Unwanted fame in Spain

The band is playing "Smoke on the water", badly. I don’t care I am jumping up and down like an idiot and laughing. The sound echoes of the stones walls of the houses around the cobbled square, I notice Phil appear from the brightly lit bar in the corner carrying another round of ridiculously over sized and under priced gin-y-tonica’s. This is another fiesta in another mountain village in the Spanish Pyrenees where we are celebrating the life of some obscure saint by dancing to bad cover versions of 70’s rock music. As always we are having a blast. We have been around the region long enough that some of the locals recognise us and smile when we show up. This is the summer of 1986 and we are working in the area making geological maps. This is in a time before fast, EU funded motorways will bring these rural communities within 3 hours of Barcelona, making them perfect for holiday homes, superficially tidying them up but ripping away a thousand years of tradition and spirit. For the time being, these villages are truly rural, water and electric are not ubiquitous, people work the land with their hands and there is a real sense of community. The annual fiesta is a big event in the village. For three days everyone parties, the very old dance with the very young, obscure games are played and the people celebrate being a community it which everyone knows and respects each other. That makes our welcome even more of a privilege that we appreciate.

For the last six weeks we have been hanging out with the local police. Four young guys, at least two of whom, Martin and Carey, signed up to avoid conscription in to the army. They are our age and always up for a party. Their jobs mean that they have an encyclopedic knowledge of all the villages and towns within a 100 km radius, including, most importantly where and when the fiestas are happening. So every evening we sit in the local bar, exhausted from a long day and they appear

"Hola, que tal?" (Hi, how are you doing?)
"Bien, que pasa?" (Good, whats happening?)
“Fiesta esta noche en Bialo?” (Fiesta tonight in Bialo?)

Where the fuck is Bailo – “Donde Bailo?”

Not that it really matters because we will cram four or five people into a Fiat 126 bubble car and go anyway and we will pretend we want to come home at 2am and then crawl back into our tents at 5 or 6, only to be woken by a baking sun at 9; get up and then go to work, because we have a ridiculous protestant work ethic. And then the next evening the process will start all over again.

Only tonight, in Bailo there is a minor annoyance. A small mean-looking guy, about 50, who is very drunk keeps barging into Carey, from time to time punching and pushing him. Carey is a small, hyperactive and utterly lovable guy. Totally unsuited to being a policeman. Nobody should ever be mean to Carey.  I have no idea who this guy is but he is really starting to piss me off and I am probably a bit too drunk to ask why Carey is not trying to stop this really obnoxious behaviour. I try to ignore it as well and go back to dancing.

A short while later the guy reappears and grabs Carey around the neck in an arm lock and starts to drag him around the square.He seems to thing this is funny but nobody else does. I have had enough, so I step forward and grab him by the throat. He looks extremely surprised and releases my friend immediately. I am a lot bigger than him and its fairly easy to pick him up by the scruff of the neck and toss him backwards

“vete a la mierda, maricon!”

He stumbles and falls on his arse, I turn to Carey to ask him if he is ok and he looks genuinely terrified. That is my firsy incline that maybe that was not such a good thing to do.

The mean guy is straight back, purple with rage and screaming at me. I stand my ground.

I realise that things are probably not so great when the bands stops playing and people gather around. The arsehole takes a swing and I step back and avoid it, he flails wildly and almost ends on his arse again. I look around and there are a lot of people just watching us and I wander what the hell is going on. The entire atmosphere has changed and I am sobering up very quickly. I try to reason with the guy…

Los siento pero Carey es me amigo y…

(I am sorry but Carey is my friend and..)

He is too angry to listen and just screams in my face

Carey is talking to him in very fast Spanish, I can only follow about half of it, but the gist is "he is English he doesn’t understand…"

This annoys me, I do understand. I understand that is guy is a cunt and he is rapidly heading for a my fist in his ugly fuckin face. I am starting to get very angry and figure the quickest way to end this is to lamp the bastard very hard and be done with it.

Carey skilfully maneuverers himself between the two of us and keeps talking, everyone else looks on and there is a real air of fear and menace. How did it change so fast and why do so many people care if two drunk people swing hand bags?

Then almost as quickly as things flared up, they dissipate. The angry man steps back, points to me and says something that I take to be a warning to watch my back and he stomps off out of the square. Before there is time for anything else to kick off the band start up again and people go back to dancing.

Carey takes me by the arm and leads me into the bar at the side of the square. There he hands me a drink and in a very over excited and clearly freaked out way explains that Snr Angry is the local police chief and a real nasty bastard. A hang up from the Franco era who has never had anyone stand up to him since he was the school bully, 40 years earlier. He is genuinely concerned for my well being and things start to fall in to place but I am still drunk enough to be brave so I shrug my shoulders and in my poor Spanish I try to explain to Carey that he is my friend and friends don't let friends get pushed around, but he is too worried to take it in, so I down my beer and we go back to dancing.

Nothing happens that night, although I stop drinking and like the man suggested, I watch my back.

The next day, news of the nights events has spread rapidly. My friends who own the local bar next to our unofficial campsite think this is the greatest thing they have ever heard. It seems that Angry man is well known and not very popular in the region. At subsequent fiestas, people I do not know pat me on the back and buy my drinks. I never see the guy again but I am never fully relaxed and my new found fame sits uncomfortably, its only a couple of weeks until I leave but all I wanted to do was drink and dance badly until the small hours.

The Stones Man, the Stones!

It was 1992 and I had just spent almost a month travelling through France and northern Spain on my bike. I had travelled down through France with some other friends on bikes and crossed the Pyrenees several times, visiting old Spanish friends and seeing new sights. When my bike buddies had returned to the UK I had meet up with other friends to climb in the Picos de Europa. Now I was heading back alone.

I have always loved the rough honesty of Spain and much prefer it to the pseudo sophisticated pretension of France. So when it came time to head home I stayed in Spain as long as possible and then blasted north. Five hundred miles is a lot in a day on an old bike with no faring and I did two of those, back to back sleeping in a field somewhere in the middle.

By the time I arrived at the ferry in Cherborg I was feeling pretty knackered. My chain was virtually shot and once in the queue I got out my tools to tweek it again, trying to eek the last few hundred miles out of it to get me back to Liverpool.

I overheard some guy say “that blokes had a hard ride”. Less charitable people noticably avoided me. I looked at myself in the wing mirror – and yep I looked like shit. A month of sleeping rough and then two days of solid riding do that to you. I didn’t care it felt good to going home at the end of such a great trip. Just what I had need to clear my head after 9 months of solid Phd writting.

It was dark in Portsmouth as I rode off the ferry and headed north. It was midnight when the chain finally snapped. No damage was done to the bike but I wasn’t going anywhere until I got it replaced and that wasn’t going to be until the next day. I contemplated trying to find a field to doss in when I remembered the good ole RAC. I hadn’t been able to afford Eurocover but I had cover in the UK and they could take me home, for free.

So I called them and said the chain is broken don’t bother sending a patrol man, just send the relay truck. So I waited an hour and the patrolman turned up and it toke him 30 seconds to figure out he couldn’t fix it and I would need to be relayed home. So he left me to wait for another hour.

It was a warm evening and while I was waiting I got the sense something was going on. Lots of battered hippy type cars went by with load dance music booming. A dutch car screeched to a halt and a pretty, short haired girl bounced over and asked me “do you know where the festival was?” Then it all made sense, this was right in the middle of the summer of love, we had been at Castle Morton just before I had left on the trip and now it was pretty much mid-summers eve. It was a whole summer of crusties in knackered old bus convoys and ravers people driving blindly around the countryside looking for “the party”. We chatted and I said that I had been out the country for a month so I had no idea where tonight’s party was in Dorset or anywhere else. A little while later she coyly asked if I wanted to leave the bike and go with her to look for it anyway. It would be fun she promised and I was sure it would. I was tempted but I had to decline since I had a date with an RAC wagon.

She left and 10 minutes later a bike pulled up. The guy asked if I knew where the festival was and I said no. Then the pillion, who was slumped against the rider woke up and said “the Stones; the Stones man; we need to find the Stones man”. I figured it was Stonehenge he was talking about not the Rolling Stones, but I was not able to help. I just laughed at them and they rider laughed at his passenger who slipped back into his substance induced coma and then they sped off. At least I wasn’t getting lonely.

