(Not So Much) Anarchy in the UK

Let's begin with some dubious copyright practices via a few photos I didn't take:

In case you don't recognize those, that's Keira Knightly as Lizzie in 2005's Pride & Prejudice. Without getting into the merits of the film (personally, I found it pretty good as far as chick flicks go, but there are those loyalists to the BBC mini-series version who would cry heresy at that,) I think it's fair to say that it has some pretty fantastic landscape shots, including the two above. Those are essentially the visual realization of the word epic.

And I got to climb there.

That's right. I finally cashed in on all the luxurious privileges that go along with working at an indoor rock climbing wall, and managed to secure a seat in a car with some fellow employees going up to the Peak District for some outdoor climbing. Our main target was the above range of cliffs, called Stanage (also called Stanage Edge, but the word Stanage itself derives from "stone edge," so it sounds pretty stupid to me to call it stone edge edge). It's something like 50km of cliffs, which means you can stand at the bottom of it, look to the left and the right, and not see the end. Endless climbing. It's even made of a special rock called gritstone that produces massive amounts of friction, allowing you to grip even the tiniest little bumps. All of that makes Stanage one of the most famous climbing locations in all of the UK.

But let's back up a bit. First, we had to get there, a feat in itself.

I had to work the morning that we left at one of our climbing walls, and then go to another climbing wall a few miles away to meet up with the car. Since we were camping out for our 3 days/2 nights trip at the base of Stanage, that meant I had to bring all of my gear with me to work. Which meant cycling about 6 miles that morning with all of this strapped to my back (except the red thing, thankfully):

So of course, on my way between walls, cycling down the main road between the two walls with all of this on my back, what happens but my bike slips gears as I'm pushing up a big hill. My foot slipped off the pedal with the jerk of the gears, and as my leg tried to continue the half-completed circular pedaling motion, the back of my leg slammed into the sharp metal spikes of the main gear wheel. Resulting in this: [slightly graphic image below]

So before we even left London, I was already injured. I'll go ahead and spare you the suspense though: this was by far the worst injury of the entire trip, so don't worry. Thankfully they had a first aid kit at the wall, so I cleaned it up before we left. Which was good, since I wouldn't be bathing for the next 3 days. It's all healed up now though, although I think it might leave a scar. Which is pretty awesome, because it looks pretty much indistinguishable from a big claw swipe. So yeah. I got mauled by a tiger...as I was kicking it in the face.

Anyway, the ride up was 3 hours, but fairly enjoyable. It somehow turned out that everyone on the trip spoke some level of Spanish, so I got to practice that quite a lot and we made a lot of translation jokes which is always good fun.

Anyway, we got there kind of late the first day, and decided it would be best to do some climbing at Horseshoe Quarry this first day and save Stanage for the next two days. As the name implies, it's a man made quarry that's been abandoned and is now just a playground for climbers. As such, the views aren't quite as epic as Stanage:

Still, it was quite fun, and I got to do my very first outdoor lead climb. Lead climbing is when you start with the rope all at the bottom, and then attach it to gear in the rock as you go up. It's quite a bit more difficult than top-roping (with the rope starting at the top, obviously; that's mostly what you see at indoor climbing walls). There are two types of lead climbing outdoors: sport and trad. At this quarry, it was mostly sport climbs, which means that there are already bolts drilled into the wall as you go up, and all you have to do is attach the rope to them. I'll go into trad later. So when you're climbing in a group, one person leads and any other climbers "second" it, which means the climb on the top rope that you leave at the top after you finish the lead. So I was elected to lead one of our routes first, so that was quite flattering :)

It was also fairly difficult. We had a very crappy guide book to tell us which routes were where and how difficult they were. So I was attempting to lead a grade 5 climb, which should be fairly easy for me (which was the point since it was my first lead). Basically going right up the thin crack on the right-hand side:

It turned out to be a bit harder. The quarry was limestone, which, unlike the gritstone of Stanage, is not a great rock to climb on. It was also quite dirty, with dust and gravel and pebbles on a lot of the holds, making them quite slippery. I did manage to on-sight it though, which means completing the route on your first try without watching anyone else do it first. Apparently you get extra points for that. Sweet. The crack towards the left is my climb (Felipe is leading the route just to the left of it).

It's about 24 meters high, and, as I learned when I got home and checked the internet, it was not a grade 5 climb, but a 6a (still relatively easy for me on an indoor wall, but a bit more intimidating outdoors). So I felt even better about leading that on my first try. The route is called He Seems so Sumo (climbing routes often have silly names; but apparently it's important to remember the name of your first lead).

After that, it was back to our tents for the night. The next morning we hiked up the path from the campground to the base of Stanage.

Stanage is all trad climbing. That means that, unlike sport, there are no bolts pre-placed on the wall. You have to place all the protective gear yourself as you go up. Usually, than means jamming a funny looking piece of metal into a crack in the rock and wiggling it around so it gets wedged in there. Here's Andy with a rack full of trad gear:

Then you attach the rope to that, and if you fall, you just have to hope the gear doesn't pop out. Needless to say, trad is a totally different monster. It's not so much athleticism as sport climbing, and there's quite a bit more adventure to it. Basically, all of the climbs are physically much much easier than you would ever do in sport climbing, for two reasons. Whoever is leading is going to have to spend a lot of energy just hanging on the rock by one hand while they try to place the next piece of protection, which you want to be able to take your time with and do properly. Here's Andy placing some gear:

Second, you simply never want to fall when leading trad. You have the protection in place as a backup, but you don't want to have to test it. There's just a lot more risk involved in a fall in trad climbing than in sport. There's also quite a bit of technique that goes into placing trad gear properly, which I'd never done before. So the first day, the more experienced climbers did all the leading, and I simply seconded up after them. Since you're essentially on a top-rope when you second, and all the risk is eliminated, it was really very easy climbing that day. Here's Andy's completed lead, which I'm about to second:

And once I reached the top, here's how Andy was keeping me safe:

It was still a lot of fun though, and the views were absolutely beautiful. I got some practice removing gear, and started learning and practicing how to place gear myself at ground level.

