Spent a pleasant afternoon at Franklin Gorge, the sport-climbing mecca of West Virginia (not quite). Can’t say it’s quite the same as peak-bagging, and I’m not really a bolt clipping sort of moose, but it was nice to get out of the house at least. I’m pictured below, with young Vegas heading up the classic 5.9+ Blood, sweat and chalk in the background.
While I’ve been off freezing to death in DC, living off the streets, and barely surviving in the cardboard box I call home (or something like that), some of my friends back home have been participating in Melbourne’s Nova FM’s Pepsi Max Wall challenge. All they had to go was go for a climb on one of those climbing wall treadmill things, do a timed lap of it, and then times were added for the team of four. I think their combined team time was less than that of any single person from the other team. And then they won $500 each! The injustice of it all!
Dan’s post about it here.
The gallery of the winners here. Swines.
Governor Stable bouldering comp photos are up here, here, here, and here. Final results are up here.
And argh! Trying to do some cooking tonight – spent forever trying to track down beef stock, pastry sheets and mixed herbs (I gave up on the mixed herbs and got something called Italian seasoning in the end – it looked right at least). Plain flour is ‘all-purpose flour’. Cooking choc bits are called ‘semi-sweet morsels’. Castor sugar is ‘fine granulated sugar’. Argh, the culture shock.
Edit – And the pastry I got (the only stuff they actually had) was those thin sheets instead of normal pastry. So my meat pies are looking fully gourmet (pronounced ‘gormett’).
Lying on my bed trying to get some work done.
Window is open, wind blowing, new leaves on the trees outside.
Hear a scratching at my door.
Yell “Come in!”
… the door opens slightly, then a white rabbit hops through.
Rabbit hops into the room, then my flatmate’s head pokes round the door, at crouching level: “Get her, go on, get her like I taught you bunny”.
Rabbit hops around dis-interestedly, then goes to hop out of the room.
Me: “I think she needs a bit more training.”
Bunny gets poked back into the room with further encouragement… then turns around and hops back out again.
Flatmate: “Ahh, you suck bunny, I’ll have to retrain you.”
Bunny and flatmate withdraw, door closes again.
I go back to work.
graupel – Heavily rimed snow particles, often called snow pellets; often indistinguishable from very small soft hail.
Came across this word while doing work (yes, work) last night. I like it.