Thursday, March 30, 2006

Climbing K2





Well, well... With weather worse than of late and an out of action bike after the crash that caused Chris' brand new brake leaver to twang in two, we headed to the new K2 climbing wall in Crawley for a spot of monkeying around before a night of dancing and drinking (in reverse order!) in Brighton. (poetry style) K-2 is nice and new and bathed in lovely light, with grippy holds and moves so bold, it was a true delight. We shimmy-ed up and fell back down, all afternoon it seemed, we forced a frown from local staff and left there fully creamed!!! (bit gay. Sorry, catalogue Argoh is getting to me...)


Twas good to see Rich and Anna and Chris and I ended the day with a nice lead to get the adrenalin going. Where was the bouldering area? Idiots.

Tuesday, March 14, 2006


J's Band!

Have been to see Mr Newton in action, was accurately descibed by the lead singer as being 'a bit edgy, but your Mum'd like him', brilliant.

Check out the links section for their website, upcoming gigs etc, with brakeforcake support we'll have you at number one in no time.

Buy the single.............................. go on try it,you might like it.

Chris

Monday, March 13, 2006

Another Sunny Sunday!

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Yep, Spring is definately on the way and the sun shone down on another nice days jaunt for the IBFC crew... This week Ad, Neil and The Lawlers came up from hip, gay Brighton in search of more manly persuits, namely riding Bracknell with me and Mike. Bob is a weapon. Not only does he not really ride (borrowing Mike's backup once again), but he and Chris have no fear whatsoever of hitting the deck and proceeded to drop off everything in sight. Apologies to Ad and Neil who are used to more of a 'ride', but we had some good fun sessioning some of the drops and discovered the nicely built Swinley dirt jumps. After a few tentative runs, everyone got well into it and twas great to have a go at pretending to be Cowan.

Saturday, March 11, 2006

A week in the life of Mowglie the Jungle Boy

Well well, what can happen in a week.

Monday morning 11.30

Turn up at the inkfish offices stylelish entrance 2 and a half hours late for work and in a foul Monday morning, Im in the rat race kind of mood. This doesn’t bother my bosses I just have to work 2 and a half hours later! Flexi hours in an office rock.
Seeing the sun out for the first time in England and being in an office with about 100 pale looking people got me inspired to start thinking about going travelling again. So though the phone book it is having a chat with everyone I know who works in water sports. Had some good chats with people.

Tuesday

The dreaded 12-hour shift! Lots more time on the phone following up all the phone calls made on Monday. Another day in the office.

Wednesday

Take the day off work to hammer out some c.vs to worldwide destinations. Im beginning to scratch those itchy feet. Had a good swim and gym session. Good for the soul. I’ve been feeling pretty restless lately due to this fact I’ve not been sleeping well and have found myself on the couch at four in the morning Supping red wine.

Thursday

Not much too report about today had a pretty bit of a headache from a few drinks last night and a couple of bottles of wine whilst chatting about the cycles of life.
Ha Ha get a phone call from Chris he has locked himself out and is waiting for me in the pub near work for my keys. So the only sensible thing I can see to do is sign myself out of work (don’t really need the money as some freelance work has just paid off and Im doing overtime anyway) and go and join Chris the mechanical marvel on the nice comfy leather sofa in the pub. One drink quickly turns into five. A good chat with some fellow windsurfers/kite surfers that live on a yacht in Brighton marina and randomly happened to sit down oppisit us. (Brighton is such a cool place for randomly meeting people like that hence I’ve been here on and off for the past two years) A bit of a stumble home, a quick stop for chips and a bit of a rumble between the two siblings (just play fighting but Chris still gave in first. one up for BOB) its time for bed.

Friday morning

Quick look out the window. MY GOD surf able waves and the sun is out nothing better to cure a booze headache than getting in the water. I manage to bribe Chris to take the day off work with a good old bacon sarnie. Tainted!

Quick drive off to Berling gap with a video camera in my hand shouting out of the car window to anyone who will listen that ITS A BEAUTIFUL DAY. Some of the reactions are fairly amusing. (As soon as I’ve found a good video hosting web site I will post the vid on here!)
Friday 10.30am
Berlin gap
Wave size 3-4 foot messy
Extremely cold
Watched 1 solitary surfer paddle out and got two of his waves on camera. Half an hour of doing this and the wind picking up enough to windsurf. We came to the decision that It was too cold to go for a surf and a windsurf. So we drive back to Hove lagoon via all the surf spots to get a couple more waves for the camera.

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Within 10 minutes of turning up the wind drops and swings off shore. Bugger!
We decide to wait around for Mr Maylon, Kai, and Germbag to see if the wind is going to play ball with our plans.

2.00pm Sweet as the wind fills back in and swings back to dead cross-shore with some nice clean waves.

