yankinoz - naïve

Ghost Street - a Halloween post even if it wasn’t Halloween at the time.

Dinner is one of the most difficult things about business travel – sometimes you can organise dinner with colleagues but all too often you end up fending for yourself, alone. Room service or dining in the hotel restaurant is pretty much the same anywhere in the world. I like to try out the local cuisine and when you are in China, and don’t speak Chinese, well things can get interesting.

Beijing’s Gui Jie (Ghost Street) was listed in the hotel guide as a famous street of restaurants – the photos looked interesting and I had just figured out how to use the Beijing subway (very easy and very cheap) so I decided to have a go – it’s a fairly long strip of restaurants and an absolute hive of activity. Barkers were inviting me in… mostly in Chinese but a few hellos in English. I noticed some, but not all restaurants had picture menus… and some were crowded and some were empty and I kinda wanted some sort of noodle dish and saw a bit of that so – picture menu, busy but not too crowded and some indication that they serve noodles was what I was looking for.

]]> What I found was a plaque on the side of a restaurant that was all about the history of Ghost street – in really good English too – inside I was sure I saw someone slurping some noodles down and it was pretty busy but a few table available so I walked in. I was seated in a booth – the table had a large hole in the middle of it with a gas hob underneath – I had heard about ‘hot pot’ restaurants and without trying it looked like I found one!

Hmm, no picture menu and it took the waitress (who was trying her best to communicate with me) brought an English menu for me… It was confusing to say the least. Best I could tell you order a hot pot with some sort of meat and then vegies on the side – I pointed to ‘spicy shrimp’ and the waitress seemed a bit worried… kept pointing to the word ‘HOT’ in hot pot and saying “Hot!” – I got the message, it’s spicy, I’ll take it. Beer was much easier to order – phew!

Dinner arrived – clearly family style – a huge bowl of prawns (these were way to big to be called shrimp) and chili – oh, my – so much chili – pepper, cloves, and I’m not sure what else but if it’s spice it was probably mixed in with what must have been two dozen shrimp. Now, I’m quite proud of my ability to pop the head off and peal the shell off a shrimp using chopsticks and a spoon so I dug in right away. It was slow going but as I got into the grove there the waitress brought me some plastic gloves and gestured that I could eat with my hands. I was having fun with the chopsticks so I smiled and said xiexie. I should say it all tasted beautiful – the prawns had been sliced open so the spices really permeated the meat. But waitress was persistent with the gloves! I’m not sure if she was being nice or just wanted me to eat faster so she could turn over the table! So fine, fine – I donned the gloves and dug in. Side effect of eating faster – the spice builds… ‘it tastes like burning!’ but oh, so good.

I filled myself up – just about the right amount of heat in the shrimp too as I don’t think I could have taken one more. Total bill for huge bowl of shrimp, some bok choy and a large (600ml) beer – 120RMB – about 20AUD – yeah, noodle soup would have been cheaper (probably 20RMB) but the experience was priceless.

Gavin hands with Grandpa hands

Capt Jack Crashes Wedding

Sydney Dust Storm

The dust from the west has arrived in Sydney

thing I learned today

my father is a fan of REM. and I don't mean sleep, although he likes that too.

Paul McGinness at LAX

best QF Economy flight ever. Airbus A380 - seemed to have a bit more elbow room than the 747 and a great crew - I was starting to think the new Airbuses were getting the best crews (status posting maybe) then toward the end of the flight was asked to fill out a survey. hmmm. hey Qantas - survey every flight if this is how we get treated when there's a customer service survey :-) - oh - one other note - fix the overhead compartment doors - they wouldn't stay open making it a fair PIA to get things in and out. other than that - nice airplane.

no facebook in china

that's new, it worked last time I was here. Twitter is blocked too. But my blog isn't.

edit: and lolcats. China doesn't like lolcats.

try try try try again - part 2

Last Sunday in Nowra I set out to better my all time hardest climb. Back in the 1990’s I had climbed as hard as 5.11b (about the equivalent of the Australian grade 22) and in the past year I’ve climbed several 22s and attempted a few 23s. Success on this outing would mean a new personal best while still a 40 year old. I searched the guidebook and settled on a 23 called Still Life (that’s 5.11d or 7a in other grading systems.) I found a few pictures of it on line – it looked technical and balancy and to be honest that suites my style so it seemed a good fit.

The day started with my pulling a hold off of a warm up climb and catching a fair bit of air as a result. (Exfoliator – 18 – um if you are a climber reading this, don’t bother with Exfoliator.) After the warm up I was ready to tackle Still Life. It looked hard in person but doable. My first attempt didn’t get very far – the opening moves were more powerful than I expected with a crux immediately past the first bolt. That was another power move and took a couple of goes to get it. I wasn’t confident I could repeat it. I proceeded to work the climb ‘bolt to bolt’ – that is I would climb a section, clip the rope in and have a rest – this allows me to learn the moves and know where the good and bad holds are. Turns out there’s a second crux at the top… oh great…

I did manage to do all the moves and got to the top with many rests. My next step was to top rope the whole thing – mostly to sort out the chunk between bolt 1 and 2 – but also to give myself some confidence that I can link all the moves together before I tried another lead. Then another climber asked if she could climb it. I pulled our rope and let her have a go – but also meaning that my next attempt would not be top roped.

