Sunday evening was Network drinks, there are a lot of people in the district who are of, or becoming of Network age but not wanting to move on from Explorers for various reasons. Its been disscussed for quite some time now that these people could, and will reinvigorate Network as they all work very well together. Problem being they all need to get down there together. Got some way towards doing this on sunday with quite a few new people, think everybody that went enjoyed it. All the Network need to do now is keep their interest for the future...
Managed to swindle a lift home from Steph (appreciated) and Liz before crashing out about midnight.
Christmas Eve. Woke up to a very nice e-mail from Claire C regards my knee, she had a similar injury several years ago, although much more severe and gave me some sound advice how to deal with it and the do and don't. Went out late afternoon to see family before heading off early to the Ship. Superb evening as usual, absolutely stacks of people there from all corners of the world. Really good to see Sean an Sarah O'S as I've not seen Sean since Greenland. Chatted to Chris P for a while who seems to become a tactical mastermind while under the influence, plotting how he can take control of certain seats in the room! Talked summer Alps trip with Ash and Dave J, also saw Maria who i've not seen for ages. Some younger elements arrived later in the evening, the like of Ian and Soper, Carrington, Nancy and acquired boyfriend (He actually seems like quite an ameanable guy!), Lewis & Phil and the Eclipse girls, plus many more, too many to name here! Decided it was about time to leave about 1.30am, lots of respect to Bob for driving me, Olivia and Stu back!
Photos of evening on Ash's site:http://www.ashthegreen.co.uk/ashpics/main.php?g2_itemId=625&g2_page=2
Into bed sometime after 2am to await Christmas Day!
Its the Christmas season, so lots of invites to different Christmas meals have been had.
10 days ago was the Explorer County Forum meal at Pizza Hut in Preston, under the guise of a Christmas meal it also served as a leaving celebration for Ray who as of January will no longer be ACC. I think everybody will miss him a lot, I've known him for a good few years now and have a lot of respect for the man, he's up there with some of the people who have made big impacts on my life. Taking his place is Hugh Miller, very cool guy, former District Explorer Scout Leader. This means he'll no longer be an Ormskirkian (Well not in the scouting sense anybody, but he knows where he belongs at heart!), I think Hugh is a really good choice for the ACC, he should do the job very well.
Unfortunately the meal was quite brief, for two main reasons. The first being that Steph who was driving for the evening was pretty late in picking myself and Hugh, something to do with not being able to decide what to wear...! Once we arrived aswell we were told that the restaurant was closing by 9pm so we had to be finished quick. Ormskirk had a strong prescence at the meal with probably about 2/3rds of the attendees coming from the district! Meal was pretty good, gave Raymond a guard of honour on the way out before parting ways. Stopped for the tradtional KFC on the way back despite just having pizza.
Two day's later was our units meal in 'Don Alberto's', a slightely mroe up-market, when comparied with Pizza Hut Italien in the village. Most of the unit was there with the addition of a few guests, Hugh and Dick. Food was very good, even better was the atmosphere the unit created. This was unfortunately another leaving do, we lost Gemma before the summer which was dissopointing and know Chris had decided its his time to leave. Respect to him though, hes been a leader for a long time and done some good stuff with us. He does promise to come and help when needed, which is some concelation. Helen & Dick are away for most of January so that means we now need to find somebody to be a temporary leader!
Walked (hobbled) home with Helen & Dick, via Ken and Chris' who had just arrived back from holiday. Ken didn't even want to ask what I'd done to my leg, hes seen most of the injusries i've done of the last decade, many!
Tuesday was an explorer scout forum, David brought cake, which was good. Not much else happened, talked over the formal ball, a bit low on numbers but it should still do ahead. Home via the ship to crash a Gathering meeting and cheekily ask Ricko could I come to the unit meal tomarrow - sucess!
