Adventures in Kansas and Nova Scotia

No, I won’t be commenting on the theory of evolution despite living in Kansas, but rather that was the name of the conference I went to. Getting back from Minnesota a day late meant I had a bit of a mad rush to get ready for this conference as I was leaving Thursday afternoon and had to make a poster, and get it printed, before I left. Somehow I managed to get everything done and even managed to squeeze in climbing with Mary Ashley at Ibex on the Wednesday evening.

The conference was being held in Snowbird, a ski resort outside of Salt Lake City. I flew to Salt lake and then got a shuttle to the resort. Jeepers that pace was expensive. $16 + tax + tip for buffet breakfast, $2.50 for a bottle of drink from the vending machines. Managed to survive reasonably cheaply by pigging out on breakfast and then mainly eating conference provided food for the rest of the day. As conferences go I enjoyed this one the most of the ones I’ve been to so far and I found the talks generally more relevant to me than at past conferences. That said it certainly could have been better organised. I didn’t even know there would be food at the evening receptions until I turned up at the first one having already eaten.

We had Monday afternoon off and I went for a nice long hike. More on this in the US section here. Tuesday evening was the last day of the conference and there was a free bar at the reception that evening. Apparently at the final reception at last years conference, which you had to pay for, food run out very quickly. The organisers got a big refund from the caters and instead of trying to refund people they put it towards this years – hence it being free and with a free bar. Would have been nice if they’d told us it was a free bar as I know many people had been saving drinks tokens for it, although thankfully not me.

Anyway when the reception wound down around 11 – thanks to Utah’s alcohol laws – I headed off to a party in someone’s room. Turns out we weren’t the only party and security soon come round to kick us all out. Realising what a big group they had and that we were all now mingling in the corridors they took us to the out of the way staff break room and then to the hotel lobby where the partying continued to the small hours. No idea what time it all wound up as I finally went to bed about 1:30.

Next day I pick up a rental car and I spent the next few days mainly exploring southern Idaho. More on this in the US section – here’s a link again.

I got back from that last Sunday and the first few days of the week were just spent catching up on things. Thursday was Independence Day. A lot of my friends took advantage of it to take a long weekend away but I didn’t have anything planned and anyway rather fancied a lazy few days after a rather busy June. As I was in Lawrence I headed downtown to see the fireworks. Was all a lot calmer than I expected and the fireworks were a little lame. That said it did give me a chance to play with my new camera some more and I think I got some decent shots – especially as I was shooting fully manual for the first time. Photos are here.

This weekend I’ve just been lazy so not much else to report. Have applied for a job in Cambridge although I don’t expect to get it as I don’t meet several of their requirements. That said I have done some work on one of the major topics and I don’t think they were expecting people to have that experience so I thought it was worth a punt. I need to get round to applying for a few more jobs over the next week. Still doing physical therapy – this week is my last week – and it definitely seems to have improved things which is a plus – especially as it’s costing me money. Haven’t done much swimming of late what with everything else going on but I hope to get back into that the next couple of weeks.

Oh yeah, my car. Well it turned out that wasn’t too much hassle. They repaired the heater core and gave me the cost of the radiator back. Turns out I could have had all the work done for free as it was under warranty although they only told me this after it had all happened. Oh well could have ended up being a lot more expensive. And guess what was wrong with my rental car in Utah when I returned it. Yep, it was leaking fluid although I thankfully got it back and then run away! Now I think that really is it so until next time…

Another quite short update time as I’ve been quite busy again. After Colorado I had a pretty normal week at work followed by a lazy weekend at home. As I was going to be away for the next four weekends this seemed like a good idea!

On the Saturday the most interesting thing I did was go to a pool party at one of Mary Ashley’s friends. Unfortunately the weather didn’t play ball and it was cloudy and not that warm – see Si occasionally we do see clouds although I have no photographic proof. Still most of us got in the water and a good time was had.

