Will it blend?

Got recommended this site by a mate - in a nut shell it is a rather amusing sales pitch for a blender. However it is no ordinary blender this is the Chuck Norris of the blender world as you can see below:

Will it blend an iPad?



Not too much of a problem. Will it blend glow sticks?



Yep - Bic Lighters could be amusing...



Damn that is one good blender!

World Police And Friendly Fire

Probably would have been better off titling this "OW" but it sounds rather boring so I have appropriated another song title from GY!BE in an effort (quite probably wasted) to appear interesting.

Anyway the shoulder is hopefully sorted - just a minor strain that had caused some sort of random chain reaction throughout the rest of my shoulder which was affecting my ability to lock off and the like. Thirty minutes of massage, ultrasound and general manipulation of my spine and neck seems to have knocked the worst out of it though it is rather stiff this morning to say the least. As a result it looks like no climbing for the next few days - just a fair degree of after physio stuff and then test it out and maybe another session of physio. Hurrah!

Broken Horse on Kicking Hill

Went to Owler Tor yesterday (or is it Over Owler Tor) for a bimble about and to try a couple of the easier lines that I haven't done yet. Upon arriving I was most surprised to find that I wasn't the only one there but instead had to share the crag with someone. Was nice seeing someone else up there - chatted for a while and gave a bit of beta for a couple of the problems with the usual caveat that I am crap and tend to make easy things hard. The crimp on Wafery Flake felt pretty bad but even had conditions been better I think I would have struggled - I have noticed lately that I am not getting any power through my legs and this is one of those problems that require it as well as the ability to pull on a poor crimp. Throw in a recurrence of a slight shoulder problem that I have had for the last month as an additional excuse and it really wasn't going down.

Having failed so miserably it would have been prudent to just bugger off home and sack off the day but instead I decided to bail to Apparent North to try and another one of my projects - the Lower Cube Traverse. Looking back it was a pretty dumb idea - here I am nursing a tweaky shoulder and trying a problem that is pretty shoulder intensive. Had a couple of goes - realised that it was not doing me any favours whatsoever and then decided to do a few old faves and then sacked it off.

Felt pretty dispirited about it all when I left - I didn't climb badly but then I wouldn't go as far as saying I climbed well either - I just felt that I hadn't achieved what I wanted to. Still the one good thing to come out of it is that I am off to see John to get the problem looked at tonight - it has been coming and going for the best part of a month now and it is time to get it resolved.

Stardate -312682.191780822

According to my one constant reader I can not live on syke alone but must combine it with lots of rad to live a healthy balanced life. Given this sage advice I have been trying to do more rad which is proving easier now that the van is insured again though the levels will drop when the credit card bill falls through my letter box.

But that is an aside - got out to Burbage North with the Flipper last night. Warmed up on the first main wall or to be slightly more honest got scared doing 4a moves above a mat that seemed to be the size of a postage stamp and then down-climbed again. Made lots of excuses that this was antagonistic training etc. and wandered down the crag to the Three Bears.

I have blogged about the Three Bears before - 9 problems which are slightly scrittly but nice enough climbing between breaks. It is one of those crags where the short and\or those not having much confidence in their footwork will suffer but I just about got away with it and sent all of the problems except the easiest which we deemed rubbish yarding between huge holds and therefore beneath us.

From there we went onto the Cube block situated about 50 yards back up the valley. I had tried the left hand problem before given a grade of Doodle Bug 1 (5b) and thought at the time it was way out but put it down to thin skin or some such thing. Revisiting it last night proved that it is almost certainly undergraded - it is tough, balancy, steep and the footholds are almost non-existent above the low break. As Flipper put it - either we are climbing really badly or it isn't 5b. Regardless of that it is a striking problem and one that I am going to keep revisiting as I made a bit of progress on it last night and managed to get to the second break static once. The break isn't good but it could be worse and I was able to hang it and match it but it all went a bit wrong after that as my feet popped and I hung in there in a style not dissimilar to that of Wile E. Coyote - feet thrashing away desperately trying to get something to stick before dropping off. Therein lies the other issue with this problem - the landing slopes away and falling off from higher up is going to result in a slide down the valley (hopefully with the bouldering mat) that Johnny Dawes would be proud of. Knowing this isn't helped by having looked at it from the side - the third break isn't any better than the second and the top is a gritstone horror show of slopeyness. Going to need a lot of rad and syke to get it topped out for sure.

