Back on it again.

pROJECT mAYHEM is apparently sorted (well it will be in 10 minutes anyway) so things are looking good until they give me the bill at which point there will no doubt be a painful feeling in the general area of my wallet...

Still one must endeavour not get depressed about these things - the weekend is here and I am not working having finished at 7AM this morning. Plans for this weekend revolve around family stuff so Nottingham tonight and then back to Sheff tomorrow night for beer and curry and general chaos no doubt. Get that out of the way and then I need to get to the wall to do some climbing before starting nights again next Tuesday.

Graffiti

Occasionally in Sheffield you will stumble across some graffiti* that is actually worth the paint it required to create it. I spotted this yesterday while walking home from work and managed to get a picture today - not quite sure what it means as such but it appealed to me.

*According to a very quick search graffiti is the plural form and I really should use graffito instead to be 100% grammatically correct. However since I very much doubt that any professor of English will ever read this blog (let alone care enough to berate me across the internet for it) I will leave it as is for now.

The horror... the horror...

The immortal words that every one remembers (though rarely the context behind them) uttered by Colonel Kurtz in the closing sequence of the film "Apocalypse Now"!

I went through a similar feeling today upon seeing this hanging on the wall in the lock up. This grotesquerie is supposed to be Rod Stewart but in truth bears a far greater resemblance to the bastard offspring of D'Israeli's "Lazarus Churchyard" and David Lloyd's rendition of V from "V for Vendetta". I might have to 'accidentally' hit it with a piece of 4 x 2 soon...

Are things looking up?

Managed to find a replacement steering rack (with very little fuss strangely) for just short of £160 delivered which I can live with quite happily when compared to the cost of a replacement from VW. Obviously it is an unknown part that is getting bolted onto the pROJECT mAYHEM but Karma dictates that my luck is due to (or has to) change where things of a van-related nature are concerned so maybe this is the start...

The other good thing is that I don't feel any worse than I did yesterday and while I would much rather feel better than I did yesterday I will settle for just feeling pretty rubbish but still functioning at some sort of level. Not sure a 12 hour night shift will help much but I will treat it as a good excuse (as if one was needed) to keep eating Mutton Karahi.

Now all I need is for Fed-Ex to deliver my parcel which is currently doing the rounds somewhere in the vicinity of Sheffield.

Quick Update

Just a few pics from the weekends work on the sleeping platform - went and bought some hinges and got those fitted as you can see but no toggle clasps in stock which was slightly annoying. Having said that I felt so rough by the time I had finished attaching the doors and worked out a couple of things that will need to be done for the other half of the bed (it will eventually fold out to double size if required) there was no way they would have been fitted today.

Discombobulated

Discombobulated pretty much sums up how I feel at the minute.

The garage that is looking after pROJECT mAYHEM rang me on Friday to tell me that the people they had sent the steering rack away to couldn't refurbish due to not being able to get the seals. Quite why it took them a whole week to admit this is open to debate but that is the situation I find myself in so now I either have to stump up for a new one which I really don't want to do at £580 or find one at a breakers. I am hopeful that the search for a replacement will not be as arduous and eventually futile as the search for the ECU but it is fair to say that I have lost a fair amount of faith in my beloved van at the moment. I am torn between selling it (and no doubt taking a heavy loss on it) or keeping it and praying to various motoring deities on the hour every hour for evermore.

On the plus side I managed to get down the ClimbingWorks on Thursday night. There is what appears to be a new set of black problems to go at and as ever they really are very good - open handed slopers, the requirement to do a lot of things statically and general technicality abound. The only problem is that every problem requires scrubbing to death prior to pulling on but it is the price that we must pay for such a good venue which is rightly proving popular with people. I also discovered the circuit board and beasted myself on the 6c problem - managed to get to the right hand end (about half way) on my first attempt before powering out looking for a foothold that wasn't there which I was pretty pleased with. The move that spat me off is not difficult in isolation but after the brutality of the traverse to start it takes on a whole different level. It also really requires you to keep the weight on your feet as much as possible which is good for me - the holds are huge but on a wall overhanging by something like 30 degrees getting as much weight off your arms as possible is a prerequisite. Subsequent attempts never quite got to this high point but the feeling of being totally battered at the end of the session was good - if my poor body ever recovers I will get back on it and try to make progress.

