Deviant Behaviour

My name is Butters - today I went bouldering at Stoney Middleton and to my eternal shame I enjoyed myself - I am a deviant.

Tomorrow I will be at Stanage Popular End flagellating myself with birch twigs in an attempt to cure this shameful behaviour.

Rubicon 1, Butters 0

Back to Rubicon today with the intention of having another go at the start of A Miller's Tale - met Ru and Sarah on the walk in and had a quick chat with them and then onwards to a deserted crag. Most surprising - just the crag and me which retrospectively was probably just as well.

Tried the warm up traverse and it is starting to feel a bit more like the Font 5 that it is given in that I am getting that bit further into the meat of the problem consistently but still haven't done it yet which is a bit frustrating. I really should be able to do a Font5 in less time than this even if it is a big pumpy traverse on polished footholds.

That's not the point though - the point was that I climbed like I was made of lead - mega flash pump straight from the off and after ridding my arms of the worst of that I tried again with similar results. After the second attempt I decided that getting on A Miller's Tale was not going to happen and so settled in for a stamina (hah!) session for an hour or so with long rests in between each attempt.

A Miller's Tale

The weather was actually good enough to go climbing today after the spell of Northern summer that we have been experiencing since I got back from my brothers wedding. Given this unseasonable spell and wishing to take full advantage of it, it was off to Rubicon with the Flipper to see what was what.

Ran into the Lagerstarfish at the crag and had a chat with him - got a recommendation for a 6b to look at sometime soon and after the usual sitting about and cogitating it was onto the "easy" traverse to warm up. It actually felt OK today which was nice - the last time I was on it I just got beasted and it felt hard as nails but even with a better feel to it, it is still nowhere near the 5 (or 5+) grade it gets given as far as I am concerned. Sat about some more and got chatting to a guy I met at Owler Tor a few months back - turns out his name is Chris which he probably told me last time but since he couldn't remember my name either I refuse to feel bad about it. More dossing ensued while we watched three guys make Rubicon Wall look piss and then it was off to have a look at A Miller's Tale.

It is just one of those problems where you look at it and think it will be interesting. Felt the starting holds and tried a few different ways of starting it before settling on a method that allowed me to be pretty static and then it was a matter of sticking my right foot on the huge but a bit polished foothold and trusting it. The first couple of times I slid off the side of it experiencing a rather painful knee\limestone interface in the process but once I had gained a bit of trust in it then it was just a matter of trusting it some more. Semi static move to the good sidepull, compress across the shoulders to stay on and then drop a huge flag out to the right with the left foot - just one of those moves where the more you do it the better it gets - it's truly beautiful. Once you have done this and you realise you are still on the wall then go with the left hand to the slot as static as possible which if you have done everything right should feel relatively easy (well easy as it can anyway).

It is at this point where the hard work kicks in - it feels (to me anyway) that the obvious move is to go again with the left hand which contradicts the "accepted science" behind climbing movement and the fact that I am blowing the foothold when I hit it backs this up. The solution? Ignore "accepted science"! Compress some more on that sidepull and pull that bit harder on the "good" crimp you hit with the left - sometimes you have to ignore the science and just go with what feels right. Plaster that foot back on and get stable then strike the next crimp with the right hand and that was about as far as it went tonight - I held the crimp with the right once and it feels pretty good but probably more important is that I feel the problem will go.

Roll on Friday when round two commences - as for the fact that I seem to be enjoying the perversity that is polished Peak Limestone? Just treat it like "accepted science"...

Best Man's Speech of Doom

The speech finally hit my in box on Friday though I was not aware of its arrival till the Saturday when I logged on. This is partly down to the appalling mobile phone coverage that afflicts Suffolk and in equal parts due to me not bothering to charge my phone. Anyway it was there at last but a hectic rush on the Saturday meant that I wrote it out long hand between 2PM and 3PM that afternoon with the intention of going over it a few times when time allowed. Time subsequently allowed me nothing and the first chance I got to look at it was when I was called upon to present it to the assembled masses at the wedding. It was at this point I froze - it would be no exaggeration to say that I completely and utterly seized and wished that the ground would open up and swallow me. After what seemed like an eternity of looking at these sheets of paper that had somehow translated themselves in a fit of spite to a combination of hieroglyphics and Cyrillic script and a couple of false starts I put the offending sheets back in my pocket and came up with what I could remember off the top of my head.

Quite what I said I have no idea but it seemed to work - I am now hoping that no one recorded the event and it will eventually become the stuff of legend and myth and that will be that.

