The Biggest Fail

So there I was, perhaps the coolest dad in the world, ever, shopping in Pick and Pay with my almost 14 year daughter (and I have warned you all, I have a big shotgun). Not only was I the world's coolest dad, but this was the world's coolest Pick and Pay, because instead of Christmas muzak, rad tunes were pounding  from the speakers (OK, perhaps they were not actually pounding).

A familiar tune came on. "Ah" said Mirella, "Eminem".

"That's not Eminem" I spluttered at full volume, as Love the Way You Lie got to the chorus, "it's B.O.B."

Oh Jeez. Suddenly I had lost all my cool points in just 5 foolish words (if I count B.O.B as one word).

We covered the remaining aisles, when Mirella, who hadn't stopped laughing, realised she needed Coke (with a capital C, registered trademark etc. Not any other kind).

We couldn't find cold Coke on the shelves anywhere. "Yes" she said. "They only have cold Coke at the koisk."

That wasn't a typo. She had just called it "The Koisk".Then she spelled it out. "K.I. O.S. K". Which doesn't frickin' spell "koisk", does it!

I laughed so much I wept.

"What did you just say? The Koisk?"

"You thought Eminem was B.O.B!"

"Koisk?? Koisk! That's the biggest fail ever!"

"But you thoug..."

"KOISK!"

Yep. That's just got to be the biggest fail. Ever.

Unpacking the trumpet

Let’s suppose I get up my route. Let's suppose I break my vow of silence, switch metaphors, and blow out a loud and gloriously self-indulgent trumpet solo...

...which segues into one of several different scenarios.

Here's one. Steve Bradshaw Jnr and Matt Bush arrive to do the second ascent. Steve looks like a latter-day Adonis. Matt, in skinny jeans, muscles, tan and funny hat with little tassles, is harder to describe (Roger, you read this blog, and that’s your cue...). Suffice it to say that... They crush the 2nd and 3rd ascents and I spend my remaining days in the retirement home morosely picking bits of egg off my face.

I should never have unpacked the trumpet.

So instead let's imagine, as the last note of my solo rings out in a sustained vibrato (can that be done on a trumpet?), a bunch of bellowing bullocks are psyching up at the base of the route ready to send damuddafukka. The air in the gully is redolent with a heady mix of testosterone, chalk and the rancid reek of sweaty climbing shoes. One by one the Young Turks (bullocks, Turks - they all look the same to me) step up and one by one They. Are. Shut. Down.

I sit on a secluded ledge and smirk as their comments float up on the aforementioned aerosol of testosterone. To wit: “Fuck, I’ve got to eat more fruit”, “That old man can still crush” and “Steve Bradshaw Snr.; The Original and Best”.

I turn and walk down the valley, pausing briefly to whisper, unheard by the bros:

“That’s not hard, bitches”.

Shape and form



The 80s were the best decade

Think about it for a minute. After the post-war asuterity of the late 40s and early 50s there was the explosion of freedom and fun of the 60s. What a time thave been in your 20s.

I am not sure that the 70s really stood a chance of following that, and after bell bottoms and huge sideburns had clearly failed, it was time for the 80s to step up to the plate.

And step up they did.

They gave us Milli Vanilli. Michael Jackson was still a black dude. We had Wham. Queen rocked us. I was in my 20s.And climbers got lycra.

Was this the face that launched a 1000 ships? Nope. But it made me start climbing in lycra. Steve Lewis on 7th Toad. Thanks to whoever has copyright on this photo!

That's not hard, bitches

There is a story behind the title to this post that I think is going to be told by my great friend Roger, and he will do it well. So instead of telling it myself, or writing a long post on all the great people I met, things I laughed at, routes I crushed, routes that crushed me, I am going to distill this to the essence.

I went to Oudtshoorn to hook up with my buddy of 25 years, and try to play a role, if I could, in his getting up a route he bolted as project, but never tried, many years ago. And after we had done most of the laughing, chatting, smack talking and some preparatory climbing, Roger gave it a go on Thursday. I was belaying and as he set off I wanted to tell everyone to stop what they were doing and watch, because here was a living legend still putting himself on the line and giving it horns. The guy who gave us Stormwatch almost 20 years ago still punching out dynos on hard routes.

Of course everyone was watching anyway, and urging him on, desperate for him to get it. He didn't, but what the hell; I got the privilege of belaying, we came up with Plan C to get in one more burn (which will involve us leaving a carbon footprint about the size of Asia) and if that doesn't work out Plan B will have anyway!

The next day Roger and Scott decided to blow off their last day at Oudtshoorn and come back via Oorlogs with me.  I didn't have the right shoes with me, cocked up a hard move in the middle, yet had a complete blast. I was with my mates, trying my project in my home kloof. It couldn't really have got any better, could it?

I don't have a photo of Roger on the route, but here he is on the warm up, colour coordinated with the rock and hence invisible:

BTW: we totally ruled the entire week in our vests.

Why am I wearing these shorts?

Because I can, of course.

I was going to say "you too could have a body like mine" but that wouldn't necessarily be true, or even desirable (if you were female, for example).

Close...

But no cigar.

Today Clinton and I hauled our asses out to Oorlogs. It was awesome. The wall was in blinding sunlight until 1 pm, which meant we were trying to redpoint our routes with our eyes closed. Not the best tactical decision.

Climbing with Clinton was as inspiring as ever. On one go he botched a foot placement low down. I would have given up at that point, had it been me. Clinton is almost entirely unlike that. He thrashed and fought, never once thinking about saying take and almost redointed the route.

