Hawaii 5-0..

Good morning folks

I trust this finds you in top form and fine fettle.
3 blogs in 8 months!
How I ever used to manage to keep this nonsense going as a weekly publication, I’ll never know, but here it is, a special birthday edition.

Today I am Hawaii 5-0, how the handbag, kettle, partridge did that happen?

Since the last blog, a lot and not a lot has happened.

• First family trip away in 4 years.
• Barrow RL are 5^th in the league.
• There was mini, but very delicious heatwave. (If you could guarantee that for a month every summer, I would happily take it, even with the 1 hour of pretending to sleep whilst tossing and turning all night). All those years of sweaty gurning in the Peruvian mountains actually did me some good!)

Lockdown mindset.

Covid 19, Novel Coronavirus, SARS CoV-2, call it what you will, first reared its ugly, ugly head on New Year’s Eve 2019 and the World has never really been the same since, although we do seem to be turning the corner now.
In Peru we were about 6 weeks behind, I watched the news obsessively as the giant wave crossed the Atlantic and crashed down on Latin American shores as we quickly went into full lockdown and generally not knowing what was going to happen, bad times, curfews, a horrible feeling of everyone being suspicious of everyone and everything, almost like a police state, governed by clueless politicians and worry mongering by the toxic press, all creating a general hysterical paranoia, times best not revisited (and uprecedented use of the word “unprecedented”).

We fled Peru for Blighty in September 2020, advised by the Embassy that after September nothing was guaranteed and set up shop in the caravan, flying pretty much straight into a UK lockdown, then another and what felt like a tentative and almost discouraged release back into society.

I worked part time in a busy local mini market for a while and like most places, masks were asked to be worn, but the amount of abuse I got just for asking if people had a mask was unreal.
“I’M (deleted expletive) EXEMPT!!!
Sorry for asking.
(Do masks even work? Who knows!)

Some people went back to normal life quickly, others held back and some stayed in lockdown mode, I was one of them and it was a bloody hard mode to get out of.
Stringent self-imposed routines. Monday night 8pm food shops (to avoid crowds), buying petrol at weird hours at 24hr garages, shopping almost entirely online, (although no panic buying, I never did understand the whole loo roll frenzy, some punters must still have a spare room stacked to the roof with the stuff!)

We are social beasts, no man (woman or child) is an island, we all need human interaction to flourish. So why has it taken so long to (finally) get out into the world again?

Is it anxiety? Is it a “Digging into the trenches” scenario? Did the lack of human contact make us forget how to interact and react? I have no answers.

I found myself making increasingly lame excuses just to avoid doing anything, passing up on some brilliant opportunities in the process

Obviously, we have to go to work, (unless we are WFH) but it took (me)  forever to do seemingly simple things, getting a bus/train, going into a café/boozer/restaurant, going to a party, the previously illegal act of a handshake or a hug…

I am just grateful that we are all hopefully getting there now (and also grateful for my weekly Sunday Zoom with my mates, a lockdown hangover remnant that is a good one!)

Cooking on gas – Part i.

I wouldn’t say that the van was a Pig-in-a-poke purchase, but it was definitely done without any research, when all my facts, figures, research and countless reviews read were all based on Transits, Movanos, Trafics (one “f”) and Vivaros.

The Nissan Elgrand was not a van I had even heard of, but it was too good a deal to pass.
Driving back from Wantage on that inky black night was a blur, pulling into Trowell services and watching as 25 quid didn’t really lift the petrol gauge from empty did make me wonder.

Thirsty, thirsty, thirsty. And the petrol crisis hadn’t even started back then.

I did seriously think of flogging it on immediately, but the mileage was so low, and it looked to have loads of potential, although none of my conversion plans would seem to fit.

Then, an LPG lightbulb suddenly appeared!

I looked around and found a wild variety of prices for conversions, but the funnel of good reviews and common-sense lead to a bloke called Simon at South Elmsall. It was all he did and he had done 600 Elgrand conversions, owning 2 of his own. The only problem was that he was booked up solid for 6mths. I booked in for June and spent 6mths not really going anywhere and constantly thinking about selling it!