This last wednesday was the Eclipse Christmas meal, I'm not an actual member of Eclipse but used to attend quite requarely to see people and have got into the habit of going to the Christmas meals which are usually at the cafe bar and a fantastic doo. Venue changed with year to 'The Italien' in Burscough, good thing being it was a bit closer for me to get there. Sat with Lewis and disscussed many a thing, good to catch up as we haven't had time to do that for a while. Food was reasonable, company was good as ever. Eventually most of the folk left bar myself, Lewis, Nige, Leigh, Lucy, Steph and Liz who engorsed themselves in the delights of deserve, a muchness of chocolate orange borwnies, and chocolate fondue! Very good. Swindled a lift home from Steph (thanks for that) and then attempted to beat Lewis on my drive with crutches.
So effectively my life over the last week has been eating, sleeping and occasionally going to college. You best interperse with that though numerous trips to Physiotherapists, GPs and Knee Specialists. Saw a doctor on friday and his verdict is that unless my knee dramatically improves over the next two weeks I may need key-hole surgery in January. Not had any surgery before... will be a new experience, possibly one I don't want though! Good news is there won't be any lasting damage though!
Bit of a technological post this... Mike Nolan'esque!
While laid up after my accident I took the time to install myself a copy of office 2007. I've always used the Microsoft Office series, and when I bought this computer was the main reason I didn't go for a MAC as I, at the time wouldn't of been able to run Office applications on there.
A number of people had warned me about how it wasn't as backward compatible as other versions and that I'd have problems viewing older files, but after reading some reviews and specifactions I decided it was worth the risk and installed it. Instalation went like a dream, no hassle at all. Installed all the programs (Word, PowerPoint, Excel, Outlook, Groove, Access & OneNote) some of them such as Access and Groove I won't be using in the near future however, Groove is a pretty cool program by the looks f things allowing you to instantly create workspaces with documents in online and allow them to altered and viewed by colleagues across the globe. Is affectively the same as e-mailing the data back and forward but a lot faster and more secure, it even has a built in messenger type program so you can discuss what to change.
The core 3 (Word, PowerPoint & Excel) all seem really cool, re-invigorated with a new toolbar design called the ribbon. I wasn't too sure about this being used to using the old system but is in fact much easier to use but also incorporates a lot more advanced features. The coolest thing is the instant previews in now gives you, if you highlight some text and then go to change the font as you scroll over the font it gives you a live preview of what it will look like, you can then make you decision and click it to change it in the document. This seems to speed things up immensely.
The other program of the set which I use loads is Outlook, its not changed massively in the mail sense from 2003 but the Calender seems to have come on in leaps and bounds and now looks very similar to Apple's iCal which is very good. It still synchronises which my phone just the same without any problems and is working just fine with my POP3 gmail account.
So, so far so good, if your thinking of getting a copy go for it in my opinon!
Been laid up in bed over the weekend with my knee attempting to nurse it back to health. Tried college on Friday, managed to pull through the day but it was knackering and difficult getting used to moving about the college environment on crutched. Got a visit from Steph and Liz on Friday evening, Steph showing off her new car (Ford Ka) in black and red which she affectionately calls a 'Ladybug'! Managed to get a ride to KFC and back with her for some hot wings before watching some TV at mine late into the evening. They left 11/12ish and I went to bed elevating my knee as of doctor's orders!
Spent most of Saturday getting some much needed college work done while staying in bed, contemplated going down to Morrison's to the 44th group backpack but didn't feel quite up to it, bit annoying as each year they have a competition for who collects the most money at these events and consistently for the last 5 or so years I've been winning, lucks like the streak is over!
Sunday was similar, took to watching TV which is something I rarely ever so. Ended up watching all 3 of the 'Back to the Future' movies which I'd forgotten were so awesome. Ended up going to bed relatively early in an attempt to decreases the swelling on the joint before college the next day.
College today was similar to Friday, starting to get the hang of getting around on crutches, most people are quite considerate and generally try to help you which is good.