Sitting at the base of lines between redpoint attempts, and looking up the wall made me realise that there are two astoundingly good lines. It's a pity that there are only two of them on the wall.

At the end of the day it turned out that we shall both have to go back. I had 3 redpoint attempts and got close but no cigar. It was more or less the same for Clinton on his route. I had a 4th go on tope rope but by then everything hurt  - wrists and finger joints especially.

Sunday it's Oudtshoorn for a change of venue. I hope to come back in good shape to give my line a really good try in the week after that.

Snoffee Cob

Some months back I decided that I should start drinking coffee, because the caffeine would help me keep my weight down. Now then, I don't like doing things by half measures and I didn't use half measures to spoon coffee into my mug. I used full measures and several of them. Furthermore, if one is going to do this sort of thing, there is no point in diluting the punishment, so I took my coffee black and without sugar. Clearly.

I worked on the principle that a small volume of an incredibly concentrated disgusting bitter drink with a superior amount of caffeine would be better than larger volumes of an insipid disgusting bitter drink. I realise that there are not enough commas in that but it's late, I am frickin tired and still trying to get to the punch line.

I soon became a coffee snob and traded Jacobs Verwohnaroma (whatever) for the world's best Ethiopian coffee, kindly supplied to me directly by an Ethiopian colleague.

Now, as an aside, consider training on a campus board. It's concentrated training, right? It could make you very strong (which might, or might not, help), right? Now, what else do we know about training on a campus board? It should be done only by climbers with a significant base of strength, and even then, judiciously. What happens if you don't follow that advice? You break.

It has now occurred to me that I drank coffee as if it were training on a campus board. Wait, that's wrong. It should read "...I drank coffee as if I were training on a campus board". But in doing so I forgot that I had spent the last 49 years drinking nothing stronger than mango juice (no ice). I haven't developed a PTFE stomach lining. So what happened? I broke. This week I spent an agonising 24 hours wracked with stomach cramps following a particularly arduous bout of dieting followed by hard core coffee drinking.

When it all goes wrong...

Great route, great song, terrible climber. Temperature was minus 17 trillion, I hadn't warmed up properly and attempted to redpoint my route.

You can see the result at:

http://www.vimeo.com/16402468

Credits for the vid are on the site.

Hey, Jupiter

If you like watching your TV when it is not tuned to a station then you might enjoy this ultra-compressed video of Hey Jupiter. I know I didn't.

The uncompressed version is awesome, I promise.

http://www.vimeo.com/16312229

Young Forever

Jay-Z has done a very good job with the old Alphaville classic.

Rather apposite:

Reminisce, talk some shit forever young is in your mind

So there I was, all vasovagal after having needles rammed into my wrists and in need of a recovery plan, lying in my car with my feet on the steering wheel. I know, I'll visit Jacques at City Rock.

The shop looked like Christmas. I thought about buying some stretch Prana pants. But I don't need those. I don't even really want those. Then I thought about buying some silly La Sportiva toe-thingies. They have a fancy name, but honestly, I couldn't take them seriously. My R 20 slops from Pick and Pay seem suitably unsuitable for staggering round at the base of the crag.

Then I spied it. An entire (insert correct collective noun) of wire gates with slinky connecting slings. I sidled over and fondled them. I went through the entire range, checking for the sound the gates makes when they close. You can do this with cars too, and their doors. Testing the resistance, then give, of the gates. Searching for the exquisite sensation that an incredibly well-crafted carabiner offers to the sensitive and expert hand.

Jeez, dude. Get a grip. This is starting to read like a potential entry for Pseuds Corner.

OK, so I bought the lot. The entire fricking lot. They weigh nothing. 12 of them weigh less than one of my old ones.

Matt arrived. My ex-girlfriend used to ovulate spontaneously at the sight of Matt's muscles. This pissed me off so much I broke up with her. Now, as I know she sometimes reads this blog, I have to say that it's possible not everything in the last two sentences is true. Don't sue me, babe!

At last, the denouement of this incredibly tortured narrative.

I reminisced, talked some shit and forever young was on my mind, so when the surgeon yells cut I'll be fine. I'm Forever Young.

Man Up...

...and pull down.

Actually it's now called Begging for Beta. This is an awesome route on The Godfather Buttress at Umgeni. Steep pulls with some inobvious moves lead to the roof. Then, after clipping, comes the main course. Insert the most mind-boggling knee bar, and pull up on some really skinny crimps. Such unlikely moves. The headwall is rather less obvious than one would like, with tricky-to-see holds. Finally, to my embarrassment, a finger crack that I found hard.

Brilliant.

And what's more, this is merely yet another route in Roger's incomparable list of first ascents. And I mean incomparable. The rest of us are just pissing in the wind.

He and I played on his new project for  an hour or so. Phew. I had my really small shoes on. They didn't suit the rock at all, although on the first few moves they worked well enough. I couldn't do the hard rock over, however. At that point the difficulty ratchets up a lot of notches.  As Roger himself might say, it gets properly difficult. Some small crimps lead, with difficulty, to a very hard bit. This will involve using a small porthole through the thin sheet of rock covering the main part of the mountain and reaching an OK crimp and... Jeepers. I am not sure.  It is steep and very thin indeed.



Something like "The Last Days of Gravity"



By this time next year

1. First ascent of Where I Stood
2. Trip to kZN in the C30 with the greatest daughters in the entire universe
3. Trip down the eviscerator at uShaka (Mirella went down it last month)
4. Answer the question of whether Tori or Missy is the best

What is going to enable the above?

