crimper.co.nz

Si, Si, i know...I suck at the whole blog thing. Life has been pretty full-on over here, no time for writing up nice stories....wish i had a little palm-thingy – i could do them while on trains then.

So, the highlights:
Giro di Italia – Aukje (the other foreign PhD student, from Holland) and I headed up and saw one of the mountain stages in the Dolomiti. Very cool – those guys are amazing. We had our bikes with us and went for a ride in the morning before they came through – those hills are deceptively steep – well not even deceptively really – they look as steep as they are – and more poor wee quads certainly agreed.

H and Meg came through and rested their weary legs for a few days or so. So we went for an explore to one of the sport-climbing areas, and had a boulder. We spent the time talking cycle touring, bad-boys (cakes) and eating way too much good food! And of course reminiscing about NZ.

Hans from Massey came over for a conference (yeah....a conference..., well there was actually one – Team Sport Conference in Treviso – near Verona. I got to be the microphone girl and run the mic to whoever wanted to ask questions...only tripped up once. Bonus.) So one weekend the three of us took to our MTB’s and headed up into Lessinia National Park – its starts not far from our house. Quite cool – stayed in a hotel for the night and had the obligatory pizza and beer. The next day was awesome – i was feeling pretty crappy, but persevered (read – succumbed to peer-pressure) and we ended up up in the hills where the weather turned to a pile of poo basically. We were screaming down the hills and visibility was almost zero, it was soooooo cold your hands, feet, legs, face and well, everything really were numb. Lucky there were random places in the middle of nowhere to stop for hot chocolates to stop us becoming hypothermic. I think people thought were we crazy! Ah well, it was fantastic. And great just being able to take off on your bike with a small backpack with a clean pair of gruts and a toothbrush for the weekend. It was great having Hans to stay, and even better watching him cut loose and have a whole litre of gelato for lunch – on bread.
Next, James was back and we headed up to Imst in Austria for an ISCF meeting. Again, I took my bike and went for a good ride while he sat doing whatever those guys do in those meetings. And we came home via the Moutain Bike World Champs in Valle di Sole (Italy). Very cool – it was great to get out into the bush and run around in the undergrowth searching for the best viewpoint as those hard-nuts guys come screaming past.
Then, ummmm....oh thats right – got myself a climbing partner – a kiwi one! James spied on Mojozone a posting from someone living over here – not far from where we are who wanted to go climbing. So we organised meeting up. Hilarious – jumped off the train and were like “hey, I know you!”. So Matt Thom, James and I hung out and climbed. He lives and works on an organic farm up in the hills - you walk for 45minutes of so up to the farm (no vehicle access) and they have an out-of-this-world restored villa. The environment is incredible – with views to die for and i think the kids of the family must be the luckiest kids in the whole wide world to live in such a place. I have certainly never seen a 1 year old so smiley! And as it turned out the family who own the farm also run a climbing wall business – and James and I had seen them at some of the comps we have been to over here – what a small world eh?

James and I have been bouldering down at the local ‘sala bouldering’ (not so great in the 37 degree heat), and went out with another chap bouldering on the walls of an old fort. We also took our new boulder mat up to Avesa – quite a few local lads were there – so now i know where the hard-core boulderers hang-out . You certainly attract a few strange looks cycling on your city-bike with a crash-pad on your back! In fact the other night when i came back from bouldering up near Trento after work, i had quite a few people lean out of car windows and off the side of their motorbikes asking WTF? (I’m pretty sure that’s what they were saying....) Speaking of which – i went up to meet another climbing friend and she took me to this awesome traverse – in the most amazing quiet valley with views form the top of the hills of the Brenta Dolomiti – absolutely stunning! Got pumped completely silly (and poor forearms paid for it the next day – wow – haven’t had sore forearms for years!!!)
I have also recently been in North-west Austria in a little ski viallage called Schrocken attending a course and summer camp for work. It was a pretty steep learning curve, but made some great contacts. Ha – i guess all of this has been about play-time so far – i have actually been working really hard too – been and presented posters at 2 conferences, helped with some cell-culture work in another lab in Padova that I will be getting into soon, have read about 20 novels-worth of scientific papers on mitochondria, PGC-1a, exercise, training and various other really interesting things (yeah right I hear you sigh....na, really it IS interesting! – it’s what makes the world go round you know....) and of course writing – the literature review of all literature reviews....it will be a masterpiece. Hahmmm, maybe.....

So, Schrocken was pretty cool. Went for a few runs – tried to run to Germany before breakfast one morning, but gave up. Not because i was soft, but because hills are quite steep in the mountains. And 10km uphill on those hills is not quite what i was used to....oh, ok, so I guess i was being a bit soft....Anyways, home from there to find the power off – not the best at 10.30pm n a Friday night after a long day on the trains, no husband to deal with it, and the thought of a weekend with no power ahead of it. But, luckily it was just the fuse – we have loads of big wicked electrical storms here...but unfortunately the fridge had been off for who-know how long – and with the hot days, well, you can imagine how good the apartment smelt!