Next weekend was the delayed club trip. I traveled down with Seth and had offered to help to teach people the next day. Seth wanted to camp at Sam’s and so we didn’t get to HCR to after everyone from the club had already gone climbing. We tried to find people but they weren’t n the obvious place. As it happens I was having a bad hay fever weekend so was in no state to teach – the bad.

The good was that I made the most of it and still got fair bit of climbing in, even if none of out was very hard and even of I did fall of a route I’d previously flashed. That evening the club provided food but I didn’t stay around b long and went to bed still feeling not great.

Sunday I did help a friend and her inexperienced other half by making sure he was safe and cleaning routes. It had rained a bit that morning and that seemed to make my hay fever better for the last couple of routes.

The Wednesday after I got back from the club trip I headed to Minneapolis to meet up with Mary Ashley who had been at a conference there. I got there a little before midnight and meet up with a slightly tipsy Mary Ashley before sleeping on her hotel room floor.

Thursday was the last day of Mary Ashley’s conference but as she’d decided she wasn’t going to attend it in the morning we went and got brunch. On the way back my car started to overheat. Turns out my less than one year old radiator had a crack. Very definitely bad! By throwing money at it I was able to get it fixed that afternoon so it wouldn’t effect out plans for the weekend. I also still had enough time to have a reasonable look around both Minneapolis and St Paul. I’ve writing the touristy bits on the US bit of this website here.

That evening I found a British ‘pub’. While the fish and chips was not that good they did have some reasonable British ales on tap. After the day ICS had these went down a bit too well! May Ashley and some other people from her conference joined me later and then we walked down to the Mississippi so we didn’t get to sleep to rather late. So much for or plan for an early start the next day.

Saturday afternoon I noticed my car appeared to be over heating again. It appeared I had another small coolant leak. It didn’t affect out day at all bit it did the next day. When we got to where we were planning to go climbing the next day I noticed the leak had got worse so we knocked climbing on the head and started heading back to Minneapolis.

We stopped to have a quick look at a light house but shortly after we’d stopped for lunch it was clear we weren’t going to make it to Minneapolis. The AAA came to the rescue and Mary Ashley even made her flight even if she did turn up at the airport in a tow truck.

We managed to find somewhere that would take a look at the car the next morning and I found a motel to spend an unexpected night in Minneapolis. Next day I found out that, as expected, it was indeed the heater core that was leaking. Rather annoying given it had only been replaced a few weeks before.

Turns out it was too big a job to finish that day but he could bypass the heater core and get me on the road so I made it back late that evening – unfortunately too late for my photography class.

So my car was the bad but I had a really good weekend despite that. I thought the ugly would be trying to sort out the mess and the cost but so far things have gone well. I’ve had the cost of the bypass refunded by the people who put the core in and they’ve agreed to replace it. They’ve also said the radiator is under warranty so I I’m hopeful of getting more money back when we discuss the radiator when they replace the heater core.

At the moment I’m at a conference outside Salt Lake City and after it I’m going to take a few days off and head to Idaho for some hiking so car repairs will have to wait a while.

I don’t have much other news. Still doing physical therapy and I think it’s helping. Also still struggling with work although I think I’m getting close to solving the large problem I’ve been trying to solve.

This blog post is dated 21st June as that’s when I wrote it. I didn’t actually add it to my blog until July as I hadn’t finished writing up the Minnesota trip report.

Well this is the shortest time between posts for a while. Largely because I did something exciting. Not that different, but exciting. I went on a four day climbing trip to Colorado. It was wonderful.

It was a three day weekend (Memorial Day) here the weekend before last and three of us decided to take the Friday off as well and head to Colorado for a four day weekend. Thursday evening saw Seth and Kim arrive at my place just after my interview had finished and we started the long drive to Colorado. We camped for the night in the flat boring bit of Colorado about two hours shot of Boulder where we were planning on climbing the next two days. Other than being very windy at the camp site nothing too exciting happened.