Out for two meals in the coming week, first is the County Explorer exec meal tomorrow in Preston followed by our Yeti unit meal on Thursday. Both Pizzerias so I reckon I could be all pizzia'd out by the end of the week..... more on them onece they been though!
Wednesday was the District Explorer Mini Moonlight. Congregated at Parbold and sorted teams eventually coming up with a crack squad of myself, Tom, Caleb, Rob & Dundee topically (and possibly controversily) named team 'Mohammed'! Check point was the Black Bul up near Mawdesley so we set off, up and over Parbold hill and down towards Wrightington before going round the eastern flank of the hill and then heading NW towards Mawdesley. Got to the checkpoint with no lives lost and quite a good entrance, coming out of somebody's gates across the road from the pub! Followed a similar route back but new we were going to be cutting it fine on time. We had to be in for 9.30, we crossed Stoney Lane just before this and were proceeding to leg it towards the church ploughing through whatever was in front of us.
I was in front and came to a drystone wall, I immeidietely jumped on top of it without thinking, I felt it begin to crumble below and fell to the ground on the other side amongst the rubble of the now destroyed wall. That was quite possibly one of the most painful moments of my life, I physically felt my knee bend the wrong way and something pop in the joint when I intially landed on it, I then, lying on the floor pressed it and felt something clck back into place, which caused further agony. Apparently according to the others it looked as if I'd fallen down a whole or something from behind. With the help of the rest of the team I managed to get to my feet although unable to flex or put any weight on my leg. We made our way through about 30m of dense bracken before reaching another wall at which point i decided I wasen't going to be able to make it the 500/600m back to the finish, this was really annoying as I reckon we were probably still winning at this point. Sent Tom and Caleb to go and get some help from the finish while I lay on another wall writhing in pain being consoled by Dundee and Rob. Help arrived soon in the form of Ricko, Leigh and a very smartly dressed Mark. The biggest problem was going to be getting me out of there so after looking for something to splint my leg with, to no avail Ricko convinced me that it was probably one of those times to call and ambulence. Soon after two parimedics and Carrington appeared with a backboard (solid stretcher). First they gaave me some gas, I can't remember exactly what it was but it had laughing gas in it and it was dam good! The guys then proceeded to carry me back to stoney lane over numerous fields, ditches, barbed wire fences and collapsed drystone walls. Respect to all of you!
Diagnosis at the hospital was that no fractures could be seen from the X-rays however there was a lot of internal bleeding around the joint and it was still too painful to see what damage, be it cartilige or ligament is actually done. Apparentely got to take it easy for a few weeks, on crutches for at least 3 and can't put weight on it for that amount of time aswell. At the moment its quite a novelty but I'm sure that will wear off!
Thanks to everybody for all their concern, been swamped with text messages, calls, e-mails and facebook posts in the last day!
Home from college on friday and straight out to Southport to see some people then back home to catch some people at a party before they left. Good few hours at Daniel's with Tom, Caleb, Joey, Katie and others before wandering back home in the early hours. Packed stuff for the weekend and got to bed.
Up at 7am to catch a train up to Penrith, met Phil and decided to sack off doing anything remotely outdoor'y due to the slightely moist conditions. Managed to blag ourselves into Penrith climbing wall for free and spent the morning there with Phil's housemate Pete. Went back to Phil's for some student style (burnt) lunch and then headed off early evening to Center Parcs where Phil managed to (once again) get us in for free. Never been to a Center Parcs type place before, its a bit weird, like a miniturised utopian gated community, apparently it has everything you could ever want, you should nver have to leave... Went swimming in the pool, lots of wave machines, slides and whirlpools! Got out and dried and met Speakman and Stubbs, went for some food at the Restaurant where Phil works; Rock Legend, pretty good food, had a big rack of ribs with some chicken, very protein heavy. Respect to Phil for getting it with 50% off! Went back to Phil's picking up Lewis on the way and then out into Penrith, went for a few drinks in quite a rough pub first before moving to our 'lock-in' social club where a very wasted Speakman bought the majority of the drinks. Got a Taxi back to phils about 3am leaving Phil with some of his associates. When we got back to his house myslef and Lew got a little bored so he decied it would be humerous to draw some fallice images on Phil's door while I removed the other from its hinges before with the help of Pete taking it downstair to the kitchen. Gave up waiting for Phil about 5 and fell asleep.
