Uncomfortable

Congrats to Ned who won the Busa yesterday with Dan hot on his heels, the hardest problem looked truly hard in a basic burly way. Nice!

Today Nat and I braved the crowds in the works (obviously lots of people made a weekend of it), the session was going well after a shaky start (confidence wise on Nat's part)... I won't bore people with details of problems but the new yellows were fun and soon enough I was trying the comp wall problems. Did the grey again 1st time in much better style (it's soft for 7a)...Then did a few more and was happy to finish by flashing the yellow comp wall up Percy's cluster of volumes (however it seems to circumnavigate the majority of them), spotted by Andy.

Walked past Travs and Mike Lea attempting the problem detailed in the last post, I muttered some words to Travs about my incident and right on cue Mike took the same nasty fall, Trav's did the same and they both moved on. I mentioned it to Sam and he looked horrified and vowed to fiddle with the foothold.

Recently Dave Macleod soloed a sport route that was reported as an 8c solo, firstly this doesn't sit comfortably with me, why does some one self engineer danger? especially in such a contrived manner, he needs a rope and harness to get down so why the f*ck doesn't he use one to get up? Secondly the clips are still in (ok so they're semi-permanent) but again he's wearing a harness so every meter or so there some kind of back up safety point so if you are going to make a point of soloing it, do it properly. His reasons for doing so didn't seem very sensible to me either: you can confident as you like soloing whatever at 50' overhanging that doesn't mean that you can solo something of similar difficulty on a slab, especially if said slab will not have semi permanent draws hanging every 1m. Lastly: Is it truly 8c? I hate to say it but I was cynical from the start.
Its very interesting when people are at their top level (not specifically this ascent I must add it just got me thinking) to see what they do re: grades, its very easy to take the big grade and this happens a lot (I've most definitely been guilty of this in the past), a lot of people also go down the other path of just pretending like everything is a path which leads to needless downgrading (...and this). Hopefully at the end the day a consensus leads to a good understanding of a given problem/route's difficulty, if this doesn't happen cutting edge ascents mean nothing as they could well already be history, the 'Next Level' may just be a crock of sh*t (like this post no doubt)...

Right now for something a bit more light hearted, this was published this week after Nat won a Road Safety quiz at her works. Oh the irony.

Well last night I went down to the works. I was having a reasonably good session, doing the grey thing on the curved section of the comp wall, don't know what grade it gets but it was a minor triumph.
After doing that I started looking for easy reds, swiftly found one. 34 i think, opposite the small kids boulder. Long reach to the top of the long volume, match, left foot up onto edge just below the lip of the volume, rock up a long way, turn your right hand, rock some more, right foot to hand....well and then my (left) foot slipped, i pivoted round the hold with two limbs attatched before springing back and landing badly on the leg, my break hurt like hell, Nat was in tears and the group I was climbing with was silent. No damage so I sat down and tried to laugh it off to make Nat feel better. Nat unsurprisingly wanted to leave, so I made myself warm down and tried to chuckle it off some more.
Not good.
I know i've been fairly negative and critical of the works since it opened but the thing i'm least a fan of is the new matting cover they have, I forecast more injury.

Catch Up

There's been very litte bloggage from me recently, this is mainly due to the fact that a while ago we bought and Xbox 360 which came with a months free Xbox live membership. I've been wasting vast amounts of time online.

Quite a lots gone on but most of it isn't really all that interesting so i'll try and sumarise things

Cars:
Well the yellow one turned out to be a bit dodgy, it had door drop and other issues. The dealership sent off the V5 before we paid so we now have that hassle to sort out. Idiots.
We found a blue one, its great, 6 months older same ish mileage. It had an adisory notice on the rear brakes so I went to get that sorted up at quickfit, nice and cheap and a lifetimes worth of pads for the price of one set (basically as they try to get you to replace all of your brake components every time you go in). Got back in the car after the above work, airbag warning light came on. Sh*t. Got the bloke out but he was having none of it.
Lots of stressing and pricing up diagnostics and replacement parts then followed until I saw sense and visited the Fiat Forum, a little time spent reading and i found something interesting
, there is a connector beneath the sear, when I picked it up the seat was in the rear foot well or near enough. A quick look and the monkey working on it had managed to wrench the seat back hard enough to dislodge the protective clips and pull out the connector. Snapped it all back together. Job Done.
The more time we spend with the new car the more certain i'm getting that the other was remapped:

* It had more go, espeically in the lower gears
* When driven steadily it did better mpg (by 10)
* It smoked more under hard acceleration

The insurance company are still faffing about.

Climbing ish Stuff:
I tried climbing the day my cast came off, it was a bad idea and hurt a lot. I tried a week later it hurt less but still enough to worry me. I can't crimp or pinch and I couldn't ever openhand so i'm screwed. I think this injury is going to be a right pain, yes its early but still my leg didn't bother me this much after it came out of the frame.