Eventually the relay guy turned up and immediately started ranting about fuckin hippies and ravers. I knew I didn’t like him but at least he was going to take me home. I climbed into the back of his cab and immediately fell into a long deep sleep, waking up on the M62 just outside of Liverpool as the sun was rising. Home!

Bungy Jumping at Victoria Falls

It's 1997 and I am doing fieldwork in northern Namibia with Nige. I have decided to take a few days off in the middle of the work period and head to Victoria Falls for some sightseeing and to raft the Zambezi. Nige doesn't want to go because he was there last year with his girlfriend so I leave him well stocked up and drive across northern Namibia, along the Caprivi strip, into Botswana and then Zimbawa. The journey takes a couple of days and is another tale.

I arrive in Vic falls in the evening and quickly sign up for a raft trip the next day just as the shop is shutting. It's already dark so I head to a campsite.

The next days rafting is epic, huge volumes of water, massive rapids, crocodiles in the pools, a single capsize. Exactly what I had come for, I was a very happy bunny. That evening I sat in a bar with the 4 gap year kids who I had shared a raft with for the day. They were a bit younger than me, on a white mans tour with Daddies visa card but they were good company especially after so long in the desert. We are having fun.

"So guys what's next?"

"Vic falls bungy jump tomorrow, 100 m, it's the biggest in the World - you wanna join us?"

I have been a climber long enough to know that falling isn't really fun and I am also short on cash, I think it will be a bit contrived and lame so I decline in a shower of accusations about my courage, my manhood and my right to hang out with them. It's all good natured though and after about three more beers I agree that I will join them. If you are ever going to do a bungy jump, I guess Vic Falls is a better backdrop than going off a crane in an Asda car park back home.

The next day we go to see the Falls and they are, without doubt very impressive. Millions of gallons of water, tumbling into a gash in the otherwise flat basalt plateau. The noise is immense and the mist and steam do indeed look like smoke. The locals who showed it Livingston called it the smoke that roars". That seemed pretty accurate to me. We also see the bridge and look down to the river below. One hundred metres is a bloody long way.

Our jump time comes so we cross customs (the bridge is the boarder between Zimbawa and Zambia) and walk out on the bridge. A small, sinister looking street kid looks me in the eyes and draws his finger across his throat in a threatening jesture. This is unusual because the kids are normally happy and laughing. I hope it isn't an omen.

We get to the middle of the bridge and the obligatory Kiwi bungy master greets us. He explains that we will jump in order of size and after each person has finished they will lower someone down off the lower deck and haul us up. Easy as that. The mood is light hearterd but there are hints of nervousness amongst the boys. I feel like I am pretty relaxed.

Matt is up first, he is a big guy and he has done jumps before. He is trying very hard to be cool and ignores most of the Bungy masters banter and some of his instruction. When he jumps it is half hearted and he tumbles, uncomfortably into space. I make a conscious decision to listen to the instructor and do what ever he tells me. I rationalise that they do this 50 times a day - if you do what they say nothing can go wrong, can it?


Then there is a load bang from beneath us and the Bungy master winces and says "that one will have hurt". I ask what he is taking about and he explains that big guys will often have enough momentium to come back up and hit the underside of the brdige if they jump badly. This is serious, Matt is a big guy but not that much bigger than me. I make another "note to self" to listen carfeul to the instructions. I have to drive half way across Africa later in the day. I have fieldwork to do. I can't afford an injury now.


So the Bungy master straps a towel around my legs, then he wraps a climbing sling around that in a larks foot and clips it into the rope and the safety harness. He instructs me, best to dive, jump as far out as you can and keep your body straight. At the bottom, you can extend your arms out to the side, that will slow you down on the rebound. Flapping can slow you down further, stop you hitting the underside of the bridge. I listen intently taking it all in and visualizing the process.


I shuffle to the edge of the platform and look down. It's a fuckin long way but I feel calm. I don't give myself too much time to think, just bend my legs and push off hard, accompanied by a loud yell. Arms extended I execute a perfect swallow dive and accelerate downwards. An old climbing adage is, if you remember falling then its a long one". I definitely remember falling and seeing the river accelerate towards me. Just as I reach the water I am catapulted upwards. This is awesome! What a buzz! Then as I hurtle upwards I remember the underside of the bridge and extend my arms, frantically flapping. I am very happy when I avoid the impact and drop down again.


I bounce around for a while before the man on the cable comes a clips into my harness and slowly pulls me back up. He is happy and smiling a lot. I guess he sees a lot of adrenaline charged westerners.


At the top I catch up with Matt and we compare notes. I ask him if hitting the bridge hurt. He denies it happened but I am adamant. Maybe he was so psyched he didn't notice? He looks at me as if I am a bit daft and we head back to the edge of the gorge to watch the others.


The bungy company shot video and sell it to the jumpers. I am keen to watch Matt's and prove to him that he did in fact hit the bridge. We sit in the little cabin as they show the jumpers in order. As we watch Matt go, we see his terrible, half stumbling jump as plummets straight down, everyone is laughing. Then as he rebounds he accelerates upwards but then stops, he is 20 or 30 m short of the underside of the bridge. I am momentarily confused and then there is a dawning realisation...


I have been had! Big Time!


My video is up next and I almost can't watch. I see myself perform a perfect swallow dive on the way down and then morph into an idiot frantically flapping my arms on the way back up. Everyone cheers! I have to laugh - I have been had, hook line and sinker.


I get partial revenge by refusing to buy the video. Its all very good natured, but I have to admit I fell for it well and truly. Just follow whatever the instructor says. What could possibly go wrong?

The Levellers

It was October 1991 and I was trying to finish my PhD. This was one of the toughest periods of my life. My daily routine involved getting up at about 10 am, heading into the Geology department and working through to about 1 or 2 in the morning. Seven days a week for about 8 months. I was totally focused on finishing the project and a 4 volume report for the sponsors within the 3 year deadline. I have never been so focused on anything, before or since. In the end I worked for 250 days straight with only one half a day off at Christmas and I narrowly missed the deadline.

One late night in the department I was drafting figures and listening to the radio. This was the days before computer drawing and all the diagrams were drafted by hand using rotoring pens on drafting film, I actually rather enjoyed it. I am not the most artistic person but the mechanics of it all are rather theraputic and the feeling of producing a nice looking figure is very satisfying. So I was there drawing figures accompanied by John Peel's eclectic mix of the weird and the obscure. At some point in the night he put on three tracks from an unknown band called the Levellers. The first two were "One way of life" and "The Game". I don't remember the third., maybe Riverflow or the Boatman, anyway I loved it. "One way", which went on to be a bit of an indi ballard was good, but The Game just sent shivers down my spine.

I hardly ever bought records back then, I didn't have the money, but next day I went straight to the small record shop on Bristol Road and bought the album, "Levelling the Land" and it became a part of the sound track to my PhD. The fusion of folk and punk with a social conscience was so representative of that period in the UK when Thatchers erosion of the foundations of society forced a generation of people to live on the road and fundamentally changed Britain for ever. It's still one of my favourite albums and I still love the Levellers.

Saw them playing in Birmingham 3 times and at Glastonbury in 1992 and again in 1994 when they played an amazing cover of the Devil went down to Georgia. Also saw them in Liverpool in 1994 and 1996. In 2003 I was walking down the road in Salt Lake City when I saw sign on the now sadly defunct, Zephyr club advertising the Levellers tomorrow night. This was a long way off their beaten track so I wasn't even sure if it was the same band. I popped into the club and asked if this was the Levellers from England? The guy at the desk just looked confused, so I tried a bit more, folk/punk, crusties, dogs on string, dreadlocks? He seemed even more confused so I just opted to chance it, rearranged my schedule and turn up.

When we got there it was indeed the same Levellers and the place was pretty much empty. When they came out there was about 20 of us in the audience and they played a blinding set, just for us. It was an awesome evening which ended up with us drinking in the bar with them until closing and getting them to autograph Chris Lepard!

I still listen to them and whenever I hear that distinctive fiddle and base sound it takes me back to the early 90's. Festivals, climbing, juggling, motorbikes, the early days of rave, travellers and long long days on my PhD. It all seems like a different World...

Meanwhile in Patagonia

We are in the Patagonian Andes, on a long dirt road somewhere between Mendoza and Neuquen. We are in an old ford F100 pick up – it is shit! Large, unwieldy, under-powered and uncomfortable. We bounce and slide our way along endless, mainly deserted, dirt roads. The countryside is open, empty and the few spiky bushes are covered in layers of dust. Periodically we see flocks of scraggley sheep and goats which are tended by gnarly, weather beaten gauchos sat on the back of equally undernourished horses. The only other traffic on the road is the occasional truck. These trucks are a miracle of bush mechanics and improvisation. At night they drive with no lights because their frugal owner-operators fear that using the battery increases fuel consumption. Driving a truck in Argentina is a different job to being a trucker in Europe or North America.