Friday night was spent out with a few mates I used to play 5-aside football with - got way too drunk on cider and then started on a bottle of white wine when I crawled back home. You would think that at the age of 39 I would realise that this is really not a good idea but I seem to forget this every time. I must also try and remember not to listen to Kristin Hersh's Sunny Border Blue album when drunk - as much as I love this album for its pure rawness and emotion it really is not music for when you have been drinking.

Goes without saying that yesterday (Saturday) was not a good day from the point of view of being hungover. Eventually decided that I should do some work on the sleeping platform for pROJECT mAYHEM which kept me occupied for a good few hours - think that I worked through till gone 7PM but it was good to have something to concentrate on and forget the hangover for a while. I will post up some pictures later of what I have been doing.

Today - got to go and buy some hinges and toggle clasps so that I can fix the doors I cut out yesterday and then relax at home while cooking a Mutton Karahi.

Just in case life needed to kick me one more time I think I am also coming down with something rather nasty. Great...

The things you see...

Just had to take a picture of this road sign in Leeds on Saturday night. There is quite probably an innocent explanation behind it (fnarr fnarr) but I will leave it up to Duncan Disorderly or Fiend to Google it!

Nearly grit season...

I have that fantastic ache you get after spending a day climbing: shoulders, fingers, forearms, the lot basically - they are all throbbing away gently to themselves after spending the day bouldering at Caley and generally having fun.

Got the Caley classic, Smear Arête sent second go - a really nice problem with a brutal pull on followed by a heart stopping move to get stood up and then it is pad, pad, pad (again with a lot of trepidation) to the top. A great problem and one that shows just how good bouldering on the grit can be. Did Chicken Heads but don't think I can claim the tick as I came in from the right and it just doesn't feel hard enough for the grade that way - my feeling is that it has to be done direct to get the full tick but for it to feel possible to mere mortals such as myself it needs to be a couple of degrees cooler. Also started working Forked Lightening Crack and had similar problems - the crimp for the right hand will feel much better when it is a bit cooler and though it didn't feel that bad yesterday it just didn't feel quite right. It is a hard move to get the left hand up and you need to trust the crimp fully, something I couldn't do as I was constantly aware of a slight layer of moisture between my hand and the hold regardless of how much brushing I did or chalk I used. For now it will just have to be added to the ever growing list of 6b nemeses that I have got on the go but it is a really nice problem - powerful and with a degree of technical nous required as well. Other than that we just ticked off a fair few easy problems before retiring for a couple of well deserved beers - a grand day out in all.

The curse of pROJECT mAYHEM.

In my ramblings of a few days ago I mentioned that pROJECT mAYHEM was losing power steering fluid and that it was, hopefully, going to prove to be a cheap fix. Yeah right - this is pROJECT mAYHEM we are speaking about here so the chances of a cheap fix are somewhere about the same as me climbing 8a... Turns out that the problem is the steering rack itself leaking - £300 to get reconditioned plus labour on top of that. Just as bad is a whole week with the van stuck in the garage because the market for reconditioned steering racks is not that big so they get done on an ad hoc basis. I could have had it back today if I had been prepared to bolt on a new one but the extra £200+ that would have cost soon put that idea to bed. Bugger!!

Anyway after receiving this great news it was a simple choice between climbing wall and pub - I eventually decided that I could do both and hit the Climbingworks with Duncan Disorderly and Tim. For the first time back on plastic in ages it went OK - got a fair few problems done, fell off some other stuff and generally had a good time socialising - all the best things about climbing on the plastic really. One thing I am going to have to suggest though is that the Climbingworks offer free entry for the best sob story of the day - I reckon I would have been a 100% cert yesterday if this genuinely brilliant idea had been implemented before now.

