Some people maintain that tramping isn’t worth the effort. At 5am on Saturday morning I was beginning to think this for the first time in my life. Mind you, I personally reckon it might have had something to do with drinking until midnight with Kiwi, English, Scottish, Irish and Slovakians (a dangerous combination if ever there was one)

So.. up at 5am, and after meeting the others from the CUTC we drove up to Arthurs Pass to start up Mt. Bealey (1836m)

The route climbs steeply up through the bush (beech forest) and then becomes a really impressive arete with side ridges coming off it. I was here 1 year, 11 months and 3 weeks ago with Florian. It was misty then.. we managed to get onto a side ridge and went completely off route. It was actually hilarious – Florian was adamant we were heading North (look at the sun) when we were infact heading South. It wasn’t until someone pointed out he was in the wrong hemisphere and showed him his compass that we finally turned around!

Anyways – blue skies for us this weekend.

Summit Pic L->R: Sharon, Caroline, Olivier, Carol, James and Volker. A great crowd to go tramping with (not a kiwi amongst us.. though I am getting there I feel)

So we trundled along through amazing scenery (though I am so out of shape I wasn’t admiring it as much as it deserved.. more cursing it really)

Once we got onto the top of Avalanche Peak (where they have races up and down every year, for fun, as you do…) it was a shortish trip down the ridge to find the exit off the mountain. The exit is a really long scree run which you can see below.

You descend about 500m. Quickly. It’s super fun as it is really easy to slide down it (acts like sand). The bottom of the slope was agony though – thighs screaming blue bloody murder with all the big rocks (which don’t slide *quite* so easily) having already fallen to the bottom! It was good to get to the hut that night.

The walk out the next morning was quite straight forward along the river valley. I had thought by the end of yesterday how funny it was to have dry feet on a hike… Fortunately there were more than enough river crossings to make up for it today!

So all in all a great weekend, it was good to stretch the legs again.

Declan (on the right in this very old picture I took off the climbing website..)

single handedly got me through tech-drawing in my first year in college (no joke), came away climbing to Cassis in France for that summer. He was a real help in second year too with motivation for the schol exams. We then flatted together for a year on campus (house 37 I think).. where he made erroneous stories about my pyjamas up.. also getting me through electronics that year..

Anyway.. great guy – and he has just left Ireland to join the British Army.. I actually think he’ll be really good in there – bringing his own brand of sanity to the job. Good luck Declan.. keep us posted with the stories!… and if you can manage a rotation out to NZ – all the better.

Dave turned a quarter of a century this week… we went to the climbing walls ‘clip and climb’ area before heading to the pub. It’s a funky play area.. e.g. climbing on perspex so you can race against your opponent, velcro walls so you only get minimum grip with your fingers.. speed climbing… lots of fun (thanks to Dave for the pics)

So… I dunno how many of you think about peak oil and some of the possible reasons behind the Iraq war (and maybe the Iranian one?) But I thought Robert Newman’s History of Oil (27megs) from http://www.thedossier.ukonline.co.uk/ was quite good. Firstly it’s comedy (and I love good comedy!)… but he explains some ideas in fairly understandable language. For example the petrodollar cycle (oil is traded only in dollars… and why this has real benefits for Americas economy (and the deficit they can run)).

Look! I’m not turning into a raving anarchist (even though I do live with some interesting types!) but I thought it was both fun and interesting.. so thought I’d share :)

Other news.. thanks to all who have posted to http://picaweek.blogspot.com. Just go to www.blogger.com with username/password picaweek/picaweek. You can post anonymously or get a login if you want (mail me).

The idea (again) of picaweek, was to collect pictures from friends & family & anyone who comes across this blog and feels like it – from around the world. So far there’s posts from Africa (Uganda and Ghana (who is/was in Ghana?!?!), North America, South America (cousin Thomas in Peru), Asia (Thailand and China), Europe (Ireland (yay), Germany, Italy and Austria). So I think that’s got every continent covered except for Antarctica. Anyways.. thanks again to all who have put pictures up… I’m planning on getting into the hills this weekend so hopefully will have something purty to put up :)

This week has been a total shock. In work every single day this week (except for Tuesday thank God which was a day off (ANZAC day). I’m actually not joking for once! For sure I’m spoiled in my working world getting to work from home (just in case anyone from work is reading this … I do work.. savagely hard!). I think it’s more the flexibility to put in the hours which are needed – but when it’s convenient to do them. I wake up pretty early and start early ish.. but I have no issues with stopping early and heading off biking / climbing when it’s convenient. As long as the work is done and up to standard everyone is (and should be!) happy.

And a ‘real job’ will put an end to that. There may be a way around it.. but we’ll just have to see what happens…

So yes, Friday night was totally welcome. Dave Aubrey had a pre-birthday (quarter century) party. It was excellent.. Indian curry, the smells were incredible. He’s a great guy.. even came out to help me in the choosing of my new bike the next morning (a Kona King Kikapu – $2000.. now hopefully I will make use of it).

Sat was pretty cruisey. I went for my first walk/jog/walk/jog/walk in 8 months (testing to see if my back is up to it!) and it went fine. I still feel pretty stiff when jogging, but it’s not sore, and I think progress can be made.

Then out to see a film with some of Dave’s friends from Paynes Forde (Isla, Andy and Chris) before Tim’s themed party. The theme was ‘Something from your Childhood’.

I didn’t really make the time to create a funky costume. But I used to enjoy padding about (still do really) in pyjamas..(and my old glasses!) Mick even wrote a climbing junk story on it and I quote from the final paragraph in that linked story..

Alas, Patrick’s pyjamas will not be with us as they are now involved in a counterculture revolution in central Yemen.

These pyjamas I am wearing in the pic above were made in Hoi An (Vietnam) back in Oct ish. Now the funny thing is .. I asked for a styalised picture of a climber to be embroidered onto the fabric. Unfortunately as I didn’t put an up arrow on the picture, it looks like it’s just a figure crawling along the pocket, not quite what I had in mind!

Anyways.. enough rambling for one week.. am hoping to get off tramping this coming weekend if the CUTC are running trips so will try to get some more exciting pictures for then!

No adventures this weekend. At least not outdoory ones.

The work I do for the government is mainly to do with the creation and maintenance of software they use in the Contact Centre. This weekend I had to make a pretty major upgrade to the site (it’s now even better than before! (wow)). So I had to basically break it all and put it back together in time for Monday morning.

Also had some friends of my cousin Rachels in town. Laura and Christian. Laura I had met before when I was in my 3rd year of college when I toured through Canada and the US. It was lovely having them around, just a shame I couldn’t get away and show them ChCh & the surroundings properly.

So… this morning.. Monday morning.. in work for 08:30. I almost died. Was kinda nervous as to whether things would actually work or not… I mean its pretty easy to let a few things go by..

And it was actually an awful awful morning… emails weren’t being sent from the system.. panic.. only to find out the entire ministrys external mail was down (sigh of relief). No, the really awful part of the morning was David getting his second ‘down trouser’ against me since I have been back in work. A ‘down trouser’ is what they call it in pool when your opponent clears without you having potted a ball. Its certainly one good reason to spend more time in the office – that of getting better at pool.

Anyways.. the upgrade actually went totally smoothly.. I shall sleep quite a lot lighter this evening.