Well with all this talk of You tube I checked it out and found these very funny monty python clips taking the micky out of climbers! Very funny.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9U0tDU37q2M&feature=fvsr

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0F2SJS6B1wQ&NR=1

Extreme Knitting

For sometime now I have had this feeling that there is a darkness within Norway, a sub culture and today I was shocked and horrified a person very close to my heart is apart of this dark sub culture or even a full member of this cult. Its not even that well hidden, and even normal people, seemingly normal people are apart of it. It also runs through families, but can just leap generation and plant itself firmly in new believers. Knitting may seem to be harmless but this cult like occupation, have stores all over Norway, and often in busy streets. Today quite unsuspecting I was lead into said shop and exposed to the full horror of this evilness. The place was full of normal looking people browsing through shelves of wool, knitting needles and piles of papers, templates and magazines. I just kept my mouth shut, and tried to blend into the wool, which isn't to hard as I was wearing a wool jumper at the time. I felt like a fraud and any sudden movement would clearly expose me as an intruder. I browsed quietly feeling the wool in my hands, but muttering under my breath anything to ward of the evil wool spirits. I escaped, by bring up the idea of lunch, and I was free. While eating lunch I suddenly realised many of my friends are part of this cult, and openly knit in public places. You would think it would be outlawed. May be I should tell somebody, or may be it to late, they are amongst us and in control at a very high level of government...

I was driving down from Mosjøen the other week, trying to find the road conditions from Lom to Songdal over the Jotunheim but the person on the phone hung up with out answering me, and the sign said open so I went for it. At first the dry road was replaced with ice and then snow, and you would think the stuck lorries or crashed car would have persuaded me to turn back but being stubborn I did not and then started to seriously regret my erroneous ways especially after slipping into a ditch and then sliding down the road started. At one point I was going 10kmh when the wheels just started loosing grip on the steep road, I was left wondering can I get the seatbelt off and jump before the car falls off the edge of the road. I made it down, what should have taken 20mins took 2 hours. its supposed to be the end of September and over the hills it was +4 with snow. A reminder next time take the snow chains winter is back!

Mosjoen, Get you Ark spares while they last

Unknown to many, even myself this rain that is falling isn't some sort of terrible weather front but biblical, and as I write half my unused brain is working on a new Ark design, come the floods. It has never ceased to amaze me that in Norway you can't find spares for your Ark, or little ads in papers advertising special rates for doubles in Arks, anyway as you can probable sea this Mystical Northern town in the middle of absolutely know were is getting and with the concept of only 4 ours of day light soon, I might be pushed to do something radical and start writing a book on How to survive in a northern tow without snow, or somehow equally irrelevant. I might even be pushed to right, dare I say it a BLOG! and become a world renowned blogger, with a special section in the local paper. Unlikely as it may seem.

With have no internet at home so I make the pilgrimage each day to the local library, the staff view me with some suspicion as I come in roughly the same time every day and type frantically for a few hours before the battery fails on my lab top and then I leave. Nobody has once asked me what i am up to, which is great, but they do swan by me and smile occasionally.

The town itself is occupied by from what I can see, local types that have the misfortune to have been born here, people that work in the Aluminium works and people that work in the hospital. There are also a collection of Artists that are easily distinguished from all the rest because they are normally Swedish and wear colourful, often very bohemian clothing, like yellow suits. It would also seem most of the people working in the Aluminium works or Hospital are forced here by necessity or are on some forced tour of duty, therefore they always seems to look south in preparation that they shall soon be leaving. The hospital seems to be full of German, Swedish or Danish doctors with the occasional Norwegian doctor.

anyway enough for today.

