Landed in London

Well I've just arrived in London. I rode my bike down today and I start work tomorrow. It's not the most conventional living situation. I've moved into Jules' place but Colin hasn't moved out yet so I've got a few weeks of couch surfing ahead of me. Hopefully it all goes well and we can survive with us all in the flat otherwise it could all go wrong. Oh well, I'll let you know how it goes so check back in a bit.

It's all happening

Well it's been an eventful day. I passed my motorcycle license and have accepted a job. I had an offer from a consulting company for a job where I would be placed at their client, Ford, and work on powertrain control systems. I've had the offer for a week and just needed to sort out a bunch of suff before committing to it and now I've finally sorted everything. My start date is on November 26th so I've got two weeks to get my life sorted and start working. The job is based in Essex but I'll live in London, which is part of the reason for the bike license. Running a car in London is a nightmare so I'm getting a bike instead. Plus bikes are just awesome. So in the next couple of weeks I've got to buy a bike, move to London and start work. Easy. Except that the room I'm going to live in is currently occupied. So I might only half move and get myself down there, start work and get going before moving all my stuff down later when I have the room. Anyway, for now I think I'll just have a brew or two tonight and see what happens next. Working for the man, oh well, it had to happen again some day, and just when the snow is starting to fall in Colorado.

Photos

Well I uploaded some pictures of Camp Jules but in other picture news I've been looking through some myspace photos and came across a truely great photo that highlights how far I let my beard go. Check it out:

London

I went down to London for the weekend. Matt GA was having a leaving do on Friday because he's getting shipped out to Iraq in the next few days, I haven't seen my cousin since before he got married earlier this year and I organized myself an interivew for Monday. So I headed down on Megabus on Friday and went straight to Matt's house. It's been about two years since I last saw him because he's been stationed in Germany so it was good seeing him and all his family again. Dave was also there since he's come over to England to work. Again, I haven't seen him in ages and since he only got to England right when I was leaving at the end of last year I didn't have time to catch him then. So it was reunions all around and good fun. I knew about half of the people who came for the leaving do from running into them over the years while hanging out with Matt so I wasn't totally lost but they definitely were not a group of close friends. The whole night was good with the highlight of the evening occuring around the piano. Rory (I think that's his name, sorry) was banging out the flight of the bumble bees and doing it very well. I was listening with Mackey from the beginning and halfway through Matt's mum comes in to listen behind us where Rory can't see her. Then after finishing he turns to us and says "It doesn't half tire out your wanking muscles." as he shook out his hand. I don't know if it went straight over Matt's mums head but she didn't bat an eyelid. I crashed at Matt's house for the evening and stayed the ext day to watch the England rugby match. We beat Australia and it was brilliant. The ozzies where out. As it turned out the French also beat the kiwis so it began to look like we might have a chance. All I know is that the England v. France game this weekend is going to be good.

In the evening I headed across town to meet up with my cousin and his wife, who had not even met yet. I ended up being half and hour late. It was partly my fault, I didn't leave enough time to get across London, but I was also delayed in leaving Matt's house. Anyway, it was quite similar to the last time I met up with my cousin in London when I was coming from Matts house again and was more than an hour late. So next time I'm going to have to be extra careful to ensure I arrive early. Anyway, we had a couple of drinks at a bar. I was just looking around and Mike Fitzpatrick walks in with some friends. A completely random encounter but we caught up a bit before he went off to join his friends. After a drink or two we headed for some dinner at a great Moroccan place. It was really nice to catch up with my cousin and finally meet his wife and we had a great time talking away over dinner. I ended up crashing at their place for the night and after some breakfast in the morning I headed down to meet up with Jules.

On my way down I had a stop at London bridge and had a look around to see where my interview was and then kept going to Jules' place. We just chilled out for the evening, cooking a Sunday roast chicken and playing Wii all night. On Monday I headed over for my interview. Now after the shocking performance last time round I was a bit apprehensive as you might imagine so I was going to do my homework. I called up a friend who works for them and asked what to expect inthe interview. He said it would primarily be on my work in my PhD so I was ready to study up on my thesis. The problem is that my computer has been dying lately. I think it has an intermitent hardare problem with the memory, but I'm not exactly sure since I've run the hardware test and it came up with an error the first time but not the second time I ran it. In any case, every now and then it just crashes. I get a message that pops up and says "You must restart your computer" and I have to shut it down. Then it doesn't always want to start up again ... sometimes. So I've been soldiering on and until it has a predictable fault I'm going to leave it (since I don't really have the money to replace it). Anyway, before the interview my computer started acting up. I didn't have enough space in my bag for a hard copy of my thesis so I was relying on my computer. I know this sounds silly considering that I should have brought a hardcopy to study for the interview but I didn't find out that tehinterview would probably cover my thesis until I was already down in London. Anyway. the bottom line was that my thesis was on my computer, which didn't want to start up, and I wanted to read through some of it. Not the best situation. Finally I convinced my laptop to play nice and I got a couple of hours looking through my thesis. As it turns out, this wasn't as necessary as I thought. I went for the interview and just talked with the business manager. I would have a more technical interview at later date and also an interview with the MD of the company. So it was quite alright after all. The interview went well this time around. The company is a consulting company so after the usual this is what we do, tell me about yourself, we discussed a few opportunites that might be a good fit for me. It was quite strange because he was talking as if I already had a job at teh consultancy. Saying things like "We've got this and we've got that. Here are some things that we think you'll fit in quite well with" and going on about it also saying "Well if this isn't exactly what you want to do then we can wait for something else to come along." Which all sounds great but at the same time I didn't have a job yet and I didn't work for them. I guess he was just good at his job. He was making me feel really good about the company and giving me all sorts of positive options to keep me interested in the opportunities that they had. Trying to reel me into the company. But it was all quite strange, like meeting with a recruitment agent but being in an interivew instead. But I guess thats what a consulting company is, some sort of recuitment agency. They have to fill their books with good qualified people and keep them on the line while they also go out and find jobs to match them. In any case there are a couple of interesting jobs going and it went pretty well. I might even be back down in London fairly soon to meet some clients to see if I fit what they want. Then I might actually have a job.

I've been thinking about it a bit and it's not the dream job that I've been looking for. It's not working on racing cars. But at teh same time, consulting work is quite interesting. You get to work on a bunch of different projects and gain a lot of experience. And if you want to push your career in a particular direction then you just have to push for those projects. Also, if something better does come up then its fairly easy to get out of in between projects. So it does look pretty good and since I don't have anything else on the table right now then it looks really good. So the interview went well and I crashed at Jules' place again on Monday before heading back up to Leeds on the Megabus on Tuesday. I must say I'm quite happy with Megasbus. Last time I used them they had normal double decker buses but they were using proper coaches this time so the trip was pretty comfortable, especially since I managed to get the double seat to myself. So I'm back up in Leeds now and playing the waiting game again and I'll let you know if this job comes through.

Camp Jules

So the other weekend I headed back up to Camp Jules. I got a lift up there with Jules' parents on Thursday night and Jules was coming up from London with Colin and the two Chris' after work on Friday. I spent Friday poking around the boats for a while playing with my new digital camera. I was taking a bunch of arty shots of the rigging on the 14 and playing with the depth of field. Check out the pictures at my picassa site. After enough playing with the camera I realised the wind was up and time was ticking away so I rigged up the laser and went for a spin. I got on quite well and sailed up to the sailing club and then had a run back down the lake (the wind was coming from the north which is a bit unusual). I was doing alright but it always felt like there was more speed in the boat given the wind conditions. I just wasn't quite getting it. Maybe I was sailing too hard up into the wind or maybe I didn't have the sail properly set for the wind. What ever it was, there was something not quite right, which is always a bit frustrating but oh well, I had a good sail anyway. Jules and everyone else got into camp a bit after midnight and we looked forward to teaching the two Chris' how to sail.

Saturday came and the wind wasn't really blowing. There was enough movement on the water to get the boats around but not much more. So we rigged the two merlins and got Jules and beardy Chris in the new boat while I took out vegy Chris. Colin jumped on the laser and had a little float with us. We managed to beat up to the sailing club again but the wind was dying. We turned around before it got too calm and started heading back. We had to jump from one patch of wind to the next, getting caught in flat clam in between. Colin was just sitting out in the middle of the lake going nowhere. We put up the spinaker and tried to catch a bit more wind with the extra sail but just ended up going round in circles as the wind floated around with no apparent direction. At least we did better than Beardy Chris who was helming the boat when Jules dropped the spinaker pole. The pole went with the excellent auto-retrive rigging and shot straight back into Chris's forehead. It was a perfect shot. On our boat, I lost the spinaker pole once but thankfully it didn't have quite as good aim and missed Chris. So we all got back to camp after a bit of a float. Adey had made it up for the weekend but not in time for a sail so we all went for a wander through the woods. It was really nice and calm in the forest. It was full of trees and moss that really deadened the sound and gave it a great sense of peace. It just looed amazing with all the lush green in the late afternoon light under a cloudy sky. It reminded me of why I enojy being outside so much. After getting a bit hungry we headed back to camp for dinner then cruised into town for a pint in the pub.