So we drive for weeks, chasing ancient shallow marine sediments, from a time when the Andes were lower and formed a chain of island volcanoes rather than a mountain range, when the Pacific Ocean flooded the continental interior. We started our quest in Chile, crossed the high Andes in to Argentina near Aconcagua and dropped down to the foothills and Mendoza where we worked for a week before heading south.

My companion for this geo-traverse is a large Irish man called Steve. Steve is a PhD student and after we finish this drive he will be in the area on his own collecting data for his thesis. Steve is an exuberant and jolly character with a high opinion of his own ability and worth. Before we travelled to Chile I suggest that learning a bit of Spanish may be a good grounding for 2 months in South America. His reply had come with characteristic over confidence; “I’ve been all over Europe and I never needed another language, for sure everybody understands me!”

So we spent several weeks in Chile where he depended upon me to order food, arrange the car hire, book into hotels etc. Gradually the reality that he would soon be on his own in Argentina, and that few if any people spoke any English, started to dawn on him. So eventually on this long monotonous drive, practicality overcame pride and he relented and asked me to teach him some key phases.

So with nothing else to do, I started.
“Queiro….” I want; “Donda es… where is” etc etc. Graduating to words and phrases for food and lodging.
“When you get to a gas station just say ‘llano’, pronouced YeaNo, that means full. Don’t worry about any of the aceiete or agua or any of that, just llano”

Several hours later we are getting low on petrol and we come across a wooden shack with a faded shell sign. There is no sign of pumps but they are a luxury not a necessity out here. As we pull in I suggest that Steve does the business, I’ll keep quite.

He is excited about this and I can almost hear his brain working overtime as he eagerly prepares himself. It takes an age for the extremely small, wizened old man to cover the ground between his shack and the car. Steve is too excited and bounds over to him, fully of puppy-like enthusiasm mixed with pent up energy from too long sat in the car.

He towers above the Argentinean, points at the petrol tank and shouts “Pollo” The man looks confused and rightly so. Without realizing that he has inadvertently requested ‘a Chicken’, Steve repeats the error with more frantic pointing. Pollo Pollo! The old man looks scared.

At this point I feel a need to help the situation, however I am laughing so much that as I try and climb out of the car I fall over. Now the poor guys, who has probably not seen another soul for weeks, has to deal with two huge Gringos, one enthusiastically asking for a chicken in his petrol tank and the other rolling around on the floor hysterical laughing.

We eventually control the situation and established that we want petrol not chickens and it takes almost an hour to dispense and fill the car with a hand pump from a series of large drums. We help with the pumping while our new friend eyes us suspiciously.

It’s just another day in the field…

Liverpool days

Toxteth is one of the rougher areas of Liverpool, rows and rows of late Victorian red brick terrace houses suffer from years of neglect from an immigrant and indigenous population that is too poor to care. The area was a pawn in the battle of wills between the loony left councils of Derrick Hatton and psychotic lack of compassion of Margret Thatcher. Years of being ignored have molded the locals into a hardy bunch and they cope, in fact they thrive, in their own imitable way.

Buried deep in Toxteth, in a converted stable house is Billy’s garage. Its more a workshop than a garage and more an accumulation of old cars, car bits and general crap than a workshop. Billy and his mate will fix your car for you if required but they make most of their money by buying cars from “crash auctions” and fixing them up to sell. They do a good job and with the exception of the obligatory “knocking the clock back” its all above board and done legally and properly.

A day at Billy’s garage is a sociologists wet dream. The constant patter of scouse banter is funny enough, but the people who pass by and the people who call in make the place. There’s the Polish guy who just hung around for 3 days without saying anything before picking up tools and starting to work. He doesn’t speak a word of English but apparently is a refuge (this is before the Polish influx into the UK). There is the constant stream of scallies who wander in and try and sell bikes, stereos and almost anything else that can be carried or wheeled while its unsuspecting owner looks the other way. There is a stream of people, out of breath chasing the bloke who just stole their bike. There is “Robbie the pimp”, a small weasel of a man who hangs around offering work to any females who come in. Apparently, he is actually a pimp. You meet all sorts here.

The place is crazy and at the end of the day, all the cars in various states of repair, disrepair and reconstruction which have been pushed on to the street to create working space are wheeled back in and the multiple locks are locked and alarms are turned on. The one bit of kit that you wouldn’t want to skimp on in Tokey is the security.

I race offroad landrovers. I have a cool machine which I am quite good at racing but even better at breaking. This time I have smashed the oil pump and need to fit a new one. So I ask Billy if I can use the ramp in his garage after hours and he agrees, but only under the promise that I am finished in one evening and I lock up properly and leave nothing outside.

So we empty the garage and set the landi on the ramp. Strip down all the oil system and fit the new one. It takes a couple of hours but everything is going well. We put it all back together again and I am sensing victory. Its midnight and I predict I’ll be in bed by 1am. That’s a result.

We fire up the beast which starts ok, but the oil pressure gauge tells us the pump is not working. Kill the engine quick. We try a few more times but still no luck. Things are not looking so good, we have to fix this tonight and we have to get the garage cleared. So we resort to a man’s worst nightmare – the workshop manual. The manual very clearly states “the pump has to be packed with Vaseline to cerate a vacuum and prime it”. Vaseline! Where the fuck am I going to get a large quantity of Vaseline at 12.30 on a Thursday morning?

So I leave Dave and head off into the night. First I try the all night garages. These are scary places when you are pissed and need a twix. Try standing sober in a queue of psychos, junkies and taxi drivers and ask for a large tube of Vaseline. Its an interesting experience. Unfortunately none of places I tried stocked it.

Then I remember that Asda have just started to doing 24 hour opening in Hunts Cross. I drive out there, its 15 miles away but it’s my only hope. I get there and its very surreal. The place is brightly lite and soothing musak is playing. Its almost empty except for a few Goths with the munchies loading up on crisps and baked beans. I pick up 3 jars of Vaseline and head to the check out counter, feeling just a bit self conscious.

The rather pretty checkout girl does not seem to notice. She obviously gets large guys, covered in oil buying large quantities of Vaseline at 1am all the time. I feel a strong urge to explain that I need to prime the oil pump on a landrover, but my stuttering attempt just makes things worse. I exit hurriedly and head back to Toxteth.

The vas does the trick and the oil pressure shoots up. We pack up the garage and are in bed by 3am – not so bad after all, Steve suggests that I should have just gone the whole hog and bought a cucumber and a packet of condoms at the same time!

Just another evening at Billy’s garage.

Cartoon Inspiration

Not much time for posting and too much work at the moment, heading to Utah tomorrow. In the meantime here is a post I wrote a while ago...
___________________________________________
When I was doing my PhD, back in the stone age, before the internet or mobile phones, (1990 to be precise), I was working on the Permian desert sediments of the southern North Sea. Since the southern North Sea is under water all the data came from borehole cores and logs. I spent a lot of time in various warehouses looking at wooden boxes full of sandstone while my various PhD colleagues disappeared to exotic parts of the World for field work.

I was trying (and failing) to get financial support to go and study some modern deserts to get a better feel for what I was trying to model. One day I was on train travelling back from a fairly long core logging trip to London when I picked up an abandoned newspaper. Don’t remember which one it was, something hideous like the Mail or the Express. I flicked through it, quickly getting annoyed at the petty small mindedness of middle England and I stopped at the cartoons hoping for a more informed World opinion. To my surprise that was exactly what I got!

There was a cartoon about a little boy and a tiger. The boy was trying to model a desert for a school project and bemoaning the fact that he had never been to one. Pure inspiration!

At that point I had never heard of Calvin and Hobbes* but from that day on I was a convert. It’s extremely cleaver and works at so many different levels.

Last week JT sent a link to a website which contains the entire back catalogue – so the first think I did was to search for desert. And here it is...














*or as it is known in Norway “Tommy og Tiggeren”. I have never figured out why the felt the need to change the name, other than to avoid offending the calvinist population of southern Norway?