Unexpectedly syked

It has to be said that the power of the SYKE is strong at the minute - probably due to the weather being gloriously sunny and just plain pleasant. A fine time to be out on the grit for the afternoon before rolling into work at 7PM feeling battered but elated that yet another project has been dispatched you would think. Unfortunately for me the current spell of glorious weather has also arrived at the time where shit needs to be done like obtaining van insurance and other assorted things that can only be done during the day as that is when normal people work.

It has to be said that it's a real ball ache having to hunt around to get a decent price for these things and even more so when the usual comparison websites don't come up with a better price immediately. However thanks to modern technology you can get a few ideas of who to ring for a modified van quote that will not be the monetary equivalent of rape. Anyway the van insurance will be in the bag by tomorrow night at a whacking £150 cheaper than the renewal quote.

From there it is the start of organising my brothers stag do which is less than 2 months away . We have a plan and now my poor credit card is going to have to start putting it into action - I feel for my credit card.

One really good thing was that I got the EGR (Exhaust Gas Recirculation - a bloody stupid idea at the best of times) blanked off on the van. Took about an hour and the difference is amazing - I have something that could be called torque below 2000 revs now. Bloody brilliant mod and on the grand scale of expense that the van has been at times it was worth every part of the seven odd quid it cost me for the plate and the sealant. It is so good it almost makes it worth while not being able to go climbing...

Mr. Smooth pictures

Cheers to the Monk of Crush for forwarding these onto me - thankfully they don't show the true wobbliness of the ascent.

I should also explain the enormous Lapis brush as mentioned in the title of the previous post. The Monk of Crush mentioned that he had got hold of this Lapis brush on the drive up but thought nothing more of it until I saw it at the crag. It is actually a shoe brush of some description and not only is it huge but it is also a seriously effective piece of kit. Maybe the Mammut boys will buy some as they have been reportedly plastering the Peak in chalk while doing some very fine ascents.

The story of the enormous Lapis brush and other tall tales.

Hit Caley today with Broken Beagle (who was adopting a state of extreme mummification on more than one digit) and the Monk of Crush a.k.a. Tim (he doesn't drink and he's done 7c+) and had a bloody blinding day. Warmed up and everything seemed to going rather well so off to the ultra classic Font6a Mr. Smooth - got to my highpoint (or not very highpoint) on the first attempt and then got it in the bag on the second go. As soon as my left foot stuck on the slopey hold I just went into auto pilot and hit the top grinning like a loon. The Monk of Crush (who had gone to pray to his gods for lots of success or to answer a call of nature at the moment of my beastliness) asked me if I had used the arête to which my reply was "Buggered if I know". Armed with a bit of beta from myself he then proceeded to flash it in some style.

From there I tried the Font6b on The Horn and having made some progress but not feeling that confident it was off to the Roof of The World area. Perhaps it was the rarefied atmosphere that little bit higher up the crag which did it but once there I dispatched Font6b first time and quickly followed that up with a two try success on another. In all honesty they felt a lot closer to Font6a (flash) and Font6a+ with a dodgy landing to me so in all honesty I don't know if I can claim to have finally done Font 6b yet. Would be made up if I have and doubly so if I finally did it with a flash attempt but there is a bit of a lingering doubt in my mind.

After that I chilled and did some spotting and then it was back to pROJECT mAYHEM to go for a well earned pint. This was where things started to go a bit wrong as I stuck the keys in the ignition to get the stereo going (maybe to show it off a bit) and after that I just slammed the back doors shut and said goodbye to Berie, Joy, associated kids and the dog. Having done that we then went to get into pROJECT mAYHEM only to find that it was locked very, very shut - fuck, fuck, fuck! I have no idea how it happened but we found ourselves by the Road of Death on the outside of a van with the keys in the ignition and me feeling like a prize pillock. Cue a call to the AA and 40 minutes of standing about feeling rather sheepish until a "Very, very nice man" got back into the van and let us go on our way.

Burbage North tomorrow if the weather holds good - what can possibly go wrong?

Grit

Had my first session on the grit for a while last night at the Burbage boulders with Flipper. Nothing hard went down - more a matter of doing the old favourites and getting back into the swing of things really but a really pleasant spring evening bimbling about and watching someone trying hard on Goliath and taking some decent falls more than once in the process. Don't think it went down but kudos to whoever it was for getting back on it repeatedly in what sounded like an increasingly frustrating experience.