Got up with Lewis in the morning and left Phil to meet us at Blencathra, jumped in Speakman's van and went down to Keswick for a bit of gear borwsing and bacon butty, then up to Scales to meet Phil and the minubus ready for the ramble. Separted into too groups, ours nailed it up the combe and then over to scales tarn pausing just before the ridge. Then prceeded to take the purest of pure line over a very very moist sharp edge! Ash we were finishing the ridge it started to snow so dashed to the summit and hid in the shelter for a bit before going down Hallsfell ridge and back to the bus.
Photos on my Picasa Gallery.
Interesting journey home, bus was making some pretty scary knocking sounds so we pulled over at the services and called for rescue, apparently the wheel was about to fall off! Back in the bus now with tightened wheel bolts, back home 9sih.
Had a few hours to spare this morning so did some surfing on YouTube and found the following video:
Thought it was pretty cool, if you look at the date it was done in July! I was on Tower Ridge on August this year and there were only a few smatterings of snow clinging to the north face. Thinks its defentely something to aim to do in the future...
Friday night was the long awaited and prepared for final Greenland presentation, the last few weeks had been filled for many of us with e-mailing powerpoint slides backwards and forwards, writing words for what to say and hoping it would all go well. In the spirit of being ultra-prepared I wrote the final words of what I was going to say in the hours leading up to the presentation, before realizing that it was going to be dark in the room and I would have no chance of reading them! Managed ok though, made a few people laugh and said everything I wanted too. Everybody else was superb, especially Chris as the anchorman. Only over ran by half an hour which was pretty good by expedition standards!
Next day was the district climbing competition organized by Chris Phillips. Done at the pump house on dark lane it was a fantastic idea for an event and I think it went really well. Some really interesting routes set as well... by interesting I mean hard! Won the 16-18 years old section but was bested overall by a few points by David from Eclipse, turns out these competitions are not just about picking the hardest routes, its quite tactical! Managed to nail one of the spot prizes aswell for a few things - Calling Chris halfway up one of the routes and telling him it was a good competition, the crotch of my jeans exploding on a dyno and falling off one of the hardest routes in apparent 'committed style'. Superb day had by all, big respect to Chris for organizing it.
That evening I'd been invited to Dick's 60th party at his house, loitered down around 7/8ish to find a whole host of people. Many many scouty faces around. Chatted with Ray about life for a good hour or so about many things, mainly how much we'll all miss him when he finishes as ACC. Spent some time later in the evening reminiscing of Greenland with Phil, Julie and Ash before him and Danny broke out the guitars. I can't describe how much whiskey there was, I would guess well more than a bottle per person on the premisiss! Loitered home about 3.30AM to crash into bed and wake up around 2pm today. Superb evening.
Was hoping for a reletively easy week after DESA, didn't really get what I wanted though. Monday was spent sorting all the gear from the weekend, drying and airing equipment with Ken before returning it all to Dick's.
Tuesday was the district forum, good meeting, new set of folks running the show now, started to begin to feel quite old!!! Then down to the leader's meeting at the Plough to sort out finances from DESA and decide on a date for our Exec meal with Hugh. Home via Hugh's house to deliver spare food from DESA.
Spent wednesday sorting out the finishing touches for my part of the presentation and then attempting to write some of the words to go with it.