Sunday was even worse than Saturday for sailing. There was almost no wind. We ended up taking the tents down and cleaning up camp a bit. Then in the afternoon it looked like a bit of wind was picking up. I rigged the new merlin and went out with Colin to gauge the conditions while beardy Chris got ready to sail the laser. As it turned out the wind didn't pick up, it died quite quickly which left Colin and me floating around in the middle of the lake and Chris just sitting on shore watching us with Jules. So the weekend was a bit of a failure for sailing. I felt bad for the Chris' who had rented a car and come all the way up from London expecting to learn how to sail. As it was they did get out on the water but it wasn't like it should have been. I remember my first weekend up at the lake and the brilliant sailing we got in, racing away in the 14 by the end of it. But I guess they did get out of the big smoke and had some fresh air and countryside, which they really did seem to enjoy. So it may have been worth it for them but knowing what it could have been with some good wind, I still felt a bit sorry for them.

Camp Jules

Failed

Well it's official, I failed to get the McLaren job. The crappy thing is that although I only interviewed for the controls job, the vehicle dynamics people decided "not to take my application any further." Maybe this would have been the case regardless but I know that the control people talked to the vehicle dynamics people and I can't imagine they gave me any positive reviews. Like I said it kinda sucks that interviewing for the control job, which I wasn't really expecting to get when I applied in the first place, ruined my chances of getting the vehicle dynamics job, which I was more comfortable with and better qualified for. Oh well, there isn't anything I can do about it now. I've been to the promised land and I firmly slammed the door in my own face with a horrible interview. God I wish it had not been my first interview. Why couldn't some other company I didn't want to work for give me an interview first. Well, back to finding more jobs. There have been a few nibbles here and there but nothing very concrete yet. So hopefully I can sort out something good in the next week or so.

The problem with a performance like the one I had in the McLaren interview is that it introduces all sorts of self doubts. I began to think that despite thinking of myself as reasonably intelligent I actually don't know anything. That I managed to squeak through my undergrad with the bare minimum of work and no actual knowledge retention. That I also pretty much sailed through my job in Detroit without having to think and again did just about the minimum required of me to not get fired. And that my PhD was a load of missguided research that looked quite nice because I managed to write it fairly well but actually didn't contain anything that someone in industry would find remotely relevant or interesting and has about as many holes in it as swiss cheese and once again I pulled it off without actually retaining any knowledge. I'm not sure if this really is the case. Although I can think of all sorts of holes in the research and looking back on it I can think of a million ways of improving it and giving it some credibility, patching holes etc, from what I hear, pretty much everyone who has done a PhD says the same thing. I guess you never really know what people mean when they say their work was rubbish and it could have been better by doing a few things and how that compares to how rubbish your own work was. So maybe it's not that bad. However, what I do know is this. First, I have passed my viva and handed in and completed everything I need to do so unless something goes horribly wrong, I'll get the degree. So at least three other people have read my work and consider it good enough, in fact they keep saying its actually very good (but I'm not sure if they are refering to the writing and presentation or the actual work). And second, I don't know enough to hold my own in an interview so I've got a lot of work to do in revising and studying a bunch of stuff that I should already know (and claim to know) so that I can actually understand everything properly and defend myself in an interview. Basically, fill in all the background for what I've implemented in my research so I not only understand it but can explian it to people who don't know what I've done.

So plenty of work ahead of me, and plenty of time to do it since I have nothing else to do. I just have to get of the internet and actually apply myself. So on that note, I'll see you later, once I've filled my brain with knowledge.

The job hunt, or should that be with a 'c'

So here I am, working away trying to pull the fleece over employers eyes, trying to convince them to hire me, and then it happened. I got a response from someone that wasn't a small, one page letter saying:

Dear applicant,

Thank you for your interest. Unfortuantely, due to the large response and quality of applicants we have not given you the job but we will keep your records on file and if something should come up in the future we'll give you a call. Now go fuck off and don't come back.

Sincerely,
Cockblocking assholes.

or something along those lines. So I finally got a response from someone. Well, that's a bit of a missrepresentation because it wasn't just someone, it was McLaren. Who you might ask? Oh wait, they're a Formula One team, yeah, that's right, one of the most successful teams out there, the one thats also made the McLaren F1 supercar and the McLaren Mercedes SLR, oh and hang haven't they been in the news lately? That's right, one of their employees was being supplied top secret information from a Ferrari employee and they got busted for cheating with the biggest fine in history ($100 million) and kicked out of the constructors championships. Well that last bit isn't so flattering but I won't go into that, there's already plenty of crap on the internet discussing that and it really doesn't bother me too much in my quest for a job. They are a fantasitc company and dspite the actions of a few bad apples they will fight on a continue to be a top F1 team.

So I got a response (did I mention it was from McLaren, you know F1, anyway) it was just a nibble at first. They wanted a phone interview for a control job I applied for. I had also applied for a vehicle dynamics job with them which is more my specialty, but never mind I did some controls as well so lets go. The phone interview went well and I was pretty happy with my performance. Then I got another nibble. They wanted a phone interview, and I was going to be interviewed by the same two people. Now This wasn't what I expected. In the first phone interview I had mentioned I had also applied for a VD job (vehicle dynamics you dirty minded bastards). They said that was fine, it was a different group but they talked. So when I had a second phone interview with the same people it didn't make much sense. So I asked the HR person if it was for ths VD job and she said yes it was. Ok what ever. So I was dilligently waiting by the phone, waiting for my second phone interview ... just waiting ... by my phone. Time was ticking by and I wasn't getting a call. Not the most reassuring feeling, not a good feeling at all. Then twenty minutes after the interview was scheduled I got a call,. Hey, a bit late but no big deal, feeling good now. However, it wasn't the people who were supposed to interview me, it was the HR person, which sent the feeelings down again. Damn this job hunt thing is a rollercoaster (if only I knew about the following week). Anyway, I figured I should heart out what the HR girl had to say. Wait, what was that, there wasn't any point in conducting two phone interviews so why don't you come down for a proper interview at the McLaren factory (which I was to learn wasn't a factory at all. It was the McLaren Technology Centre and it is a thing of wonder and amazment). So the nibble had turned into a good bite and I was on my way down to Woking for an interview, no more bad thoughts, just high spirits.

So it was that I found myself on the train down south, reading through some things, trying to study up on some control stuff and the VD stuff as well. just getting my mind in the right frame for the interview. I got down to Woking and grabbed a cab to teh McLaren Technology Centre. Now I should say that it is absolutely phenomenal, I was completely blown away by it. Now keep in mind I have already visited the Renault F1 Factory, which was amazing but this place, wow, it's just on a different level all together. We got to the security gate and the security shack was no shack at all. It was a circular glass building that wouldn't look out of place in a comtempory design gallery. So I signed in. The guard gave me a pass card and one for the cab. He told me to be dropped off at Rotunda B/C, go inside and down the steps, along the corridor, up the lift to Level 1+ and go to the racing reception. Ok, no problem so I got back in the cab and gave the driver his card and the directions. He dropped me off at Rotunda B/C, which was just a small circular glass building at the back of the main building. Oh did I mention, all the transporter trucks where parked right between me and the main building. They had jsut come back from the Belgium GP at Spa, pretty cool. Anyway, I wasn't there for the sightseeing so I swiped my card by the door and went in. There wasn't anyone there. Here I was, inside a top F1 facility belonging to a team just convicted of a major cheating afair, and they just give you a pass card and let you loose. Well not entirely I had a stair case in front of me. So I went down the stairs and got ready to "go along the corridor to the lift" like the guard at the gate told me. But this was no ordinary corridor. It was a gleaming, white 200m of perfect, underground corridor. It looked like it was out of a spaceship, maybe from 2001. It was fantastic. There were some doors but they were flush with the wall so you didn't even notice them. I was impressed toi say the least. But no time to dilly dally, I didn't want to get caught gobsmacked when I was here trying convince them I actually belonged there. So I wandered along, quite casually I thought, to the other end of the corridor, which just had a circular white pillar in the middle of the circular room. The lift entrance was around the back. So I got in the lift, but it was really disorienting. It was a glass lift but in a black chamber so it was all super reflective and you couldn't see anything. It took a little while to find the buttons to hit 1+. Before I did though, I looked up. Through the black hole was a white light at the top. I hit the button and started to move towards the light. I came up out of the floor and moved up to Level 1+. Now Level 1+ was a floating level, or at least the part I was on was. I had been brought up straight out of the ground and up to these floating walkways. I got out of the lift and looked around. How about right, oh there are a bunch of race cars that Bruce McLaren raced back in the day, including his first ever race car. Oh and check that out, there are a bunch of McLaren F1 super cars and behind them there's the work shop where they make the McLaren Mercedes SLR. Not too shabby. How about we look right. Oh, a bunch of F1 cars and whats the name on the side, just Ayrton Senna, no big deal. And beyond them, just the current F1 cars in various states of build. And guess what, there's not a single drop of oil anywhere. Everything was pristene and perfect. Did I say this place was absolutely phenominal yet? So I managed to get my feet moving and looked for anythign that could be Racing Reception. I saw a floating circle with a desk in the middle with a lady. I went over there and it turned out to be Racing Reception. Result, I had made it. It was a good thing I was a few minute early because that let me calm down and get used to the place. By the time I got called for the interview I felt pretty good and relaxed, which is good because that feeling wasn't going to last through the end of the day.