Did all the stuff on the back of the Cobra block and then did the traverse. Not sure if the traverse is a first for me - I can't recall doing it before but what is sure was that it was a tick of awesome ineptitude - feet skittering and generally looking like a grade A punter on it - welcome back to grit! From there went onto the Pock block, Pick went down easily, Pock went down with a display of excessive crimping and pulling hard as it had been sat in the sun all day and then we got rather scared on Pock Man. Now this is a problem that I have done before (and fell off an equal number of times) and I want to do it in a better style than just stretching like there is no tomorrow and walking my fingers over the top but last night was not going to be the night - after a few attempts we succumbed to the fear and walked on.

After that we did a few problems on the Brick, a few on the Pig and finished off at the Tank boulder. Finally got some decent beta on the traverse of this and now have a method of doing the drop down to the side pull - it's still a bit stretched but it's doable - just got to get the footwork a little better and hopefully one of my many projects can be laid to rest.

Today is a rest day, I was hoping to blank off the EGR on pROJECT mAYHEM but the gasket sealant hasn't arrived in the post as hoped and then the plan looks like Caley tomorrow with Broken Beagle and then possibly a return visit to the Three Bears at Burbage on Monday with Flipper.

Bugger Blackpool!

My theory was correct with regard to my wiring dilemma and after altering it to the new configuration no more blown fuses. This is good as it was getting frustrating but it also means that I have a surplus supply of 7.5 amp mini fuses so if you are ever in need of one just get in touch as I have plenty to spare.

Getting that sorted was the start of a good (albeit bloody long) weekend on pROJECT mAYHEM - finished off the wiring on the Friday, ripped out the front passengers seat, ran the wires down the B pillar, found out the wires were not long enough, extended the wires and then put everything back together again. Having got that out of the way I then ran the wires for the split relay charger under the van, found out that the conduit was not big enough to accommodate the power cable for the amps and the cable for the split charger, tried to force it anyway before giving up in frustration and deciding to cloth wrap the lot instead. Connected everything up and decided to call it a day at sometime after 7PM.

Saturday I ripped the doors apart, fitted the motors for the electric windows, dynamatted round the speaker apertures, behind the speaker apertures and also on the backs of the door cards, tidied up the wiring and then put it all back together again. Cranked up the stereo and no more rattle from the doors - RESULT!! Following that I wired up the electric windows, tested them and was surprised to say that they worked apart from a minor cock up with connecting to a permanent +ve instead of an ignition +ve resulting in taking the glove box out (again) removing the radio (again) connecting to the right wire and then removing acres of skin off the back of my hands (again) putting the radio back in. It was only a minor cock up but bejeezus it was taxing on the patience to say the least. Finally finished at nearly 8PM and was very glad to leave the lock-up and adjourn to Tesco's for a much needed bottle of wine which disappeared somewhere far too quickly for my liking.

Compared to the previous two days Sunday was a breeze, ran through a cable that I had forgotten about the day before, got the battery fitted under the passenger seat, got the split charger and all the rest of the fuse boxes and the like installed and tidied the lot up. Again it all worked so my ability to wire auto electrics is either getting better or pROJECT mAYHEM has realised that resistance is futile. Finished off by getting the other roof panel installed, bypassing a dry soldered joint to one of the lights connections and then moving the switches to the correct places on the board. Moving the switches resulted in a couple more blown fuses (not those of the 7.5 Amp mini variety though) and that was that.

Will get some pics over the next couple of days of pROJECT mAYHEM illuminations in all its glory!

Fat Knacker

Quick round up of the last few days.

Climbingworks on Wednesday and a new circuit - managed 36 out of the 40 problems but I was climbing like a fat knacker to say the least. Vertical problems and slabs were OK most of the time - I managed to flash most of those but when the steepness kicked in I was a dead man walking. Flipper on the other hand flashed 38 of them and the other two he was done for by reach related issues as usual. Still it's a very good circuit all in all - technical and featuring nice movement and as an added bonus the Fiendometer quotient (flange to climber ratio) was in the high 8's - it was like your very own DFBWGC wall.

