Shoes

When you want to go travel the world, explore possibility and horizon, you really want better shoes than this. Terrible state. Thus, my new Inov-8. They rock! I've been giving them as hard a time as can be given in a city without actually running on them or parkouring or similar, and they have held their own very elegantly. If there is anything that might be bad about them, it's how incredibly breatheable they are, wind seems to hit your feet as if though you were in flip-flops. Rugged bomb-proof flip-flops.




Days have passed since I wrote that, many long intense days. Ellie and I have gone mental getting our last pieces of gear together (just have two things missing, and I for one am of the idea that having a spade is DEFINITELY of grave importance). It is come to that time before a trip when it finally sinks in, you are leaving. We are now unemployed and I'm one day away from being homeless, and never felt so free. And it is so HARD deciding which clothes go with me, which will stay or will be sold! Genuinely hard. So many cool t-shirts!

As a matter of curiosity, it will be good to know, for our readers, that I have finally got a passport. Five days before setting off to Scotland, I finally managed to go to the German embassy and pick up that hated piece of printed bureaucracy. Promptly, Ellie and I bought our tickets out of the Kingdom. We will leave for Spain at the end of November, flying to Valencia first, in order to climb in a place that made the front cover of the last Climb magazine, Chulilla. It looks AMAZING! Seriously, google it, place looks magical. After a week there, off to Lleida, where Sharma, Ileida, Andrada, and loads of other absolutely ridiculously good climbers seem to flock. Maybe we'll run across them, and some of their magic will rub off on me. PLEAAAAAAAAAAASE!!!

After that we need to get to Barcelona, fly from there to Milan (quite close to some rocks as well, hehehe) for another week, and after that, we'll see :P so far, nothing is solid except for those stops. And the very first stage, two weeks of Scotland wild camping, Ellie got the flights there for my birthday! All in all I feel the very luckiest man around. And it all seems to be getting better every time!

Christmas versus Halloween

One week to go and so much to do....parties parties and more parties! Oh what a hassle, how will we cope? Talking of parties (Bah humbug me if you will) it will be nice to leave behind the crazy Christmas-Ness that has already started... The street councils have the brains of barnacles and seem to be getting confused as to whether Halloween lights or Christmas lights are the order of the day. It's October for fooks sake!!

Anyhoo, although the tin can trangia was a success the amount of meths needed to boil a wee bit of water, suggests we would need to be hooked up to an entire resevoir of the stuff to produce a slurp of tea. Ergo, we may resort to a hexi-burner type of stove for our lighter version of a trangia.

Due to a finite source of funds and horrendously boring monetary situation we may have to subsitute the awesomeness of the brand spanking new Primus Omnilite Ti stove (which Ranaz has been orgasming over since he read the press release), in its titanium beauty and total weight of 239g, and lower fuel consumption blah blah blah ... For the Pocket Rocket, which in all fairness is adequate ( who wants to be just adequate though?), for our needs and is a fraction of the price, is a reliable little stove, and is adequate....

The need for two stoves is because the trangia is fantastic for cooking proper meals, which I love doing when camping, none of the boil in the bag, constipation inducing meals for me thank you very much. But crap when time is an issue...its takes ages. The little gas stoves on the other hand are great for boiling water, but tend to be unstable and not good for cooking gourmet meals for two at the foot of the crags.

Apart from geeky stove discussions, I have an inordinate number of contact lenses to buy, a carboot sale to organise, a room to tidy, doctors and dentists to visit, plane tickets to book, parents to visit and lots and lots of luverly parties to go to...all in a week. Better get cracking.

Of karebiners and flaming tins.

Today I worked out a system to lighten the load and free space up in rucksacks while still using the brilliant Trangia cooking system. Take a can, poke holes for air, and voilá.

An unfortunate insect was found in the Trangia lid. A minute of silence.

On another note, Ellie got me an early birthday present which is AWESOME! I had gone to the DMM factory tour earlier this year and got the awesome gift of a personalized phantom krab. Wheee! A couple of weeks ago someone decided to nick it :( Ellie then decided to try and replace it and emailed the nice people over at  DMM and they decided to send out a new one, with RANAZ printed along its side and everything! And it's blue! It's awesome! Best thoughtful birthday present ever.

Getting really psyched about leaving London now, keep thinking of Scotland, Spain, climbing, and getting to see my friends and family soon :D there's only a few odd bits of gear I want to catch hold of before we leave and zoom away from a life of commutes and buildings and bills and all that!