Next morning we drove to Eldorado Canyon State Park just outside Boulder. First impressions were encouraging as it was rather scenic and the climbing looked fun and longer than anything I’d done in a while. This was going to be Kim’s second time seconding trad and both Seth’s and Kim’s first time multi-pitching. Our first route of the day was a three pitch 5.6, Calypso. Carol had suggested just doing the first pitch and as it was equipped with lower offs it seems likely quite a few people stop there. Both Kim and Seth, having never done multi-pitch, wanted to go to the top so we did all three pitches. I led the first and last while Seth led the middle. The first pitch brought a big smile to my face. I’d certainly missed large trad climbs and the fact that it was on really enjoyable rock only made it better still.

Things got a bit exciting when we reached the top and we spent a couple of hours trying to find the way down before finally finding where you were meant to abseil from just as we were giving up and going to make up our own way down. Unfortunately the guidebook, as is the want of such things, hadn’t exactly helped us find the descent! We finally arrived back down much later than we should have done and so had a quick discussion about whether to just do the first pitch of another route or whether to try to fit a whole route in. Deciding to do the later we headed off to do Wind Ridge…

Except that’s not what we ended up doing. We got to the base of the route, had a cursory look at the guidebook and got going. I knew I didn’t really know where the route went that well beyond the first few moves but was trying to save time and was hoping for direction from the ground but for one reason or another no one said something so I ended up doing a different and easier route than we’d planned called Breezy that went at 5.5. Although I have yet to see it described in a guidebook I’m pretty sure I must have run the two pitches together as I used nearly the whole 60m of rope. While on my belay ledge I had a discussion with another climber who pointed me at where Wind Ridge should have gone and were it now went. When Seth arrived he fancied leading the last pitch – a one move wonder – which I seconded him up. As it was starting to get dark by this point Kim decided to just walk off from the belay ledge. Seth and I abseiled in the dark – thankfully we now knew where it was, before we all got back to the car rather later than planned.

That evening we stayed in a hotel as there’s not any camping near Boulder and that what was a bit further away seemed likely to be busy what with it being a holiday weekend. I’d let myself get a bit dehydrated that day so I dozed while the other two drunk. Eventually everyone went to bed but the late night meant not the earliest start in the morning. Which wasn’t ideal as we were planning on doing a very popular nine pitch route.

Next morning we eventually found somewhere to park and headed up to the first flatiron. There’s a classic 5.7 up it which I really wanted to do. Unsurprisingly there was a queue at the start and we had to wait while two other parties did the first pitch. This gave me plenty of time to consider how bold the first pitch was. The first pitch is a friction slab with a bolt at about 30 foot. I tentatively made me way up and past this. The next piece of gear is another bolt which seems more than another 30 foot up – I certainly didn’t want to risk falling before I clipped it. My legs were getting quite tired but I knew I had no choice but to keep going before I eventually got the second bolt. There’s one cam on the rest of the pitch but, after waiting around for the belay ledge to clear, the rest of the pitch went fine.

Seth and I then alternated leaded for the rest of the climb, all of which were trad. We wandered a little bit off route at one point, apparently a not exactly uncommon event, but other than making us do an extra shot pitch this was of no real consequence. After seven pitches we arrived at the ridge. From here there were another two or three pitches to go and we were aware it was already getting late. We managed to do it in two very long pitches (both nearly 60m) which created a lot of rope drag but was otherwise OK. We then signed the summit register, did the single abseil and just about managed to get back to the car without use of head torches (or for my American friends who find “head torch” highly amusing, head lamps). Was a thoroughly brilliant if tiring day.

That evening we headed down to the Canon City area to meet up with several other friends that had driven out Friday and climbed else where on Saturday. We reached their camp site quite late and I don’t think any of the three of us were planning on an early start the next morning after the previous two days. In the end all of us got to the crag later than I was expecting – it was gone midday – but I still managed to fit five sports routes in – including sandbagging myself on a 10d when I thought I was climbing a 10b. Felt rather happier about my rests and falls once I’d realised my mistake.