Thursday night was Yeti, the unit eveing is never really cancelled as even if the Leaders can't make we try and do things off our own backs under the guise of explorers anyhow. One of our unit, Graham, was in a production at Cardinal Newman college by coincidence that evening so several went to support him. There was two plays we watched with Graham being in the second one. Caleb had had a little to drink before we went and unfortuntely didn't get to enjoy the first one as he fell asleep (passed out)!!! Graham's was superb though, he played a really good part really well.
Superb weekend in Wales with the District Explorers. Organinsing the event wasen't as easy as expected though, there is far too much paperwork for this sort of thing!
Off on friday towards Wales, taking us about 2.5-3 hours to get to the bunkhouse in Ogwen. Then played about with huge blue curtains in an attempt to segregate up the place for girls/boys/over 18s. Planned what we were going to do tomarrow and got to bed. Got up to some reasonable weather however we knew it was going to turn soon from the weather report and from the front coming in. We first dropped Les off at the cottage, his plan being to go up and do both the Glyders before returning. I led the rest of the group up the North Ridge of Tryfan from Milstone Butress carpark. The team I took was pretty good, all of them having done varying amounts of stuff in the hills and they all moved pretty comfortably on the Scramble. A late addition to our party however was Ken Spencer, the DESCOM for Ormskirk, Ken said he wanted to do Tryfan however he was expecting he'd turn back after a short while... he was wrong. With Ken in tow and one of the party not feeling at their strongest progress wasen't superfast for the first few hours and we stopped to take in some of the sights of Tryfan, including everybody getting their photo taken on the Cannon. About 3ish, we hit the summit in some pretty awful conditions, I reckon it was gusting up towards 50mph and hail/sleet was beginning to come down. Bothy came out to warm everybody up and let them rest/recoup before setting off down towrds the col, decided to sack off Glyder Fach due to detieriating conditions, so ttok a righthand turn down towards the Cwm and then to Car-park. The amount of rain that was coming down was incredible, metcheck recons it was over 12mm in a few hours. Got back to the Bus jsut after 5pm and just before we were going to loose the light, everybody buzzing.
That evening Ken cooked us up a superb feast of curry + rice and muchoss naan bread. Great to have everybody sat round the table together talking about the day.
The next morning Ash and Martin arrived to lend a hand, we had decided that it would be good to try and get everybody up Snowdon as it would give all of them a real sense of achievement. Ash took one group up Crib Goch and I took the other up the Pyg Track. After about 600/700m there was snow lying on the ground and by the time we got to the top there was a good few inches in places. This unfortnately made the steps on the Pyg track above the Glaslyn very slippy making 2 of our party quite nervous, made me glad i'd put a 16ft sling in at the last minute but wishing I'd taken two! Had to dog-lead one of them to the summit from their. Suffice to say everubody felt they had really achieved something, it felt like a real mountain to all of them being covered in snow on top depsite the building work being done on the cafe next door! Decided to take the path back down to Llanberis rather than back down the Pyg track, eventually getting down just before 5pm to be meeted by Les in the bus.
Shot back to the bunkhouse and packed stuff, said by and thanks to everybody and then dove in Ash's car with Carrington in an attempt to get back to Preston for the Greenland dress-rehearsal. Made good time and called a Pizza Hut on the way to pick up a huge amount on Pizza for tea. Managed to wing rehearsal despite writing most of what I was going to say in the back of Ash's car that day. Back home 10ish to crash out absolutely knackered.
Really hectic week, and as I can foresee hectic next few days as well!
Been seriously organizing DESA, the District Explorer Scout Activity weekend for a few months now. Its really surprised me how much work goes into preparing an event like that, the amount of paperwork is huge, and the biggest thing I've lernt is getting money and commitment out of people is like trying to get blood out of a stone! Looks like everything is going to go ahead now, probably not going to be under-budget but if everybody has a good weekend it shouldn't really matter. (There'll be a entry on here about the weekend soon after I get back I suspect.)