The abandonment

Many people don't realise that there are many periods in life, one classic one being The Enlightenment, where (I think, I haven't been emancipated yet) the great people of France decided you could obtain intellect without the helping hand of the church, thus releasing themselves from emancipation. Here in Mosjoen, the town in the middle of nowhere they have completely ignored this concept, as being to hard work, tow the line and gone straight to the "The Abandonment". The Abandonment period, is only in its infancy, however in the is northern town it has reached epidemic proportions and involves, the abandonment of anything that you own, for example at the local swimming pool, this large building containing tepid water, which is surrounded by a first world war battle field style car park. I suppose the local council just think well it will snow soon and then all the shell holes and trenches will be full and nobody will notice until next summer when they will be full of rain again. Anyway I digress... The swimming pool, in this vastness of space surrounding the building local types feel the need to ride there bikes right up to the front door and then abandon them. Many get so close there front wheels touch the door stop, and anyone else trying to get to the front door need to squeeze on through the labyrinth of bikes to get to the tepid waters within. Why, is this Chaos's in motion, can't they use a bit of sense and use the perfectly good bike store to the left, and then I noticed the do the same with there cars. Healthy sporting people, so engrossed with the philosophy of Abandonment, drive there cars right up to the back door of the sports hall and then park in some haphazard way rather than 20m away in a perfectly good quagmire of first world war hell. Anyway this leads me nicely onto the the swimming pool... The great thing about swimming is you need very few in appurtenances of the sport, unlike other activities like climbing or road biking etc. Swimming is very simple you need water, contained in some space, not to cold so you don't die of hypothermia, and pair of Speedo's and goggles. That's it, nothing fancy. Very simple. Cheap (ish) after all its Norway, and you even have a place to Abandon your towel! Everything is sorted, all you need to do is wave your arms around, kick a bit and you move forward. be careful to to wave them randomly with gulping sounds as someone in the little glass booth by the side of the pool might have to get all heroic or something. In the UK, or the pools I go to the UK in, you couldn't see the water for Floats, but come to Norway its a Float free pool and when I asked for one (training!!!) they told me "Bring your own". Great, I will. They did have one, but it was so gigantic it was probable part of the pool cover. Anyway not to worry.

Mosjøen, byen i midt av Norge.

So I am in Mosjøen, the town in the middle of Norway! The town in the middle of nowhere until we drove last night to Sandessjøen, a town on the edge of insanity, out there just at the edge of the world and the known universe, and to make it even more fun, they put it on an island. They had this rock called Norway, sturdy and strong, but needed to place the town at the edge of the universe on an island to make some point or another. One of the great things about all this Norwegian obsession (Skiing, tunnel building and making suspension bridges between rural areas) is this amazing semi suspension bridge from land, Norway, the known world out at an angle away from the town of Sandessjøen into the sea, quite literally the sea. The bridge leaves perfectly good land, and then heads boldly out into the unknown to a man made island of rock in the middle of the fjord, before the road, sweeps in this semi elegant ramp back towards the windswept town on a 1km causeway made of chippies! Most elegant but why? May be they just had a suspension bridge free, left over from some other crack pot scheme, or they are all made to a fix length in Norway and you have to make do. Who knows who cares, it was a very nice bridge! We went to town, it was windswept, and had all the feeling of a forgotten west coast town in Scotland, but with less hooligans and thus less culture. Another outstanding things was a hospital, it was huge, the kind of things a town of 100,000 in the UK would die for, literally. On this windswept and increasingly rain soaked island they have this hospital that services the entire area, or 10 people or so. It has Akute mottak (A&E to you and me) operating theatres, plastic surgeons hundreds of beds for sick people and loads of doctors walking around in white coats looking important (I didn't see any doctors I made that bit up, I just imagined a hospital of this size must have hundreds of white coated doctors).

After this extravaganza we drove back in gloomy weather, and heard the local weather station has closed as they said it it going to rain for eternity so what's the point of being a weather forecaster, boy it rains here. Anyway I notice some 30km from Mosjoen some cliffs and then a more solid cliff high above the road, so made a mental note, and today I returned in biblical rain to check it out. I had to wade through millions of water saturated bilberries to the base of the crag. Between torrential rain I counted 15 obvious lines with some desperate slab routes in between! If and when this rain stops I'll go back and bag the lot, and nobody can touch me for it! Or care for that matter! After all it will be known as the crag of 20m high in the middle of bloody nowhere, and who in the right mind would go there just for that.

