Slaying Demons

Every time I go to Curbar I think to myself that today is going to be the day that Strawberries moves from the "Things I should have done ages ago" pile to the "Thank god I finally got that done" pile. Yesterday it finally got moved - a subtle adjustment of the left foot allowed me to get the higher slot for the left hand in control (for such a small adjustment it is ridiculous how much of a difference it made) and then just pulled hard and hit the jug. BANG!!

At this point it falls to the mighty Dobbinator to sum up proceedings:

"...all you can do is try not to listen to the voices going 'this is the one! you did that move well, this could be it' and then when you get past the hard bit and find yourself shaking out on the 'easy but droppable' bit then the voice changes to be saying 'dont fluff it now, you know you did before...' and again, the voice gets a pillow on its face, and you push on. I felt more tired as I did the final moves than i have before, I felt wild, like I wasnt climbing well but somehow fought on regardless and then bosh! i was on the jug, swinging around at the top having finished the problem. The crowd didnt go wild, there was no roar of satisfaction but finally it was done. A warm glow of success spread slowly through my limbs in the minutes afterwards. Brilliant."

It was all of that and worse - Curbar has been a witness to some fine examples of shit climbing at times (most provided by me) but a new base line was reached yesterday. All the memories of the last time I made it to this point only to fall off came back to haunt me - I would have struggled to smother the voices with all of the stock contained within Mr Wong's Duvet Emporium let alone a single pillow. There was no way I was dropping it this time and reaching deep within myself I plumbed the murky depths of rad and syke. Finding something I hauled like a team of wild horses on the huge hand holds and without an iota of care for style or anything else I just dragged my useless feet behind me and onto the top of the block. Style? Who needs it...

From there it was off to The Ultimate Gritstone Experience where normal service was resumed - made it to my usual highpoint and that was that. One day I will figure out what I am supposed to do with my right foot when I get to the lip but success was proving elusive yesterday - a man can only slay so many demons in a day.

YYFY

More tomorrow....

Round up

Well the laptop got sorted - more memory arrived, was fitted, iTunes stuff was removed and a new build of XP that had been put on a severe diet by nlite was slapped on. Take that virus ridden, under powered laptop!

Climbing - went to Pleasley Vale to see what it was like and the answer is rather good indeed and far better than the area we had to travel through to get there. It was a bit of a shock to travel through a rather awful housing estate to then suddenly find yourself in pristine English countryside and the only thing that marred the experience of the last couple of miles were the biggest sleeping policemen of ever. They would be classed as mountains in Lincolnshire!

Anyway welcome back to the limestone (or some geological variation thereof truth be told) and prepare for decent handholds and very shiny footholds. Was good to get reacquainted with the lime once the conditions improved - it was like a 30 foot high bar of soap when we arrived. Surprisingly there were other people there as well which we didn't expect to see - in fact during the course of the evening quite a lot of people came and went and a good time was had by all. Nice to see the place is being restored with a great deal of care and attention by Tony Simpson after the problems of last year.

Lastly I am rather pissed off at the minute due to my box of Cheerios deciding to "commit suicide" from the second floor window of our office resulting in no breakfast for me till Waitrose opens at 10AM. Bugger, arse, bollocks and all that.

Waiting for the man.

Currently waiting for UPS to attempt delivery of the much needed memory for my brothers woefully underpowered laptop.

A short story of the laptop - it was brought up North to be seen to as it was running slowly even by it's own awful standards and a "quick" look over revealed that it had a massive 256Mb of RAM in it. Given that it has a sticker on it that states it is "Designed for XP" this has to be absolute minimum spec to run XP - even without seeing it try and run anyone with an iota of computer knowledge can appreciate that this is a laughable statement - one that is firmly encamped in LOL territory! Anyway I managed to strip off the old AV which had died horribly and then removed 33 various viruses and lord only knows what else from the hard drive. Also ripped off a shed load of old programs that hadn't been used since it was built (circa 2006) and just generally cleaned it up. While this made some improvement to the overall running speed it was still shit so I told my brother that he was going to have to spend some money on it and then proceeded to order a whole 1Gb of memory to max it out.

And so we reach the present - waiting for the man to deliver the goods. Once the memory is installed all the iTunes stuff can hopefully be removed from the hard drive and once that is done it is going to be time to learn how to use nlite and rebuild it with a massively stripped down version of XP.

Should be fun...

The Walnut

Broken Beagle could be described as the man who is angling for the lead role in The Mummy does Grit if the amount of tape he wraps round his digits is anything to go by at the minute. Should you have some spare cash laying about at the minute I recommend investing in stocks of the company who makes Strappel tape as they are going to turn in a big profit this year!

