Spaghetti anyone?

Take one standard VW roof panel, drill lots and lots of holes in it, cover with nice stripey material and add LED's in a vast number. Then tape them all down nicely so that it is nice and neat.

Lovely!

Then proceed to solder them all to other bits of wire to link them together. In an effort to hide the resulting mess (or maybe to keep the wires in place) add vast amounts of duct tape.

Repeat the process on the other roof panel.

Turn over and hopefully it will look a lot neater than the back...

I have also made up three of the four wiring looms to connect stuff to the incredibly neat "magic box" that takes care of the power supply\battery charging\fuse box side of things - all I need now is for the roll of tape to turn up to wrap the loom for the reversing camera. Other than that I need to do a bit more soldering so that the reversing camera has power, remove the passenger seat, run all the looms in which you can't do this without removing the passenger seat (thanks VW) chop out five LED's that would be hitting one of the roof beams if I left them in, patch up the holes where the LED's used to be, put all the roof panels in, build the switch box so that I can turn the scores of LED's etc. on and off, wire the switch box, test everything, wire up the rear speakers, test again, run in the power supply for the "magic box", refit the passengers seat, fit the "magic box", fit the leisure battery, test some more and that will hopefully be the electrics sorted. If I have doubted my sanity at any time during the construction of pROJECT mAYHEM it is probably about now as the weather has decided fuck me over big time - it has decided that Spring has either not arrived yet or it is over for this year and we have just gone into Summer which is obviously the wet season as any climber well knows!

More 'works related stuff

Went to the Climbingworks with Flipper and met my mate Duncan (another Duncan, not the Broken Beagle) down there. Was feeling a bit trashed after a very frustrating day sorting out the roof panel on pROJECT mAYHEM but after a few easy problems had been dispatched it was time to get on it. Did a few Black problems, some of which I had done before and some I hadn't and threw in a few Purples, Purple and Pink Spots and Reds to really work things out. All in all it was an hour and a half of relentless pulling hard and did I know about it today - I am officially trashed. Didn't bother with the campus board as that would just have been a bridge too far - getting 20 press-ups done at the end of the session near killed me as it was.

Anyway hopefully either the Black circuit or the Purple will get changed soon - the Black has been up since before Christmas and it really starting to show its age but the Purple is in as bad if not worse state. The Purple circuit is probably at the upper end of my limit but the few problems that I have done are really good - loads of slopers requiring a lot of shoulder power and a fair degree of core strength and technique as well. The problem is that it the almost unanimously slopey holds (which is half of the reason why it is so good in the first place) are now caked in multiple layers of chalk and grime. Sure they could be brushed but one suspects that it would be a full on work out just to clean half of the holds on half of the problems. Come on you Climbingworks chaps, get to it and give us some nice new circuits at our level to play on!

Bringing out the A-Game

Saturday night featured copious amounts of beer, vodka and Red Bull before finally culminating in revisiting the Leadmill and then getting in sometime around 2.30AM armed with a greasy kebab and fries.

Given this bringing out the A-Game was never going to be much of an option when I finally joined Flipper at the Climbingworks just before 3PM the following day. In all honesty there would be a necessity to add some more letters to the alphabet to describe the sorry state that was my game when I got there and this transferred directly to my feeble thrashings on the first few greens problems in an effort to warm up. From there it was on the the remaining black problems that hadn't been done the session before and things slowly started to improve - it wasn't a tour de force by any means but at least it wasn't a total waste of an afternoon. As an after thought I decided to have a quick campus and amazed myself by being able to do 1-3-5 on the second largest set of rungs and 1-4 on my left on the largest set. 1-4 on my right was not happening though - I could hit the rung but the extra inch or so to latch it wasn't happening but all in all I was pretty impressed given I a was a fat hungover knacker! Next time the mission is to have a go at the new red circuit, nail 1-4 on my right and then try 1-4-6 on both - ah the joys of being foolish!