Running in Blackhill

(instead of one picture tuesday)

A student of mine ran in Blackhill a couple of weeks ago. He described the run as challenging, steep, with very high ledges and gigantic boulders. Of course, as with 6 Foot Track, I immediately jumped to the challenge, without, mind you, knowing what I got myself into. On a side note, I have just read the description of 6 Foot Track Marathon. Like just. After two  years or so since I registered for it. After I read it, I curled up in a corner and cried. I may be batshit crazy, but I had just realized that I am stoopid.

Coming back to Blackhill. My first attempt to run it had me run from home to Blackhill, run there for a bit and then get Marian to pick me up. That didn't succeed very well: after 20 or so km and within 2 km of reaching Blackhill, I called Marian because I was so bored with the concrete. Run failed.

The second time around was much better. Drove to Blackhill, jumped out of the car and proceeded to run up a trail to the summit. The run was steep and narrow but nothing as I was expecting. Sure, some of the ledges were pretty high for me, but then again that is not very hard to achieve. And sure, I did stop sometimes, but that was mostly because I'm old. And fatt. But nothing spectacular, with the exception of the beautiful sunset and the view across the city.

I got to the top of it very puzzled. "Wuss!" I decided about the previous runner. "If he thought that that was difficult, let him come to Chambers Gully! Pfft!" I followed a track towards descending the hill. And then I got to the real running track. Jesus christ!!! There were boulders at least my size, ledges that seem to reach my armpit (again, not very difficult), and my descent run was reduced to a crawl. WHAT THE FUCK is this?! I pondered while trying to get my ass of the hill as quick as possible. Because you see, a trait of being stoopid is that one admires the sunset, takes plenty of pictures etc., and then realizes ten minutes later that one is in the middle of the woods, without any soul around, in the middle of the night, but without a headlamp. Life is good.

A tourist still

On Thursday I was supposed to go to meet a fellow teacher I do outreach with. We were supposed to meet at the University of Adelaide Wetlands. Now if you tell any of my colleagues this, they will straightaway say take fullarton then take a right on Cross road.

I did so, but I also asked google, who decided that going straight on fullarton road was the way to go. So i took google's advice and got to the Adelaide agricultural high school. I asked at the reception about the meeting and was quickly ushered after some people on a tour of the high school, and its lending library. Turns out the lending library was a menagerie with all sorts of little animals and associated activity sheets. Did you know that those black lizards that look like tree stumps (aka the shinglebacks) mate for life? Also, their tail resembled their head and they use this sneakily to fool prey by walking backwards to it: prey will then run behind the lizard, i.e., to its head, and presto, death!

The meeting went on for half an hour or so, during which time I petted around three types of lizards, one frog, one snake, and one possum. It was only when we got to the possum that I texted my teacher and asked him where the fuck was he*, and found out I was in the totally wrong place. Stood up suddenly and left. Very rude of me. Got to the meeting with only a few cheese bits left. Sigh.


*not my exact words

One picture Tuesday

My nuts are here!!!

I was going to post a long post about running in Blackhilll but will leave that for tomorrow. My nuts are here! Unfortunately, the shop that sold these nuts did not sell any buckets of stainless steel balls. Will have to keep looking.

A series of unfortunate events

1. Come to work, buy and drink one coffee (regular latte, extra shot)
2. Colleague comes to work and we go to the tea room for ... coffee.
3. Find out that somebody had put vanilla cinnamon coffee beans in the grinder. We find this out while drinking our lattes.
4. Clean grinder (by this time it is 7:45 am)
5. Have an espresso much much later, at around 9:30 am. A proper one, no cinnamon, no fucking vanilla.
6. Win a bet with PhD student, earn a latte. With an extra shot. (Not sure if I actually drank this one)
7. Sit through a 2 hour meeting. By now it is 11:45am.
8. Lunch will be soon, at 12!
9. Person comes in my office just before lunch, asking stoopid question, demanding stoopid things from me.
10. Off with his head!!
11. Go to lunch.
12. Feel guilty for number 10, and therefore,
13. Come back to work, buy and drink one coffee.

One picture Tuesday

I have two of these in my fridge. May add them to my omelete tomorrow morning. And I might just miss work because of that, but at least I will have fun!!