Monday we headed to Garden of the Gods in Colorado Springs, a stunning rock formation that I’d wanted to climb on since I’d seen them way back in 2006. By the time we’d registered all the convenient parking was full so the three of us hiked in from overflow parking while the others drove off and, as it turns out, went elsewhere. As we had a long drive ahead of us we only did two short routes but I think the first of them was my favourite single pitch of the weekend – even if I did only top rope it. Looked rather bold on lead and there’s no way it’s a 5.9 as per the guidebook but if I’m ever back there I’d like to try leading it now I know I can do all the moves. We left Colorado Springs about 2 and reached Lawrence about 8 hours later with only a single 10 or 15 minute petrol (UK) / gas (US) stop. Was a tiring but excellent weekend – as you can probably tell by how much I’ve wrote! The few photos I took are here.

In other news, I didn’t get the Australia job. Can’t say I’m surprised. 27 applicants of which they interviewed 6 so I was doing rather well just to get an interview. I’ve also started going to Physical Therapy about my knees. At the moment it’s definitely still at the make things more painful stage although I’m starting to see signs of improvement as well. This Monday just gone I also started a photography class. Have just splashed out on a cheap DSLR for it, something I’ve been wanting to get for a while. The first class was quite introductory and also covered a little bit of simple stuff not directly related to photography – such as how to bring in photos on a flash drive – so it wasn’t very exciting or helpful. That said it definitely showed promise for future weeks.

Well life’s carried on much as before so don’t expect anything different in this post! I’ve been to a couple of new climbing places but that’s about the most interesting thing that’s happened. June on the other hand is looking quite busy with a few different things… more on this in a bit.

In my last post I said I had a three day weekend in Arkansas planned. Well the weather stopped that plan. It was a Kansas City climbing Club trip and the club (rightly) decided to postpone given the weather forecast. That did not however mean no climbing trip for me as a two day trip to Oklahoma was had instead. This was all a bit last minute when I realised that I’d heard of climbing in Oklahoma and that the forecast for that area was rather good. So after some last minute planning Seth, Rob and I left Friday evening.

The climbing in Oklahoma is quite a bit further away than Arkansas but as it’s Interstates pretty much the whole way it didn’t take too much longer to get to. None of us had a guidebook so we stopped off at the visitor’s centre to buy one before heading off to the crag. Here we found Carol and her car load and hoards of people from the KU rock club – not exactly unexpected as we know both groups were in the area but we didn’t know where they were heading. A fun day was had in really nice weather even if not many routes got climbed. I did a nice 5.7 crack on lead and Seth led a couple of trad routes. For someone who hasn’t been climbing trad long he’s doing really rather well!

Sunday we headed to a crag a bit further from the road. Here we found one other group but no one else we knew. Seth and Rob both led a sport route which I top-roped as I was suffering quite a bit from hayfever. Seth then led a trad route which was followed by some fooling around at the top. By the time we got down it was rather later than expected so we made a move back home. Photos from the trip are here

Next weekend I stayed in Lawrence as it was out last football game on the Sunday. On the Saturday I headed to Warsaw with Seth and met up with a few others there. Was a largely successful day, highlights being leading the route Mary-Ashley fell on for the first time since she broke her leg and following Seth up a rather nice trad crack right at the very end of the day. The five photos I took that day are here.

Sunday I played football and boy, was it a challenge. When I turned up just before kick off I was our teams 8th player which meant we could have an official game. To begin with it was 8 on 11, although we gained another player a little later. I don’t think we disgraced ourselves in losing 4-0 given the difference in numbers. Was not my best game due to hayfever but was still rather enjoyable.

By the next weekend the worst of my hayfever seemed to be over. I was no longer getting the light headiness and lack of sleep from it although I was now getting slightly worse eyes and nose – which is rather better in my opinion. That weekend Seth and I headed of to Arkansas. Can’t say it was the best organised trip as we only finally decided where we were going once we were nearly there! Saturday was spent at HCR where we started the day with some trad crack climbs. I did the first one (5.7) OK on lead but then had an absolute disaster on the second one (5.9) – the less said about that the better! After that disaster I decided I would just second Seth up the next one (also 5.9) rather than try leading it. That done we headed to a different area. Seth put up the rope on a 5.10d called Crimp Scampi and it was indeed quite crimpy. I got about half way up it on lead with a few rests. I think I could probably have reached the top but the finger I’ve tweaked was starting to hurt so came back done. Seth had wanted to lead it again anyway to try to get it clean which he did successfully.