View along the top:

(I'm in the blue).

The next day, back up to Stanage again for more trad climbing. This day, I mustered up my courage and did my first trad lead. I was a bit nervous, but it was an incredibly easy climb. It was really only a little bit more difficult than going up a few flights of stairs. The guy teaching me to the gear placements actually free-soloed (climbing without a rope) up with me to give me tips on improving my gear placement, so that was a really great opportunity. Here's the climb, called Martello Cracks:

After that, I seconded a few more difficult climbs.

Then, I finished off the trip with one last lead, which was a bit more of a proper climb than the first. It was pretty scary as well, and called Robin Hood's Crack (don't laugh):

Again, it was still quite easy climbing, but I only had 3 gear placements on a 22 meter climb. Which means that most possible falls would be at least 6 or 7 meters (about 20 feet), which increases the likelihood of my gear failing and falling all the way to the ground. Plus, even if the gear holds, falling that far and then smacking into the face of the wall still hurts quite a bit. Still, I managed it alright, and aside from one strange move that took some thinking to figure out, it was pretty easy and overall really fun.

Then the drive home. I'll spare you the details, but suffice it to say that it took a lot longer than it should have. The driver decided the engine needed more oil. Don't really know why. Because when we stopped at a station and he bought some oil and put it in, the tailpipe started spewing white smoke and we had to wait an hour for AAA to come an drain the excess oil. We got home about 3am, and I hadn't showered for 3 days of climbing. Wasn't my happiest moment.

Still, totally worth it!

Moving along chronologically, next up is the infamous 2011 London (later upgraded to England) riots. A few things to say about that. First, Chelsea and I really never even witnessed any evidence of the riots. If it hadn't been on the news and all over people's Facebooks, I doubt we would have even known anything happened. Apparently the looters did come through Harlesden, but after they busted the window and looted the pawn shop, decided there was nothing else in Harlesden worth stealing and just left. Sometimes it helps to live in the ghetto.

Second, I think most people are in touch enough with reality to know this already, but in case you've been disillusioned by disillusioned journalists, the riots weren't about political protest or making a point or anything remotely admirable like that. You don't stick it to the man by robbing a video game store. You make yourself look like a greedy teenage boy who wants some free video games.

Third, Chelsea totally predicted this. Just a few days before the riots, the police came to our building looking for one of our neighbors. He had disappeared, and apparently was in trouble. Even after the police came and realized he was gone, this guy kept coming and knocking on his door and yelling his name, asking him to come out. He sounded angry. Chelsea then made the insightful comment, "London is getting scarier." If only she knew how right she was. A few days later, someone tried to break into another of our neighbor's apartments (but pathetically couldn't break the door down and gave up). Then, the riots happened. Anyway, the point is, if you followed the riot news at all, you may recognize the name Mark Duggan. He was the guy the police shot and killed, and it was at protests over his death that the riots initially broke out. The name of our neighbor who mysteriously disappeared? Mark Duggan. So either our neighbor was indirectly the cause of the riots, or that was one of the strangest coincidences ever. To be fair, the Mark Duggan was supposed to have lived in Tottenham, not Harlesden. Also, we never got that great of a look at him, but we're not sure the two Marks were the same race. Also, the guy that kept coming looking for our Mark...still kept coming after the riots had started (maybe he just lived under a rock?) So yeah, can't be certain that it's the same guy, but still very strange that he disappeared just a few days before the riots.

Moving on some more; I had the day off work one day and Chelsea and I took the opportunity to go see the Tate museum of modern art. So that was fun. Despite our artistic tendencies, we both often quite dislike modern art. However, the Tate was actually quite refreshing, and we found ourselves appreciating an unusually high percentage of the pieces there.

Here's what remains of Wei Wei's sunfower seed installation:

Tons of hand-painted porcelain sunflower seeds, commenting on the massive resources of manual labor in China and what it means to be one among so many. Makes you think about "Made in China." Originally they were all spread out in a big room and you could walk on them and touch them, but then they decided that that was grinding the porcelain together and filling the air with harmful dust, so they had to change it to the above, slightly less cool version.

A few other highlights:

(We don't think this was actually intentionally art; they really simply just didn't want us to cross the line in order to protect an exhibit. But we found it so ironic - the cliche juxtaposed in a setting focused on exactly that - crossing the line - that we can't help but think that this is art. Besides, eye of the beholder, right?)

After that, for lunch we walked over to St. Dunstan-in-the-East, an old church that was bombed during WWII, and the ruins have since been converted into a garden (I think I've mentioned this on here before?) It's one of my favorite spots in London. We even got a little crazy with a photoshoot on Chelsea's point-and-shoot camera.

As we were walking around, we also spotted a graffiti installation from the famous graffiti artist Space Invader. He makes little tile ceramics of characters from pixelated video games and glues them in places. It's kinda small, but it's the blue and yellow thing on the corner:

I'm quite fascinated by what I'd call sophisticated graffiti, as made famous by Banksy, so this was really cool to us. This guy was featured in the Banksy-directed film Exit Through the Giftshop (awesome documentary if you're interested).

Next time: Chelsea will update you all on her internship, her birthday celebrations, and her dissertation! It's sure to be a thriller, so check back soon!