As per wikipedia:

"The Ghost Pepper (Bhut Jolokia)^[1][2] is a chili pepper previously recognized by Guinness World Records as the hottest pepper in the world. The pepper is also known as Bhut Jolokia, ghost pepper, ghost chile pepper, red naga chilli, andghost chile.^[3][4][5]

The Bhut Jolokia is an interspecific hybrid cultivated in the Indian states of Nagaland and Assam and parts of neighbouring Bangladesh.^[6][7] It grows in the Indian states of Assam, Nagaland and Manipur. It can also be found in rural Sri Lanka where it is known as Nai Mirris (cobra chili). There was initially some confusion and disagreement about whether the Bhut was a Capsicum frutescens^[8] or a Capsicum chinense pepper, but DNA tests showed it to be an interspecies hybrid, mostly C. chinense with some C. frutescens genes.^[9]

In 2007, Guinness World Records certified that the Ghost Pepper (Bhut Jolokia) was the world's hottest chili pepper, 400 times hotter than Tabasco sauce; however, in 2011 it has since been superseded by the Trinidad Moruga Scorpion.^[10] In March 5, 2012, some ghost peppers tested hotter than the scorpion pepper varieties. Now the ghost pepper and scorpion pepper are tied for the world's hottest pepper."

The Trinidad Moruga Scorpion sounds most interesting as well!!

Trad leading 101. Part 1.

Last weekend was the weekend that will probably change my life forever. It started with Josh and Nat deciding to go on a one-year (more or less!) bouldering trip covering the whole wide universe. And yes, before you ask, I am terribly envious and yes I wish I would do that (soon though!). And yes, I am sad to see them go, but also extremely happy, as Josh decided to lend me his rack*! Woo hoo!

Excitement aside, last weekend we went to Morialta for my first ever trad lead. I do not count the other trad lead in New Zealand as my first, because then I had Lydia Bradey watch over me like a hawk. This one was the first lead ever in which the chances of me hitting the hard hard ground should I fall on my lead were probably very close to 50%, sadly. And yes, I aim to bring that to as low as possible in the future. 

I only lead routes in the 11s which are way way below what I (think) I can normally lead. This is me before my first route.

The first thing one notices while trad leading is that one needs to wear very comfortable shoes. Either that, or one needs to get very quick and very precise at placing gear, lest one's eyes start to pop out because one's shoes are too tight. So yes, wear comfortable climbing shoes. 

It took me about an hour to do the first 11, which is not very high as you can see. I struggled and I fumbled with the gear,  I re-placed wires because they came out while I was trying to clip them. Other wires came out while I was clipping some 5 meters above. The important thing here is that I did not die*, but it was not because my gear placements superiorly solid.

Wires got stuck in the cracks and I had a very hard time to get them out, as I didn't have a nut tool (I do now!!!)

Another thing one notices is just how heavy this whole rack thingy is.  That is what I had on my right hip, and I had an equally bulgy one on my left hip.

 Lastly, I found this cam to be the most useful, and as such bought it for my birthday:

It is all a mental game I guess, what with keeping your calm and trying to shut out the voice inside you that does not stop saying "ImgonnadieImgonnadieImgonnadie!!!" while at the same time trying to figure out which protection goes where. I am getting very very excited about this and can't wait to go out again (next week!) Woo hoo!

*Hopefully, my tombstone won't read "Josh gave me his rack" :)

30 Fucking 1. Enuf said.

Went trad leading over the weekend - more about that in a later post. Not bad for an old geezer.

Am in Sydney now, for some quality time all by myself, including grant writing, paper writing, and the occasional and much too sparse (sorry!) blog post. I worked my ass off (unfortunately, only figuratively) last year - this year it's going to be all about having crazy fun, sans (too much) work. I hope! 

One picture Tuesday

Running the Coogee bay to Bondi beach route this morning. Life is good!

One picture Tuesday

This was my speed while running the other day in NUS. It took me a number of attempts to get this, as it turns out it's quite difficult to run and take photos at the same time. Also, if I happened to slow down below 12km/h, so as to allow me to take a photo, the sensor would not register me. So there you go interwebs, something you didn't know about speed sensors.