It's only one week to go now! Need to sort out all my "important" bank and tax and boring things to get out of the way and I'm sorted. Wheeeeee!

Ranaz experimenting with tin can trangia

Making room for my heels...well impressed! Hands up I admit I was doubtful

Crutches....

My first contribution since Ranaz set up this blog... Enforced houseboundness has given me the time to watch every old Hamish Macbeth episode, eat the fridge bare and finally get round to contributing! 2 weeks before we set off on our climbing extravaganza sees me (sod's law) on crutches for the first time in my life and the novelty has well and truly worn off. Embarrassingly there is no epicness to my accident, no daring deeds to report, but simply hopping over a stream in cornwall saw me sitting in Truro's finest medical establishment for the best part of a glorious sunday whilst the rest of the group enjoyed the fine weather and the finer waves.

Sitting around for so long and with evening climbing sessions off the agenda has given me opportunity to really think about our trip. I've had itchy feet for a few years now and its crazy to think that in a couple of weeks we'll be off to visit some of the finest climbing destinations in the world. I'm also very lucky to be heading off out there with one of the most awesome climbers I've met! Ranaz has been climbing for far longer than I have and has this uncanny and freakish ability to cling onto holds smaller than a gnat's arse.

So we've spent a small fortune on amazing gear that we would never have been able to afford otherwise... There are benefits to working in an outdoor retailers to make up for the wages... I have no idea how Ranaz has managed to fit all his gear into that Osprey rucksack in the photos, I'm starting to wonder if I should have gone for something a little larger in a bag, like a trunk maybe or a white van. My Trangia is an invaluable bit of kit but it takes up a lot of room, although Annie at work has opened my eyes to the possibility of the tin can trangia which will leave me with room for the heels! Yes I am definitely taking one pair just because...and anyway they have cork heels, cork floats...and.... I'm sure at some point we'll be in a desperate situation which calls for cork floats. Honest.

Nearly there....

Two weeks to go and then we are off. It's a bit scary. But exciting beyond all reckoning. The thought of being off, leaving the mundane and protected world of everyday normality, sacrificing the comfortable and secure feeling of a job a commute, walls around us... wait... that's why we are leaving! Wheeeeeee, freedom!

On Friday we competed in the Superleague, the second round of this bouldering competition. On the first round I'd been in top form, crushing the problems and coming out top in my category.

This time I had one of my worst performances at a wall ever. That's how I felt anyway. Now I realise it was mainly due to the injury I suffered on the first round, and the resulting rest and recovery time.

Ellie and Ed, on the other hand, shone. They basically glowed with the joy of trying out new moves, puzzling over new problems. They were in the zone. How I envied.

After that I've been training to get back with it, and wow, I'm ridiculously out of shape. Good thing I'm off soon to climb the world :D

Mountain Chicken

Meet Mountain Chicken. Inspiration to both Ellie and me, she embodies the true mountain spirit. Mountain Chicken is awesome. First sighted in the confines of an underground lair by a troubled adventurer gone astray, Mountain Chicken seems to have changed significantly from the first rough sketches were presented. Recent sightins clearly show a much better-equipped individual, though truly faced with perilous environments and dangers.

Mountain Chicken, circa November 2010

Mountain Chicken, in what could be
the same summit, c. September 2011

Today, in preparation to our future travels, I packed my rucksacks with the bare-bones climbing/camping kit. Except for my harness, which is at work. My new climbing pack can take it all! Of course, I'd have no change of clothes, or anything to cook with, but I'm impressed how much I could stick in there. Check it out.

Impressively, this made my room look tidy.

I really love Osprey packs.

My harness is still missing there, my chalkbag, and all form of footwear is completely disregarded. However, when I fit those same things (and those that are evidently yet to be packed) into my larger (and also beautiful) 70 litre pack, there was roughly half the space to be filled. Uncompressed. And the daysack empty. I am pleased. There will be room for underwear (YAY!)


As time approaches, nerves are fraying. I don't know whether I'll have time to do all I have to do before I leave (frankly, I don't even know WHAT exactly one does before leaving a city for good... must involve talking to banks and all that boring annoying stuff), or tuck tail and head for the hills in what little precious spare time I have.

Maybe I'll just post blogs. I am enjoying this quite a bit. Hopefully Ellie can write soon too :D

More soon.

Ranaz

To begin a blog

Today we test out the possibilities of this blog. Today we begin!
Today we get a first peek at Ellie, the Mountain Chicken.
Today I'm dead tired and will go to sleep, bedtime!

:D