Following the wall it was off to the Sheaf for part deux of the evenings grand plan. It was the usual Thursday night scene with climbers everywhere so more talk about climbing and the like followed and the night was completed when I was asked by Dave Thomas to go and do some trad sometime soon...

Potato shaped like a thingy

In honour of this currently for sale on eBay.

Before you ask: I would explain why my brother is only wearing one shoe but the reason for the lack of said footwear is so unbelievably mundane that recounting it would probably tip me over the edge - just put it down as a bored farmer thing.

Weekend ahoy!

Well at least for me since I finished work at 7AM this morning and don't have to be back at work till 7AM on Sunday (hopefully later).

Tomorrows plans are to run pROJECT mAYHEM into the local garage as it has started to lose power steering fluid from somewhere which is not really what I want in life. Hopefully this is just a result of the missing bracket that was highlighted on VW's check over and the pipe that it is supposed to hold has been rubbing and worn through. Otherwise it is probably the seals on the power steering pump itself that has gone tits-up which is not so good but still not exceptionally bad when compared to the cost of the ECU replacement. Either way I will be pushing to get it back tomorrow night (Thurs) if at all possible.

Assuming that I do get the van back tomorrow, Friday will be spent at Curbar trying the usual projects and maybe starting off this years campaign on Gorilla Warfare.

Friday night will be spent drinking wine in Leeds and then off to explore some North Yorkshire grit on the Saturday. Where depends on how far the "dear boy" is prepared to drive but he didn't seem too put off by the prospect of a trip up to Slipstones when it was mentioned in the pub earlier. A "casual" mention of the fact that the Black Sheep brewery is in the vicinity has hopefully swung this as the choice of venue so maybe the outstanding project that is Right Hand Twin will get resolved.

Saturday night - make it up as we go along!

Hotter than the sun.

A.K.A. how to cook a Chilli that will take paint off the wall.

Chilli was probably the first thing I taught myself to cook, and while this recipe has changed beyond all recognition from those early efforts, my search for the perfect chilli recipe goes on. It's about as close as I can get at the minute but one day I will figure out how to improve it that little bit more. Till then here is the best chilli recipe that I know.

Take some garlic and chop it fine. Add in two scotch bonnet and six birds eye chilli's both finely chopped. It is important to use the two different sorts of chilli's as they have different qualities when it comes to the heat that they generate - the scotch bonnets give an immediate heat that is then replaced by the after burn of the birds eye chilli's in the finished dish.

Fry the lot in a large pan with some oil - be prepared to go temporarily blind if you get too close to the pan at this point.

Throw in two pounds of the best mince you can find - low fat content is the key here but not to the point where there is no fat present at all - you need a bit of fat to make it taste right. Add salt and pepper to taste.

Leave for a couple of minutes and add a little Cayenne Pepper and more importantly Paprika.

Once the mince has browned off nicely then add Tomato Puree, three tins of Chopped Tomatoes and two cans of Kidney Beans.

After that leave to cook for two to three hours and then let it stand for 24 hours. The standing period is the most important bit as it lets everything mellow out.

I am aiming to try a variation on this soon using Chipotle Chilli's (these are dried and smoked jalapeños) and combine this with chocolate to produce a more Texan variation of chilli which I will post up when I get round to it.

Alain Robert

Earlier I got text from friend asking if I was watching the antics of Alain Robert, the limelight loving, attention seeking French climber of buildings on TV.

My reply was something along the lines of "I would view watching anything with him in it as a waste of an hour of my life".

Feeling a bit guilty about this rather terse missive I sent one back later saying "Sorry if that last text was a bit harsh but Alain Robert is a cretin of the highest order and should not be allowed the oxygen of TV that he so desperately craves IMO".

My guess is this probably qualifies as a fail in the way of an apology but I am blaming Alain Robert for this - it only seems right somehow...

A new truimph of over engineering

As briefly mentioned in the last post I was considering getting the storage\bed started and as you can see from the pics below I have got that stage under way in the last few days.