Spent this afternoon getting all the group kit ready, my room is now full of ropes, harnesses, helmets, my rack, several Hyperspace tents and one of those blue expedition barrels!
The other big thing looming over a lot of people at the moment in the Greenland Presentation which is happening next Friday at the UCLAN lecture theater in Preston. This means that for the last few days Powerpoint has been running constantly on my computer as I've been doing some parts for the presentation, spent far too many hours sifting through the terrabytes worth of photos in the expedition gallery looking for just the right shot. Hopefully these should be done by later tonight, leaving me only the words to write before the dress-rehearsal on Sunday.
Linked to this I suppose is the our Duke of Edinburgh, for those of you that don't know myself, Carrington, David M and Harriet did our DofE Gold expedition while in Renland. This was a superb experience, being able to roam the Arctic independately within a group of peers is supercool in my opinon especially since we were doing it for something that most groups don't even leave the country for!
Downside to this was that to complete the expedition side of the award we needed to conduct a project while on our trip, we chose to study the glaciology of the Edward Bailey, the largest glacier on Renland. This unfortunately has become a chore of sorts, taking me back to time of GCSE and AS level geography coursework and while the stuff is interesting its just that little bit tedious.
Its probably not a good sign of my dedication to my education that I only mention that College related stuff here. Been putting off doing my UCAs application for ages now, need to get down to it, already missed the internal college deadline! So far have decided on 4 universities but need to find that illusive 5th one...
Spent the morning in college today re-siting a Physics exam, went quite well so hopefully I nailed it but we'll have to wait and see.
To top the last few days off came home tonight to find my cat ill, took him to the vets to get told that he has heart failure, probably not going to last for any more than the next few days. He's had a good life though, being older than me; which is pretty old for a cat!
Lets hope things start to calm down a bit...
Last night was our thrown together party for Caleb's 18th. After having a DESA meeting with Ken an Les in the morning I spent the rest of the day in Southport with Tom, Rob an Kim trying to find a place that would ice a picture of falice Caleb onto a cake for us and then delivering it to the restaurant where he was going for a meal later with his girlfriend. We'd expected him to have made a booking but he hadn't so we had a to book a table for him and his missus!
Back to Caleb/Rob's house, nobody was answering the door so I decided to climb onto his roof and through an upstairs window, assuming he was asleep or couldn't hear us knocking.... turned out he was actually out! Made ourselves at home watching TV an eating until he returned followed shortly by Caleb. The evening continued with more Die Hard, including an awesome fan video and some very funky chocolate brownies!
Anybody thats a fan of Die Hard should defentely watch this...!
Remembrance Sunday today, its one of the two times, along with St. Georges Day that as Scouts we're asked to go to church, and it my opinon its much more important than the aforementioned.
Along with all the sections of the 44th (Yeti's feeder group) we paraded through the village... in the rain and laid our wreaths on the monument before going into church. Service as usual, not particularly exciting but quite meaningful if you think why your there.
Thursday night is Yeti night. Within Yeti theres a group of lads known as the 'Marines', for those of you that have been to any district event there the ones in camaflauge gear, face paint and probably singing! Some say there quite intense. Last year two of them ran a 'Marine Night' for us at the Lesiure Lakes in Mere Brow, doing lots of running, PT, stress positions in the lake and wrestling. All in Febuary, suffice to say it was a bit chilly!
Met Ali and Mark in Newburgh on Friday evening and set off with haste to Peak District. Took us about 1hr30 to get down there. Got a phone call on the way from Chris saying he had got off at the wrong station due to being engrossed in Harry Potter and was walking to the campsite.
Blogs seem to be everywhere and everybody seems to have them. I've tried a few before; the likes of MSN Spaces and Wordpress and never really kept them up to date. I imagine people that are disciplined enough to write diaries are quite good at blogging, thats not really me though! Anyhow, we'll see how this goes. I've set myself a target of a blog a week, meaning this time next year there should be 52 entries on here..... hopefully!