Sunday we headed to Haw Creek, a crag neither of us had been to before. There’s a classic 10a trad route there but it was looking quite wet so neither of us got on it instead doing some sports routes. It was an enjoyable day and helped in my slightly mad plan of visiting every crag in the Arkansas guide before I leave. Doubt it will happen, and not too bothered if it doesn’t, but hopefully having it as a vague goal will help motivate me to go to new places. Photos from Haw Creek, including one of the trad line we didn’t get on, are here.

I’ve just got back from a four day trip to Colorado but as this post is already quite long I’ll put up a new post about that soon. This weekend I’m planning on staying in Lawrence but then I’ll be away for the four weekends after that with firstly the club, then a trip to Minnesota to meet up with Mary Ashley and go exploring after a conference of here. Then the next weekend I have a conference near Salt Lake and I’m planning on going hiking in Idaho afterwards which extends the trip to the next weekend. So lots of exciting stuff happening in June.

In other news I have now signed a new contract with KU so I’m now employed here to the end of October. I also had an interview for that job in Australia, although it didn’t seem to go very well so I’ll be very surprised if I’m offered it. Have a feeling I’m missing some news but can’t remember what it was so that’s it for now.

So onto April. I suppose the first real thing of note that happened in April was being taken to a strip club for my birthday – apparently this was Mary Ashley’s doing. Not quite sure what to make of that! I’d never been to one before and had a good time – although I think there’s probably better ways to spend that amount of money.

That weekend four of us headed to Southern Illinois, a climbing area none of of us had been to before and which takes only a bit longer to get to than Arkansas. Jackson Falls is the main crag in the area and it was rather busy. OK, it was no Stanage on a sunny summer Saturday but it was probably the busiest crag I’ve been to so far. On Saturday we visited two different areas, the first being steep and juggy the second slabby and balancy. The second was also rather under-graded, in mine and, judging from comments, a lot of other people’s opinions. Still I was climbing pretty well which was nice. In between the two areas we once again went a brief dip in a pool and it was no warmer than the previous week.

Sunday was spent in another different part of the crag. Highlight for the day, for me at least, was leading a lovely 11a arete. I’d already top-roped it and as that went reasonably well I decided to try leading it. Probably shouldn’t have done that as it quickly become obvious that I was more tired than I thought and it ended up taking longer than planned together with rather more rests but as the route needed cleaning I kept on going. Definitely a project if I ever go back.

The following three weekends I had at least one soccer game scheduled and as I’d paid quite a lot for the season I decided to stay home and play in the games instead of trying to go climbing. Rather glad I did as I’d forgotten how much I enjoyed them. I’m also definitely getting better at it and played the the best two games I’ve played so far last weekend. This weekend I played well but not as well. Attempts to go climbing outside on days I wasn’t playing soccer were not successful, at least in part due to the weather. I’m meant to be having a 3 day weekend in Arkansas this weekend so fingers crossed for good weather.

Recently I’ve also been to the doctor’s about my knees that have been, at various times, uncomfortable or painful for several years and which recently have been going through a bad phase again. I do now have some sort of diagnosis and have been told to go see a physio. Given that they now hopefully have some idea what’s wrong I’m hopeful this will be more successful than my last visits a few years back.

Work wise things have been going well and I’m hopeful I’ve solved many of the problems I’ve been having. I hope things will come together over the next few weeks and that I can finally get around to writing papers.

I think that’s pretty much all my news. Oh, I’ve applied for a job in Australia. It was all a bit last minute and there’s quite a lot of competition so I don’t expect it to go anywhere. If it does I’ll be sure to post something here… eventually.

It would appear that there was less to report in April in March, probably because of less climbing. I have a feeling May could be a lot busier. Hopefully I’ll also be rather quicker at updating this blog.