All going pretty well actually as I seem to be getting better at cutting wood in general though anything that requires an angle that is not 90 degrees tends to go a bit Pete Tong at times. One slight problem is that one of the main stays on the bottom is warped (which I knew at the time and tried to work round) but is causing slight concern at the minute as the next stage is probably going to be to fit the internal panels to separate the storage space. While I know that the frame has enough flex in it to compensate for the warp now it might not once I add more structure to it so I have got to figure out a way around that before I can progress any further. Other than that the usual curse of needing three other things in place before a job can be completed is starting to raise its ugly head on this part of the project now. I want to shape the back of the storage so that it follows the line of the panels but until the panels are carpeted and fitted I don't know what shape the back is going to take which has the knock on effect of being unable to fix it to the floor. Aargh!!

Even with all of these "problems" to work around I am getting close to having the wood stuff done and dusted I think. The internal panels have been roughly cut out now though there will have to be something removed from the edges before I can fit them in place to allow for how much space will be taken up once the ribs have been carpeted. Even better than that I am pretty sure I have figured out a way of fitting them that doesn't involve drilling holes in the internal braces where there are already VW fixtures in place. It has always been a bit of an aim of mine to drill as few holes as possible in the van and while I will have to drill some holes for the upper sections of the barn doors and the top panel of the side (unless I have another great idea) the main panels themselves won't require them. As with any of my solutions it probably involves a lot more work than banging in a series of self tapping screws but my Heath Robinson approach to engineering has served me well so far so why change?

Rethink

I would have loved to have got the carpeting done next month on the pROJECT mAYHEM build but it has become apparent that there are way too many other things to do before that. I seem to be at the stage where one thing depends on another thing being in place which usually requires a third thing to be sorted before you can make progress.

The revised plan that I have now come up with is:

• Finish cutting out the interior panels in rough form.
  

• Fit leisure battery and split charger.

• Fit the fuse box for the electrics and install the reversing camera.

• Remove the roof lining and cover that, carpet the interior, carpet the sub woofer\amp enclosure, get the lights ready to go in and the tweeters installed.
  

• Insulate behind the panels, under the roof lining and run in speaker cables and wiring for lights in rear doors.
  

• Wire up the rest of the lights and switches, the sub\amp enclosure and speakers and fit all the above.
  

• Build the sleeping platform\storage.
  

All in all a bit frustrating at the minute but at least the sub\amp enclosure is finished (or at least as finished I can get it for now) and the sleeping platform can probably be started with the purchase of a few more lengths of wood for the frame. No doubt there will be other stuff that requires doing as well but if all else fails I will just have to go climbing.

Good day\Bad day or some random combination thereof

To be honest the last couple of days have been pretty bloody good actually after returning from the home county of Suffolk which always tends to weird me out for some reason or another. Yesterday was spent getting back on with pROJECT mAYHEM stuff and today was spent trying to slay a couple of nemeses at Curbar with Sloper. Do I need to say that the two nemeses I am referring to are Strawberries and The Ultimate Gritstone Experience? Probably not...

Strawberries didn't go particularly well - felt all out of sorts on it and the best I did was to get half way through the rock over move at which point I started to believe that it was possible, scraped my right hand up the face and lost it. Spent a while after trying but it turned into too much of a process of breaking it down into individual moves and trying to link them. The end result was that nothing was flowing so I sacked it off - even so I feel I have broken some sort of barrier with it though quite what it is I am not 100% sure at the minute.

Anyway after feeling a bit out of sorts on Strawberries it was a bit of a trudge off up the hill to TUGE (standing start). After a couple of finger scraping attempts with a duff sequence Sloper pointed me in the right direction and the bottom section just clicked. Reached my previous highpoint in way more control than I had before and after that it was (almost) smooth as silk to there every time. I got to that point at least four\five times and at one stage I had my left mitt over the top of the overhang on a really good hold but a combination of sheer excitement\anxiety, a foot blowing and not having a clue what to do robbed me of a possible send. Regardless of that I made tangible progress today and I have a couple of good ideas on how to proceed past my new highpoint so it's looking really good.

So to sum things up: gritstone season is not quite here yet but one big YYFY moment is in the pipeline fo' sho!!