So I met the guy interviewing me and he briefly showed me around before we headed into the interview proper. Everything went nicely to begin with. There were two people interviewing me and they were nice and friendly. They started off giving me a run down of what they did and the job they had open, which was actually three positions and a bunch of work that needed to be done. After that we got into some more technical stuff, but that was fine because we started out just talking about my research and what I had done. This went well and I was quite happy and comfortable talking about it. But they certainly looked at it all with an eye for the control stuff and I got caught a little bit here and there trying to explain the control stuff in the terms they were familiar with. So not entirely smooth sailing but no big drama, yet. We ended up getting caught up with one thing in particular, sliding mode control, which I had trouble understanding myself and with an eight month break I was having trouble understanding it again and trouble explaining it again (as you might imagine if you don't remember it yourself). So we moved on. Maybe not the best if you can't fully explain work that you claim to have done. But like I said not a big deal, just a little slip. So we moved on, like I said. Fine, I was quite happy to no longer be interrogated about my own work, and fail to explain it properly, or thats what I thought.

"So I'm going to give you an example problem and just see how you do it. If we have a valve here and the flow rate is proportional to ... blah blah blah ... (stuff that's not really interesting to 99.999% of the people reading this)"

As he was saying all this he was drawing out a diagram of a hydraulic system. I hadn't even looked at a hydraulic system since my undergraduate days, about eight years ago. Ok don't panic, it's really not that complicated, actually it's about as simple a system as you could create. Even if I can't remember anything I should be able to at least just think logically and think my through this.

"... blah blah blah ... so what's the relationship between the current and the position of the piston, x?"

Ok, don't panic. Just think this one through ... right so we've got i, Q, x ... I need A so I'll introduce that ... then there's this ... oh wait not sure I need that ... how about if I do this ... hang on, this isn't going well ... ok, stop, this isn't that hard, just think, you can do this ... nope not getting it ... come on Nick!!!! ... right start again ... ok so you've got ...

And it just didn't get better. My brain froze up and I may as well have been sitting there drooling on myself, scratching my balls and farting. After some proding and a little help I fumbled my way through it, very poorly.

"Ok, so now whats the response of this system to a step input?"

Ok, put the last failure behind you and, wait, don't say failure, we need positive thoughts. Put that behind you and crack on with this ... ok, so its a first order system ... erm ... um ...

So once again I was fumbling around, and with a little guidance I managed to get to what could have been the right answer. I'm not sure if it actually was the right answer because they never really gave me any positive reassurance to that effect. Well shit. I was sitting there in a pool of dispair. I was embarassed by my performance, it was humiliating. It's not like they had asked me a really tough question or posed a problem with a tricky aspect to try and catch me out. They had given a problem that was about as siple as possible that was a direct representation of the work I would potentially be doing, or not as teh case was beginning to look like. Anyway, they had beaten me, or maybe they hadn't beaten me, but rather I had beaten myself up over my complete incompetence. Well they moved on and we had a few HR type questions, whats your salary expectation? when can you start work? etc. Things got a bit better and I did manage to move on from the previous suicide attempt and get back in the grove of talking confidently again. It did end with a more positive feeling. I asked about the jobs available and it did seem like they were suggesting things that I could do, and that they were thinking of were I might fit in. But in any case I had already committed suicide and the job was gone. I left the interview and walked out with my head down and my tail between my legs. If I was them I wouldn't hire me, in fact I would wonder how I had managed to graduate from university let alone got a PhD. I left the promised land ashamed and thoroughly dejected.

I headed back to London and was staying with Jules for the night. He tried his best to cheer me up. We all know you are your own harshest critic and maybe it didn't go that badly? No, I'm pretty sure it was that bad. Well, who knows what the other applicants are like? Good point but if they have a pulse they'll probably get the job over me. I suppose maybe I was being harsh on myself. First, everything went well until the final part of the interview, my resume/CV and therefore my qualifications got me the phone interview. So they must have liked the PhD and thought I was a good candidate. The phone interview went well and I did present myself well (until it all went wrong). I wasn't a control engineer, I was a VD engineer that did controls and I did bring this up. I never had any formal controls education. I had just taught myself what I needed to know for the PhD and it was a very well received piece of work. The fact is that no matter what job I end up with I'm going to have a steep learning curve, but just like my PhD, I'll get stuck in, learn what I need and get the job done, I just need some one to give me a chance to show what I am capable of. On top of this is that it was a controls job, not the VD job. The VD people would contact me separately about that job if they wanted to. So the VD stuff is my specialty and what I want to do, but the controls stuff is still very interesting and it has a much broader scope. It can be applied to almost anything so it would give me more opportunities in the future, unlike the VD stuff which would be more limited to the automotive industry. So maybe I would have a tough time getting going with the controls job but it would still be an amazing job. It just sucks that my first interview, which you always tend to fuck up since you have no idea what to expect, was with a company and job that what I've been dreaming about for years, its the whole reason I'm here now. And it killed me to fuck up the interview so badly when it was all actually easy stuff that I shoul dhave been able to do. The other crappy thing is that I thought I was also interviewing for the VD job. If I had know it was only the control job I was interviewing for I would have tried to sneak an interview with the VD guys while I was already down there. Oh well, they only told me that after the interview. Not much you can do about it at that point. I just hope that any negative feedback from this interview doesn't work against me for the VD job. So maybe it wasn't all bad, just 99% bad. Well Jules was trying to cheer me up. Needless to say we hit the pub and ended talking to a bunch of people I really didn't want to deal with when I felt so shitty.

Well I woke up the next day, feeling shit from the booze and feeling shit from teh interview. I didn't really think that a night getting drunk would make me feel any better about royally fucking the interview but it worth a try. Actually, the hang over probably made me feel worse about everything, which is generally the case. Anyway, I got up and moved out. I jumped on a train, not back up to Leeds, no not yet, I was heading out to Salisbury. Why might you ask? To visit Kirsty. She had broken her back at the start of summer and being down south and so near, it would be criminal not to visit. In any case I wanted to go down and visit, see how she was doing and try and brighten up her day. She had an incomplete spinal which means that its not complete paralysis. She can feel everything down to her knees and then after that she still has sensation but its a bit strange. She is recovering well and generally cruises around in a wheel chair but I was around when she had some physio work. She managed to walk around the building, about 100m, very slowly and with walking sticks. For someone with a massive spinal injury this was amazing. She is having to teach herself to walk again and it's amazing how well she is recovering. We also headed into town and got some lunch and a drink. It was awesome to hang out with her and jsut chill. We were sitting in the pub and it was like there was nothing different for when I saw her last. But then when we left and she wheeled away instead of walking it brought it back again. But she's fighting hard and I have no doubt that she's going to keep improving and getting better and she will walk again. It was a good day and I'm really glad I took the time to go and see her. It did put a few thigns in perspective. Here I was moaning about doing poorly in an interview, which really did mean a lot to me, but here was a really good friend and what she was going through just put all my trails and tribulations to nothing. So my job hunt (or cunt) isn't going too well, but I don't really know, maybe they will offer me the job. If they don't, there are more jobs out there and I'll get one sooner or later. I'm just thankful that I have a sound body and mind (at least for now) and that I have all the opportunities open to me because things could be very different, there are many people out there without the opportunities that I have and they are fighting on with more strength than I could ever hope to have.

So I potentially didn't get a dream job with an F1 team but come on, I've really got nothing to complain about. I'll let you know how it goes when I hear back and till the next nibble or bite on the job front I wish everyone well and I hope in particular that both Kirsty and Marco have speady and full recoverys, my thoughts are with you.

Hanging out

So I've had quite a bit of free time lately. I've been keeping up to date with the job hunt but it's really not a full time activity. I've had a couple of outright rejections but I do have an interview next week so hopefully that goes well, I'll let you know. Apart from that, there's been a lot of sitting around and web surfing. I've got myself on Facebook now, to add to all the other stupid networking sites that I'm on. So that took some time and is providing something to do, searching around and seeing whats up. I've also just received the CF card reader I ordered. What does this mean, well I can now download the pictures from the digital camera my brother gave to me. The result, a new gallery in my picassa site with some pictures from when I was in the Bay Area. Although the camera is vastly superior to the crappy 2 megapixel point and shoot I was using I doubt you'll really see much difference in picture quality over the net. It just means I'm wasting more space on my picassa site and it takes 10 times as long to up load them. Oh well, I'll have to figure out how I can automatically resacle them or reduce the file size. Anyway, cehck them out.

Bay Area stop-over

Leeds

Well, I'm back in Leeds and settling in a bit, hopefully not for long. As much as I'd love to stick around, the jobs I'm looking for aren't here so I should be moving on if all goes to plan, and hopefully soon. On the job front I have had a couple of nibbles and hopefully they'll be enough to turn into the full bite so fingers crossed something comes from it in the next couple of weeks. I've also printed out my thesis and sent it to the binder to get bound. I had to print out five copies of the 250 page thesis. I was going to check through them but realised I didn't really know what I'd be checking for. I certainly wasn't going to re-read each of them so I was pretty confident they were all complete and in order so I just left it at that. Hopefully all the pages are there and in order. So on that front things are almost sorted. There are a few other things I have to sort out, claim on my insurance for the cactus incident etc, but soon enough my to do list will be exhausted and it will just be the job hunt. On the social front, it's my birthday coming up on Friday so I'm going to watch the England vs. South Africa rugby world cup game then head out into town for a bit of drinking and dancing. It'll be the first time I'll see most people so it promises to be a good bit of fun.