Realization. Part 244

Assuming I live till I'm 80, and considering that I'm still technically 30 (for a few weeks at least), and assuming that I will read on average, one book a week, then we have:

50*52 = 2600

Which means that I have life in me only to read 2600 books. Or 2548 if I go ahead and admit that

I'm 31 already.

This makes for a very small amount of books considering how many good books are out there that I have yet to read, and just how many books I would want to re-read.

One picture Tuesday

On Saturday, the bird and I set out to run 11k around Macritchie Reservoir Park. Why only 11k you ask? Well, we actually set out to run 21k, but then ... It rained a bit on Saturday. Which is to say that the forecast was "thunderstorm" and that it rained heavily. So heavy so as to run through knee-deep puddles. And to get puffy exfoliating palms after 5km. And to be able to wring out about 1l of water out of my dry fit clothes. 

I had absolutely no remorse about stopping after 11km! We retreated to the shelter of a nearby cafe to warm up and I had two teh tariks and one laksa. Good times.

Bouldering at Granite Island

I've spent a while mulling over this in order to decide whether I hated climbing at Granite Island, Victor Harbour. And I finally decided that I actually really liked it. Despite the rough granite with many many crystal pebbles in it. And despite the fact that most of the times, your spotter is considering wearing a helmet because of all the pebbles that you are sending down while climbing. And the fact that sometimes you might step on something and then fly off the route because your foothold just broke. Or, as in D.'s case, come down off the route really quickly because the super solid undercling you were holding as your start just came off. Nevertheless, one thing that is most cool is that the problems are not very high, and that the landings are pretty clean! More info including topos and route descriptions can be found here.

The problems are interesting and tend to be in the slab, mental kind of area - my favorite! NOTT! In terms of difficulty, the ones we tried ranged between V0 and V2, with a lot of mental stealth with respect to footholds and handholds coming off.

Here's me on something called Plumber's Crack (I wonder why!)

This is one of my favorite problems so far. Trust Issues, V2, Umbrella boulder. Start on some footsies under the crack. The name says it all: delicate footers over a bulging slab to a slopey finish. Clean landing either on D or on Stalin and some spiky bushes to finish it off.

 Psyched and scared to death at the same time.

Lolcat Dreamz

Last night I dreamt that a box full of kittens had made its way to my house. From this box, I could only pick a certain number of kittens to save - I'm not sure about the number because it increased in every iteration of the dream - and the rest would go to an unnamed place boo hoo

I had trouble picking out the kittens because they were all so different! I picked a Russian blue that was BRIGHT BLUE!! in my dream because he slept on his back. I picked a black kitten with white spots (I had problems with that one because there were many black and white kittens running around so I had to remember which one!) I picked a very skinny very tall grey kitten and a fat, older tabby.

After picking the above, the other kittens disappeared to lalaland, at which point i got distressed and the dream started all over again.

Eventually I rescued enough of the kittens and got to actually play with them. At that point Suzie somewhat appeared in the picture. I remember that the newly saved kittehs were a bit reluctant to play with me, and that I kept telling myself "suzie is the most loving of all", and "suzie is the softest of all".

I then woke to find Suzie sleeping on my face. Purr.

One picture Tuesday

Judge me not by my books, but by the super cool way in which they are arranged. On the right of the bookcase I will stash the books I have read -> note that this is almost* true for the background column, and not the foreground, which should be only for mountaineering books (how did the rest get in there?!) The nearly collapsing column of books on the right are books I have yet to read. These will be transferred to the column on the right once I read them. I have yet to decide the fate of those books from the left column that decide to collapse. So far, that column has managed to stay like that despite numerous feline interventions :)

*Hell will probably freeze over when I will actually read the Wheel of Time. I think that (and Sasha right on top of it) are the only books that are Marian's. Also, the Maigret Omnibus (the yellow book) has one emergency un-read Maigret mystery in it. 

I've been having issues ...

... with my kindle. You see, at some point last year I went to New Zealand and encountered many many days of superiorly shitty weather. At some point during the trip, I also acquired, among many other things, a library of about 1000 ebooks, which I then immediately put on my Kindle Keyboard. To be fair, I would probably not read most of the books as they tend to be in the "love-vampire-books?-well,-here's-a-thousand-of-them" variety.