Lost in Spain

The year is 1986, the place is Huesca a provincial city in northern Spain. I am sitting in the town square wondering what to do. I am here to work as a field assistant to a geology PhD student in her final year of fieldwork. I have just finished the first year of my undergraduate degree and have that fantastic arrogance that comes from knowing nothing useful about the world. And now I have a bit of a problem…

I travelled down through France on the train. I speak no Spanish and virtually no French. This is only my second time out of the UK and I firmly believe that I don’t need to speak any other languages because I will make myself understood. How hard can it be?

My well planned route had gone to shit when I got to the border and was thrown off the train at gun point. I have no idea why but at least I was not alone, there were four of us, two clean cut german boys and a scruffy, older American. The Germans kept themselves to themselves but the American was friendly. He was patient and forgiving of my arrogant attitude and told me that I would need some Spanish if I was going to spend any time in Spain. He tried to teach me a few key phrases – Key-Aero is “I want” and Key-Aero Ear is “I want to go to”. Donday is “where” and with that he tells me if I spend any time in Spain and if I fall in love with it, I will remember his name forever. He was called Don and he was correct, 24 years later I still do.

We spent the night sleeping outside on the train platform in Hendaye and next morning I continued my passage. As I approached the final part of my journey on the train I tried to call ahead to the hotel where Liz was staying. Each time the phone was answered I would insert the coins and say. “Hello Key-Aero Liz ”. Each time the elderly woman at the other end hung up so I enlisted a guy on the train to help. He was Spanish and dressed in white, I am fairly sure he was gay and hitting on me, but he spoke bad English, which is better than no English and was happy to help me. At Huesca we used the phone box in the station to call the hotel and he got me through the old lady to Liz. She was pleased to hear that I was alive and in the area but her van had broken down. She told me to grab a hostel for the night and then catch a bus in the morning.

I didn’t tell her that I had no cash left and the banks were closed for the day. That was my problem and I loved the idea of being destitute for a while. I used the small amount of money I had left to buy some bread, cheese and a bottle of wine in the tiny supermarket and I sat in the square, surrounded by short old people dressed in black who come to pass the evening with the friends they have shared since childhood. Once it started to get dark I headed to the park and lay out my sleeping bag in a flower bed behind a small hedge. The evening was warm and I was enjoying the vagrant life. This felt like an adventure.

Through the night I was disturbed a few times, mainly by inquisitive dogs, who found something new and interesting to smell on their late night exercise. Even later a couple made noisy love in the bush next to me, oblivious that I was lying there silently listening, complicit in their stolen moment. After they finished and stumbled off giggling, I drifted into a deep sleep and dreamt of long train rides, boarder crossing and old hippies.

I awoke suddenly as water splashed my face. I sat up to see that the rain came from a hose pipe, in the hands of a park attendant 10 m away. When he saw me he was less than pleased. He sprayed me with the hose as I swore back at him and stuffed my things into the old, ex army rucksack. I beat a hasty retreat as he chased me out of the park swearing in colourful Spanish I didn't understand.

I headed to the bank and changed a travellers cheque. Feeling rich I splashed out on coffee and a croissant for breakfast. Then things started to go bad. Over breakfast I suddenly realized that the address and phone number of the hotel were missing. I searched every pocket repeatedly, as if the piece of paper would magically appear in my pocket the third time I looked. Then I searched my bag, no joy. I had had it the previous evening, where could it have gone? Was it in the floor bed with the angry gardener? was it in the super market, dislodged as I pulled out my last few notes? I thought to myself, "where ever it is, I am in shit!"

So I took stock of the situation! I was in a town I didn't know, infact until 2 weeks ago I had never even heard of; in a country where I didn’t speak the language. I did not know where I was supposed to be going but I knew its about an hour away. I had no way contacting the person I was supposed to meet and no way of getting home for the next 6 weeks. I was also pretty sure that nobody else who I could potentally call would have any more of a clue than me. Things were not looking great.

I had a vague recollection that the hotel was called “Jabali”. So I searched the phone book in a phone box until an irate woman, who wanted to use the kiosk shouted at me. I am not sure what about but I left. Then I headed to the bus station and tried to ask someone. “Ollar, KeyAero Hotel Jabali”. I pronounced the J in the English way so it sounds like a boxers jab. Nobody understood me, but a crowd gathered, keen to join in. One guy figured I must be French and two French students were enlisted to help. This did not help it just meant that there were people shouting at me in two languages I don’t understand. So after 10 minutes I gave up and forced my way out of the crowd. They carried on arguing, oblivious to whether I was there or not.

So now I am back sitting in the square, pondering my next move. I am in shit! Despite this, things don't feel too bad and at least I am having an adventure. This is kinda cool in a very fucked up way. I laugh to myself but I have to admit I don’t see a solution just at the moment.

I look up and I look around at the square with its big shady trees and it's old buildings. I am just contemplating the Spanish Civil war and what may have gone on here when suddenly I see a white ford escort van drive past. I notice the yellow of a rear UK number plate and stand up. Could it be? Surely I can’t be that lucky but I don’t wait to think too hard about it, I throw the sack on my back and run into the road. The van is indeed real and british and by now it is stopped at some traffic lights 200 m down the road. I sprint through the traffic which honks and swerves and honks some more. I ignore the irate drivers because I know that I only have one chance…

I reach the van as the light goes green and I open the door and jump in. Liz’s immediate reaction is one of shock. It’s not every day that a 6’2” hippy with long greasy hair and cheap imitation aviator sunglasses, who literally has just slept in a hedge, jumps into your car unannounced. She recovers quickly when she realizes it is me and says “hola chico”.

I have no idea what she is talking about, but I have arrived…

Money Laundering

"I washed the clothes in your washing basket" she said, so I thanked her.
She repeated the statement and I could tell by the look in her eyes that this was more than a visiting girlfriend who was bored and helping with laundry, something was wrong.

It turned out that in addition to washing my clothes she had also managed to wash £1000 in 10 and 20 pound notes. The money was to pay for my new van and had been rolled up in a bundle and hidden in the pocket of a pair of shorts at the bottom of the basket. Living in Liverpool did that to you. I can only imagine the shock of opening the washing machine and finding the drum filled with cash. This was 1993 and a grand was a lot of money back then! So we made a washing line in my bedroom and the money dried out fine although the phosphorous in the washing powder made the notes glow under the UV lights that were popular in shops for detecting forgeries at the time.

I had a good friend in Liverpool at the time called Dave. Dave was an awesome character, frighteningly intelligent and also very unique. He had dropped out of school at 15 and spent a big chunk of the 70's stoned. He figured everything out from first principals and could fix anything from TVs to lorry gearboxes. He was totally disinterested in wealth and there were a constant stream of people at his house, getting him to fix all sorts of, which he always managed and never charged them for.

This was Liverpool and while Dave never did anything illegal, in fact he had a very strong moral code, he did end up being involved with all sorts of extremely "interesting" people. Often because they needed problems solving and the usual options were not available to them.

So over a beer I jokingly told him about the "money laundering" and he retorted with a much better tale...

At sometime in the early 80's a guy had turned up at his house and needed some money laundering, literally. A few years prior the guy had come upon £25000, presumably not through legal means, because he had buried it in the woods for safe keeping. When he came back to dig it up, he got a nasty surprise. A badger had got there first, burrowed into his stash and made a cosy den in the cash. After a brief and bloody engagement with the animal he extracted the remains of his loot, the only problem was that it stank. Horrendously!

What to do? When you have tried everyone else and you have nowhere else to turn, contact Dave! So he turned up on Dave's doorstep with a binbag full of very smelly money and asked for help. Always a man for a challenge, Dave invited him in. Over the next few weeks they tried everything, they washed it by hand, they put it through the washing machine, they tried various chemicals to neutralise or even just mask the stench but nothing really worked. In the end they broke it down into small bundles of £500 and went to every building society and bank in town dressed as scrap metal merchants and opened accounts. You can only imagine the response from the well dressed counter staff as they had to count piles of freshly washed, but strangely odorous cash. But it worked, or at least it should have. The postscript was that the witless owner of the cash promptly forgot the details of half of the accounts, including the false name he'd used and where he'd put the money so most of it is still sitting in unused accounts from building societies, half of which no longer exist.

He probably would have been better off leaving it with the badger!

A whole new dimension on the term money laundering

Pretty good English for a Russian

It's 1994 and I am doing fieldwork in Utah. Based out of the town of Green River, population 973, famous for water melons, uranium mining and being home to a cold war missile base. It’s a one street town which is 70 miles from any other town, in any direction. It has some plus points, there is Ray’s Tavern a truck stop and a few ok diners. It sits in front of the Book Cliffs and as such is a gateway to some of the best geology in the World and it is my home from 3 months.