1. I need to up my climbing game and get my eye back on the ball. No more dicking around on arbitrary activities. While these are amusing, they are contributing to the rapid disintegration of my wrists, are frustrating me because I can't be bothered to try (and hence end up feeling like a loser) and are taking time away from the real objective. Focus. Focus. Focus. Belief. Belief. Belief. In fact, it's time to go public with this: I am strong, light and skilful. I can do all the moves on this route. Nobody can hang on poor fingerlocks better than me. I want to do the first ascent of this climb. This is the most important goal in my life right at the moment. Clipping the anchors at the top of this climb will be an incredibly satisfying experience, looking down at the wall sweeping away beneath me. I can get the wrist and finger pain under control for long enough to get up the climb.
2. Money.
3. Closed eyes.
4. I am listening to Hey Jupiter as I type this. Hey Jupiter is a staggeringly good song. I wish I had a video of the climb to set to the music. Actually I do.
5. (Back to objective 1) Re-read the post called Value.
6. (Back to objective 4) Maybe Hey Jupiter wins... It certainly doesn't come 2nd. That is, the live version (there are many on Tori's legal bootlegs), or the version played on keyboard etc. Watching Tori play this at Sydney Opera House as her encore...

Mirella saying "Shit!"having survived The Eviscerator

Are you my hero?

Guy: "How is Roger?"
Me: "Roger is my hero!"
Guy: "What about me?"

If your name is Roger, Guy, Mike or Jim you might be my hero. At the very least you might be someone possessing qualities I admire very much.

Mike has no idea that I view him in this light - at least I very much doubt that he does. Mike Roberts. He really knew how to climb. What an inspiration he was.

Jim won't ever read this blog, sadly. He died on 7th April 1968. I didn't know him, although I did see him driving when I was very young. There is a line from a book by Doug Nye that I shall quote, perhaps incorrectly: "The memory of those apple green cars at speed, Clark's dark blue helmet visible above the coaming, the master so relaxed and confident and such a gentleman, still makes the eyes mist over."  What else is there to add?

And then there was the Battle of Britain Spitfire pilot I saw on a documentary recently. At the age of 80, I guess, he went up in a 2 seater Spitfire. 60-odd years later there he was, flying a Spitfire once again. And as she handed over the controls, the pilot said over the radio to him: "You have control of my aircraft. I am very honoured, Sir." Yep.

Does anything else really matter in life?

Awesome kids (old dude ruins photo)

There is trouble on the way - shotgun purchased

Come any closer to my daughter and I'm gonna blow your balls off!

This is not about intolerance, as had been promised

It's about raw, naked ambition.

1. I need to own a Volvo C 30. Now.
2. I want to do the first ascent of my project, which is grade 33 or harder. Soon.
3. I want my wrists to be pain-free. Which is not that great an ambition, I admit, and which will soon be realised because I am visiting the orthopaedic surgeon on Monday.

Tolerance of ignorance

When should ignorance be tolerated and when should it be a capital offence?

Expressing adamant, contrary opinions based only on hearsay while remaining wantonly ignorant of well-established knowledge shouldn't be tolerated.

We need to get specific here. "Evolution. Pah. How can something as complex as the eye have evolved? Explain that to me." There is no excuse for saying this, because if you bothered to make the miniscule effort required you could find out the answer. "Climate change isn't real. It was hotter a long time ago." We shall ignore for now the wooliness of the phrasing, and assume that my putative speaker is trying to claim that anthropogenic forcing is not causing global warming. This isn't acceptable. If you are saying this you have expressed a silly opinion without informing yourself. If you are an insignificant prat with a miniscule sphere of influence this might not be too worrying and perhaps you need not be shot at dawn, but rather sentenced to some hard education. If you are A Person of Influence, please step outside and stand aginst the wall.

"We handed over countries with good infrastructures at independence and look how they fucked it up." Well yes. And no. Check up on state of the indigenous population at independence and re-assess your comment. What were education levels? Why were the borders of the country defined in the positions that they were? And so on. And so forth.

I would venture to suggest that, unless you know what you are on about, a little reading before opening your mouth might be A Good Thing.

In my next post I shall consider when intolerance should be a capital offence, assuming I have not been taken outside and shot before that.

If you wish to find out more about the topics mentioned above I have a reading list for you.

A million chickens

How many chickens does it take to produce 3000 t of shit per month? Apparently this is important. It could be. I was just asked to work out the answer. The answer is a million.

If you don't believe this you could do one of many things. Here are two options:

1. Do some research and confirm it.
2. Figure out how much shit a chicken makes in a day. 10 g? What? Do you have any idea how little 10 g is? 1 kg? For fuck sakes. Have you ever seen a 1 kg turd? Not one that came out of a chicken's arse, that's for sure. (Chickens don't have arses, they have something else, probably called a vent. I really don't know because I don't study chickens.) Clearly the answer must be 100 g of shit per chicken per day. The remainder of this problem is merely an exercise in multiplication, which anyone can do without a calculator.

So ... Ill

Last week I did the best route in the world. Actually I didn't really do it. More accurately, after one of my mates decided his rate of progress was insufficient to get up the route before the onset of the next ice age, which at that precise point in time seemed to be only a few hours away, I tied in. That done, I defrosted my shoes and set out. Brilliant moves on thin holds led to something, which I am trying to remember. It was probably a good hold. I wasn't paying attention because I had to hang on the draw and check how many fingers had fallen off due to frostbite. Without my reading glasses I really couldn't tell so I carried on.

