Old Skool Dog Porn!!!

pROJECT mAYHEM update

Just had the man who is looking at pROJECT mAYHEM's electronics issues on the phone. I think he must have deliberately phoned during the massive thunder storm for dramatic purpose as the news wasn't very good. They have found the relay that was not working properly and replaced that but it still refuses to start every time so now it is either the ECU that is not working properly or it is the immobiliser not releasing which is causing the issues. The up\downside of this is that the ECU has gone to a very nice man to be tested - if it passes then the immobiliser is at fault, if it fails then the bill gets that little bit bigger to the tune of £175.

With regards to the bill, I have no doubt that it is going to be of epic proportions anymore as it has been mentioned more than once that it is an absolute swine to work on due to the ECU being located under the battery tray etc. so this possible extra added onto it has been accepted with about as much sanguinity as it is possible to muster.

Fuck it - I will allow myself a quick utterance of "Doom" - I deserve it!!

Tottering piles of choss

I have this severe problem with climbing on limestone in this country of the bolted variety as the choice of routes within my grade range tend to be completely heinous and loose nightmarish choss. Still a few days out of commission due to pROJECT mAYHEM being in the garage in an attempt to resolve the steadily worsening electrical problems meant that it was go and climb on bolted choss or spend another evening sat about feeling fat. Given the choices laid out before me it was not a hard decision to take up the offer of a trip to Intake Quarry.

Matt started off up some 6b which looked quite pleasant till the final moves where it got a bit nasty to say the least but at least not too many bits fell off it and the sun was shining on us so it was actually quite pleasant. Next up was Duncan on an arete that looked like it was denying gravity by some power known only to itself but it dispatched with not too much fuss though there was the odd comment about the general lack of rock quality.

Two routes and no real drama of a rock fall variety though the party climbing to our left were taking up the slack by pulling down large sections of the crag with considerable ease and throwing in some top quality cursing as a bonus.

My turn. I decided to second the arete and unsurprisingly I was feeling a bit spooked after the goings on of the party to our left - a feeling that wasn't helped when I pulled on and promply pulled off a large hand hold... Great! Anyway I udged, bumbled and slumped my way up the route with a great lack of style and eventually got to the top feeling considerably less than motivated.

Matt tried another route that seemed almost as unpleasant his warm up for the evening and then we stomped off to the Take Away Wall in the search of something that might be a bit more promising and by God we found it. OK it was a small wall - three bolts and a lower off but it was solid and looked inviting. It was also had a couple of lines in the grade range that I can operate in.

Dunc dispatched the hardest line on the wall and Matt did the same and so it was my turn - with a bit of prompting I went for the 6a line "The Big Take Out". Syke still wasn't exceptionally high but after getting the start done I was into the route - past the first bolt, get the second bolt clipped and I was actually enjoying the experience. Get through the crux, make another couple of spicy moves and clip the third bolt and then finish up the rather interesting top section that feels like another bolt wouldn't be considered totally unnecessary and clip the chain.

This is not how UK bolted limestone is supposed to be! This stuff flows and is interesting and above all is solid. OK it is a bit short but regardless I will be back to tick off a few more routes on this wall because it's a rare diamond and so must be treasured.

Unadulterated Genius

Just found this posted on one of the many forums that I frequent on a random basis:

"WCMUT [what cheered me up today] was the wife phoning me to say she still can't get Channel4, C4+1 and E4 etc. I told her Virgin are going to come round Monday and have a look at the box.

Little does she know I have locked the channels out

Big Brother can fuck right off."

I will report back when his wife finds out what he has done as you just know that this brilliant masterplan it is going to backfire in some hilarious way...

Italy days 5 and 6

Day 5 continued.

As previously mentioned we decided to try and avoid the miserable wet rain by driving North to Maiolo where there was a possibility of it being drier and maybe even the chance of some climbing. Three hours later via roads that make Sheffield's look well maintained and with a very interesting lesson into how the Italians cope with traffic jams thrown in for good measure we arrived at the crag.

Obviously the weather reporting in Italy is about as accurate as it is in this country! However having driven all that way we (or rather I) decided that we were going to have a look at the crag regardless and get some syke up for another visit sometime. Suitably armed with umbrellas we stomped off down the road to have a look at the crag.

The crag is somewhere down below (with a very picturesque church on top of the crag apparently) but quite where I have no idea as we somehow lost the huge amounts of syke we possessed on the 400 yards we had walked to this point. The path had a rather ominous look of quicksand about it and if it was possible it was actually raining harder. Neil made a few noises about coffee and cake and so we bailed with absolutely no qualms about it.

Day 6

The last day of the Italy trip dawned to more rain but the low pressure had been moving slowly up from the South and so we decided to go back to Le Placche de Miracolo for the final day. After a very successful first visit to Placca B with two 6a+ onsights in the bag the plan was to go to Placca A and do a couple of the 6a's, follow that up with a couple of 6a+'s and then have a crack at getting the 6b onsight.

As with many of my great plans it was doomed to fail at the first hurdle and pretty spectacularly too - the 6a that I chose to warm up on was in a word nails. This was not just any 6a, this was proper old skool 6a with spicy moves between each bolt for the entire 30 metres and topped off with a weird rock over move that would have been a piece of piss on the grit. Take away the relative comforts of any semblance of friction though and it felt a fair bit harder - there was nothing for it other than shutting down the brain, uttering a few last choice swear words and commiting to it. First route of the day in the bag at a far greater cost than I had thought it was going to be. The second route was shorter at 23m and didn't have a weird rockover move but it proved to be no less arduous. Like the first route it was easy enough to get a rest at just about every bolt - the problem was making the moves between the bolts... It would have been preferable not to have such good rests at times as each time you calmed down a bit after getting the next bolt clipped you then contemplated the moves required to get to the next bolt with a sinking feeling as more hard and\or tenous moves presented themselves to test yourself against.

I am making this sound like it was some terrible ordeal and at times it felt like it but it's this style of continuous mental challenge that really makes climbing what it is to me. That need to keep digging deep again and again to find the resolve not to rest on the gear and commit to those next few moves in an attempt to get to the next bolt, just shutting out the fear of falling and acting on an almost pure instinct. You know that with every bolt the chain is that bit closer and once you get there the adrenaline rush is almost as good as it gets.

The views aren't too bad either.

The fatness of rain

Welcome to the view from the balcony this morning - it is almost exactly the same as the view that greeted me yesterday. In other words it is still raining here with very little sign of it giving up...

To avoid another 24 hours sitting about drinking coffee like it is going out of fashion the plan is to drive approx. 3 hours north to check out a big bolted sandstone cliff and the boulders at the base of the crag. "Strapiombo" gets mentioned a lot in the route descriptions along with a few "rezistenza's" (eeeekkk!!) though enough references to "Technica, movemento and equilibrio" are thrown in to keep the slab loving punter that I am happy .

As for the carbon footprint - I will worry about that later...