Its hard to believe but this is in the days before the internet, mobile phones or email. To communicate with the folks back home you wrote letters (how quaint) and every couple of days you went to the Post Office and collected your mail that was sent “general delivery”.

So one day I walk into the post office and see the smiling old lady. I buy some stamps and hand her my cards before asking for my mail.

Out of the blue she asks “Is the Ukraine still apart of Russia?”
Now that’s a curved ball question! But this is the time of the break up of the Soviet Union, so I figure that maybe she doesn’t know who else to ask.
I reply “Yes, I believe it is”
“You speak pretty good English for a Russian”
Getting more random by the minute...
“I am not Russian” I reply
“Oh” She looks confused but not put off she comes back with “Well you sure send a lot of cards and letters to Russia”
At this point I am totally lost and trying to work out if some cold war task force is going to appear and arrest me.
“I have no idea what you are talking about” I reply
“Look!” She exclaims. “All these cards going to the Ukraine”
She points at the UK at the bottom of the address and all is clear…
“No, that’s UK - United Kingdom, Britain, England…”
“Nope its definitely Ukraine” she insists and I give up arguing.

I leave hoping that a) the person in the main sorting office is more geographically aware and b) she didn’t see fit to add “raine” to all my UKs so a confused postman in the Ukraine is looking for a town called Llanwrst.

Biker tales 2

Its September 2004 and I am heading to the newly liberated Czech republic to drink beer and and climb sandstone towers with Rich. We are riding our old bikes, heavily laden with camping and climbing gear.

I have been living in Liverpool for a couple of years and agaisnt my better judegment I let a local lad service my bike, he was very keen and claims to have a diploma in motorcycle maintainance. Its always good to put money into the local economy, but in this cases its being funnelled straight to the local dope dealer and is rapidly disappearing up in smoke.

Things start to go wrong in France when the electrics keep packing up. I eventually trace the problem to a short in one of the indicators and fix it cleaning the contacts. Then the bolts holding the headlamp drop out, leaving it hanging. This is corrected with a couple of sharpened sticks, shaped into pegs that are banged into the bolt hole.

Things really start to go to shit as we cross the boarder into Germany when a bolt drops out of the anti-dive mechanism. This makes the heavily laden bike hard to ride and just a bit dangerous. I give up on the bush mechanics and concede that a bike shop might be required. We reach Wurzburg where we have a very random conversation with a local biker who is pleased to help because he tells us how much he loves British bikes. I ask him why and he replies that German ones are boring because they never break down. Right now I would settle for a German bike rather than this 20 year old piece of Jap engineering which has just endured a service from a pot-head.

We find a Honda garage that is a shrine to highly polished, state of the art, plastic-fantatsic racing machines, not a drop of oil, or spec of dirt anywhere. We pull up and wander in. We have only been on the road for 3 days, but sleeping in fields is already taking its toll on our appearance.

I try to explain "anti-dive bolt" but the parts guy has no idea, so I get him to come and look. He admires the bike, over loaded and held together with bits of tape and sticks, and he asks "vhere have you come from?"

"England" I reply

"no but vhere have you been?"

"Nowhere we are just going"

And at this point he realises that that we are not on our way back from India or somewhere similar. We are just strating out, now his admiration turns to amusement and these idiot Brits and their crappy bikes. He disappears out the back, to get parts, at least that's what I think, but he returns with all the guys from the workshop who stand around having a good laugh.

There is not a whole lot we can say or do except agree that getting a stoner to service your bike before you set of the ride across Europe may not be the best idea. We get the bits and fit them in the forecourt of the Honda centre. The staff are less than impressed but there is not much they can do.

Three days later we ride across the boarder into the Czech republic. Hundreds of prostitutes line the hedge rows, under-dressed and shivering in the cold. They are presumably catering to German businessmen and truckers. It's pretty grim but I busting for a piss. The number of girls thins out after a couple of klicks from the boarder and I stop in an empty looking layby. No sooner have I started doing my business than 3 very pretty girls in short skirts appear and proceed to chase my around the car park, cock in hand, Benny Hill style. I get back to the bike and beat a hasty retreat - welcome to the eastern bloc!

Biker tales

Its May 1992 and I am standing on a street corner in Huesca, a provisional capital in northern Spain. Huesca is one of those moderate sized towns that you have never heard of. A medieval central square surrounded by ugly sprawling concrete streets of box shaped buildings. The town is big enough that I am having trouble finding a bike shop to fix the tyre that is sitting on the pavement next to me. The rear wheel with its deflated tyre came from the Honda 550 that has carried me and a large pile of gear, all the way through France to the small village in the mountains were it is currently resting.

The bus brought me and my buddy Mark to town, wheel in tow and deposited us in the town centre. That was an hour ago and since then I have been lugging the wheel around, trying to find a bike shop that was in the phone book but is now hiding in the maze of busy streets.

A bike pulls up at the lights, ridden by a young guy with a girl on the back. I quickly ask him, in my bad Spanish if he knows where this garage is. He looks at me, assessing the situation and his own time schedule before barking at his girlfriend to get off the bike. She looks pissed off and looks at her watch, they are obviously supposed to be going somewhere and I guess they are already late. He then barks at me almost as directly, to "get on". I climb onto the back of his bike with the wheel balanced across me knee, just as the light goes green. We take off, cutting through the traffic, way too quickly. I pull my knees in tight as we skim between the cars and I try not to think of possible consequences.

I notice that the bike, a VFR750 is battered, there are serious scratches down both sides of the cracked faring. This is a bike that has been dropped, several times. I am painfully aware that I am perched in the pillion seat, without a helmet and unable to hold on to the bike or its rider since I have a large wheel across my knee.

The bike accelerates roughly and brakes hard as we carve through the traffic. I suddenly realise that each time we brake I lunge forward and the sprocket (big oily cog) leaves an oil stain on his denim jacket. I am powerless to stop it happening and it does, repeatedly, shit!

I have been on bikes long enough to know that no matter how scary it feels, its probably best to let the rider do his thing and relax. We zip through the traffic and I grasp my wheel and resign myself to fate as we head to the suburbs.

We arrive at a couple of tower blocks and in the basement of one is a workshop. The old guy who obviously runs it is just shutting up for his siesta. After a quick exchange with my new found friend he agrees to have the wheel fixed in a couple of hours. I am terrified of not finding the workshop again but no sooner has the mechanic scribbled the address than I am hustled back onto the pillion seat and we hurtle out into the traffic. Now I realise that he was "taking it easy" on the way there and within 3 minutes we are back at the traffic lights where a very pissed off girlfriend is taking it out on Mark who is pretending not to speak any Spanish.

I jump off and thank him profusely, he has helped me out big time and all I have managed to do his cover the back of his jacket with a large oil stain and piss off his girlfriend. I am contemplating mentioning the jacket when la chica jumps onto the bike and they take off. I can only imagine the amount of pain he is going to experience in the next 15 minutes but I am massively thankful for his help.

Three hours later, I find the workshop, the area is very dodgy, but the wheel is fixed and at a very nice price. I love being a biker and I love Spain...

Blowing bubbles in the face of death

I float in the darkness, the water around me is cold, but not too cold. I am wearing a wetsuit and the various bits of paraphernalia that go with diving, the black water is cut by the beam of my torch, which is leashed to my right wrist. Above me the hard limestone roof of the cave thumps against my head and the dawning, terrifying, realization that I am not in open water brings an immediate rush of panic. I spin around shinning the torch and frantically looking for an exit as my heartbeat accelerates and waves of fear wash over me. I am alone and very scared, possibly more scared than I have ever been in my adult life. The bold text of the brightly coloured PADI training manual springs into mind pronouncing that “overhead environments kill!” How the fuck did I end up in here?

I had just completed a job in Namibia and was en route to Brunei with a couple of days to spare. I opted to go and dive on Sipedan, a unique deep water island off the coast of Malaysia. The archetypical desert island, with sandy beaches and palm trees only 500 m across, fringed by a coral reef. Beyond the edge of the reef the waters drop away vertically to 1000 m. The island sits on top of a volcanic plug about an hour by motor boat from the mainland. A few wooden huts sit on the beach and thousand of turtles, swim in the waters and lay eggs in the sand. Sharks and rays come in from the deep, the place is an absolute paradise.