Spent yesterday blowing fuses at a rapid rate of knots trying to wire up the interior lights in pROJECT mAYHEM. Hopefully this is now going to be an issue of the past after a brainwave this morning caused me to wonder why I was so stupid in the first place to think that the way I was doing it would ever work. The new theory also makes sense in my head whereas the old one didn't - a classic scenario of being too close to something to see the obvious errors in the plan really. The best I can liken it to is someone pointing out the obvious beta to a problem that you have been sieging for ages. In retrospect it all seems so obvious but at the time you just get obsessed with a duff sequence that you think must work and it is your own failings that mean it isn't happening. All I need now is to rewire the switch and get some more fuses to test the revised plan.

Following on from that I went to see Kick Ass - a fucking excellent movie that will become a cult classic. Snappy dialogue, a great script and some really funny moments - go and see it.

BOOM!!

The first of the VERY stripey roof panels is in place and once that was done then the important part of the job became a reality which was to get the rear speakers in. Now I can really see some progress being made! Couple of slight issues that I know of at the minute - one of the LED's in the panel is not working so it is just going to be a matter of time until it annoys me to the point where I am compelled to fix it. The other one is that the fade on the the radio is back to front but that is getting put down as an idiosyncrasy of pROJECT mAYHEM due to the amount of work needing to be done to correct this small error is huge.

Talking of huge - look at that little bundle of wires that I have got to sort out and connect to different switches - should be fun...

Did I mention that it sounds bloody brilliant by the way? Was a good moment when I fired up the stereo and it all sprang into resplendent tuneful life. Even so there is still the vibration from the passenger door speaker which has been reduced in annoyance levels but I still know it is there so that is going to have to be fixed soon before it really does my head in.

Stuff, stuff and more stuff.

The weather actually turned out half decent yesterday afternoon so I got cracking on pROJECT mAYHEM for a while. Finished off the wiring looms and got those cable tied in so they are ready to be run down the B pillar when we eventually get a couple of consecutive days worth of decent weather whenever that will be. Also stripped out the reversing camera and painted the hole where the camera goes with a couple of coats of Hammerite to make sure that any idea of rusting is stopped in its tracks.

After that I got side tracked with a stereo wiring issue on some kids car. It has been a while since I saw a wiring job done with such a lack of skill - it was a classic example of letting a monkey do something that they have the minimal knowledge required to get the end result. Honestly the Albanian Rat Hound could have done a better job of it. As if the god awful state of the wiring wasn't enough as final insult to everything the radio had blown a fuse. The usual thing to do in this situation is to buy a new fuse and trying to figure out why it blew in the first place but the Johnny Cock-Shaft option was to wrap the fuse with a strip of copper wire! Fucking monkeys!! From what I can tell this prize piece of engineering has resulted in the live running to the radio burning out so I sent him off to buy a new fuse for the radio and an in-line fuse as I am going to have to run a new live feed in and there is no way that it is going in without some sort of safety mechanism in place. Thankfully the rain saved me from having any further dealings with it yesterday but assuming that the whole thing doesn't catch fire first it will have to be looked at soon. I can see that I will also end up sorting out his sub which has been wired in with a similar skill level from the brief look I had yesterday - expect some more prime ranting when I get round to dealing with that!

After getting away from that it was off to a really quiet Climbingworks with the Flipper - excellent session all round and contrary to expectation I flashed another CWIF problem which I was rather pleased about - probably 6a+ or really soft 6b but still got it sent first go. Did a load of other stuff - if it looked good we tried it and even though we didn't seem to be pushing it that hard I was ragged after two hours. My tips felt like they were on fire which was probably a result of trying a particularly savage CWIF problem featuring an overhanging arête and ridiculously small holds - bloody brutal and equally brilliant at the same time. One thing I can tell is that I am getting some raw power back again and what I consider to be a base level problem is going up all the time - something that I would have expected to take three or fours goes a fortnight ago I now think I should flash. The one area that's proving to be a big weakness at the minute is pulling hard on small holds (half digit sized) - I can hold them fine but just can not do anything with them which is frustrating. Anyway it will come soon I hope but I suspect that it won't be before next Wednesday...

Minimal Progress

Got a bit done on pROJECT mAYHEM yesterday and was hoping for good things from the weather today but it seems to be mainly intermittent hail showers at the minute which is not good. Still one must persist so I am going to try and finish off a few small tasks in between the showers and then off to the Climbingworks tonight with Flipper and Twitter. Maybe I will flash another one of the CWIF qualifying problems though I suspect that in reality I found the one soft problem in the entire circuit and flailed up it manfully because every other problem I tried gave a whole new meaning to the expression "hard as nails".