She was warming up (ugh!) but hey – cool – seeing someone else climb something that is difficult for me makes it look more possible. She had climbed it before and had some tricks.. First was a different way to get from bolt 1 to 2 – she went left through some small but positive holds and it looked a lot easier then the way I was doing it (technical and balancy instead of power.) She used a different hand sequence from bolt 2 until the upper crux – in fact her belayer pointed out a ‘hidden’ hold that made getting to the upper crux a lot easier. As for the upper crux, she pretty much did what I did so that made me feel pretty good - at least I had done some of it right.

Second shot I did on lead – the technical bit from bolt 1 to 2 was not as easy as she made it look! I fell off it probably 3 times, maybe 4 before I figured out what to do with my feet and found a good sequence. As soon as I got through it I managed to keep going into the upper crux but fell off that bit. No worries, it wasn’t a ground up attempt anyway and I took the opportunity to work out the top a bit more (finding another ‘hidden’ hold as well.)

After 30 minutes rest and as much food as my nerves would let me intake I took the third shot: Power start felt weird but I got past the 1st bolt and rather ungracefully managed the technical moves up to the 2nd bolt. Still going strong the powerful moves were coming to me one after another I found myself at the last bolt, trying to catch some sort of rest before the last crux. Heading into it things felt good but Amy tells me I looked pretty ‘desperate’ – I ended up missing the hidden hold I just found – had my feet in the wrong spots for the last move – still managed to grab hold of the last hold and just needed to get my feet right so I could clip the anchors. I’m so close but it doesn’t count if you don’t clip the anchors! I fell off instead. One of those falls where you are falling long enough to think about the fact that you are still falling. My scream changed from the ‘darn I failed’ scream to more of a ‘when am I going to stop’ scream but the rope and gear all kicked in – pulling Amy off the ground a good 1.5 meters. All good and Amy lowered both of us back to the ground.

Amy suggested getting back on it right away – maybe I can use the adrenalin left from the fall – and the fact that I know I can not only do all the moves I can do them all in one go. Forth shot: excellent – the power start felt great and I moved smoothly through the lower crux. Just started to head into the powerful moves past bolt 2 and realised that I was running out of steam fast. Third clip and that was it – I sat on the rope for another rest seriously unsure if I could get back to the top even with rests. I was completely spent. It wasn’t easy but did manage to get to the top again. Tried some different things with my feet in the upper crux and then cleaned the climb. Yeah, I was a bit sad that I wasn’t able to set a new hardest climb but I knew that I gave it everything I had. I also knew that the next time I get on Still Life it I will be fresh - right after a warm up and I will send it. So what if I have to do that while I’m 41.

try try try try again - part 1

or my last climb while aged 40.

After spending the better part of July either with or recovering from the flu we finally got out to some real rock climbing last weekend. Amy and I spent a relaxing Saturday afternoon at the Thompson's Sunrise crag in Nowra - getting used to the rock again. I found the climb Isengard (18/5.10a/6a)a nice re-introduction to Nowra climbing. The start of the climb is very similar to the Blue Mounatains with sharp flakes and positive edges, then around a corner the top 15 meters is slightly overhanging rounded, sloping pumpy climbing - ahh Nowra!

The plan for Sunday was to set a new personal best. more on that later.

wonder if non-climbers think this is as cool as i do

probably not but have a look anyway (it's large)

Pachamama

i'm still here

I haven't been blogging much lately. Facebook is the new blog I guess. I've been meaning for ages to follow up on my last post - the stellar weekend that ended with wale watching. The Saturday saw a new rock climbing personal best. A grade 21 called Girly Germs in the Blue Mountains. Those of you paying attention will know I've been talking about recent grade 22 climbs that I've done so why is Girly Germs a PB? Well it's the first 21 I've climbing in an 'on sight' style - that is to say I did it on my first attempt with absolutely no 'beta' - tips or prior knowledge of how to climb it - or even seeing someone climb it. I walked up to, climbed, and that was it.

I spent the rest of the day falling off of long (25 meter) harder climbs (22 and 23) and realized that my endurance needs some serious work.

The weekends since have been cold, wet and/or windy - I've been spending a lot of time at the climbing gyms. I say gyms because there's a second gym - a bit further from home - that I'm spending more time at. Sydney Indoor Climbing Gym is taller than my local, Climb Fit. And since I'm working on endurance... a taller gym is a good thing.

In addition to having longer routes the Sydney Indoor Climbing Gym also grades a lot of their routes. I don't know why Climb Fit doesn't do this but they just don't I guess. I'm working on a long term goal to climb grade 24 - gym climb 24s don't count - but today, at the SICG I did a 24 on top rope. It only took two attempts and it was very hard work. Now, I don't count that for the long term goal - that's for outdoor climbs on lead but what is interesting is that this is the first climb marked 24 (or 7a+ or 5.12a) in any gym I've done. Good for the confidence that is :D

The tail end of a stellar weekend

Gaby Mayo heading Into the Void (19)

Spare-time Study Centre

test shot of cockatoos

what a week. need this long weekend (even if I'm working Monday)

finally got a chance to have a play with the new (new to me) camera so naturally new cockatoo photo. The camera is a beast for sure. I think the cockatoos were a little scared of it.