I was travelling alone and I quickly team up with a guy called Lars, who was also in need of a dive buddy. He is a very experienced diver, way more that me, and I enjoy being in the water with him. One evening he suggested that we take a night dive and I readily agreed. We checked out the kit and entered the water, I followed his lead and we swam through the shallows and dropped off the edge. The usual vertigo that one experienced dropping off a km high wall was replaced by an eerie feeling of being watched in the surrounding darkness. We swam for a while, following the wall. Lars stopping to take pictures from time to time while I casually followed, enjoying the coral and fish. The reef at night is a totally different place, with a whole different shift of workers in the aquatic city.



I killed my light for a brief while, to allow Lars to take his pictures. While I was floating in the total darkness I suddenly started to feel very cold. I turned on the lamp and realized that I had lost my buoyancy in the darkness. The drop in temperature was because I was sinking fast, already reaching 40 m. Bugger. No problem, I kicked up and started to ascend, breathing out to avoid ear damage as trained. Losing your buoyancy is bad form but not dangerous.

Then suddenly I hit the hard roof of the cave above me. At first I was surprised, which rapidly gave way to fear. This is bad, very bad. The coral core of the island is filled with caves and there are currents all around that carry you, sometimes very swiftly sideways. In losing my buoyancy and my bearings I have strayed in to one of these. This is very fuckin bad!

I try to suppress the growing fear. This could be where I die. That is not being melodramatic, that is a very real chance here, fuck fuck fuck! I am about to become a statistic, a warning to others, an anecdote. I feel very lonely and very scaried. Fuck!

I look at the tank gauge and it says 100bar, that gives me about 20 minutes at this depth. That's a very short time to have left to live but it is also a reasonable amount of time to try a sort the problem out. I need to keep cool, the only way I will get out of this is by keeping cool.

I shine the light I can see the roof of the cave but apart from that, darkness in all directions. A couple of kicks takes me to a wall, but I have totally lost my bearings, I have no idea which way is in or out, or how far in I have drifted. I am just keeping it together, panic and a total freak out is just suppressed as tales of scratch marks in cave ceilings from doomed cave divers flash through my mind. I don’t want to die here alone in the dark.

I opt to swim 20 kicks in one direction and if that doesn’t work I will spin around and do 40 in the other and continue adding 20 in each direction until I get out. It’s a plan which might just work and more importantly it’s the only plan I have. As I start to swim, counting, the roof of the cave starts to gently drop down and I am convinced that I must be going the wrong way, but I also force myself to stick to the plan.

After 15 kicks the roof is still above me and just as I get ready to turn, suddenly it disappears. I am still not sure if I am out in the open ocean or just entering a large cavern. It’s still totally dark outside the torch beam. Now I am worried that if I swim up and hit another roof I may not be able to find this passage again. Fuck! Cautiously, I ascend, controlling my bouncy and trying supress the panic derived urge to just swim for it, try to stay cool, go slow and keep my bearings.
Then I see a light, swimming towards me, I let out a huge sigh of bubbles, pure relief, a massive adrenaline hit. I swim more quickly towards Lars and he looks at me partly puzzled and partly annoyed. He makes an O with his thumb and forefinger to ask if everything is alright and I make the same sign back, saying it is. Well at least it is now.

We continue the dive for another 10 minutes and I follow him very, very closely. Still not quite able to comprehend what has happened or that I actually got out of there. Back at the surface he asks where I went and I am too embarrassed to say that I broke so many of the fundamental rules of diving, “keep your buoyancy”, “stick with your buddy”, “avoid overhead environments”, that I tell him I lost my buoyancy in the dark and just sunk a bit, but it was no big deal. I can’t bring myself to admit that I made so many mistakes, at least not just yet.

Next day I ask one of the locals who works in the dive shop about the caves and says that they lose about 1 person a year, “very dangerous, stupid people who want to explore and get lost, very stupid”. That was almost me, well not the bit about wanting to explore, but the rest was correct. Now 10 years later I can laugh about it and when ever I read the bit in the PADI book about over-head environments I can agree with them, they are dangerous. Most of all, now I can say that I looked death in the face and it was very fuckin scary.

Wednesday Movie - Dodgy Landings

Some years ago a couple of friends of mine where doing fieldwork in southern Chile. They chartered a small plane to fly them around so they could errect a series of seismic monitoring stations. One of field sites was in a fjord. The pilot flew them in and they set about building the concrete plinth for the station and mounting the gear. By the time they had finished the cloud had come in and the pilot told them there was no way he could take off in the narrow fjord, so they headed to the bar to pass the time.

Two days later they were still marooned by the weather and starting to worry. They had built in some slack but that was now all used up and they still had a lot of work to do. The pilot, who spoke no English was not especially forth coming with the weather report, despite there best efforts to try and persuade him to find out.

After another failed attempt to communicate with him, he disappeared for ten minutes and then returned saying “Vamanos ahora” , We will go now. They were skeptical but keen to go and fortified by three days of drinking and boredom they jumped into the plane, and threw in their bags as the pilot fired up the engine and turned the plane around to point down the cloud filled valley.

The were still wondering what the hell was going on as the little plane accelerated down the gravel strip and rose into the cloud. Then the heard the pilot, talking to himself under his breath…
Uno, dos , tres, quarto, dareche (right)” and the plane lunged right. They could see nothing in the cloud but the threat of the huge granite cliffs was ever present and threatening
“Uno, dos arybe (up)” as they climbed steeply and got small glimpses of hard grey rock alarming close. It was soon painfully apparent that the pilot believed there constant questioning and frustration was instruction for him “to do something”. So he had talked to the local pilots and got “directions” out of the fjord, which comprised of a series of instructions, fly 4 seconds and then hard right; 10 seconds and left etc etc. Which he had then committed to memory.

Our heroes were justifiably terrified but by the time they understood what was happening it was too late to stop it and, being smart they realized that there best chance of survival was to let the pilot execute his memorized sequence. Turning back was not an option.

After what seemed like a lifetime the little plane climbed out of the fjord, through the cloud and into the clear sky. Seismic stations were erected and our heroes got to add another stupid story to their repertoire.

This weeks Wednesday movies deal with dodgy take off and landing – who ever said flying was safe never fly with these guys…

The World’s craziest airport
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=DqgZvb37NX0
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Rq_S_vAsiuo

I actually had the privilege of flying with this guy when we were filming a few years ago – we did not do any Arches but he was a real character
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=IkeJQJxHpQw

This one is a bit long but it is worth watching to the end because just when you think its over it gets more interesting
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=V06LBgfuxgA

Inspiration for telling this story and the movies from Ian

The scariest animal in the desert

Nige and I have been working in Namibia for a couple of months. The Huab Basin in the north of the country lies just inland from the Skeleton Coast, it is the most remote places I have ever been. Fieldwork involves driving on dirt roads and river beds for a day just to get to the area, then camping out for two or three weeks at time without seeing another soul. Everything is carried in to the field area in the back of the pick-up including, food, water and spare fuel. Out here you are on your own and this is in the days before satallite phones or any of that stuff.

The landscape is harsh and unforgiving, red sandstone outcrops capped by thick mountains of dark grey weathered basalt. We make our camp sites where we can, we have a few prefered spots, where rock carvings and the occasional arrow head tells us that we are not the first to seek the shelter of the shallow caves and gullies.

The only vegetation is sharp and spiky. The animals are similar. The harsh desert conditions through-up all sorts of weird variations of the things we are more used to. Elephants with extra long legs for running over the dunes; zebras which are brown and black, and foxes with huge ears that triangulate the position of buried rodents and insects. Anything seems possible in this place and at some stage in our 3 months out here, we have seen most of them.

Several people have asked us if we had ever seen a "Honey Badger" yet. In fact we have been asked this question so many times that the creature is starting to take on mythical properties. "Oh man! Its so fierce it will kill a buffalo" was a claim from one local who we agreed was probably full of shit. "Its the craziest animal in the desert" from another, and "don't worry about the elephants", which had chased us out of the dried river bed "it's the honey badger that will get you". What were these people on about?

Then one evening as we drove back across the plain at dusk we saw a smallish creature casually lolloping along in the wheel ruts. We slowed down to see what it was, eyes straining in the half light. Nige says "it looks a bit like a badger" and which point it turns around and attacks the car! Huge white fangs barred, snarling and gnashing as a 30 cm fur ball tries to savage a 2.5 tonne Toyota truck. There is no fear in the beast, no comprehension of scale or consequence, just shear aggression.