In other news, back in Colorado, Arthur is probably on the mighty Colorado river in the Grand Canyon right now (or soon). How, you might ask, does a first year guide who wasn't into rafting before this summer end up on an 18 day Grand Canyon trip? Well Gouch from Four Corners got a permit through the lottery system and due to the late season date there were some places left open. Arthur just happened to be in the right place at the right time (along with a couple of other people, Podo and Mike among others) and scored a trip of a lifetime that a lot of people have been waiting more than 10 years to get on. So I hope you're having fun you bastard and you better have some good stories and pictures to share when you get off the river (not that I'm jealous or anything).

Home again

Well after almost nine months of having fun I'm back where it all began, lovely Leeds. I'm not too sure if the title of this post is really acurate, "Home again". I certainly have all my stuff here now and I'm here for a while until I find a job. But thats just it. When I get a job I'll probably move so really I'm just hanging out here until something comes up. It could be a couple weeks if things move quickly or a couple months or more if things aren't looking so promising. Hopefully I manage to find a job in good time and don't have to sweat it out here to long. Not to say that I don't like it here, on the contrary, it's quite nice. I have a good group of friends here and like the city. The weather is even nice and sunny right now, but I'm not sure I can call it home.

I've been thinking about this concept of home the last few days. I was talking Glen on the ride home after hanging out with the boys for the last time about this and he said "The Bay Area will always be your home". I guess he's right. There is something there which I will always be connected to despite the years passing but I can't really see myself returning there for a couple of years minimum. So England has to be my home. But to call something home by default just because you live there doesn't work. I found this in Detroit. I moved out there with no real plans to move on at any time. I was living and worknig out there for almost two years and yes, if someone asked where I was living then I would obviously say Detroit. But thats different from where home is. Although I think I would have said home was Detroit at that time I'm not sure I really believed it. I think in the back of my mind I always knew I wasn't really home, or if it was going to be home it would take a good few years to earn the title. So where is home? I guess I don't know right now because I don't know where I'll be next year. I don't really want to call Leeds home because when I get a job, chances are it won't be here. It will be down in the midlands somewhere. So I guess home will be England but I just don't know where yet. Even when I get a job and move to where ever it may be it will still take some time to really feel like home. I suppose thats really it, you need more than a quick few years to call something home. I've never quite resolved where I'm from or where home is because I've moved around quite a bit. I suppose home is the Bay Area. I grew up there and my parents live there. But I wouldn't say I'm definitively from the Bay Area since I did grow up in England and that was a big part of who I am, even just through the influence of the culture through my parents. So I guess it will take a while before I can call some where home again.

Anyway, I had a pretty good trip back with only a few delays. It started after a couple hours sleep at 4:00am in California (12:00 BST) on Wednesday and I didn't get into Leeds until 4:30pm (16:30 BST) on Thursday. So almost 30 hours travelling with maybe 8 hours sleep a couples hours at a time in the last 46 hours before I went to bed last night. Like I said I was only delayed once waiting for my flight out of Charlotte but I still made all my connections to trains once I hit England. The most testing thing was the final bus ride back in Leeds. I'd been travelling for close to 30 hours, I had a 70lb (32kg) snowboard bag that thankfully had wheels to roll it around, a 50lb (23kg) backpack and a heavy carry on that I'd been dragging around through airports, train stations, the underground and across town and I'd finally made it to the last connection, the bus home. I heaved all my crap on the bus and was ready to settle down for the final leg but there was stil one test for me. As I sat down this guy sits right next to me. Fine. Then he starts talking to me in this low mumble with a broad yorkshire accent. It wasn't so bad that you couldn't understand what he was saying but it certainly took some effort. He starts saying something about going to university and how he's starting a course and has to buy a laptop and sign up for classes and all tha sort of stuff. Now this guy is probably in his 30's and doesn't really look like a university type but he's on about open university and who knows, maybe he's taking a class or two and trying to improve himself, who knows. One thign I do know is that he stinks of booze. Anyway, he won't leave me alone. Starts asking if I'm going to university and all that. I'm crap at lying and I actually was replying honestly that I didn't go to uni any more but trying to give the shortest most deadend answers to end the conversation. But he was having none of it. In fact he was convinced he knew me. Well maybe not. He might have known that he really didn't know me but it didn't stop him pretending he knew me to carry on the conversation to try and learn about me. He would say things like:

"So, yeah, you still ... err ... living up the road, you know ... err ... by the um ... what's it called ... you know the shop there ..."

To which I'd reply "No, I don't know what you're talking about." trying to end the conversation. And he would carry on.

"Oh, I know, I remember now, you're up the hill from my misses, my ex that is ... you know Julie round the corner ..."

After a while I was trying to stop him by saying "Look, I really don't think I know you, I have no idea what you're talking about." But that was no sign to stop for this man. He just carried on.

"Oh no, I remember you ... I see you all the time. You know Doncaster Dave right? You know ... he's the one who came round with Ringo the other night ... if you need a phone he's got the best deals, just go round tell him I sent you, no problem ... You can get pay as you go from the bank ... or no, don't bother with the bank, see Jimmy up the road ..."

And on and on it went. I tried ignoring him as much as possible but it just wouldn't work. I wsa just praying he would get off at a stop before me. I had all kinds of visions of him stalking me off the bus and trying to come over for tea or something. Needless to say this was not what I wanted to deal with. Luckily he got off the bus after a while so I only had to endure about half an hour of this onslaught. In the end I guess it was harmless but certainly not the welcome home I wanted. In any case I made it back. I was safe and sound in Leeds with my stuff and thats all that mattered.

I think it really helped me that the weather was at least sunny and nice. I began this post with my struggle to figure where home is and I think if I'd landed in London and it had been pissing down with rain and generally miserable, like England can be, I would have been having second thougts. As far as I could guess, if I stuck around the USA and got a job, I would be on about double the salary. Meaning that I'd have about twice the spending power over there. So I could afford a nicer car, buy a nicer house and have more toys. Basically I figure that I will have taken four years (well five now), and bunch of money to get a PhD, a further qualification, but take a pay cut compared to what I was earning in Detroit. Now, there are some stipulations though. First is that getting a job out there would be a lot more difficult. I don't have any professional connections out there and if I wanted to live in California or Colorado the industry I'm interested in isn't there. So in practicality, if I was to get a job it would have to be in Detroit or it would take a while to find one in California or Colorado, which may not be very possible. But regardless, for the purpose of this argument lets assume I could get a job out in the USA some where nice, like California or Colorado. If we go with that, I'd be on a much better salary that could get me a lot more toys and I'd be living some where with big mountains and good weather for all the outdoor fun I'd want. The problem is that I wouldn't have the job I've been working towards for the last, oh I don't know lets say, 10 years. I really want to work in the racing industry and the best place to do it is in England and thats why I'm here. Now don't get me wrong, England isn't all bad, it's certainly much better than Detroit. Out here they actually have some mountains, even if they are small. But if I want to go climbing, hiking, paddling or what ever else they do have it here, it's just on a smaller scale. Whats more is that I have a good group of friends out here who are into all the outdoor stuff so I have people to do it all with. So really its pretty good in England, its just that after having a season boarding in Breck and rafting on the Arkansas I've had it good. If I'd come back to the prospects of no job and less money when I do get a job, and to top it off the weather was miserable I think I'd be having some pretty depressing thoughts about why I'd decided to come back. Luckily, that isn't the case. The weather is nice and I've got a call back from McLaren about a job so all in all things are starting to look up. The real test will come in the next few weeks and months so I'll keep updating the blog and we'll see where I live next, maybe it will become home some day.

Labor Day weekend

So we just had labor day weekend, my last weekend in the USA. I went into SF on Thursday for a big old meal and booze up. We went over to a place in Japan town that did an all you can eat and drink special. So we hit that up and got a bit carried away. We had quite a lot of food and an excess of booze. Needless to say it was a good night, except for a bit of the usual couples getting into drunk arguments. But I managed to avoid it all and not get involved in trying to mediate any of it because I was blissfully unaware of it in my drunken state. Anyway, it made for a difficult Friday. I can't imagine how it was for the guys who had to go to work on Friday. As it was I just felt shitty sitting on the couch watching TV for the morning. In the afternoon I went out to Golden Gate park and hit up some frisbee golf again. I met up with Chupa and Jaime and ran the disc golf course. Its a good way to chill out and get outside, wander around a park and have a bit of fun. However the bus ride over there was pretty difficult. I was clenching my jaw the whole way and ready to run for the door if I was going to vomit, which could have been any time. Friday night was pretty relaxed, at least for me. We hit up the marina district in SF and although we were out till the bars closed I wasn't drinking much but still feeling pretty rough. I would have been quite happy to give up and go home around 10ish but it good seeing more people in town and hanging out.