6 months passed, I took it down and 3 days later I was heading back up the A1 with my second fuel tank full of 79.9p per litre LPG. The future was looking bright…

L-o-n-g Covid

Without harking back to my old weekly Peruvian rant (noise, traffic, corruption, moan, moan, moan), I will have a quick whinge about one thing.
We all got C19 in January, the girls bounced back and none of us were really ill with it, but I found my breathing was not working, not asthma, just not being able to get a proper lungful in or out. 4 GP appointments got me referred to the hospital, in July, for a Spirometry test, where you blow into a snorkel tube and machines measure your lung capacity. I now have to wait a few more weeks to get my results. Not a big deal in the grand scheme of chaotic current things, but a big deal for me as I can’t really run nor cycle, without my heart rate going through the roof, even on easy stuff, and easy stuff is all I can do.

Most of my life I have been into running and also cycling (when I was crocked and couldn’t run) and it does become a way of life; training-racing-training-racing-getting crocked-comebacks-training-racing…

Training isn’t just haphazard randomness, every session has a reason, a purpose, an objective, but the wheels fell off my training in January and it really has left me lost, with no goals, no rudder and absolutely no spark whatsoever. Like rueing over a lost lover, will it actually do any good?

I have been going to the gym and swimming. Swimming I am crap at (even after 9mths of pouring my heart and soul into it when I did my first/last/only triathlon in 2004), the gym is hard graft as it is something that I have always avoided like the plague (the gym, not hard graft before you say it), but now my membership has run out, I have to find something else, until I find out whether I can ever get back to “proper” training.
All I really, really want is to get back into the fells. Not breaking records nor winning races, just long days in the mountains. I still haven’t been up to the Lakes yet, there is an irrational by nontheless very deep fear that I just won’t be fit enough.

(In the meantime I did however buy a bargain haul of weights off Fleabay for 99p. The advert wasn’t clear, but I now have enough weights to set up a medium sized leisure centre).

Always wear your skid lid!

I always have been an advocate of wearing a lid on a pushbike.
Helmets are much lighter, comfortable and affordable these days.
I took a spill on the way home from work. afew months back.
Your typical Audi pulls out, rider overcompensates, catch a pothole and go down like a sack of spuds, luckily on grass, whilst taking advantage of the roaring tailwind and going too fast scenario.
The driver drove off, (she hadn’t actually done anything wrong to be fair, but must have seen/heard me crash. I was lying winded on the grass when 2 worried looking blokes asked if I was ok. They said they had heard a big crash sound effect noise.
“Fine” was my automatic response, as I remounted winded and wondering what the massive crack noise had been.
When I got home, the helmet showed me the source of the sound.
Better a knackered lid than a knackered head!
Always wear your lid.

The Alpinist

I won’t say anything about this film, except that it is truly brilliant.
As part of my “getting back out there” I went to the cinema with my friend, Dave B, to see an amazing film about an incredible climber called Marc-Andre Leclerc. If you haven’t seen the film, do so at your earliest opportunity.

50, not out.

Still going, not at a place where I expected to be, but having done lots of things I had never dreamt of. Zero bra$$ but a lot of memories 😊
Lessons learnt?
Too many for this blog, don’t want to tip it over the 10,000 word mark!

Gone fishing.

Not being able to run/cycle suddenly freed up a lot of free time, but free time is useless unless you fill it, so I started thinking, what can I do that is:
a) Cheap-ish.
b) Local.
c) Inclusive (whatever that means!)
d) Might be fun…

I am a bugger for going back (in life, to jobs, places, past hopes, and dreams) and came up with fishing!

As a young lad, growing up in South Lakes, there wasn’t a lot to do.
Different times, definitely simpler times.
The Lake District hills were just a bit too far away and I was pretty shocking at football.
I did go to watch Barrow RLFC, but that was only once a fortnight.
We used to pile round to Clinton Davis’s house as he had a dartboard and a diddy snooker table, and then one day, one of us got into fishing and we all followed suit.

All of us started with a completely useless Woolworth’s starter set, which we all used for everything. We never really caught much, we fell in the water, we got tangles, we got cold and wet, but we had a brilliant time!