The works now have rings, I've tried to get Percy to build a box but he refuses which is annoying as you can't do a full rings workout without something to kneel on. He suggested a chair, this was very unstable when extended and with my luck I decided that wasn't a good plan.
His massive cast iron hook ring removal system is utterly crazy as well, hopefully it doesn't fall off at any point while hoisting as it will knock whoever is stood near the desk clean out.
I get more and more uncertain about the works each time something like this comes up, its becoming gimmicky, huge almost 70% useless campus board, Graffiti'd training board which isn't steep enough (its better but lets face it the people who like it usually have access to a contrasting steep as f*ck board) and now the rings...Maybe its just me?

My mate James Blay has started working for Wild Country so Nat and I took him to dQ on Friday night for the party (thanks to Vic's for the heads up as I was unaware as per usual). Saturday night came and James' new girlfriend was up so I was required to go out. It was expensive and I felt terrible on Sunday.

Well I did a rubbish job of making that short...

Car Shennanigans

We've found a replacement Punto, in less than subtle yellow. 22k miles. We've also found an insurer which is nice.
Buying it is turning into a whole lot of unwanted hassle as we have Nat's brothers car at the minute and need to get that back down south and then ours back up but Nat's barely driven since the crash so a days driving isn't on the cards. Add to this its not taxed and they're trying to give us 7 days insurance for free (their insurers won't touch us with a broomstick, well they will but the quote was £3700 with an excess nearing a grand) in order to get a cover note, but obviously that isn't working out so well.

Cafe Guru

It's been a while a since I blogged, Nat and I stopped taking pain killers for long enough to enjoy Valentines evening. She had a free hair up thing at a salon across town and she finally got to wear the dress I bought her for Xmas (as we seem to be social recluses).

Here's a piccie as I'm trying to tell her that the taxi is here and she wants a darn pic:
The meal was fantastic as ever, and it really was the perfect setting. Two bottles of wine were consumed far too quickly and we were both slightly worse for wear later on.

Sunday came and we quested off to Birmingham on the train to have a look at what seemed to be an amazing find, a low mileage black version of our shiny little oil burning beast:

(pics taken by me after owning it a week and using every Autoglym product I own on the car in order to get great pictures for when it was time to sell it...)



The example we found was great inside and out but was producing a bad average consumption and seemed to be down on power, further forum based discussion and texts with Mr.Dobbin suggest that this might of been a minor issue but possibly could of indicated a flogged existence. The latter seems likely to me, I mean what other car offers this kind of power for your money (and insurance group 9!), the VRS is the only one really.

We've just had some really great news RE: the crash, the bloke's blood test has come back, I don't know what the units are (mg/L?) but the limit is 80 and his came back at 120 3 hours after the incident so he is screwed. It was also nice to find out that his kid is now fine after having some pretty serious abdominal surgery. Obviously Nat feels very relieved about both those things.

We both went back to work and Uni on Monday. Nat called me at 15:00, her boss had driven her home as she wasn't ready to be back. Today my back feels screwed, I think the same applied to me.

Congrats to Dobbin who seems to have been crushing recently, commiserations to Dave Mason for his dislocation and to Foley for the shortlisting thing that I don't understand. Bad news about the School as well...

No Vehicluar Progression

Right so the Fiat Garage wasted our time by letting us book a test drive allowing us to walk there and then telling us that car was on a corporate training day so it wasn't there, no apology nothing. Nat still test drove the fiat 500, well designed neat small car, too small we decided and too slow (1.4 ~ 10.5s).

Next up was the Suzuki Swift, lovely little GLX with lots of extras out at the front but an automatic gearbox, the Sport was a lot better but had some major issues with build quality (you can see the airbag holes through the dashboard) so that one is scrubbed to.

We also looked at a fiesta st, yes it compromises mpg severely but it ticks almost every other box, unfortunately though this (as yet unresolved claim) makes insurance a bit too much to be affordable.

Dobbin suggested a VRS, I suggested he went and sat in one, cream seats as standard: not a good idea for bouldering.

So all we seem to be doing is crossing things off our list, thats why I think my original idea of a large (padded) hamster ball is the way to go:

Nothing Much

I haven't really been up to much since my last post, Nat and I are now back in Sheffield and her bruising is subsiding, I'm taking significantly less pain relief which is good. Mon night I popped in to watch the foundry bouldering comp, the rest of the time has been taken up trying to find a decent car to replace Nat's Punto HGT Diesel:
0-60 8.7-9.2 (Never found a figure that seemed to agree with another)
Combined Mpg Quoted at 50 we got 62 over its lifetime average (this peaked at about 78 on a trip to font then Amsterdam)
and now obviously the NCAP rating is a bit of an issue as well.
Current Contenders are the fiat 500 sport, Grande Punto 1.9d Sporting, Pug 207 1.6 HDI Gt 110 and the new Corsa 1.7 cdti




all of which seem to have some manner of compromise compared to her/our last car. Whilst at the Vauxhall garage (after oogling a VXR8) I had a sit in a Corsa VXR (the word understated couldn't apply less!) I bet these are fun if maybe a bit lairy with such a big turbo.

UKB has been a bit slow but I laughed pretty hard when a tongue in cheek post of mine prompted this: