Tash and myself wanted to make sure that we were good enough to supervise a friend.
Now the thing about climbing is that you can buy all the kit you want and go to a cliff and climb. There aren't any rules about who can and can't climb, it's your life, it's your responsibility. Indoors climbing is different, you're using someone elses place so legally they ask you to sign a bit of paper (or take a course) to show that you're good enough not to anything too silly. The course in Inverness has about 18 months of waiting list on it. I'm pretty happy that I can remember all of the stuff for wall climbing but it doesn't hurt to go back over things and get a refresher, especially as there's going to be a kid climbing with us after Christmas and with kids you don't take chances.
So Tash and myself went to the Edinburgh International Climbing Arena at Ratho.
Oh ye bloody hellfire.
I've seen big indor walls before, the Welsh International is big. Ratho is in another league. You walk in on the second floor and look through from the reception aera to windows going out onto the floor and think, "oh, that's big." Then you walk towards the window and realise it's not just big but you look UP and then you look DOWN! This place is huge! Pricey but massive. We had a great guy checking us over, running through the basics and suggested wrapping the ropes a couple of times at the top to add some more friction to stop Tash taking off when she's belaying me, always a problem. Almost worked as well, until we had an overhang, then she DID lift off, so Ewan (instructor) held her down and then we tied her to the wall for the next climbs. By this point my arms were pumped, the forearms solid and I managed most of a couple more climbs then just belayed Tash. It's quite depressing, she's less than half my weight, much shorter reach than me and is climbing over a grade higher than I am. Ahh well, she always was better than I was. Gives me something to work on.
Next day went swimming with Tash, found out I need to work on my stamina, but then I knew that anyway. Only really managed 32 lengths of a 25 m pool, need to get that better. Then later on had a go on Chris' bike, a lovely 600 ninja. As I've only got a CBT I was of course only riding on closed private areas, and not at all on any kind of by-pass, but even then it was great to get on a bike again. Makes me think I need to get my full license as soon as possible. But not that bike, the geometry is too short for me, would cripple me within two hours and I'm going to need something with more tourer than sports. Besides, the micky taking from the guys due to the ninjutsu training we did would be horrific, and perfectly justified. And it's green.

And that's pretty much me up to date, Tash is coming up next weekend, we're going to have a look at Inverness climbing, and possibly Aviemore as well; and I'm going to have a chat with a couple of car places, see if I can get a new (or different) car within my budget.

Reading - Greg Mandel series by Peter F Hamilton,
Listening to - Mash up mixes.
Watching - Long way down.

Rope tricks

I've splurged a bit (wow, the spell checker actually recognised that one) and bought a rope in the Tiso sale, thought it was 50 m of 10 mm, actually got 60 m and a free belay plate. Seeing as I was in the store and physically chose it, I was suprised that I was suprised. Anyway, my point.
In this age of legislation for everything, the fact that anyone can go into a shop and buy enough kit to go and do silly things in the hills is kind of gratifying. And also worrying- I mean there's nothing to stop people killing themselves or just getting into serious trouble but on every piece of kit, and in most stores, there's the disclaimers:
"Warning: Climbing is a dangerous sport!"
"No liabilities are accepted!"
"Use your own judgement!" - these from an American book.
"The authors..cannot accept any responsibility for [anything] while following any of the techniques described." - From a British book.
These are all fairly standard but the one on the back of the packaging for the belay plate (minimal packaging which is nice to see) struck me as just, well, just about right:
"Climbing and mountaineering are inherently dangerous. It is the sole responsibility of the purchaser or user of this climbing equipment to get proper instruction and to act safely and with caution while using this equipment.... You are responsible for your own actions and decisions."
And that's the thing. "You are responsible." The companies give you the kit and design it to be as good and as safe as it can be, but in the end, if you choose to take the risk, it's your call. You have the say over what you do. Nobody is forcing you to do it, (in all but the VERY rare cases of product failure) nobody is responsible for your safety, apart from you.
This is, I think, part of the appeal of the sport and the lifestyle. That and the feeling you get on a good climb, were everything is flowing and it's like you're dancing up the rock.

With this in mind, there's a great quote from Edward Whymper, a British climber who was on the first ascent of the Matterhorn - on the descent of which, four of the team died.
"There have been joys too great to be described in words, and there have been griefs upon which I have not dared to dwell; and with these in mind I say: Climb if you will, but remember that courage and strength are nought without prudence, and that a momentary negligence may destroy the happiness of a lifetime. Do nothing in haste; look well to each step; and from the beginning think what may be the end."
The passage from "Climb if you will..." is (or at least was) displayed on the wall at the Plas y Brenin National Mountain Centre.