Other than my dying at the vital moment it all went swimmingly well as far as I can remember.

Countdown

Two days and counting till my brothers wedding - just got to get the rest of the seemingly millions of things I have got to do sorted and that will be that.

The speech is sort of written - I decided in my infinite wisdom that I would combine things that I really don't like doing (writing a speech) with things I do like doing (having a pint in the Sheaf). A great plan in theory and it all started so well till about the third pint at which point my already limited resources of inspiration dried up. Ended up getting rather drunk and something that was passable at best so I got on the phone to the Dear Boy Philip and with the promise of beer as a reward asked him to edit it out for me. This has been done but as yet no speech has been mailed back to me - when I spoke to him last night he had done the editing but his laptop was running out of battery and he was about to board a ferry to France. Therefore he was going to try and charge the battery on the ferry and then send the revised speech back to me using WiFi from a Maccy D's or somewhere similar when in France. Mmmm.

Plan for the rest of today is to get all the odd jobs out of the way and then spend an hour or so at Pleasley doing a few problems - hopefully it will be in nick as we had a fair bit of rain yesterday but since it has been so dry I can't imagine that there will be much run off or seepage. From there it is back south to the sounds of Adam Beyer, Laurent Garnier and a few other choice DJ sets to keep me sane.

Wish me luck - I have the feeling that I am going to need it...

Odd and sods

Another set of four night shifts has been consigned to history and the countdown to my brothers wedding starts - I have the basis of the best man's speech written down and so once I have finished rambling here I have got to crack on with that.

I woke up last Thursday in what can best be called an absolutely foul mood - quite what was causing it I have no idea but I needed to do something so I went down to Rubicon to have another go at the traverse. I have now managed to complete the second part once which is kind of good in some ways, slightly depressing in others but the reality is that it got me out of my mental state of hubris which was all I really wanted from the day. Started off by throwing a beer mat on the ground a couple of moves past my highpoint (surely a contradiction with a traverse) and made that first time which I was pleased about so moved it down to the red streak as my next aim. Cue lots and lots of failure - I just kept getting swamped with a tsunami of pump once I hit the second section and while I knew it was over gripping that was causing it knowing this doesn't actually mean that you can stop it. Time for a change of plan - I knew that I had the first section pretty much wired so decided to eliminate that and start at the end and work the second section. I also admitted to the fact that I have got no stamina at the minute and so I sat about for ages (think along the lines of epochs here) getting my feeble arms to a non-pumped state and then put myself on timed burns at it. The plan was to have an attempt and then give myself five minutes recovery time before the next go - it says a lot that five minutes wasn't enough for my forearms to recover but the only way to get better is to push a bit harder outside of the comfort zone. Somewhere in this torturous set of attempts I managed to get past the beer mat to the end of the second section proper - it was just agonised slapping from one good handhold to the next with the sole aim of making one more move, moving feet and repeating until failure but it felt good all the same. Nice setting with a bit of a breeze and sunshine followed by a fantastic pint of Barnsley Bitter and some Sheffield tapas - welcome back to humanity.

Yesterday I watched the finals of the Bouldering World Cup on the internet - I wanted to be there in person but stuff got in the way so had to settle for the streamed experience instead. All in all it was good - the only real criticism I had was that they really should have the clock showing so that you know how long the competitors have left to attempt the problem but it worked well other than that. Some of the comments on the "chat" function were also amusing - various comments abounded about the first men's problem as it featured the ignoble art of chimneying and a lot of people just couldn't get the fact that you can set a good problem on something that is not 45 degrees overhanging minimum.

Seeing the beast that is Adam Ondra casually dispatch the first three problems was equally dismaying and welcomed as it meant that full attention could be transferred to Natalija Gros instead who in her own way is equally beastly. The way she did the crux move on the second (I think) problem was a sight to behold. While all the other competitors went for leaping across in various states of gazelle like grace she just did the splits across the two holds, got what looked a less than ideal handhold, crushed it and rocked over somehow - a fine effort indeed.

The other huge surprise was Ondra falling off the last problem not once but twice - the crux was reminiscent to the start of the crux to Tody's Wall (the move onto the block) but a bit harder and then getting a huge hold out behind your head. Once you figured out that you had to be facing the huge hold and dropping onto it then the rest of the problem was "easy" in comparison but seeing Ondra fail to flash it after the ease with which he dispatched the other three final problems was somehow shocking.

Right - better crack on with the best man's speech. Back to Rubicon tomorrow to see if progress can be made on the traverse and try a few other problems I think and then Pleasley on Thursday as it is only a short diversion from there on the way back South.