Sail choice 5.3 its good to sail out from hove as you can park right on the prom to rig up. Have to be a bit wary about the traffic wardens as they like to put these really annoying yellow clamps round your wheels and charge you £120 to take them off.
John hadn’t sailed for a while but got straight back into it with some good air and over rotating so far on his loops it looked like he was attempting double back loops.
The cold got the better of Kai whilst he was walking down to give Chris a hand who got worked over in the waves and ended about a mile down wind. Adam got some nice wave riding in bashing away at the lips of the pretty clean waves that don’t appear too often in Brighton and I had a nice one too. Got round cleanly on most of my carve gybes almost put my feet though my sail on a fairly big jump that went a bit wrong. Time to head in though cos I cant feel my fingers anymore and Chris needs picking up from down the beach to save him from the walk of shame with all his kit. It was too cold for Mr traffic warden so all cars were fully operational.

Friday 12.00pm
After a good windsurf like that (Its just what you do in Brighton) and it being Sali,s birthday who’s back off to turkey soon. We hit a night club the dancing was ridiculous with John and Sali making everyone participate in the famous “how silly can you do it) dance off. Where those boys picked up some of their moves God only knows.

Saturday 5.30 pm

Chilled out day here at the flat had a swim at the King Alfred and saving some energy for a mountain bike ride down some nice steep hills tomorrow. Think Im going to take the video camera along and immortalise your guys riding on video on ibreakforcake.

GET INVOLVED keep your eyes here Im going to be somwhere hot soon for you all to come out and have a good holiday in the sun sea and sand.

robertjlawler@hotmail.com
07861249092
for all you out there that dont know how to contact me.

Monday, March 06, 2006

Leith Hill Ride

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Sunny weather and the promise of some fresh trails lured us out for another Leith mission with Chris and the Brighton crew...

Turned out we knew the trails, but Ad, Kem and Ben had us peddling all over the surrey trails in the usual non-stop fashion that had Gav spewing (literally, 4 times!) from our excesses the night before - to be fair, not our fault, we wouldn't have got drunk if either K2 or Shorham climbing walls had been open past 6:30pm on a sat! Anyway, after getting to Leith via the scenic route, the trails were in perfect condition and DRY, promting a good day and a little spell of jumping at the Bomb-'oles! see pics. Ben and Ad showed us all how its supposed to be done, with Ben producing some nice big tables and a taboggon!

Thursday, March 02, 2006

Road Trip 2005 Scotland and Scarfell

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A few pics from the end of May/start of June last year of our road trip to Scotland. Gav, Dave, Rich and myself.

Friday was spent pitching our home, having driven up over Thursday night, we pitched 3 times due to 70mph gust blowing straight down the valley at the foot of Ben Nevis, nice. Then a further couple of hours up to Invernes near to where Gav's Dad used to work.

Saturday turned out rubbish weather wise, wind still howling and white out conditions forecast so we reccon'd the walk in for our Ben Nevis route, up the first 400m odd to the Lochan and the split between the donkey path that goes straight up and the descent back down to the stream and Photo 1 of Rich and Gav, that man has missed his calling as a catalogue model, seriously.

Sunday we were up at sparrows to pack the tent and car before retracing our reccy route from Saturday. Dropping down to the stream loses nearly all of the height you gain getting up to the Lochan, the result being you start from scratch up the foot of the Cairn Morg Dearg arrete with the North face of Ben Nevis looming occasionally over your right shoulder out of the clouds.

Far too many hundreds of meters later up constant, steep gradient scrub and rock scatter we reached Photo 2, the sharp contrast between the arrete and the snow clad North face to the right of the picture.

Photo 3 of Rich is after the arrete on the climb up to the summit plateau, I think this was the first of June we did this and there was no lack of snow! The summit plateau itself had coating of a foot or so of snow which made spotting the piking great gully, on the way back to the tourist path, impossible until we'd safely gone past it. Not a nav f&*k up you'd want to make in a hurry.

Sunday night was spent with Maddy and Laura in Glasgow which for a variety of reasons was most agreeable.

Monday saw another stretch of driving back down to the Lakes and several hours of fraught YHA searching.

Tuesday Scarfell Pike, it has to be said, in the sun was a walk in the park compared to Ben, so much so we ended up climbing up a route shown in Photos 4 & 5 to avoid the boring zig zag path and too many other people. Got buzzed by a Tornado which almost blew Gav of the side of the climb before Dave managed to bag a pic of a Jaguar using the peak as a Nav point to make a turn down the valley.

Finally made it home well after midnight on Tuesday.

Photos courtesy of Branfield as per usual, text by Chris.

Wednesday, March 01, 2006

Grand Canyon

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Christmas Day in the Canyon, admitedly not much action took place, i did a little scrambling but i was with the folks so nothing that scared em too much, its a pretty big drop in places!

Having said that, theres definately some good stuff to do for a bit of hiking and climbing, check out this four day effort up the zoroaster peak. Its a bit of a mission to get to, we were in Vegas and its a five hour drive so definatley not a climbing day mission....plus its 5000 feet deep and 10miles wide on average so you could be there for a while!