From here on things got improbably,impossibly, better. All things connected with the route, that is. Stemming, smearing, an astounding flat ledge in the middle of nowhere, a holdless groove, smooth black rock, bolts perched somewhere between me and infinity and the cold wind. I  have never been on a route quite like it.

Sadly I thawed out only once I was lowering down so my ascent didn't quite match up to the quality of the climbing. I guess next time I am there I should tidy things up and redpoint it. But then again, perhaps not. I am not sure that is really the point, because the experience really couldn't be better than when I first went up it.

The next day was a sharp contrast. I spent the day at the Country Club of Johannesburg being A Professor. Different. Not better. Not worse. But very different indeed. The details are not relevant here.

And then the next day I shed my professor's skin and spent the morning at Paul's gym. I haven't led routes on a wall since the last millenium and the days of the national circuit. Does anyone remember those events? One year we were in isolation, which was on a slipway near Quay 4, for so long we ended up scraping barnacles off the hull of a boat and eating them for sustenance. And when you finally got to climb at 11:47 (pm), the temperature had dropped below dew point and you couldn't hold on to anything, unless you were David Olds. I wasn't David Olds. If I were ("were" is correct here, it's the subjunctive), this blog would not be called Stevenbradshaw.blogpsot.com, would it?

Back to the story. Paul had been setting routes for a comp so he kindly let me climb them beforehand. Awesome - big holds, long reaches, steep walls. It was a blast.

I left at lunchtime and cut across to the N14 to the airport, and just like a few weeks before, the brown hills, the haze, the cold wind, the blue sky, all of it, all of the dry, bleak and wind-swept highveld made me nostalgic for something that I now realise really is in the past.

Next time I shall tell what that is.

Value

Yesterday I dragged my daughter out to Oorlogskloof with me. Lack of a climbing partner, and an unpleasant chest infection had killed the opportunity of doing my project this past weekend. I now needed to get my draws back to take to kZN. So we missioned out to Montagu, while Marshall Mathers spat acid through the car speakers...

There were times on the long drive and steep, thorny walk to the top of the buttress that I wondered where the value was in all of this. I could have been lounging somewhere, taking life easy. As it was, I was thrashing up a frickin' hill, through scratchy bush feeling somewhat below 100%.

Of course, as I was there, there seemed no sense in merely rapping down and cleaning the gear, so I rigged a top rope and worked it again.

As I did the last few moves to the anchors and looked down the line, I imagined how it would feel to be there on repdoint. That's where the value will be.

Where I Have Been

Everywhere. But most specifically, Orkney, in the North West. Hmm. I suppose things could be worse. In fact I know that they could, because in order to get there I drove past Ikageng. We have some awesome looking soccer stadiums following the World Cup. And we still have Ikageng, and lots of others like it. Anyway, the world out there is brown and cool (because it is still winter) and the sky pale and watery and there are rolling hills and dust and it's the Highveld. Somewhere close to Orkney the hills give way to spoil heaps, and if you drive past them into the town you could try to find somewhere to have a cup of coffee. But I don't think you would succeed. The best I could manage was stopping in the car park of the local Spar.

But here it is, all up on the Interweb. Worldwide...

On the way back I drove through Westonaria, Randfontein, Krugersdorp... It was all quite surreal. Dusk, lights from mines, odd towns that looked like shit heaps and yet made me feel nostalgic for something that was not even in the past.

I drove on, dropping down out of Krugersdorp to the N14, passing a gaudy and bizarrely appealing casino that looked like a cross between a drive-through fast food outlet and something from a Douanier Rousseau painting. Clearly I was losing the plot.

Closer to the airport I heard a song I didn't know - Airplanes II by B.o.B feat. Hayley Williams and Eminem. Cool.

The next day I was training and this is what I could see.

Better?

And then I went to Montagu. On the way it looked like this:

Sheep and wheat, although I don't really notice any sheep in the photo. My camera has a resolution of one nano pixel.

Finally I stopped here. Things could definitely be worse.

I spent three days here, working in the morning, and climbing in the afternoon. 

Workspace. There was nothing to do except work, nothing to read except work, nobody to interrupt me.

And finally, I was here. Things really could have been a lot worse.

Where I Stood

It’s funny but on Saturday after I made the arrangement to climb with Cobus on my route I started to think that I had bitten off far more than I could chew. I wished that I had opted for a venue where I didn’t have to perform, where it was warm and sunny, and where there wasn’t a walk-in, thorns, and a scary abseil. Where I could  belay someone while they struggled. On the drive out there it got even worse – I was constantly wishing I was with my kids, buying books and drinking coffee at a mall, or with my girlfriend. Anywhere safe and comfortable.

When we got to the valley I still wasn’t convinced. In fact we decided to climb where Cobus wanted to first of all, on the pretext that the temperatures were better to do things in that order. The reality is that wasn’t so. His route was getting too hot, and we had to waste time during the day stomping back and forth across the valley. Even when we went over to my route and  I had set up the rope and put the draws on the bolts, I still wasn’t sure. I had been thinking that this was all too much pressure for me, and that it was a sign that I really needed to shift gears big time and stop pushing myself so hard. Time to buy a pipe, and feed the ducks on a Sunday morning. Time to act my age.

Finally I was faced with the decision – to top rope and practise the route yet again, or to go for it and try to do it. So I did the latter. I was ultra-nervous, imagining it would feel insanely hard, that I would fall off the first hard move, or that the back wall of the gully would be too close and I would fall and hurt myself on it.