Now Saturday was the big day. Cal vs. Tennessee in the football season opener. It was the biggest college game of the weekend and it was a home game for us. We headed over to Berkeley and hit up the house. Again it was good to run into a bunch of guys I hadn't seen in years and catch up over a few brews. There was the required foosball and beer pong, the shit talking from the deck and all the good old pre-game fun. I didn't bother with tickets but headed up to tightwad hill with Chupa and Kim. We hit up the game and saw a good victory for the Bears. All those Tennessee hillbillies could run back home to their trailers and go do their incest thing they do. It was great to be back at a Cal game and see a victory. The whole time I was at school there the football team sucked. Its only been the last few years that we've finally started winning again. After the game everyone was pretty knackered so we grabbed some food and headed back to the city and passed out.

The rest of the weekend involved a lot of chillin out, heading to Golden Gate park to play disc golf and then hitting a few bars and having a few brews. Jaime had a BBQ on Sunday night which was made especially good by Marco showing up. He was diagnosed with Leukemia at the start of the summer and has been battling it. He's been going through radiotherapy and chemotherapy and getting pretty beat up. The good news is that they have found a marrow donor for him so it all looks good. He ahs to go through a lot of proceedures to get the marrow, more chemo and radiotherapy and again he'll get pretty beat up from it but it certainly looks positive. So it was really good to see him out and have a chat and catch up, even if we pretty much only told stories and jokes about shitting the whole time. So that was my weekend. I'm heading out to see the boys one last time this evening before taking off early tomorrow morning. I did take a bunch of pictures with the new camera so once I get a card reader I'll post some of them.

It's kinda crazy to think this whole journey is coming to an end. It doesn't seem that long ago that I was just heading over to California after finishing my viva. Oh well, now its time to find a job. I'm sure I'll have plenty of time to think about this whole experience and I'll keep the blog as active as I can so till next time, when I blog from England.

Dinner with the family

So we all got together and had a family dinner out down in Palo Alto. My middle brother picked out the place and I headed down with my parents and met my oldest brother there as well. It was good to see them again and catch up a bit but the best part of the whole situation was that my oldest brother gave me a really good digital SLR camera. We were talking about taking photos and he realised I was still using a film camera and said "Well, I've got an old camera I don't use any more. You can have it if you want it." Its a Canon like my current film camera so my lense will work with it. Plus he gave me a bunch of stuff to go with it. An extra lense, a bunch of memory cards and batteries etc. The only thing I'll need to buy is a battery charger and a compact flash reader. So bottom line is that I've got a nice camera now and should be able to post pictures with much better resolution. The only problem is that its bigger and heavier than my old camera, but hopefully I'll take it out and get a bunch of good photos and post them.

San Francisco

So I headed into the city to hang out and get away from the boredom at home. I got there Saturday afternoon and the plan was to go play crazy golf. There was a new course near Dustins place and we were going to check it out. It turned out to be a local art project type of thing and was basically shit as an actual crzy golf course. Maybe it was a good piece of art but somehow I doubt it. Anyway, that left us with not much to do. We figured we needed to do something outside and therefore probably in a park. Frisbee golf, that was the answer. We didn't have any frisbees so we headed to Sports Authority. It turns out there is quite a market in frisbee golf and they have different frisbees for different shots, a driver, mid range, putter and even more. We just started out with the midrange disc and each got one and set off for the park with a few cases of beer. The golfing went well. We just picked a tree and went for that having a few brews on the way. It turns out there was a proper tournament going on over the weekend as well so we kept running into people playing in the tuornament on an actual course. They were usually quite nice but some of them seemed to get quite annoyed that we were just hucking our frisbees around playing for trees when there was a proper tournament going on. We tried to stay out of their way and played on. We ended up running out of beer and light after 18 holes so we headed home. A quick freshen up and we went out for a few drinks. It was a good night out. There were a bunch of people out that I hadn't seen for a while so it was good to catch up with them but it wasn't a crazy night or anything. The next day we had to figure out what to do again. A few ideas were thrown around and frisbee golf was on the list again. We left it to Evan to decide and he went for the golfing (he hadn't been the day before). So we knew the tournament went on for the whole weekend and we also saw the drivers and putters in action so we figured we'd go and get some of those because we blatantly needed the distance of the driver to tee off. It urns out there are a bunch of options. There was a distance driver and a fairway driver. There was also the champion edition which cost and extra $5. We figured we needed the full distance driver and got a putter as well for everyone. We now had a reasonable set of discs and couldn't wait to try the driver. Everyone was guessing what it would be like and how easy it would be to throw it for miles. We got to the park and decided to start further down the park to stay away from the tournament (a decision that would lead us to interesting places as you'll find out). First hole, and how did the driver perform? Not that much differently from the mid-range disc. Well, I wouldn't say we had been ripped off. After a while of throwing the different discs, it became apparent that the driver would go further than the mid-range, you just had to throw it very flat and well to get a noticeable benefit. That was pretty much the key. If you were spooning your throws off into the rough the different discs really didn't do anything for you but if you had good form then the discs did behave differently. Anyway, we didn't really care that much. We just kept picking new trees for the next whole and had a beer in our hands so it was fun regardless. So as I mentioned before we were pretty far down the park towards the ocean and generally exploring around, checking out random parts of the park we had never seen before. We came across a big sports field, I think it had three or four football (soccer) pitchs lined up and we were driving down the side off them because thhey were fenced in. After running a hole down the side of the fields we cut through a fence and got into what looked like a storage area for the park. There were big piles of hay bales, gravel piles and stacks of massive logs all in an area that was supposed to be fenced off with a gate but the fence had holes in it everywhere. It looked like a cool place for a hole. I climbed up a gravel pile and was starting to look around when I got the impression there were some people around. After taking a look around I noticed a small group of guys off in the pile of logs. I didn't want to stare but as I flashed my eyes around I noticed that on guy was on his knees and didn't have a shirt on. It all looked a bit dodgy. As they saw us climbing up the gravel pile they sort of shuffled around to hide behind the logs and eventually split up and wandered around a bit. Everyone else climbed up the gravel pile and was saying "This looks like a great place for a hole. Lets go from here to the post over there." But after seeing the boys in in the logs I figured it probably wasn't such a good place for a game and it was probably best to leave the boys alone in the logs so I said "I think we should play on and go somewhere else." At which point Dustin caught my eye and turned around to see the guys in the logs and quickly agreed with me "Yup, were not playing here. Lets move on." I'm not sure exactly what was going on but I'm pretty sure that the logs were a place for gay dudes to show up and get gay with each other. So if you're in the city around 6ish on a Sunday night and fancy a bit of gay sex go check out the logs in Golden Gate Park. We decided to move on and played another few holes until it got dark. Well we kept playing in the dark until Ly lost his driver. Then we went home, grabed some food and played Mario Kart into the morning. So the frisbee golf was pretty good. I've got a set of discs and just need to convince people in England thats its a good laugh now. I figure Hyde park would be good for a round. It also got us out and around Golden Gate Park and introduced us to areas we never knew existed and certainly opened our eyes a bit.

Anyway, its mid week now and guess what? I've been turned in to general slave labour for my dad. He's doing a lot of work around the pool redoing the paving slabs so we rented a big old pnuematic hammer and broke up a bunch of the old slabs on Monday and I think the new paving stones arive today so I'll no doubt be recruited into laying those. I suppose it does help ease the boredom by giving me something to do but it would be nice to feel like I had a choice and to actually have more than five minutes advance warning. Oh well, the weekend is coming up soon so I should be able to escape then.

Bay chillin

So the conference is over and I presented my paper no problem. I had a good time hanging out with all the boys (and girl) from Leeds. It was fun to show them around a bit and have the BBQ and swim back at my parents house. But now they've all gone and I've got another couple of weeks here. I seem to keep doing this. I roll through the Bay Area and figure I should hang around for a while and hang out with all my friends around here and take plenty of time to do it. However, in practice everyone has to work through the week and can only hang out on weekends. Plus people who only have weekends free tend to have things planed. So what ends up happening is that I become some slave labour for my dad at home and hang out with my friends a little, but certainly not as much as is required to occupy all the time I have. So I'll have to come up with some things to do during the week so I can entertain myself. I think I'll try and get myself off to the mountains, maybe Yosemite or something but then you get into the complication of asking to borrow a car. Anyway, its the weekend now so I've got stuff to do so I'll check out and head into the city.

The story of beard and an early halloween

So now that the transformation from beardy long hair back to short hair and a clean(ish) shave has been completed I put up a gallery of the whole process. I've also included a picture of my awesome costume from our halloween party, which occured on July 31st for no real reason. I was a spartan and put together the costume in about 5 minutes once I spied the BBQ lid, yup that was my shield. After that it was easy. A broken paddle for a spear, a red towel for a cape and a 12 pack case crafted into a helmet. Check it out.

Echo Chillin

The end has come

Well, it had to happen sometime, and that time is now. I am writing this blog, not from the ramshackle bunk house of Echo Canyon or from the Breckenridge employee housing, but from home sweet home in California. This can only mean that the end of my adventures has arrived. Now don't get me wrong, it doesn't mean more adventures won't happen in the future, it just means that this episode has played itself out. I still have about a month of time in California before returning to the UK but the first week of that is the conference which will certainly be a wake up call from the previous eight months. In fact, I still have to finish my presentation and powerpoint which I need for Tuesday.

