(for accompanying photos, see http://www.facebook.com/media/set/?set=a.10150701600995244.700941.676350243&l=8a14657a30)

I bought a car.

I hate cars.

They pollute, they take up space, their steel and glass frames insulate the occupants in a bubble from their environment. They’ve contributed to the destruction of communities, and enabled the urban sprawl which blights the most beautiful of landscapes. Every day I see the rush hour images of thousands of cars, stationary, engines chugging while the sole occupant wonders what everyone else is disrupting his Very Important Journey. When motorists complain of traffic, they pull a cheap magic trick on themselves, the assistant being sawed in half, the rabbit in the hat; they fool themselves that they are stuck in traffic. Willfully, they ignore the fake box, the velvet curtain, the fact that they are stuck in traffic because they are the traffic.

Busses, trains, taxis, bikes, pedestrians, car poolers: take your gold star at reception. That lone motorist, you’re part of the problem. And no, that wider road that will take a larger number of cars into a fixed space, no, that’s not the solution. Your car, moving or parked, uses expensive real estate. For free.

Cars suck.

I hate cars.

But. In the reality of Sydney and Australia, access to a car seems currently to be a genuine need.

So I bought a car.

The one good thing I can think about cars, is that they are pretty freaking good at being able to carry adult toys to beautiful environs for an immersion in nature. There’s a certain irony there. And that irony was the primary reason I bought my 1999 Olympic edition Holden Vectra, or, Juan Antonio Samaranch, as I sometimes call him. Rather than transport from A to B, it provides the escape from A and B, driving up mountains, into the country, carrying tents, bikes, surfboards and now, skis.

And so begins our story. Munching on a hunk of meat carved off the impromptu roasting spit, my ex nemesis from a slightly more immature time, now friend, Charlie invited me on a ski trip.

“No thanks”, said I, using the excuse that I don’t have a proper job to be able to take expensive holidays from. “Can’t really afford it at the moment.” In addition to being savagely disappointing the vast majority of the time, the snow is prohibitively expensive in Australia. After snowboarding in the dry powder of Europe and Canada, I couldn’t’ afford it in more ways than one.

“Afford? We’re going backcountry. The only cost is petrol and food”, Charlie shot back.

I find it a sign of maturing maturity that I now attempt to talk myself out of holidays instead of in to them.

He continued.. “It’ll be awesome, 5 of us in Gus’s car” Gus, the fellow unemployed drifter, lends a knowing nod. “Down on Friday, back Wednesday night”.

But I had the ace. “I can’t ski”

“Ahh, you’re fit enough, you’ll be fine” replied Charlie, it was like listening to a recording of myself convincing some other sucker to do something dangerous.

“But the Tour. Le Tour de France starts that weekend. I can’t miss it”. Which is true, the whole of the year builds and falls away from mountainous crescendo in July of Alps and Pyrneness in Lachlanland.

“First 5 stages are flat, sprinters stages, you won’t be missing much”.

And that’s where I stopped arguing, if the tour de France couldn’t provide a good excuse, there’s not much else on this planet that could either. A few days of dithering and I sent the email indicating that I was in.

The trip started like any other.  Supplies were bought, a dinner was had and we set off. Our team was Connie, Charlie’s girlfriend who was the recipient of Charles’s benovelence up in Coonamble. She was sick with the flu and thoughtful Charlie had reserved her a bit of the nice concrete in the open, sub zero carport.  Julian McGee, a  classic literature fan / school teacher hitherto unknown to me, but with a name that makes me still giggle. Charlie who seems to be a recurring figure in other’s crazy outdoor misadventures. Sarah, the girl with the peanut allergy that Gus and Charlie had just purchased a lot of nut contaminated food for. And Gus, who like me, lives with his parents, is unemployedish and has no real prospects.

 Connie and Sarah off in one car, talking about dresses, soap operas and period pain With Gus. Jules and Charlie and I in the other, discussing the important moral issues of the day. Issues related to, but not only, the opening of beer bottles while driving with the seat belt buckle.

A misty drive along the Monaro and we were in Cooma at the slightly later hour of 2am, taking full advantage of the 24 hour ski hire. Up the hill to the picnic stop that would provide our camp for the night, the backend of Juan Antonino providing the warm bosom of sleep before the early morning sunrise above the clouds took us in and reminded us of that reason we leave the city. A reminder that’s always too shortly lived.

Sunrises. Who doesn't like them?

But, no time for niceties, we figured we wouldn’t need snow chains, but what the hell, while the bacon and egg rolls were cooking, we’d get ‘em just in case. And we were off, into the backcountry, using the 5 year old, hand scrawled directions on the back of a work printout as our guide. The road turned from highway, to a left onto a undulating road, to gravel, to dirt. Then some more dirt, bumpy dirt and then a massive hill of bumpy dirt, the downslope of which got me thinking that perhaps I should have been a little more obvious with my parents when angling for the use of their brand new 4wd.

We got down, the hill in the rear vision mirror looking suspiciously larger in reverse, thinking “Well, we’ll cross that bridge when we get to it in 5 days” Looking forward, we had the immediate concerns of the world’s narrowest car bridge over the Gungarlan river. Passing with flying colours, we zipped up the hill to the first and shallower of two river crossings.