In the event, it was nothing like that at all. I climbed up and clipped the first 3 bolts, and climbed down to the ground. I took off my shirt and went for it. As soon as I did so it felt as if I had switched into an entirely different mode. I wasn’t thinking about anything except the next move, and while I was still too nervous for the attempt to have been successful, I tried hard the entire way and did every move with real conviction. At the rest, which turned out to be less restful than I hoped, I could see my heart leaping round in my chest like a jack-in-a-box on speed.

At the crux, or at least the hardest move, I got the technique slightly wrong. Accumulated fatigue, a slight loss of sharpness of thinking and I wasn’t pulling in hard enough on the back step, not straightening my body quite enough and hence leaving myself with way too much pulling on the sloping crimp. I got the next hold, but right at the bottom of it, where it’s too bad to hold onto. I kept trying to reset my fingers into it, but each time I ended up with them in the same place, slipping out of the flaring part at the bottom. I seemed to be trying to do this for ages, although I suppose it was merely seconds. And then I was out of there.

On my second attempt I made a small adjustment to how I clipped the bolt just below, and clipped off my left hand, which was more awkward, in order not to fatigue my right as much. This time, something weird happened on the foothold as I tried the move, and my ankle felt odd, but worse, my skin felt really soft on the crimp and I didn’t really stand a chance of doing the move so I fell in a slightly lower position. 

After that I did the moves from bolt to bolt, and it felt OK. But then it would, because it's an endurance problem...

Phantom of the Opera

This refers to the climb, not the, well, opera. Here is what happened - bearing in mind that this was 1995. We put up a top rope, lowered down and set to work. We understood that the first few bolts-worth constituted the crux and substance, as it were. So far so good, because they were trivial. The first few bolts worth. Actually they weren't trivial, but this is the interwebs and I am allowed to lie brazenly. They were OK.

Up and up I went. The last move seemed hard, but finally I had that sorted and was ready to redpoint it.

I got on with it. Half a mile into the route, and with something around another 17 to go, things were looking decidely cock-eyed. I was lost and attempting to superimpose the sequence from some other part of the route onto the place where I was currently located. In Phantom of the Opera (the opera, not the climb) Carlotta is singing the lead in the Phantom's opera, contrary to his instructions. Under his malign influence things do not work out for her. Following a hideous attack of croaking, the lead is given to Christine in the next act. That's pretty much what happened to me.

Phantom of the Opera. It's absolutely brick hard at grade 28.

Faaarrrrrckkkk where's the off button?

I just drank another cup of concentrated caffeine with coffee flavouring and now I notice that my screen is vibrating. I hadn't noticed anything wrong it with before. It's quite new. Jeez. The quality of things you buy  nowadays.

And I just ripped my desk in half. I thought it was supposed to be solid wood. WTF?

I was going to write a post about the merits of moderation but I really don't have any time to do that now because I have to train.

If he gets up, we'll all get up, it'll be anarchy

The scene: Saturday afternoon, around 4pm, draws up on 3 routes and the wall in shade.
The characters: Phlip, Christo and me with parts to play; Danie, Kobus and Anro supporting.

Phlip got up first, and then, one by one we all got up. I went last, and I think I was the only one grunting on my route whereas the others seemed pretty competent on theirs.

Bam, I stuck the sloper. It felt like my body arched out as I did so, although perhaps the video will show otherwise. The next easy move didn't feel quite as easy as I wanted it to - the foothold was much skinnier than I remembered and I had to pop for the big jug. But nowhere, on any move, was there any other idea in my head except complete focus on the climbing.

A great day. Thanks to everyone who was there.

As I Am.

http://www.vimeo.com/12639043

Horizon

We walked down the steep road to the beach, stooping under the mangrove trees on the boardwalk, and  sat on the solid linearity of a bench. Sea and cloud and sky were all mixed up in grey and blue.  And no matter how you hope that it won’t, time goes just as fast when you have only an hour left as when you have a lifetime.

So with my future in the past, in a world with no horizon, I drove away, steering through a lens of tears.

Intimidation

Where I Stood (perhaps I shall be sick of the song by the time I do the route) starts up The Dream I Knew. This entirely lacks an approach march. While we should be clear that this isn't the world's hardest route, of course, there is simply no waffle anywhere. When I looked at it on Sunday I have to admit that I was a little bit intimidated. It's full throttle from move #1 and continues in that vein all the way to the chains, a reasonable distance above.

Why is it called Where I Stood? Because it's a very strong contender indeed for the best song ever written. Furthermore, the song says a lot things that I can totally associate with. Not so much as the singer, but more as the singee.

The route might match the quality of the song. Incidentally, Andrew Mac from Flat Stanley told me I could call my other line As I Am. I chatted to him at a meet and greet after a concert - what a great guy.

Priorities

Somewhere down below lies a post about accountability. This pre-supposed freedom of action. I no longer have that, due to an incorrect date of birth. Therefore I am resolved as follows:

1. As I  Am 30/31, which I shall wrap up next time for sure
2. Where I Stood >32 which is actually my last big objective and I really want to to do this.

The other stuff is merely nice to have.

Chose the correct option and win a trip to Oorlogskloof

Here are two things to do with a wrist that has, inter alia, a torn TFCC.

Option 1 shows use of a big strapon. As used yesterday afternoon during training.

Is this correct? Obviously not. They are always purple.