So what has happened since the last gun slinging chapter of this saga. Well, nothing quite as exciting but a few things have passed. Most noteably, the lack of kayaking and evening boating, a trip up to Buena Vista and the arrival of the parents. On the boating front Aaron had a broken nose and wasn't feeling up to going kayaking due to his nose being blocked up and full of crap, and its a big nose to be full of crap at that. So that was understandable. You don't want a nasal enima from rolling when your nose has just been broken and you're trying to get healed. And as for rafting in the evening, taking out booze cruises, well thats been stopped. We had a company meeting to end out the year shortly after the Texas showdown and one of the consequences was that rookies aren't allowed to take out boats in the evening. They're also cutting back on the senior guides taking boats if there is going to be alcohol involved. So we really screwed that one up. Oh well.

Just before this metting, Pickett and I were sent up to BV to help out the Four Corners office. They were a bit overwhelmed with business on a Saturday morning so we were sent up Friday after our morning trips for a ride along in the afternoon then a double slam on Saturday. I was initially unhappy about heading up stream. I didn't really have a tent or anything and the only reason why I would have volunteered before was to go up with Aaron for some kayaking. As it turned out I'm really happy I went up. We got the double slam on Saturday which meant we weren't missing out on any trips and we also got to commercially guide more river. I was a bit curious as to what Browns Canyon looked like as the water went down. It looked about the same but there were a few places that really changed. It's certainly a much more technical section of river than the Bighorn so it was fun to figure it out and see that I could get down just fine. So even though there wasn't any kayaking to be done it was a good diversion anyway, even if I couldn't get Arthur a Four Corners staff hat.

So that brings us to the very end of my season, the arrival of the parents. My parents arrived on the 4th and Arthurs parents arrived on the 6th. It was pretty funny because we were both worried about swimming our moms. Arthur even played man, bear, gun with me to see who had to swim the'r mom. He lost, but he didn't swim his mom. It took my parents on the raft and rail on the 6th and everything went well. There was only one spot at the bottom of sharks tooth where I had any issues and that was just spinning off a rock. After rafting the Bighorn we took the train through the Gorge. It was pretty nice to ride the train. It gave a different perspective of the river and let the parents see the class 4 section of river. So all in all a good time. Arthur was taking his parents down on the 7th and was pretty nervous about his mom. But despite losing the man, bear, gun contest he made it down the river with only a few hicups but more importantly, without knocking his mom out of the boat. Everyone was able to compare notes that evening about their rafting trips because Arthur and I got our parents out to dinner together. Apart from the rafting we did the Pikes Peak Cog Railway. If coming up with stupid jokes and entertaining people on a raft is crappy, the girls doing it on teh train had it even worse. They had a whole bunch of absolutely rubish jokes and stupid crap that had to last about an hour and a half as we rode the train up the mountain. I think I would shoot myself if I had that job. Oh well, we got to the top just in time because after checking out the view the cloud level dropped over the peak just as we were leaving. Perfect timing.

So I'd taken my parents rafting on the Monday, I had one more day of work on Tuesday and we set off on Wednesday. My parents had come out in the camper van and were taking me home. It was a good arrangement because it meant that I didn't have to worry about getting the Greyhound again or flying home and worrying about cost or getting all my crap home. This way I got home for free and all my junk could come with me no problem. The only issue was living in close quarters with the parents for two and a half days of driving across the country. It turned out not to be that bad. I just sat in the back and didn't say much and tried to sleep the whole time. Actually I guess that makes it sound bad, as if I don't get along with my parents. This isn't the case, but when they're on a driving holiday together there always seems to be a bit more tension. My dad generally drives the whole time and gets tired and stressed from it. Then my mom is navigating but I'm not sure my dad trusts her with it or trusts her when she takes a shift driving. So as the day and the trip wears on it just seems like the tension rises and its just not a very fun environment. In any case it went by just fine and now I only have to deal with my dads pestering about "doing something useful" and "not wasting the day" when I sleep in. I'm sure there will be plenty of the same pestering in relation to the conference as well, "did you meet anyone new today?" or "have you got any job leads yet?" and "are you making sure you ask questions and get noticed?". The problem is that as much as I hate hearing all that crap and would like to think its a load of BS, it really isn't and he generally does know what he's talking about. It just grates me to hear it from him constantly. Oh well, we'll see how it all goes. I've just got to get my presentation sorted first.

As a final note, I got a bunch of pictures from rafting, the commercial ones they take for the customers so I'll be putting some of those up. They will document the transitition of the beard from full beard though the different moustaches to a clean shaven face. The final chapter will come soon when I get a hair cut. Anyway, check out the pictures.

Echo Commercial Pics

Showdown!!!

Right so I have to start this post by apologising from the for the blatant lack of quality in my recent posts, especially the last post detailing the thunder booze cruise through the gorge and everyone visiting. I really didn't do the whole thing the justice it deserved. Needless to say the thunder cruise was epic even if my account of it was severely lacking. The trouble is that I was pretty worn out and tired by the whole weekend and the lead up to it so I really wasn't that inspied while writing the posts. So once again sorry to all involved and those of you who took the time to read the post. Now having said that, I've had a couple good nights rest, well as good as they get around here, and whats more I have a story that is truely worth detailing in all its glory. So sit back and relax, it might take some time to tell but it's worth it so enjoy.

So I'd been working pretty hard the last couple of days. I had a full day trip on Monday, a double slam on Tuesday and another full day on Wednesday, yesterday. To top it off they were all on oars and I wasn't doing to well with tips. I attribute that to shaving off my moustache but oh well. Yesterday went better but I had a bit of excitement in spikebuck rapid. I parked the oar boat on picnic table rock with a four load up front. This is the rock that everyone wraps boats on and has trouble with. We had to pivot the boat off by loading up the front, while highsiding. It was graceful like ballet, the nutcracker christmas special had nothing on us with moves like this. The boat got vertical on its nose catching water on the upstream tube before she spun around, still vertical on her nose. Mike in the boat behind us thought we were flipping for sure but I had the boat tamed like a purring pussy cat and she settled down nicely so I could row away like a champ. Oh yeah, it was like poetry in motion. But that is not the real story here, it's just a prelude to the main attraction. Mainly it was cool and I wanted to share it with you.

So when I got back to Echo base I jumped in a car and headed downtown to go to an internet cafe so I could write my paper for the conference that I'm going to back in California. It's due on the 30th so its getting a bit critical. I put in a good couple of hours before heading back to Echo. It turned out that the drytop I ordered had arrived and on top of that, the boys were going out on a booze cruise down the bighorn. So I jumped on the trip and took Pickett's pop to paddle and test out the new drytop. We had an oar boat, a paddle boat, the mini-me and me in the kayak. Things were going ok and everyone was having a good time having a few brews and enjoying the river. We made it through the first few rapids and I had a beer in the float between the rapids. Aaron decided he was going to try and ride the front of my kayak so we gave it a shot. We wobbled for a while but inevitably we went over. It took a while for him to get untangled from the boat before I could set up the roll. My first roll was strong but I rolled into Aaron who was right next to the boat so I didn't make it. The next attempt I rolled up into the raft. I tried a good couple more times but I was gettin gpushed under the raft so i ended up having to swim. So my expedition wasn't starting too well. It didn't really matter too much. The swim was easy, it just annoyed me that I swam. I thought I was getting quite good and swimming in flat water isn't really what I want to be doing, regardless of the fact that I was rolling up into a raft.

We carried on down the river and I had decided to not only paddle the pop to make things interesting but also take some more interesting lines in the rapids. So at spikebuck I took the left line up top and though the bottom. I caught a few rocks and some bad water and ending up upside down again. Shit. I got my roll ready and hit it. It got me all the way up but I did the full 360 barrel roll after hitting some stuff right as I got up. So upside down again, but this time I was dragging and bouncing along shore, upside down in water about a foot deep. I wasn't really in a position to roll so I figured I had to pop the deck again. When I reached for it I realised I had made it into deeper water and could probably have tried another roll, but it was too late. I already had my mind set on getting out of the boat. So there I was, swimming again. However, this time it was in a shitty shallow rapid bouncing off all kinds of rocks. What can you do? I swam the boat to shore and sat down truely pissed off with myself. I took a couple of minutes before setting off down river to catch up to everyone else hanging out at harvey's. I chilled out and had another beer, probably not helping my balance and paddling much but I figured I was in for a penny, in for a pound. Also I was curious to see how much it would really affect my paddling. So after feeling shitty for a while and being pissed off for swimming twice I got oevr it all. That was when we realised that Jaclyn had forgot to bring her keys for the shuttle car. They were at the put in with one of the other trucks. Great. Austin and her were in the mini-me so they decided to take off and just cruise the rest of the river and try and hitch hike back to the cars. So they took off and we hung out a little more.

