Scalp

Another mounatin race last night. It was on Scalp, a viscous b*stard of a place altogether. It was raining yesterday and though it stopped raining for the race itself, the conditions were very tricky. Occasionally the tracks were very slippy and mucky. I'm bad at steep downhills the best of times, but steep mucky downhills really really slow me down. 5 people passed me on the last steep downhill. Disgusted. I managed to catch 3 of them before the finish but am determined to do some work on it. The problem is that when you look down in the cold, your eyes fill with water and blur your vision, making it hard to judge footing. And if you wipe them you either get dirt or sweat in there to add to the problem! I'm always well impressed with the lads who take massive confident hops down the steepest hills. It's amazing to watch.

I came 132 out of 163, with 172% of the winning time. I did this race last year aswell and i got 183% of the winning time, so i'm well pleased with the improvement. In the league i'm 121 out of 401, yeehaw.

This is another photo taken from the race. I think it looks like something out of Jurassic Park. The path that they are running on is almost completely overgrown with gorse, and it's really easy to trip over consealed rocks. It adds to the adventure.

Clair's New Friend

Clair met this charming monstrosity in Japan the other day. Here's a rather humerous extract from a mail i got off her recently:

"I was reading this on my phone on the way home from work, but I didn't reply because I was so nervous that I was on the wrong train. It had a sign on it that wasn't a place name on any of the station lists. I asked someone "Yokohama desu?" meaning " Is Yokohama for I am a foreign r'tard that knows not how to read or speak Japanese?" The latter part was just implied. He said "hai" but I didn't believe him so I was really worried where I might end up. At one stop along the way, I asked a neighbour "Kore wa dokko desu ka?" which translates as " Where is here for I am a foreign r'tard but who is proud of being able to say even this little bit in Japanese?" In this case, the middle part is implied in the speech and the latter part is implied in this email. She told me and I recognised that as a place along the way to Yokohama. But I was still bloody relieved when we actually did pull into Yokohama."

Aussie Guest

This is a mate of Hugh's from when he was a wee platinum blond toddler in Australia. Adrian is on a round Europe spin and stopped in Ireland last week. he's great craic and we had a fine cultural exchange. We took "strewth" and he took "langer".

This is Hugh unwittingly drinking from a maaaassive bottle of bud.

Bray Head

This is a picture from my latest mountain race yesterday evening. It was seriously hard. it was around 5 to 6k (depending on who you ask) around 2 mountains in bray. It's the shortest race of the season, but faster paced because of that. I did the early start and came 3rd out of that group, beaten only by 2 dudes! And one was German! I never mind being beaten by Germans! And the other dude was perfectly fit and healthy. I held him till the summit but he passed my on the way back down when i got a shoulder cramp. You know the one that's like someone is driving a pick-axe into your inner shoulder? Had to slow down for a bit cause of that.

The route was out and back along the same path, so on the way back down i started running into the people from the normal start. My friend Ronan was at the lead. I ran into him early enough, and then had a steady stream of people to pass for around 2/3rds of the way down. I was just on an incline up to the first summit again when i really thought I was going to have to stop cause I was going to have a heart attack when the photographer dude appeared as if from nowhere. So obviously you can't stop if you're being photographed, so I kept going, then soon came across another downhill. Now this downhill was the first uphill I had encountered after the start and a lot of it actually had to be climbed hand and foot, so it was pretty difficult to get down it at any speed. Then there was a gentle concrete descent out onto the main Bray promenade where there were loads of normal non-purple-faced folk to run embarrassingly past to the finish, around 500m away. now there was a choice of running on a path or grass, so i picked the grass. Slower, but easier on the legs. So I sprinted as fast as i could, using up the very last of my energy to cross the line. In the wrong direction. A friend of mine was a race marshall and she was like "get outside the wall and run in the long way". I was so confused. So I had to jump over a wall and run around another 50m and turn, where Ronan passed me, and then back through the finish again. If I'd kept to the path I would have seen the markers leading around the long way and would have beaten ronan (15 minutes behind). But a great race. They asked me not to do the early start again cause i'm too fast!!!! Yeah!!!!! I'm holding 155th out of 385 in the league. And I came in at 45:58, 160% of the winning time which was my aim for the season! Hopefully i can equal it next week on a longer route. This is a picture of Ronan leaping a fence on the descent.

Marshmallows

This is my latest craze, making fresh marshmallows. They are made of sugar, golden syrup and gelatin and combine to be the stickiest stuff ever. These are ones that myself and Emily made on Saturday, and we ended up completely covered in goo afterwards. The problem is that the mixture is so tasty that you can't help taking bits of it to eat, and you end up stuck to the utensils, then stuck to the table... it's brilliant! It starts out as a really sticky liquid then is poured (with great difficulty) into a tin to cool. When it cools it can be coated in icing sugar to stop the stickiness and cut into squares. Extremely tasty.