Its terrifying and despite the fact that we are perfectly safe in the pick-ups cab, we both jump and cower in our seats. Then satisfied that it has made it's point, the beast waddles off. Confident that it has won the moral battle and got the respect that it felt it deserved it disappeares into the night.

Now it's our turn to say "beware the honey badger, it is a fearsome beast..."

River running in Spain...

Northern Spain, summer 1995. I have just returned from a field season in Utah were I got my first taste of rafting on the mighty Colorado. Sat in a large rubber raft, piloted by an experienced guide the whole think seemed rather easy.

So now I am back in the Pyrenees, looking at some of the best structural geology I know. The Galleago gorge is an amazing cross section through the external sierras guarded by with the mighty conglomerate towers of Riglos. I have climbed on these 1000 ft monsters but today I have a different plan. Today I will take what I have learnt from my rafting experience and run this punitive river with it’s little rapids. How hard can it be?

I get 4 inner tubes from a garage in Jaca but the students who I am supervising are not interested in this adventure. That’s there loss. So I head off on my own to the bridge below the dam. I arrive and there is a professional rafting company setting up, Their clients in wetsuits, helmets and life vests carry the boats from the roof of their van. In contrast I am in shorts and sandals with a inner tube under my arm and a piece of wood, found at the side of the road to use as a paddle.

The guides look at my in confusion, which quickly morphs to compression, followed quickly by anger. The guides obviously don’t want me to humiliate them or their paying clients, my lack of expensive kit is underlining the validity of their operation and they are pissed off. They shout at me in Spanish but I ignore them, throw the tube off the bridge and vault the rail, casually taking the 10 m to the water. In the water I climb into the tube and set off downstream on my adventure. I sit in the tube and go with the current. My arse bounces off the odd rocks but I am happy, I am on the river and the sun is shinning. This is the life.

At the first rapid I fall out, its harder than it looks, but I float the rapid into the eddie and climb back in. A quite section follows and I admire the familiar geology. More rapids and I am starting to get a technique, I still fall out occasionally but its all going well. I laugh at the students stuck back at the hotel and I laugh at those stupid people with all their gear. What a bunch of idiots, what a waste of money.

My progress continues, through rapids followed by gentle sections. I see the towers of Riglos and feel sad that my tour is almost over. The gorge is narrowing for the last bit, maybe there is still some fun to come? I wish it had been just a bit more exciting. Then I round a corner and I hear the roar, maybe its not over yet? The best is obviously still to come, I am more excited than scared and I make it my goal to try and stay in the ring.

The roar gets louder but I still can’t see too much. I am wandering what to expect as I go for the falls. They are only about a meter high but I am immediately out of the ring and in the water. I splash and paddle as amusement turns to anxiety and then to full on fear. I am bounced off large boulders, fighting to stay above the water. I go over another drop and I don’t come up. I start to fight and swim hard but I can’t even tell what way is up. Just as I am getting really scared I am spat out to go straight over another small drop into a pool. I go under again but surface quickly, right next to the rubber ring, which through its own adventure has ended up next to me. I grasp it and use it to keep me afloat has I am carried further down the river, bashing and bouncing off the boulders.

I am pushed against a large boulder in the middle of the stream. Initially it threatens to pin me down but as I climb up the back of it the water pushes me up on the top. I grab the ring and I am safe, temporarily at least. I take stock of the situation, a few cuts and bruises but apart from that I am ok. I sit on the rock, with the water roaring either side and, without warning I throw up! Probably a combination of the water I have swallowed and a delayed reaction to the fear. The retching goes on from a few minutes until my stomach is empty I sit there cold and shivering.

It takes me 20 minutes to sum the courage to do what has to be done. The only way off the boulder is back in to the raging river. I have no idea what is down stream but I can and starting to get really cold and I know I can’t stay here.

I tentatively ease my way into the water, all the bravado and bullshit has been washed away. I don’t even try to ride the ring, I just clutch it and let the water take me. Its not as bad as I had feared and in a few minutes its all over, I am spat from the rapids into the deep running smooth waters.

I climb in the ring and float for about a kilometer, before I find a good spot to get out. Climbing the side of the gorge is steep and treacherous but I hardly notice as I scramble up, leaving the river below me. At the half way point I stop and I look back, staring at the rapids. Scouting them would have been a good idea, but then again if I had done that, I probably would have stayed back at the hotel with the students.

I watch the guided tour appear around the corner. They stop at the top of the big rapids, the clients get out and walk around as the guides run the boat down on a line. Finally I laugh to myself at myself and my ridiculous adventure.

A cold lesson

All this cold weather reminds me of an ice climbing trip to Canada back in 2001/03. We were staying in Banff and one day when it was fairly cold (-20 ish) we headed out to bag a couple of pitches of road side ice.

We climbed to parallel routes, I was climbing as part of a three and by the time I got back to the bottom of the pitch there is no sign of Dave and Mike but there is a lot of blood on the ice. That's a bad sign, given that you either have to have a facial injury or be bleeding very heavily from below all the layers for there to be that much blood on the ground. I was expecting the worst.

Back at the car and the boys are looking sheepish but decidedly intact. I ask about the blood and Mike nods while Dave sniggers.

Turns out that Mike was sorting his gear and he put a metal crab in his mouth, which had...

...yes predictably at -20, had stuck. He then panicked and pulled the skin off the end of his tongue and as he started screaming blood and spraying went everywhere - OW!!!

There is a lesson there! We felt the need to re-enforce this lesson by feeding Mike chili and curry for the rest of the week. It was for his own good but I think we realised that it could have been any of us.

I have not asked him but I am prepared to bet that he hasn't done that again, I certainly haven't. So the following from http://www.despair.com/ is for Mike...

Get your hands up

Roy and I are in driving along highway 6 in front of the Book Cliffs in Utah. This is classic cowboy country, a long straight road across the badlands with huge continuous cliffs on the left and in the distance redrock desert on the right. It’s been a long day in the field and there is a cold beer waiting in Green River. The road is pretty empty so I am doing a healthy 85 mph.

The Book Cliffs and Highway 6 - never meant for 60 mph

Suddenly I realize that one of the cars just about to pass going in the other direction has a rack of blue and red lights on the top. Bollocks! Bollocks! Bollocks!

So I say to Roy, we are about to get pulled over, stay cool, we’ll get a ticket and be on our way. Just don’t get out the car, don’t make any sudden moves and make sure he can see your hands. As I say this, I look in the mirror and see the blues light up and the sheriff does a u-turn.

So I pull over before he is even behind me and put my hands on the wheel in plain view. Roy raises his in a stance of surrender, I am not sure if he is scared or being ironic but I think its kind off funny so I do the same…

The plod approaches, moving along the side of the car cautiously. This is with good reason, too many of Utah’s finest have been shot by crazy people out on these open roads.

When he reaches the open window he immediately asks “Why the hands up? You got a concealed weapon license I don’t know about?”
“No officer” I reply, in earnest, “we are British and we heard that if we got pulled over then we should show our hands or risk being shot”.

He visibly relaxes and apparently thinks this is the funniest thing he has heard today. He takes my license to check it out and then comes back with a big smile on his face.
“Since you guys aren’t from around here I am gonna let you off with a warning”
“Thank you officer, we’ll be more careful in future”

Nice one!

Two days later, early morning we have hooked up with Chris, Atle and Helen and we are all heading south from Green River to Moab for a five day raft trip. We are all pretty excited; I am doing my predictable 85 mph when we pass a policeman. Bugger!

So I pull over and say “get your hands up everyone, now!”

Roy gets it straight away, the others comply but a bit more hesitantly.
The police man approaches and fortunately it’s a different one and this is a different county. Again he asks why our hands are up and again I say the same thing. Helen, who is rather striking and has a pretty plumy English accent at the best of times, hams it up and says
“We’d rather not get shot officer”

He looks less than impressed but goes off and 10 minutes later comes back, telling us he is going to let us off. We thank him profusely and drive away slowly.

Nice one!

Maybe this is the solution to all those speeding tickets? The question is, how far could you push it?

Two years later Atle and I bottled out of trying it again and took the ticket. That time it was at 3 am and we had been out sampling sandstone in Arches with a large drill which was in the back of the car. We were also half cut and didn't want to try and explain what we were doing, but that's another story…

Life in Suburbia

Been in the Smog for the last couple of days, meeting investment analysts - not sure how I ended up here, last time I looked I was a geologist...