And then the battery on my Kindle started to act up. I would charge it and then it would discharge to 75% within hours and then to 50% within a day, and to about 10% within two days, even if I did not read anything at all. Not connecting it with the addition of books, I first thought that there was a problem with the firmware. And when it wasn't that, I thought that the time had come for a new kindle. What better time than the beginning of February (HINT HINT HINT) for such a thing to happen? Endless conversations with San about which Kindle model is better, and after finally deciding on one ...

... I googled the issue. That is when I realized that maybe Amazon hired some of our students  to write software for the Kindle.  Here's what the interwebs had to say:

Also, keep in mind than from time to time, the framework likes to mess around with the index files, even if nothing's changed in the content, and the more books you have, the more CPU it'll eat. (That's kinda true as a whole too, since it'll churn a bit on the index file every time it wakes up from sleep, too).

I went all crazy with this new piece of information and removed all but two books (Perdido Street Station and Mountaineering, the Freedom of the hills, if you must). No change in battery charge in the past two days. All iz well!!

One picture Tuesday

Every new adventure starts with a new stationery item! I have gotten soooo fatt and sooo weak over the holidays that I've started a new training program woo hoo! I wrote it down in this little notebook and then forgot it at work before going for training.. Sigh..

Mammal adventures

Today we went to climb at Granite Island, in Victor Harbour. Again. I had Marian take plenty of pictures of us climbing in order to do a super duper post about it. I was going to post about this today, but then something else happened:

Today I saw my first ever dolphin! True, I had seen some at the zoo in Singapore, but never ever one up close (#define close 500m) and personal!

Do stupid things sensibly

Somebody's stupid actions while running (that is, full speed running in 36 degrees, immediately after dinner and without proper hydration) nearly had me pick up the phone and rebuke said person for totally fucking shit up.

But then I remembered that I too, have done some stupid things in my (running) life, some of them detailed here on this blog. A few gems such as:

• getting totally pissed on New Year's Eve and THEN going climbing on New Year's Day 
• spraining my ankle and then running a marathon on it
• running barefoot in the middle of the day in Singapore
• running a marathon just before a big expedition, resulting in a minor stress fracture that could have threatened the climb
• totally ignoring the running plan, and running much faster than planned (ran 5min 15sec/km, sometimes even 4min 15sec/km instead of 5min 30sec/km), thinking that "It's supposed to hurt like hell" and "I can push through it" and "Pain is weakness leaving the body"

will probably never get repeated, mostly because I have fewer ankle ligaments, I'm not in Singapore anymore, my feet are now used to long distances, and now I know how the "all wheels are coming off RIGHT NOW" pain feels like.

I cannot help but notice that most of these actions are running related - fair enough, if one does stupid things while climbing one tends not to be alive for very long. I wish I could say that I did these stupid things when I thought I was invincible and will live forever, but I can't, because most of the time I still feel like that, and some of these things are pretty recent. I know that I would not have done the second and the third one had somebody told me about WHAT THE FUCK MIGHT HAPPEN. And I've learned from my mistakes as well: for example, now I do not run with a cold unless I really have to (?!) because it really makes one feel woozy, hazy and close to fainting, which apparently are things that are not good for training wheeeeee!

So, summing things up, I guess I'm probably not the best person to preach anything, really. There's this brilliant romanian saying "Do what the priest says, not what the priest does". Damn!

Meet Dude

Went bouldering at Granite island with D. today. Sent some nice little problems and made a new friend. Uncharacteristically, it took me a while to name him, but finally decided on Dude. It's not the best or the funniest of names but then again, who gives a fuck anyway?

Note to self: next time, do not rely on yourself to put sunscreen on your back. Get somebody else to do it, or else you'll burn!

Quiet celebrations

Seven years ago on this day I quit smoking. This is perhaps the only new year's resolution that I've actually managed to keep. This is a big thing (to me) especially since the depths of my previous addictions can be easily judged by my current ones (and my old age has definitely made me mellow addiction-wise). I celebrated by reading two-three books, taking ample naps, and watching two Poirot episodes. Life, c'est jolie, n'est pas?