Epic Weekend

Myself and Emily had a great weekend full of fun and merriment. It all started on Saturday when Emily arrived and out came the swingball. It was really windy around dublin but thankfully my garden is pretty sheltered so we were able to play through it (note all-important beer on path). The garden is just wide enough for swingballing, but there are briars growing out of our hedge and the washing line is getting a bit loose so occasionally there are sideline obstacles to deal with.


After playing till our arms hurt too much, we took a leisurely cycle to Fresh, the overpriced yuppie supermarket on Pierce Street, and found a fabulous bargain on Druids cider. Rather a nice drink, it gets the MagsEmily seal of approval. Suffice to say, after imbibing much of this thrifty booze a lack of judgement occured, and the swingball got moved indoors so the darkness of nighttime wouldn't hinder playing.



As you can see the playing area indoors was rather cramped. Also the base is filled with water which was splashing everywhere. After a healthy amount of damage was caused, another error in judgement was made and we decided that writing on our faces was in fact the best idea ever, even better than indoor swingball.


Inspirational stuff. Also, somewhere in the course of the day myself and Emily's combined powers produced the finest Shepherds Pie in Ireland. All ofthis goes to proove that it's impossible to have a quiet weekend in when Emily is in the county.

Twin Leeks

This is Catherine displaying some of the fine vegetables that we have arrayed around the kitchen.

Myself and Emily had a fantastic weekend of madness and swingball, but my camera battery has died on me here so i can't get any of the pics. I'll get them later.

Those crazy Japanese....

This is a road near Clair's new Japanese abode where they have fancy restaurants. Very well named in my opinion. As is the Muffin shop on this avenue. Fair play.

Harry Potter Mania

So the new book is out on the 21st July and we shall all get to know what happens in the end. I believe that Snape will turn out to be a good guy. He was trajically used as a helpless pawn in the last book, by both Malfoy and Dumbledore, but he will show his true good colours in the end and will possible be killed in the fatal attack (guaranteed) between Harry and Voldemort. I shall be purchasing the book in Edinburgh with Niamh and will be pub crawling with the book about the town for a few days. All are welcome.

Loads of bikes

This is the picture that clair was talking about yesterday. It is a multi-layer bike rack in Japan. She says that in the city where she lives everyone travels by train, and everyone gets to the train station on a bike, so there are throusands of bikes at the stations. They use loads of these racks to store the bikes. I can only imagine the effort involved in getting a bike onto the top level. Poor feckers. It's hard enough to get a bike in to the narrow one level ones.

Clair in Japan!

Clair is safe and sound in Japan and here's proof - this is a mail I got off her yesterday:

"I have a really cool phone, nokia n73, which has a 3.2 mega pixel camera. This is good enough for me! I've been looking for photo opportunities at all times. By far the coolest spectacle is the people. But it's a bit creepy to be photographing strangers and i don't want to get deported. The mad clothes on the teens, the trains black with salarymen, the kids so cute you Want to hug them... I took a photo of the multi-story bike park that's at my train station, but i just can't capture the scale of it. Here is a pic of a car show grounds. The local cars are in front, the car behind is for export"

Hugh's Big Band

Hugh played last night in a big band in Ballymun. The concert started off with a wind and brass band of local kids. The trombonists kept belting eachother in the heads with their instruments (true to form), and they even had miniature timpani. Then the big band played, and they had various kids up to play with them. It was really cool and i took loads of photos which all turned out really blurry cause the room was pretty dark. My camera skills are giving up the ghost. This is the clearest one of the bunch.

Death by Chocolate

I had a murder mystery in my house over the weekend. It was called "Death by Chocolate and was for 8 players: myself and Hugh, Jennifer and Pierce, Catherine and David and Ian and Nathalia.

The story goes like this: It is Paris, 1900. The World Fair and Olympics are both going on and a famous chocolatier, Billy Bonka has invented a new enourmous easter egg which defies the structural laws of easter eggs. Unfortunately, Billy has been murdered in his hotel room, killed by a bomb concealed in an easter egg. 8 other guests at the hotel (us) sit down to dinner knowing that one among us is the murderer. Throughout the course of the meal, with the assistance of Inspector McClue (dvd cheese) and various exibits given to the guests, the murder must be solved.

It was great fun and everyone played well into their Character. The first picture there is of Jennifer as an eccentric archaeologist and David as a skitsophrenic ventriloquist with his puppet, Ziggy. The next picture is of Catherine, a scandellous artist and Hugh as Mike Bison, famous american boxer.