How about option 2?

This shows the use of a small plaster. This is correct. It is covering up the site of the cortisone injection.

Doctor my wrist hurts

Don't know how the hell the pain started masquerading as pronator quadratus because it's definitely the TFC, confirmed by MRI.


I hope to get an appointment with the hand surgeon this week. From the medical literature it seems that the periphery of the TFC on the ulnar side is slightly vascular and tears there might heal following immobilisation. The bulk of it is avascular and so tears won't heal. From the MRI it's not clear quite exactly where the "full thickness tear" might be.

Now what?

I could ask the surgeon to fill my wrists with cortisone and hope that masks the pain for long enough for me to open the major new line I am working on. After that I deal with the consequences. Presumably the consequences could be significant by then, given that at this point already I can no longer do stuff like eat soup with a spoon!

Alternatively I get surgical repair with several months' immobilisation and rehab. In this case I really don't believe that it would be possible for me ever to get back to climbing the standard I wish to. Perhaps I am overly pessimistic but I don't see many examples that suggest that 50 year olds recover from wrist surgery and get back to climbing grade 33. When I combine the wrist with the OA in the fingers, which is fairly bad, it seems to me like the clock is ticking...

Is climbing some arbitrarily defined grade and certain routes really important? That's hard to say. From my current perspective the answer is "yes". That might be an odd way of looking at climbing, but so far I have been unable to make the mental adjustment required to look at it any other way.

Perhaps I need some sessions with a psychologist to gain a little perspective rather than a trip to the hand surgeon...

DEM simulation of slow crushing of single particles

My colleague Dr Abubeker Ali produced these results. His excellent work shows slow crushing of a single binary ore particle, at strain rates typical of those in a jaw crusher. The sequence shows the particle, a crushed untreated particle, and a crushed particle following treatment at high microwave power density. The images have been coloured to allow Dr Ali to determine the liberation spectrum of the progeny fragments.

These images should not be copied or reproduced.

A Grillion, M'Lud

After a wildly strong espresso I need an alligator to wrestle. Instead I am going to fill in my scorecard.

1. Right wrist - doesn't rotate. Minus 1 billion points.
2. Celebrex - really does work on my fingers. Each tablet is in the form of a football-sized pill of self-denial. Plus 500 million points.
3. My points scale seems similar to pricing an expensive Ferrari in Lire. Cool. Neutral score.
4. Within a year we'll be able to combine electromagnetic cavity simulations, DEM simulations of treated ore particles and fundamental flotation models to predict flowsheet behaviour of microwave treatment from a priori mineralogy. Plus 2 Grillion points. You need to know about the Krikkit Wars to understand how many points this is.
5. Doing the 2 finger problem up the system wall. This is the biggest achievement of my life. This week. I think it's entirely reasonable to get Plus 1 Grillion points.
6. Failing to do a single one of Phlip's or Allan's problems at the wall. Actually it's a little worse. Failing to do a single move on any of them. Hmmm. Minus 1 Grillion points.
7. Working out that people searching for Noah's Ark have got the scale wrong. I have not done the calculations precisely, but Guy and I estimated this morning that it was probably the size of Sweden. Grubbing round near Mt Ararat is the wrong approach. We are looking for a much bigger structure, and a distant vantage point is the place from which to start looking. I suggest the moon would do. This is worth at least a point.
8. Getting Python and SciPy loaded on my machine and fantasising that I am going to do hardcore coding 20 years after I last wrote code in anger. Plus 27 points.

This document format is unsuitable for adding and subtracting all these numbers automatically. I consulted Jens Larsen and Bjorn Pohl (aka Masters of the Universe) and according to 8a.nu rule 3(ii) sub 2 (a) I have been declared the winner.

Now I am going to mop the kitchen floor.

Accountability

Before the end of the year/my fingers

1. As I Am 31?  - new route at Oorlogs
2. Where I Stood >32?  - new route at Oorlogs
3. Dark Heart 30 - Kalk Bay  Ruins my wrists
4. Tea with Elmarie 8A+ - Rocklands
5. Stone Heaven 30 - Umgeni
6. Smackdown 28 - Umgeni
7. ******** !! - open project ****** (this is pretty ambitious so I would rather keep it to myself)
8. Fossil  Fuel 31 - The Chosspile
9. Boulevard of Broken Dreams 27 - Mhlabatini

Osteoarthritis

I feel comfortably glued to my chair otherwise I would get up, pull out the relevant book and cite the reference that says something along the lines of  "it's a myth that climbers will get osteoarthritis".

Bullshit.

I got the high resolution ultrasound scans done last week.All 8 PIP joint and all 8 DIP joints have it. There are osteophytes present in several of the PIP joints. Little bits of bone. We didn't bother looking at the thumbs.No point really; even the x-ray showed an osteophyte in one thumb. Hmmm. So that's all fairly clear then. Over 30 years of finger joint abuse and that's what you get. Is this a big deal? Well, the pain wakes me up every night. Crimping is a little more stressful on finger joints than sleeping...

Now, where did I put those anti-inflammatories?

"How did you like amateur hour at the Tour de France? " - LA

That more or less sums up the performance aspect of an otherwise great day out at the crag with some great new climbing mates.Let's make a list shall we?

1. Running out of liquids at lunch time
2. Dieting on a climbing day
3. Starting a new training cycle the day before a climbing day
4. Sitting around for an hour between attempts and not bothering to warm up before the next attempt
5. Spending an hour trying to do the crux move statically in the mistaken belief that's how you did it previously and stubbornly refusing to do the simple dyno to the sloper instead, until right at end of the afternoon.