When I took up mountaineering, fishing sat on the back burner and then one night, someone stole all my fishing gear from my shed, miraculously it was insured and with a voucher for £2000 I went to a fishing shop in Wigan (the closest shop which the insurance company dealt with) and surreptitiously exchanged it for £500 cash, which I probably spent on beer and fancy shirts!

Like many interests, pastimes, hobbies, and sports, unless you do that activity it is mind blowingly boring to talk about, unless you are also into it.

It does feel like an absolute luxury just to go to a local pond or river and just sit there all day, chilling out and maybe, just maybe catching a fish now and again.

The Nipper had shown an interest, so she comes along too, and it is good fun 😊

STOP PRESS: Going boat fishing off Whitby for a birthday treat, what could go wrong???

Summer holiday weekend away.

Our last holiday was a 3-week summer whirlwind from Peru-England-Peru, back in 2018.
A flurry of fish and chips, visits, an odd session or two and shopping for forbidden fruits unavailable in Peru (generally shoes, long sleeved shirts and replacing worn out running socks).

With our new set of wheels, we kept putting off and putting off the maiden voyage (until the gas conversion) and we finally managed a weekend away mid-July.

Cooking on gas – Part ii

First time filling up with LPG was always going to be a bit of a mini test. It is a slightly different procedure and there aren’t many places around to get it.
(As expected) we were later away than planned, and a bit stressed so when I came to plug in at the motorway services, it just didn’t work. I noticed the previous LPG customer had only put in £7 worth, and I could only get 37p in!
Friday night, busy at the pumps, had to pay my 37p, then try again.
Slower than a snail on a sloth’s back on Valium.
It took me 15mins to get a tenner in, then, when I came to unplug, disaster!

The pump pulled out the adaptor which pulled out the main fill valve, so there was a loud BANG, the rush of escaping gas and I was left with a frozen hand and a dread that I had made a massive mistake with the conversion.

A quick call to Simon confirmed that it was safe to drive, but only with the tenner of LPG I had trickled in, and the rest would be methadone/champagne cocktail priced E5 petrol.

Bit of a blow (literally) but fixed a week after, free of charge.

Onwards and upwards to the beautiful Saltburn-on-Sea, a place I don’t think I had been to and an absolute gem of a place.
We booked in on a small campsite, which wasn’t quite on the sea.
I asked the friendly owner about getting to the coast and she gave me instructions but we got out wires crossed and she thought I meant driving and therefore told me it would take 15mins.
We set off down a trail at noon and an hour later were in a farmyard and then after patching together snippets of paths until we arrived in town. I asked a lady “Which way to the Front?”
“Which front?” she replied. “You’re in Skelton.”
Is that good or bad I wondered to myself? She took pity on us and gave us detailed directions After crossing a busy dual carriageway and negotiating a manic country lane, we ended up going through the picturesque Valley Gardens, where I kept repeating myself with “On a normal day this would be a brilliant walk” as we all trudged on in silence.
After about 3hrs, we could finally see the sea and came out of a sheltered path into the full brunt of a northern gale!

A very brisk walk up and down the pier was followed by a long walk to an amazing Chippie (Church Fish Shop) and then to the last bus, which we had missed by 10mins.

So, I caught a bus (any bus) in the general direction of where we were staying, then double-tabbed it for an hour uphill, to collect the van and finally collect the girls.

On the way home we marched up and down the diminutive Roseberry Topping, which was jam packed but very worthwhile 😊

Raider’s round-up.

The mighty Shipbuilders keep on winning, normally under nail biting circumstances, taking some good scalps in the process (York, Widnes, Bradford Northern).
The possibility of the play-offs is a tantalising dream.
Stand-out performances from me coming from the evergreen Maltese utility back/kicker Jarrod Sammut and flying wingman, Tee Ritson.

Onwards and upwards!

And finally….

10 years ago today, I celebrated my 40^th birthday in the middle of the middle of nowhere in the middle of the Gobi Desert, with a group of ralliers and warm lager, after an epic day of river crossings and torrential rain (in the desert).

One day I will write a book about it, but for now, here is the 15-minute film we made (with HUGE amounts of gratitude to fellow rallier, Matthew P, for  his editing skills.

Hasta la proxima amigos.
Cheers
Johnny & the girls