Anyway that's by the by - met up with the aforementioned Broken Beagle yesterday with the intention of bouldering at Burbage but that idea was shot down by rain on the way out so it was off to Curbar to seek drier conditions. Once we got there we were greeted by clear skies and a decent breeze and the plan became The Walnut - F6c of overhanging low level traversing fun on big holds. Both of us had been on it before briefly last year and I thought that Broken Beagle was going to make short work of it as he lanked his way along only to get hideously pumped and dropping it toward the end - something that was to happen repeatedly throughout the afternoon. I wasn't making such serene progress and spent most of the session trying to work the sequence out for my feet on the initial part which was just bloody frustrating at times given my complete inability to recall what I did on the last try. I would get something working and then have to try and recall what I had just done. By the end of the session I had something that I was happy with but it seemed a lot of work of what probably amounts to four feet of progress on a 20+ foot boulder problem. Still it is a good problem and one that can be worked in sections easily enough so next visit will be to remember the sequence for the first part, get something working on the next part and try and link the two together. Finished off the session with a pint at the Millstone and then home - not a bad way to finish the day.

Being a gaylord

Met up with McFiend yesterday armed with trad gear, sport gear and a bouldering mat as the weather was looking a tad ominous and so having as many options available as possible seemed like a good idea. After a while spent talking and generally catching up we went off to have a look at Hen Cloud but bailed before we got to the crag as it was plainly obvious that it wasn't going to be in nick - Hen Cloud was in the cloud so to speak.

Therefore plan B was put into operation - Smalldale Quarry for some bolted action and while the thought of climbing in a grotty quarry of bolted limestone wasn't the most thrilling of things to be doing but it was better than nothing. McFiend showed that he had not lost any of his ability to climb in a grotty quarry of bolted limestone with relative ease which was more than could be said for me - decided to warm up on a 5 and it kicked my arse! This can be put down to many things - having concerns about my shoulder before starting off, not being on a piece of string since Wales last year, having no routes fitness and being plainly unfit in general, too much drinking in the days previous and a 450 mile round trip to look at a van two days earlier. All of these factors contributed to a massive display of punterness, featuring overgripping, swearing, reading the route badly and getting hideously scared. My forearms felt like they had been remade out of super compressed lead by the time I got to the second bolt and it didn't get much better the rest of the way as I dogged up the route in a style that would be called in a fit of extreme charity haphazard.

McFiend then made short work of something else and it was my second lead of the day, this time weighing in at a mighty 6a and it went much better (it couldn't have gone any worse). Still got pumped, still got scared and still had a real struggle reading the route but managed to make it to the fourth bolt and was inches off the 5th before having to downclimb and rest when I couldn't figure out the sequence - it later transpired that I missed an undercut which would have allowed me to clip the bolt. After resting I looked at the route some more - I couldn't see a way of getting to the fifth bolt and even if I had it looked like some nasty run out slab climbing to the top (there was a bolt but I couldn't see it). Taking this into consideration I decided that I had put myself through enough trauma for the day and the thought of taking a huge whipper on a slab going for the top had zero appeal so I backed off.

Overall it wasn't a wasted day - the shoulder injury seems to be fine after treatment last week, I got back on a piece of string again and didn't do that badly considering I was in pretty bad shape overall - it just needs more application and a bit more time getting used to grotty quarried bolted limestone. I must be mad...

Back on the trad gang?

Fiend is in the area and is keen to be doing some trad bollox today. I volunteered myself for action after sinking three pints of the Sheaf's finest anaesthetic to combat the ill effects of driving to Ashford (Kent) and back on Monday to look at a van for a mate.

I am now feeling the full effect of that little 450 mile round trip as it would appear that myself and VW seats were not designed to exist happily together for any long period of time. This situation is probably not helped by the fact that my seat did 148k with a fat Lancastrian arse sat on it prior to me taking ownership of pROJECT mAYHEM so somewhere in between now and Font I need to find a replacement seat that I can live with for more than a few miles to bolt into place. Quite when that will be is open to debate as my next task is to get a couple of quotes for the clutch to be replaced and a service done. Fuck me it's expensive owning a van but at least with those tasks out of the way the clutch won't need doing for another 60k+ and the service is good for 20k. If that wasn't enough I worked out yesterday that I will have to get the cam belt done in the next 10k miles. I will enquire about the cost while getting the other work done but I suspect it is going to be a horror show of a job (read as bloody bastard expensive) and it will have to wait for another few miles as yet before the money becomes available.

Also getting the boys trip to Font under starters orders - Lord Sloper of Grindleford has decreed that he will be there from Monday to Friday so now it is time to start getting the ferry booked, get the Gite sorted and the rest of the stuff under way. Damn I am syked for this trip but first I need to get the stag do for my brother arranged as that is only six (or seven, if luck is with me) weeks away.

So much to do and so little time and I have just remembered that I have got to drive to Portsmouth and back on Monday - my bones are aching at the thought of it all...