Dark Heart, 30, Kallk Bay. It's a horrible route really - always full of grime, bolts in the wrong place, but it's got these big, butch and ugly moves that make you feel so inadequate when you fail on them. I also ended up banging my head on it (micro-lump visible using STEM. Also on the grainy photo above). What kind of a crap route do you bang your head on, for heaven's sakes?

I'll get it next time.

Today was the 23rd May. A landmark day for me.

Where the fuck has my navel gone?

A few years back I sent in a news report to a climbing magazine congratulating myself on doing an ascent of a moderately difficult climb. It was nonsense. Let me explain. It’s quite true that I did indeed tie into the rope at the bottom of the route, and I climbed up to the top without falling off. It’s also true that it was hardest climb I had done for a while. There were plenty of reasons for this. For example, I spent some years doing an imitation of being a husband. Once I realised that I had made a total balls up of that, I perfected being a father instead. Some time later I decided that I needed to become an expert in designing microwave treatment systems. That took quite a bit of effort, but in the end I got there. And so, after all these and other distractions spanning several years, I looked in the mirror, only to find that my reflection occupied its entire width. Further, when I tried to find my belly button, I found that it appeared to have receded several centimetres into my body. I knew enough about physiology to realise that this couldn’t really happen, and was therefore was forced to accept that I had finally become a slob and probably couldn’t climb for shit.

So far, of course, this was just a hypothesis. Now, I am a scientist, and scientists like to test their hypotheses. Accordingly, I arranged for just such a test. It was to be a simple test, and the results had to be unequivocal. The test – I would go out for a day’s climbing. And so I did the test, and now let us have no argument here: at a confidence level of close to 100% I established that I was indeed really, really crap. As a result I swore that I was going to throw my gear into my wheelie bin that very night. It was at this point that I was saved from a monumental folly by one of my many personality disorders – my inability to get rid of stuff. Any kind of stuff really – old love letters, tatty ropes and my climbing gear. I just couldn’t bear to chuck it in the bin.

There was another interesting insight I gained from my little science experiment – I had publicly humiliated myself, and I didn’t like it. While being lowered from a climb on which I had failed to toprope a single move I had been asked if I didn’t used to be Steve Bradshaw. The shame of it...

Clearly there were now only two options at this point, as Warren Harding pointed out many years ago. Either I had to climb a whole lot more or a whole lot less. I chose the former. And in a round about way this brings me to the point where I came in – my magazine news report and the actual nature of my ascent. The thing is this – there are very many aspects to doing a climb that pushes one’s personal limits. And there were very many of those things that I actually couldn’t do at all. So I got someone to do the climb with me.

I chose to do the easy things. There wasn’t much to it really – I had to figure out how to do some underclings, use a bit of body tension, that sort of thing. Not too tricky really, particularly as I had been doing this sport all my adult life. I had to do some training too – but that was fairly straightforward as well. Some running to lose weight, some pull ups and dead hangs, a bit of campus board stuff and lock offs. On the other hand, my friend had to do all the hard things that I couldn’t do.

She had to provide support when I went out to try the climb. She had to give up her afternoons to hold my rope and stand way back under the big roof not able to see what was going on and pay out rope at the right time and lower me down when I was tired. And when I wanted to climb back up the rope to work on the crux moves one more time she had take tight so I could do the rock princess walk up the rope to my high point. She had to listen when I complained that my finger was sore and that my joints were aching. She had to check through the scientific literature on climbing injuries and see why I had funny nodules growing on my fingers and whether climbing had caused them. And every time I thought I was putting on weight she had to listen patiently and then point out that in the morning, I would weigh just the same as I had the day before. She had to provide all the words of encouragement when I kept on messing up the hard move on the lip, and had to tell me what I was doing wrong. She had to put up with my obsession and ramblings and whims. She had to sit patiently with me in between attempts and listen to me prattle on about the pain in my finger from the slot on the lip. She had to do all the things that I couldn’t do myself; all the things that made the difference between success and failure.

So,I really didn’t do the climb. My friend and I climbed did it.

This was all many years ago...

Dear Andrew

I had originally thought that I would buy you a farewell card but such cards are often trite and seldom convey the true message of the sender. Instead I sat down to write these lines that I hope have captured a few of the memories of your time in this country.

I remember the first time you ever touched rock. It was Beginners Meet at Monteseel and you followed Reformatory facing out from the rock on the crux! I am sure later that afternoon I would have led Hallucination; it’s what I always did.

Hallucination… It is hard now to imagine just what that route meant to us back then – in the centre of the arena yet before it became a trade route for everyone ticking off another route in checklist to stardom. Do you remember all the silly things we said at various times while doing the route? “Not only am I unfit, I’m also useless.” Didn’t you keep a record of how many times you did the route? I guess my ascents must be in the hundreds. So much personal history in forty feet of rock.

I feel like Villon and asking, “Where are the great days of flying up to the Transvaal for a long weekend?” (Of course Villon didn’t fly anywhere, and was longing for snow). Waiting in the lounge for the midnight flight, sipping Cointreau, opening a new route in Mhlabatini, flying back to Durban late on Sunday night and then feeling like death the next day. But fortunately there would be the wall to go to that afternoon, anxiously checking the time as it neared a quarter to four. Doing the difficult traverse, the desperate mantels, chatting to “the starlet”, laughing with Craig as he lounged on the grass in his disco slippers before cranking out some hideously think move and then climbing on into the dark with the floodlights.