After a bit we floated off to finish the river. It was getting quite dark by now. It was the first time I had paddled the rievr in a kayak in the dark so it was another thing that I was curious about to see how well I got on. I was a bit wobbly on all the easy flat water but I made it through the rapids just fine. It was kind of wierd. It was like I was paddling on my own even though I would wait around to make sure one of the rafts was near me as I went through the rapids, just for safety. But I pretty much knew they weren't going to do much for me if I swam or got into trouble. Not like other kayakers would do for me. I mean I knew if I got into serious trouble they would be there for me but I felt alone being the only one in a kayak. That combined with the dark made for a really surreal experience. I've paddled a river on my own only once before and I remember being quite worried about it even though it was the washburn and I was leaving one group and trying to catch up to another group. But last night was different. I guess I do know the water really well but still I was surprised at how comfortable I was with the feeling of paddling on my own. Anyway, we cruised down the river without much further drama. The only real drama had been the paddle boat, who were getting bitchy with eachother for not paddling when who ever was guiding needed it. Instead everyone was drinking beer, but they got over it.

The real excitement started when the paddling stopped. So like I said, we didn't have the keys to the shuttle car. That meant we had a lot of drunk people hanging around trying to organise everything. That's when Austin had the idea that while Jaclyn was hitch hiking to get her car we could deflate all the boats and roll them up and put them in the back of his truck. Aaron thought this was the stupidest idea ever and wasn't quiet about voicing his opinion about it. In fact he basically said that it was the stupidest idea he had ever heard and that Austin was an idiot. Okay, but he didn't stop there. He started calling him out for being a pussy, for being a bitch and that he would ass rape his sister when she came to visit. Basically saying everything he could to try and wind up Austin and he was doing a good job. There were some attempts to try and calm Aaron down but in the end no one thought either of them would actually do anything about it. So after about tem ot fifteen miuntes of abuse Austin was gettin greally wound up and ended up shoving Aaron to the ground. This didn't really do much to cool down the situation and Aaron got up and back in his face. At this point Chris came down from carrying a boat up to the road and took a different approach to everyone else who was just watching the show and got in the middle of them and tried to break it up. This ended up with Chris tackling Austin to the ground and Aaron trying to get in on top and dry hump them, or somethign like that. At this point I figured Aaron wasn't helping calm things down so I grabbed him by his life jacket and dragged him off them and threw him inthe river. This worked to cool things down for a least 30 seconds, maybe even more. I couldn't really tell, I wasn't timing the ordeal. In this time Austin went back up to the road to get away from Aaron. I thought we might have sorted things out with that. I had Aaron sitting on the boat and we almost had him chilled out. But no. As I said it lasted a good 30 seconds or more.

At this point Aaron started yelling more shit. I was keeping him down by the boats but the consensus was that it would be really cool if Aaron would kick Austins ass. I thought that this was probably not a good idea since Aaron was pretty hammered by now and would probably come off worse in any conflict but the boys said they would handle it so whatever. They went up the hill to the road and I chilled out down by the boats with a few of the guys who couldn't give a shit what happened at this point. Well things escalated a little bit and after hearing a bunch of comotion up by the road we went up to find that Austin had punched Aaron in the nose and broke it. Cale and Chris were playing doctor and were debating how to rebrake it to set it straight. So that was pretty entertaining. They actually did a really good job and his nose is pretty much straight. At this point we had some cars back with keys so Arthur, Jaclyn and myself took off to pick up the rest of the cars. In the time it took to run the shuttle Aaron decided to get Austin back and gave him a good elbow to the face and then everyone immediately tackled Austin to prevent him fighting back. So that's the scene we found when we got back after running the shuttle. Arthur took off pretty quickly with a car full of people, including Aaron. Jaclyn and Austin got into words and she took off in a big huff. Then Austin jammed out pretty quickly, I just had to make sure the mini-me was strapped down well enough along with the kayak and my gear. That left the rest of us to load Aarons van with both boats and then we took off. We packed the van full. He lives out of it so he built a bed in the back and had storage under it. Chris went under the bed, about ten people were on the bed and five more were up front riding shotgun. It was a cosy ride. I put on our summer theme song, Wagon Wheel and we had everyone singing along and for a second we could all forget the drama that had just occured and just shout out the song and enjoy the crazy ride. But that would all change once we got back to Echo base.

We pull in and start sorting out all the gear and the boats. We pretty much get everything sorted and I pull Aarons car up to its usual spot were it transforms from being a normal van during the day into high class, luxury house by night, right by the bunk house. I thought things would start to settle down. At this point I think Aaron had got what he deserved. He was winding up Austin, wouldn't let him go, got punched and broke his nose. They had straightened it out just fine and everythign was alright. They had both sucker punched each other and we were back home were, hopefully, everyone could go their separate ways and chill out or go to bed for it all to be water under the bridge in the morning but no, this is when it really got interesting. So I walk over to Aaron who is getting some medical attention from McIver on the bunk house porch. Right then Travis rolls up and says "Hey Aaron, Austins got a gun and wants to shot you. You should get out of here." Sweet, I love the good ole US of A. Everyone has guns, isn't it great. You can always be assued of your right to carry firearms for self defense. So we figure its probably a good idea to get out of sight. Right as we were walking towards the road, away from the bunk house, I see Austin down at the other end of the bunk house. A quick change of direction and we head over to the Whitewater bar next door by going the back way through the fence. The bar was closed so we didn't have to worry too much about other people. We did run into a few of the guys who kayak oevr there. We chattedd for a while and told them a bit of what was going on. Then Victor came over and everyone decided if someone with a gun was running around wanting to shoot Aaron we'd probably be best to move a bit further away. You know not near the inocent guys who were just hanging out that we chanced upon. So we moved away to the otherside of the bar and chilled out on some tables and just waited to see what happened. Victor was doing us the job of keeping us updated as to what was going on next door the whole time.

So what it turned out happened was that Austin was walking around with a gun in his belt talking about how shit was going to go down and don't get in his way or else you'll get it too. Sargent Cale USMC, trusted by everyone, friend of all and ever the peace maker, went up to him and tried to convince him to give up the gun. Austin reached for it and was about to give it over but changed his mind. Cale didn't. he went for the gun and after a bit of hand wrestling got it away from Austin. It turned out it was a pretty cheap gun with no safety and a round chambered, ready to go. Pretty lucky that it wasn't fired in the exchange. Oh and as a side note, the guns serial number came up as reported stolen in Missouri. So Austin no longer had his gun on him and someone called Andy, the big boss of Echo. He turned up and called the cops to sort things out. Before the cops show up we see Austin drive his truck away. Then two cops cars roll up. The whole time I was chilling out with Aaron next door. Eventually McIver rolls up and says the cops want to talk to Aaron so we head over next door. Andy is there with the cops and they talk to Aaron, get his statement and take a few pictures of his busted up nose. Austin is nowhere to be found. It urns out he drove off back Texas, oh yeah so I forgot to mention he was from Texas, go figure. So with almost everything sorted out for the night everyone is hanging around talking about it all. I manage to round up all my gear, which I had put in Austins truck to get back to Echo, everything including my new drytop but missing my helmet. Shit, but it does give me an excuse to get a new one which I have kinda wanted the whole summer. Anyway, everything is pretty much sorted out. It's decided that Aaron should go into town and stay in a motel, just in case Austin decided to come back. So Victor drives us into town and we get a room for the night. Bonus, I get to sleep in a bed, watch TV and have a shower and that was pretty much that.

So a pretty exciting day. Sargent Cale was the hero. He could set Aarons nose and disarm Austin, a regular Walker Texas Ranger bad ass. But it just goes to show that having guns around (which isn't allowed on Echo property in the first place) is really just a stupid idea. You get yahoo cowboys who think they need guns for self protection in case the boogy man comes to rob there trailer and all that happens is that a silly punch up turns into a full situation with guns and the police showing up. If Austin didn't have a gun there would have been a bunch of shit talking, a few punches and a bit of a scuffle and that would be that. We would all have gone to sleep after a bunch of drama and woken up this morning and it would all have been water under the bridge or at worst Aaron and Austin would just not talk to each other and avoid each other. Instead we have captain texas, the yahoo cowboy, who goes back to his trailer and pulls out a gun to try and make himself feel big and powerful trying to take the law into his own hands and what happens? He gets disarmed and loses his gun and flees back to Texas. He's lost his rafting job and is now probably wanted by the cops for a possible fellony offence of threatening to kill someone. So this gun which he intended for self protection has just backfired and put him into a potential fellony offence. I imagine this is probably the case for a lot of cases where people own guns for self protection. They get used in situations that aren't self defence just because they are available and around. This supports all my theories on why gun ownership is bad. I guess I'm not against gun ownership in theory, but in practice it just seems to escalate situations and get people into more trouble than they were in. Although I would love for people to be able to own guns responsibly I just don't know how its possible. Maybe if we just gave Texas back to Mexico a lot of these problems would be solved.