Wait a minuet the weather! Its just started raining more heavily! And way do these locals have an obsession of building there west coast towns on Island, and know historically they have all been trying to leave but this is ridiculous.

Mind Monkeys: Part 1

Life on a boat. I try not to remind myself that even working on this fantastic Norwegian contract that for every three years one is spent at sea. I quite like working at sea, I get to work with some really good people, and that is probable why I continue to work at sea, as well as the good pay and off-time. It a continuous battle however to keep focus on what you want, and keep the balance right, between off-time (climbing and skiing) and money (so you can climb and ski) and on-time (when everything stops for two weeks). When on-time starts to effect off-time then you have to correct the situation or you end up on a slippery slope, of working all time, and in this offshore life this is very easy. It is true we have a staggering turnover of staff, less so in Norway, but a quick calculation for the last 2 years has shown I have worked with over 60 different people. People mainly from Norway the UK, but also Pakistan, Egypt, Iceland, the Faeroes, Russian, Mexicans, Brazilians, Polish, Italians, Belgians and the Swedes. This all adds to the wonder of working at sea, but is also extremely tiring having to teach new people every two weeks how the somewhat chaotic systems work or don’t, and what to watch for. I once read it takes 10 years for a geologist to become useful in an oil company, and at the time with 2 years under my belt I thought rubbish I am almost there! Now I have 12 years and I think I understand less know than I did then, and see my erroneous ways. Then I knew enough to be dangerous, but didn’t know it. Then you pass the mile stone; you are dangerous, and you know it but don’t know how to make it better. The next stage is; your know enough to be dangerous, you know it, and you can act to change this, but decide to go skiing or climbing instead.
I find the boredom the hardest thing to cope with offshore, it eats me alive at times, and with all this spare time you would think I could improve myself , like learn better Norwegian, or create a webpage or plan an expedition but somehow the monkeys of boredom grind you down, swinging from the branches of my mind. Swinging, swinging, tumbling and laughing, the monkey of apathy really knows how to swing. Many moons ago I was working with a guy who had spent time in a Scottish prison, and he told me prison was better than the boat we were on! I found it hard to believe, and then he said the cabin in prison was bigger and you got to walk outside once a day. The Sea Profiler had been a good boat, at one dizzy time the flag ship of British Antarctic surveys, back in 1954, but now it limped along, over heating engine that occasionally just stopped. I wedged myself into the bunk, as we slipped down the waves, it had risen to force 11, I was scared. The sound of the tappets on the only engine, rhythm ever present, comforting my frightened mind, the bow would rise, I would slip down the bunk, then down the wave, the prop would wiz as it came out of the water, crashing back into, cavitate for a while until it got something to push on. The tappets would momentarily drop out; I would grip the bunk, wondering could I get my survival suit on, and out onto the back deck before she capsized? Probable not… The storm passed, I passed out with exhaustion, making promises I never would keep…
What’s the alternative, well with all these redundancies going on I might just get what I want and then regret it. But how do I get the feeling I might get spared.
There has been talk, probable to much talk, about going climbing in Alaska, and the monkey of apathy has been knocked off the mind branch by the monkeys of ambitions, ego, fun, fear, desire and doubt, and suddenly I find myself checking PHD design sleeping bags against Feathered Friends, and should I go for -40° or go for a -20° and wear my down suit inside for the summit push? Do I really want to plod all the way up some glacier, knowing I could lose my toes or worst my mind! But the monkeys are swinging again, they always do, and I just can’t stop them anymore.
I should be happy with this offshore life, just accept it, buy a hytta get in more debt and be a slave to someone else dreams, but them the monkeys always think they know better, and they never shut up, they just keep eating bananas and swinging… They need more coffee, I know it makes them crazy, they love it, they want me to eat more sweets, they love that to, and it makes them, swing so quickly…