Flutes?

Jane look what's happening to the flute population of Ireland without your steadying influence!

Congratulations Aoife!

Last night was myself and Hugh's last performance with the Trinity Orchestra. This is the conductor Aoife Hiney who is in Hugh's class and who I used to live across the road from last year in Rathmines. The theme was American music and we played Copland's Appalachian Spring, Philip Glass's Violin Concerto (weird but daycent) and Jurassic Park. Also, here is proof that Hugh actually does play the trombone (or can at least hold one convincingly).

Adventure Race

As promised, these are some of the photos from my adventure race in Blessington a few weekends back. This is a picture of the team before getting on the water to start the race. Rachel is on the left, she is an avid runner and does all sorts of mad mountain runs and marathons and such, then me, then Aimi, who is a mad into the mountain biking and dragged us up and down the biking slopes on the day, then Emily. Clearly we have no idea what we are letting ourselves in for.

The race started on the water, with around 4k to travel to collect 5 markers. The race was set out like orienteering. They gave us a list of coordinates at the start which we had to plot on a map and then set off to find as many as possible. We had a card to punch at each marker to prove we'd really been there. All water markers had to be found in a conoe and then the land markers were split into mountain biking and trekking. The sea looks flat calm in this picture, but on the way back into land after finding the markers the wind picked up out of the blue and boats were capsizing all over the place. We did well not to fall in and get totally drenched. Myself and Emily have plenty of water experience from misspent youths at rowing, so that helped no end.


Unfortunately there are no photos from the biking stage cause we were all too busy trying not to fall off. The trekking started off running up a rough forest trail before swinging left and going up a really steep fire break (a gap left in trees every now and then in forests to stop the spread of fire). At the top we looked into the distance and saw the deadly steep Sorrell Hill (hill me arse) and had to make it to the top as fast as possible to get the next marker. The wind was unreal and nearly blew us off the top. It was quite sore to take the wind full force in the ear for the duration of the climb, but was worth it when we reached the top. This is me, Rachel and Emily trying to catch the wind to float onto the next marker, which was on the mountain visible in the distance.


And this is us at the end of the race, just barely alive. It was a proper challenge and took us 5 hours, but we set out with the aim of finding all the markers, not being last (we came 8th of 12) and to still be friends at the end of it, so we achieved all aims! Hurrah!

How Rude

While walking down Oliver Plunkett Street in Cork over the weekend I came accross this very interesting window display. They must have students working there.

Gourmande Gourmandises

I've taken on Groumande as my favourite word, but recently discovered that I got the meaning of it completely wrong! It simply means someone who appreciates food. Whoops. So here's my new word, which I think means something really really tasty that simply has to be eaten no matter how full you are. Slight change, but still ok. No longer the noun of savage eating, but the object which must be eaten. Goumandises. Hopefully this one is accurate, I found it on a box of sweets.

Dance Catastrophe

This is the result of a rather hilarious bout of dancing around a pole on Pana after Clair's going away party on Friday night. Noone was serious hurt, except Laura, who looks like she got a fairly bruised arse.

Farewell Clair

My friend Clair (who visited recently and paretook in a mighty amount of gourmande) is now off on her merry way to Japan. We had a going away party in Cork on Friday in Goldsoundz. It was fantastic fun. This is a picture of me and Clair trying to look as normal as possible in our final farewell picture. Fat chance of that...

Fancy Car

On my way down Westmoreland Street last night I came across this daycent car. See how the gardai are walking over to bust it? They are standing at the back of the car. It took 45 minutes to walk to the driver's door and by then it had made a clean get-away.

New Baby

I've been meaning to put this picture up for a while. My friend Niamh is in Edinburgh for the year doing a masters and has taken to keeping pet rats. They are the cutest things I have ever seen. They are much better than cowardly hamsters and are really entertaining with the tricks they get up to. This is the latest addition to the rat family, a new baby rat.

Also in my latest mountain run last night i came 167th of 190. It was around a mountain called Prince William's Seat and has spectacular views. There was a bit of every technical challenge possible in the race. At one point we ran through pitch dark forest, which was really weird after coming out of the bright sun. The descent was also very tricky, with half of it on spongy turf and half on loose rocky paths. It really separated out the experienced runners from the inexperienced. I had to slow down a good deal to avoid tripping, and people were running past at what seemed to be a hundred miles an hour! I was 15:41 behind the fastest girl, which was a slight improvement on last week, so I'm happy with that. I took 178% of the winning time, but there were bigger gaps between the faster and slower people due to the technicality of the downhills. All in all, a great race.