More visitors

So I took a couple of days off last week to go up to Denver with Aaron to try and get some peace and quiet to write my conference paper. I got a good chunk of it done but still have to finish it and then polish it, which will take a bit of work. Anyway, when I got back to Echo I had some friends come in to town. Ly and Jeff rolled into town late Friday night and then the Breck girls, Alissa, Kirsten and Karen showed up Saturday afternoon. I had some trips during the day but we had a booze cruise through the Gorge lined up. We got two boats plus another one from RGR and a couple of guys in a mini-me as well as a hand full of kayakers. We got a bit of a late start trying to let the weather blow through but then we decided to get going regardless of the weather because it was getting a bit late and it looked like it might hang around for a bit. We cruised up to the put in with thunder and lightning all around and jumpeed in the boats and set off. It was awesome. We had a thunder cruise. The lightning was striking the gorge rim all around us as we cruised through. The rain was pounding down and hammering everything. We eddied out above sunshine and soaked up the ambiance. It was truely epic. The thunder cruise. After a good safety break we jumped back in the boats to get through the hard rapids before taking another break at corner pocket. More extensive safety checks were made (involving plenty of beer) were carried out. By this time it was getting a bit dark so we set off to finish the cruise. We finished off and got to the take out only to have Arthur realise that he forgot his car keys so a bit of shuttle shuffling happened, with a few food stops, before we made it back up to Echo. At this point pretty much everyone was feeling pretty done for so we all turned in.

Sunday the girls had to leave but the guys were staying around for another night and another cruise. I had to work again so they chilled out all day and when I got back we started sorting out a bighorn cruise. The plan was to take a 10ft raft and surf everything we could find. We had a good run down the river and I let Ly and Jeff try and guide a little, which they actually didn't suck at. Well except for Ly who did well at guiding but managed to fall out of the boat numerous times because he ... well he just fell out. Anyway, we got down to double dip and couldn't manage to get the boat in the hole so we gave up and went down to satans suckhole to try surfing that. We got in just fine and as we paddled hard into it the nose caught and we got whipped sideways and dumptrucked. We all got thrown out. I grabbed the stern line and pulled the boat out as I was flushed and Jeff got out fine as well but Ly was recirculated a good few times which made thigns fun for him. Anyway, we got regrouped and back in the boat and finished off the run. After taking care of the raft and everything we headed to town for some fried chicken but KFC was closed so we had to settle for Safeway. Once again by this point I was pretty much done so after checking out the bar for a few minutes I crashed out. The guys left in the morning and I was bcak to work.

It was good seeing everone from Breck again, especially Alissa who it looked like was going to be too busy to make it out to visit. We also had one of the most epic trips ever with the thunder cruise, which is probably the best gorge cruise I've had all summer. We did have a few pictures so check them out.

Echo Canyon Rafting

Gorge photos

So I managed to get the photos of us paddling through the gorge at sunshine falls. Its a sequence of four photos taken at the last drop of sunshine falls. Check them out.

Echo Canyon Rafting

Mini-me rafting

So a bunch of people have been trying to get into kayaking so Aaron and I have been doing a bit of teaching and some roll sessions. But going down the bighorn section in a kayak isn't as fun as it used to be. We know the river so well and its not too difficult anymore. So we changed it up and took out the mini-me. We put in a Harvey's, did a bit of a roll session and then set off down the river in the mini-me. It's basically an 8ft raft that you R2, one person on each side. It was a blast. The first was above bootlegers just set us off into giggles and it didn't stop for the reat of the river. We surfed every feature in the river and just got thrown around. We played in double dip for a good 15-20 minutes, and the only reason we left is becuase the guys kayaking were getting bored. But we endoed the boat and flipped it a whole bunch, and giggling the whole time. After double dip we surfed satans, magic wave and everything else. The mini-me made running the bighorn fun again. Our next mission is to take it down the gorge so keep posted.

Class IV kayaking

So I got ruined by the gorge the last time I was in there and I needed to get back in there and tackle it again. So a couple of days ago me and Aaron got back in the kayaks and had another run through, but this time we were going to scout the rapids. I was feeling pretty nervous about it all. I knew I could get through everything fine, especially after scouting the rapids but its like when you're a kid and you have to fetch a ball in the neighbors yard with a dog. If you go in there the first time and the dog bites you, you're going to be a bit wary if you have to go in a second time. So there we were, getting back in the gorge. We eddied out above sunshine and scouted it. It had changed quite a bit. The water level had dropped a lot and although the features weren't as big, the line was a lot more techincal. It worried me a bit more than last time. Well no time to hang around so we got back in our boats and set off. No problems. We both hit our lines and got through just fine. The commercial photographers even took our pictures so when I get my hands on them I'll post them for you. So sunshine falls was out of the way and we moved on through grateful dead and towards sledgehammer. This was where I swam and snapped the padedle last time. Again we got out and scouted the rapid. We got a good line picked out and got back in the boats. This time things went a whole lot better. I got my line and cleaned the whole section. Scouting did help a lot, and I saw all the crap I swam through last time. We continued down like that for a while. We pretty much ran it read and run after that except for scouting the other class IV rapids, wall slammer and boat eater. But again we had no problems and ran the rest of the river well. It felt really good to have run the whole thing clean and to have scouted and checked out the major rapids. The only disapointing aspect was that the water level was about half what it had been. I would really like a chance to take it on again when the water is back up but that won't happen until next year when I probably won't be here.

We hit another class IV section today as well. A bunch of us were low down on the standby list so we decided to take the day off and head up to Buena Vista and run the numbers. Aaron and I were in kayaks and Cale, Drew, Craig and Austin took a 10 foot adrenaline raft. We drove up, set up the shuttle at the BV play park and cruised to the put in. We all got ready and set off. Aaron ran lead and was just running the river read and run style but he had kayaked it before so he did have an idea of the lines. I followed him and the raft came last. We went through numbers 1 to 4 no problem just read and run with the raft bouncing off a pile of rocks but at number 5 we decided to get out and scout it. It's got the biggest move on it with a 6 or 7 foot drop so we had a look. After scouting it we jumped back in the boats and hit it. Everyone styled it pretty well and we did just fine. we carried on with the read and run to railroad bridge were we took a little break. After that came the number 7 which is also the miracle mile, a continuous section of class 3 or 4ish river. After this point it was getting a bit nicer and easier, class 2-3 stuff and a good float down to BV. By the end of it I was pretty tired because it was a long section of river to do but it was an awesome day. That coupled with the success on the gorge earlier really boosted my confidence in a kayak.

Moon tower party

So the other night we took some trucks and four-wheeled them up behind base to the top of the ridge where they have some radio towers, the moon towers. We had a good little party up there with a few brews and checked out the sunset. Everything was going just fine until the very end. We drove back down to base but to miss driving on the main road one of the trucks decided to try and find the back way into the camp area, which does exist. The problem was that the lead truck was going pretty fast and it was night time. He ended up hitting a massive boulder with his front right tyre and bouncing the truck over the boulder and beaching it. There were three people in the cab who got bounced around pretty well but also three people riding in the bed of the truck. Two of them got lauunched out of the truck about twenty feet while the third some how managed to stay in. Fortunately, a bashed up hip for one and a possibly broken hand for the other were the only reall injuries sustained. So the rim was bent with a flat tyre and the step bar was also bent where it was resting on the boulder. We went into full recovery mode and got the rescue party out. A high-lift jack got the truck up, we switched out the tyre for the spare and managed to drive the truck off the rock. Pretty good for a bunch of people who had been partying all night. After a more detailed inspection, the truck actually survived without too much wrong. Just a new rim and control arm was all that was really needed, about $200 bucks of work. Check out the pictures and see if you think that boulder would have caused more damage.

Echo Chillin

My first visitors

So I had my first visitors from Cal come out last weekend. Jaime, Russel, Sam and James came out for a couple days over the 4th of July weekend and we hit up the river. The first night we hit the Bighorn Sheep Canyon with a little booze cruise. We put in above three rocks and went down to old parkdale, the half day run. We loaded up the boat with beer and whiskey and went for our float. After making sure they could paddle, which was pretty pathetic at first I pretty much gave them a break and deadsticked most of the river so they could concentrate on the important stuff, drinking. We had a good run down and a good few beers. Jaime had the Jim Beam kicking and I certainly indulged. We eddies out at double dip and once we set off agian I hardly remember guiding the river. We had people riding the bull and taking pictures. I think I kicked them out of the boat inthe last rapid and made them swim but I really can't remember. We managed to make it back to base in good shape and supposedly I even made it to the bar for about 5 minutes before heading to bed.

The next day I guided a morning trip before trying to hook up a gorge trip for the boys. I was having a difficult time getting a gorge guide to go. Everyone said maybe and wouldn't commit. Finaly I talked to Dolan and he hooked me up with Taylor who wasn't a gorge guide yet but is working towards it this year. So we were all set. We had a guide so got the boat loaded, ran a shuttle car into town and got on the river. We were a bit later than usual but in good time. We had some supplies again in the form of beer and whiskey once again but I was certainly going to pace myself a bit. We had an awesome trip and Taylor styled all the lines. We chilled out in corner pocket for a while before ending up the cruise. Right at the end in town I was sitting on the back of the boat with a beer, not really locked in and we hit the smallest little ripple in the river but it was enough. I had the most slow motion fall ever. I just slowly, slowly, slowly fell out of the boat, head over heels, but I saved the beer. I swam back to the boat got in and we were pretty much at the take out. A quick Wendy's stop in town and we headed back to base and had a beer in the bar before hitting the sack. The boys had to leave in the morning so that was the end of their visit and a good time was had by all. So for all of you who haven't got out here, get going. They did send me some pictures but I haven't downloaded them yet but when I do I'll post them.