This weekend i had a very cool adventure. I went up to Matts and we went climbing on a falesia (sport-climbing area) up above his house – lucky bugger – imagine having your own crag of quality 5-star-routes right in your backyard! Well, he does. So we spent Saturday mucking about on them, and then watched climbing vids – we are planning a trip to Kalymnos (Greece) for when James gets back here – and the video had some climbing footage from there – wow – gotta buy our tickets!!! Anyways, Sunday we got up real early and set off to do an adventure alpine style route – a first accent further up the hill. When i say hill, i mean like something you’d imagine from the Sthn Alps but with no snow. Anyways, walking, walking, scrambling, grass-climbing....”Ahhh, a snake!” So i say calmy “where’s the snake? I can’t see it....” “Right there!”. “Ah, you mean this one? The one like about 30cm from my hand?, ah, hey that looks a bit like then one you have in a cage back at your house – isn’t it like a viper or something?”. “Um, yip”. “Aha, best i get back then eh?” “Would say so....”. So as i stared into the viper’s eyes watched it flick it’s tongue a few times, it must have thought to itself “ah this kiwi kid won’t be worth wasting time over”, and with that it slithered off into the undergrowth. Wahhha – what a buzz. But i spent the rest of the time to the base of the crag wondering how many others were hanging about under the grass right where we were scrambling....

So we got the base and started the first pitch at 11.20am. It took 8 pitches and 8 hours – the rock was quite loose in places so we were getting rid of quite a bit down into the valley below – lucky it’s not the kinda place people go for a casual Sunday walk – as those rocks whistle as great speed you can certainly understand how a tiny stone landing in the wrong place can kill a person. It ended up being a bit of a mission – we were trying an arête, but kept getting shut-down by impossible sections, so ended up doing a lot of weaving form side to side – but got here in the end – it was incredible. My only experience of anything anywhere near this kind of style is Mangatapopo valley – and it was a far cry from that! Wow! Matt lead the whole thing – I am very aware of my capabilities – and they are not up to this kind of route yet – wonder if they ever will be - it’s pretty ‘on the edge’! I have certainly re-set my boundaries of fear, exhilaration and breathtaking beauty this weekend i can tell you! I would get to the belay station every-time, just feeling the adrenaline coursing through my veins, with a grin as wide as the grand canyon and eyes like saucers. Far out man! It was pretty amazing how the rock changed as you climbed – different stratifications and different style of climbing with each pitch. And it was pretty cool just hanging out with you bum over the edge of the abyss, with butterflies flitting around your face, watching a falcon feed it’s chicks on another cliff, the odd lizard and the sun beating down on your filthy body slimed in sunscreen and dirt. It was magic!

Once we got to the top it was getting a bit desperate though – we had run out of water many hours ago, but had enjoyed the best tasting floury apples ever! And a peach each. And that was it – neither of us wanted to risk choking on the bread rolls – we had to get down to the waterfall we had spied on the way up....it was getting pretty dark and couldn’t find the bag we had stashed near the base of the crag that morning (with much needed water and bananas) so we flagged it and kept going. There are some trenches from WWI up there, and Matt knew if we could get to them, he knew the way back – even in the dark. We eventually got to them, but by this stage it was pretty much night. So stumbling through the forest (well, Matt wasn’t – just as well he still had his harness on so i could follow the jingling – i felt a bit like Hansel and Gretel...) we eventually got to where the small waterfall had been that morning. Only to find it was no longer running. Just moist moss-covered rock. We had a laugh and asked if each of us had read Touching the Void, then proceeded to ‘suck-face’ with the rock so to speak. So there we were, night time (no torches as we had both stupidly forgotten to put them in – cardinal sin...), dehydrated to the point of all you could think about was water and you didn’t care at all about getting home or food, two figures hugging the rock, sucking any moisture we could out of the moss. Boy, it was good! It gave us what we needed to carry on to our next stop – an old disused well. Here, Matt assured me I would award him a Nobel Prize – climbing tape, rope, battered drink bottle, and a big rock – and presto – cool, clear, fresh water! We sat there, looking up at the stars, with the sounds of the wild deer and other random things that I’m not sure we want to know what they were, two parched souls, pouring it down our throats. In fact we had a real feast – two bread rolls each – and who would have thought Friday’s bread rolls would taste so damned good on a Sunday evening!! Another 40min or so stumbling down the track back to the farm – and the adventure was complete. 11.30pm. What a day!

So this morning, I am a bit tired. A few good grazes and scrapes, nice pink sunburn glow, and yes – of course i was most interested in the colour of my pee! Getting back to normal now – va bene. But best of all, I got a tick. Yeha – my first tick. Tough little buggers – you have to be careful pulling them off though cos otherwise they leave their mouthparts behind in your skin – my little friend came off well intact and sadly met his fate between my fingernails. Shame.

This place is outstanding – so many wild places to go and explore. So many opportunities. But always the reminder that you have to take care – a bad weekend for the area in the mountains – 3 people killed including a pro guide. The adventure was an intense reminder of the complete and utter trust between two climbing partners – a relationship you often take for granted or do not appreciate as much as you should when you climb in the ‘safe’ surroundings of a falesia or gym environment. It also makes you realise what a great country NZ is – it’s just not in my psyche to watch out for dangerous bitey-stingy things in the undergrowth, or those that appear on you later, we’re pretty lucky you know.

Enough for this cowboy, better get some work done....oh and nip back to train station with the toolbox– some bugger put his bike lock through my basket bracket – so my bike is locked to his. Arse!