Ultimately, of course, it was Monteseel that was our real home. It was fresh and exciting still and grotty and scruffy as well. There were nights at the hut when nobody else was there and we were bored to tears, forced to go down to the bar at Thousand Hills Hotel to pass the evening. Others times, though, the hut was so crowded that sleep was impossible – snoring climbers, the dripping tap and rattling door. Noisy parties next door, and a local band playing Lover Boy. The filthy shower, dirty sink, collapsing furniture and beers mugs all covered in candle wax. Reading two year old time magazines while hiding from the midday sun. Arriving at the hut on a Saturday morning and rushing to check the notice board for new routes, to see the comments scrawled in the hut book and in the new route book. Opening a new line and proudly (arrogantly?) writing it up, deliberating over the route name. That weekend a group of physics students came to watch Halley’s Comet and braai and made such a racket. And climbing. Leading Rigor Mortis with you barely consenting to belay in hole – I don’t suppose that you heard that the entire pillar fell down some years later? Warchild, Edge of Eternity. Soloing Pinup, following routes in running shoes and soloing down Pilgrims Progress to get to the start of Wild Sky. What stories and memories those routes hold for us lucky enough to have been climbing then.

What happens to that special feeling that climbing gave us? Does it last, or disappear with our youth? No, it’s still there. When the time and conditions are right, it all comes flooding back, just like it did on Guy Fawkes Day in 1988 when I opened Lonely Walls. I was glad it was you belaying me that day. It was right. The old team, putting it together one last time. Leading out on those grey walls at Winston Park when the wind is blowing and the sky grey and heavy with impending rain is a memory that will stay with me forever. I hope you remember that day and remember that it’s all worthwhile. The hours of effort, the training, injuries, all of it is worth it for just one day on a route like that. I haven’t been back since that day and doubt I ever shall. There is a big toll plaza below the crag now on a new freeway, and the route was bolted sometime later. I suppose that might have been a good idea, because now other people can make their own types of memories there.

Andrew, you helped my climbing so much. You belayed me on so many routes, you seemed to believe in me and helped me to believe in myself. Shadows in the Rain, Wish You Were Here, Glory Road; the list could go on and on. We had our ups and downs, but with the passing of time that all seems so meaningless. And now you are leaving this country for good and I don’t suppose I shall see you again. I shall always value the memories of the times you shared with me. I hope you don’t forget either.

My entire climb is smaller than the smallest hold on yours

The other day, or month, I was driving out to climb and headed past that gargantuan and tottering pile known as du Toits Peak. Actually that might not be its real name but for now let's suppose that it is.

I always veer off the road around about there, because I try to see the wall and the line of Renaissance. Very strangely indeed it turns out that more or less the most memorable day of my life (clearly this can't really be true, perhaps it's the 3rd most memorable) was the day Snort and I did Renaissance free in a day from Cape Town. I am led to believe that Snort is now impersonating an orthopaedic surgeon called Charles Edelstein and living in Cape Town.

The thing that struck me is that I was off to top rope a new project which really is smaller (in its entirety) than the smallest hold on Renaissance. That seemed like a very odd thing and I wondered how I had come to be living at the focal point of a high powered microscope.

Renaissance free in a day from Cape Town... Technically I suppose it's all of grade 22 and has holds the size of aircraft carriers, but that is missing the point. It really was one of the best days out.

As a footnote: A couple of years later I tried to do another route on the wall, the name of which I have completely forgotten. I got off route on the scrambling stuff at the bottom and arrived at the big ledge 4 hours after leaving the ground instead of 4 minutes later. And that was more or less that.

Important climbs

In the UK some climbers are lucky enough to do important climbs.

Important?

I decided to make a list of all my important climbs and then to make another list of all the people to whom those climbs were important. Then I would cross-correlate the two lists using some nifty software that I don't have and from that I would extract a network of important connections.

This took me absolutely no time at all. There wasn't a single entry on either list.

It reminded me of the Tilman biography The Last Hero which, I hasten to add, I haven't read. On the other hand I did read Harold Drasdo's review of the book in which he asked if you could be considered a hero for simply indulging your passion for wandering round in the wilderness or sailing round the world.

Can there possibly be such things as important climbs?

Shirker or Sherpa?

Yesterday morning was decision time. Shirker or Sherpa? More specifically, did I want to drive for two and a half hours, thrash up a bushy hill with full pack for 30 minutes and then spend 3 hours drilling bolts before reversing the travel experience, all on my own?

At around 10:30 am, while in the middle of wide-ranging debate with my ex-wife and eldest daughter about visiting arrangements, finances, schools etc, an SMS arrived. During a lull in negotiations I sneaked a glance and the message said "go and bolt it".

We quickly negotiated world peace and then I rushed home, packed and headed out to Oorlogskloof. Everything went swimmingly. There was a slight moment's hesitation when I was clipped to the anchors at the top of the wall and pulled the rope from the top anchor. It struck me that dropping the rope at that point would make things very unpleasant indeed, for a few days, until death set in.

So the line starts up The Dream to the 4th bolt, then moves diagonally right for a further 8 bolts. In 2 places the opposite side of the gully is fairly close and it was hard to decide how best to place the bolts at that point to make the fall safe. I hope I got it right.

It has the same hardish start as The Dream, then instead of the hand jam rest moves right on reasonable holds. It probably doesn't have a hard single crux move, but the top half looks more sustained than The Dream, on smaller holds.