Being in London reminds of a time, twenty years ago when I arrived here, fresh from Uni with a very large debt, trying to get enough cash together to go and do a PhD. It was an entertaining 9 months but it also made me realise that I never wanted to live here again. Each time I come back and visit only serves to re-enforce that view. Anyway here is a tale from back in the day...
________________________________________________________________

The year is 1988 and I have just finished my degree. The job market sucks and I am very short of cash, so I have taken a job in London with a small consulting company. At £7500/year the pay is so bad that I can’t actually afford to live here. In fact I would probably be better off back in Wales landscape gardening or delivering cars (which, along with stage crew work, had helped to finance my degree), but I also need to get some relevant experience to strengthen next years PhD chances.

So I end up living on my cousin’s floor in deepest, darkest Kent. I have been here for 2 weeks, long enough to work out that if I leave the house at exactly 7.30 I can walk 10 minutes to the train station, then catch a train followed by two tubes and get to the office in Putney at five to nine. I am already part of that well oiled commuter machine!

So for two weeks everything is going just fine and I am making a good impression at work. Then one evening, the guys ask me to come and play cricket with them. I am not much of a batsman but my long lanky arms assist in fast bowling and as it turns out the opposition are fairly crap anyway. We win and there is much beer downed to celebrate until the last train home.

I get to Oprington Station and head home, its pouring with rain and rather grim I realize that I must be more pissed than I thought because I am now lost. Bugger! It takes me about 2 hours to get my bearings, make it into the house and collapse on the bed.

Next thing I know, the room is flooded with daylight and I am awake and alert. What time is it? A quick look at my watch says 27 minutes passed 7. Shit! Shit! Shit! I know that if I miss the next train it will trigger a chain reaction of delays and I won’t be in work until 9.30. That is bad! Drinking on school night is fine as long as you make class the next day. Especially when it’s your first time out with the team.

I jump up, throw on some clothes and bolt for the door, running down the street towards the station, I might just make it! Half way I start to get a stomach cramp so I slow down a bit, I am sweating and feeling very rough, I start to walk. By now my goal has been down graded to making it to the station and finding a toilet before I crap my self.

More spasms and I am in serious trouble. Then just as it’s looking very bad, a man walks out of his house and asks if I am ok. I ask if I can use his toilet, he looks at me rather horrified and says no. I should emphasis that I can’t blame him, I am 6’2”, scruffy, with very long hair and I am sweating like a horse. I probably wouldn’t invite me into my house to use the toilet either.

But it’s desperate so I plead and eventually he relents and quietly says the toilet is at the top of the stairs. I need no second bidding, I barge past, take the stairs 3 at a time, while undoing my trousers. At the top of the landing I come face to face with his wife, dressed in her nightie. I am pretty sure that every morning he leaves for work at 7.36 and she gets up as he goes and heads to the toilet. I am also pretty sure she has never been head off at the pass by a large yeti with his trousers undone…

I pull down my trousers and my arse explodes, solids, liquids and gases under pressure. It’s a real mess and it stinks but it’s also immensely relieving, I feel so much better. A quick look at my watch tells me that this diversion has actually only taken about 3 minutes and if run I might just make the train. So I pull up my trousers and bolt down the stairs and up the street to the station.

I make the train and my honour at work is intact. My honour on the way to work subsequently is more challenged as every morning my new found friend waves and says hello. I wave back and hurray along.

The thing that really worries me about the whole affair is trying to imagine what his wife thought was happening and what she said when he got home that night …
“Darling, after you left this morning some long-haired hippy ran in to the house and stank the toilet out before running off. Can you imagine?”
“Really dear? In Orpington, imagine that...

Take your 40 grand a year and shove it...

We are camped in a small gully, the low rock walls shelter us from the wind. The fire is providing heat for the blackened cast iron poki-pot that contains our supper and for us as the sun dips below the hills. All around the barren desert terrain takes on a gentle reddish glow as bright daylight passes quickly to dark night. Nige stokes the fire and sips his beer while discussing the merits of various gritstone E3s (climbing routes in north England). This is how we have spent most of our evening for the last two months. This is field week in northern Namibia, one of the most remote places on earth.

But tonight is different, because just as we settle into our evening routine a convoy of 4x4's comes over the horizon. These are the first people we had encountered in the field since we got here. We had sort of known that they were coming, but this is the days before mobile and satellite phones and there is no email. When you went to the field – you cut yourself off from everything and then emerged a couple of months later with notebooks filled with data. So we knew a group might turn but had no idea where or when.

The trip is from an oil company called Enterprise and was being lead by Dougal. Dougal had been with us since we first started working in Namibia and knows this area as well as we do. His entourage however had no place being outside an office in London. We greet them and they eye us suspiciously. We were suddenly aware of our appearance. Wearing the same clothes for 2 months, with no water to wash anything more than your teeth can make one look a bit rough and when you both smell as bad as each other, you don’t tend to notice.

As soon as the group disappeared to set up there tents Dougal lets out a tirade about how useless they were, how they drive at 10 mph on the dirt roads and how the moaned about camping. Moaned about camping! They had tents, which we never used – it doesn’t rain, why would you need a tent? They also had a cook, fresh meat, loads of water and they are only out for three nights.

A bit later they joined us by the fire and one particularly obnoxious individual sat next to me and in a loud, public school voice attempted to socialize
“So how long have you chaps been out here?”
“About two months”
“My Gawd! Bet your looking forward to getting home”
“Not really, I am quite happy here” I say, while I am thinking, what a wanker, this is one of the most amazing places on earth and he’s more worried about missing the pub on Sunday and the squash club.
“Is it just the two of you? You must be getting on each other nerves a bit”
“Actually no, we get on just fine” which was true.
“So your doing a PhD then”
“Nope, I am a lecturer and he’s a post-doc”
“Blimey!” He blustered and then continued, “I thought about being an academic but the pay was so crap! What do you earn?
I have heard similar statements before and I am always amazed by the arrogance of someone who thinks being an academic is an easy option...
“About 16 grand a year” I reply reluctantly
“Sixteen grand! That’s terrible, I earn 40,000 pounds a year”
“Good for you” I saw as I get up and go to tend the fire and make sure I don’t go back.

Fuck me, being sociable is hard work after so long in the desert. I go to chat to Paul, their cook. Paul lost a leg to a land mine in Angola, he is a good guy who understands the desert. He sees the ostrich egg bead in my earring, picked up by a 2000 year old fire place in a cave high on a mountainside and we compare notes on various San sites we have found.

We camp with them for two nights. They are not all as obnoxious as Mr 40-grand-a-year, but they are out of their depth. They fail to appreciate the beauty of the desert, focusing only on the discomfort of the spiky bushes, the dust in the food and the problems of shitting outdoors. One girl throws her socks into the bin and Paul tells me she has done that every morning. I later catch Nige, picking the socks out of the rubbish because they are so much cleaner than the pair he is wearing.

And then as quickly as they arrived, they are gone. Back to their idea of civilization, and its just Nige and I in our little camp spot. It’s wonderfully serene. While Nige cooks supper, I climb up the large volcanic plug behind the camp. Scrambling over the sharp jagged rocks is therapeutic and I focus on moving faster and faster as I race the sunset. Just below the summit I find a comfortable spot, out of the cold wind and settle down to take some photographs. As the sun starts to dip below the horizon the sky erupts into a wall of red and the entire Etendeka Plateau is bathed in it's fiery warm light. I can see for hundreds of miles and I am pretty certain that there is not another living person anywhere within my field of view. I drink the silence and contemplate what it all means.

Such sunsets are not unusual and the scenery is the same as it has been for the last two months, but tonight it’s impact is improved by the absence of our recent visitors. I smile as I think to myself, “Fuck you! Take your 40 grand a year and shove it up your arse! This is worth so much more than that and the best thing is, you’re too stupid to actually realize that". I also know at the point that I love my life, I love the places it has taken me, I love what I do and I am immensly happy. I appreciate that 3 months sleeping outside in a remote desert is not everyones idea of fun, but I swear I won't let my life change too much as I get older.

I told this story to a few friends and Gareth, who actually worked for Enterprise was able to tell me who the guy was. One time a couple of years later I called Gareth at work and he said, guess who I am sitting next to? I had no idea, even when he said Steve Kenyon-Smyth, I didn’t recognize the name. When he explained it was Mr 40-grand-a-year, I asked how he was.

Fat with two kids – Gareth replied, and that was enough.