“What’s the deal with fording?” I asked, “Do I go at it full speed and just hammer across?” I said, joking, expecting the boring answer that always comes back in life of “slow and steady”.

“Um yeah, I guess so”.

Mental note: never ask for life advice from Charlie and Jules again.

And boom. We flew through the little creek. It had the same thrill as jumping in a puddle with gumboots on.

Over the hill and we came to the next river crossing. We stopped and surveyed it, a bit of knuckle gnawing going on; This one was much wider, 10-15 metres wide, but didn’t look too threatening with the trickle of snow melt bubbling over the river rocks. Gnawing over, indecision defeated, we hit it at a good speed again, feeling more like we were on a boat than in my little one previous lady driver car. Our journey seemed to last for longer than it should of. A pregnant pause. But wheels gripped, water was displaced and little Jaun made it up and out.

“Todos bien, Juan. Todos bien”.

Gus, driving with the windows down. That's confidence

Gus, with his decommissioned police wagon, made short work of the river, plowing through it like it was a student protest at a G8 summit. After the initial celebration of clearing the river, we spied snow on the hills nearby, boom! We were on!

After three attempts at a snow touched track, Juan gave up and took a snuggled park on the side of the road. We put the snow chains on in the unlikely event that a lot of snow fell and we had to get out, we could. After the exponential pfaff that 6 people can generate, we set off. Hiking up into the mountain range, skis strapped firmly to our packs, we wouldn’t be needing them right now. Instead we hiked up and over, up and up, over some fences until we hit a patch where there was slightly more snow than dirt.  Skis were put on, and we plodded  until we hit a plain with a slight downhill slope, a decent snow cover.  The sky was big with a big blue cover, the speed and thrills of snowboarding easily satisfied in this moment on barely moving skis.

Skiing, at last!

And then the skis came off. We walked and climbed and then searched for a camp in the high winds that had come up around sunset. The perfect one was found. Or rather, we had found a perfect rock to have a massive fire behind. In fact, massive doesn’t really do the funeral pyre of several trees justice. It was an Epic fire. The rock had a dead tree sticking out from the base, which became our mission to burn down.

Charlie and the fire

The four litres of port that we were carrying were very quickly lightened from our packs and in depth discussions relating to the legalization of drugs, the awesome attractiveness of Colin Firth’s Mr Darcy, discussions of amputees in hotel bars, men with scars and the polarizing sexuality of Lyndsay Lohan raised argument and adoration until the previously steadfast tree quavered. Conversation stopped. The branches dropped again. Stuttering again and the tree fell into the fire as we hooted in agreement! Fire! Fire! Fire! Which promoted the question – what man doesn’t like making a fire? And conversely, why is it that women don’t seem to actively get the same joy of loading a fire? Important questions that I pondered for several seconds before passing out next to a snoring Jules.

With heavy heads, the next day was underway. Again with the skis off and the boots on for some more hiking. This wasn’t turning out to be much of a ski trip, but within an hour or two, we were above the ridgeline, carpets of white snow not too far away. Some slogging up hill and we were there, all skiing uphill in the ridgelines surrounding mount Jagungle. It was the real start of the trip and we were thankful for it.

Except that Charlie and Julian were dragging the chain, no doubt discussing Lindsay Lohan. We waited. And waited some more until it seemed something even more serious was going on. Gus skied down to investigate. When you hear the words “Oh, Shit!” screamed loud above the wind, something is up. Or out as the case was – Jules had broken his ski when crossing above a hole. Not just a little crack, it was snapped in two. Game over. Return to Go, do not collect $200.

Of course, when you have several sticks of good quality salami for lunch, such problems don’t seem so bad. And with each fatty morsel, it became obvious that we needed to get out, get to the cars and find some new skis and a new adventure to go on. An unavoidable shame, but life goes on when you have a pack full of good chocolate.  And so we made our way down a barely snow covered mountain, my first attempt at going down hill on skis providing to be an exercise in frustration that had no equal. Reminiscent of building a fence and repeatedly hitting my thumb with a hammer, the droned words of “FAAAAARK” echoed out through the valley as I fell, got up, fell got up and fell and then fell before I could get up again. Learning to ski on a technical, tree filled, downhill with a massive pack on your back probably isn’t the most encouraging lesson one can invite. I wanted to be alone with my frustration, lest I tear someone else’s hair out. But after the most frustrating time in my life, we were again plodding out, and with some chocolate and whisky, I was now seeing the funny side of it.

And rather than get into the cars and drive out, late at night for a late night camp somewhere cold and windy, we arrived at an alpine hut. Complete with fireplace, benches and sleeping area, Cesjack’s hut provided a warm room for some good times. Our hangovers finally receeding, we ate like Kings and slept like Kings who sleep in sleeping bags in a cold Alpine hut while the wind and rain hammer hard on the tin roof.

An enjoyable walk out to the Cars started and finished without event. Given my relative proficiency with walking compared to skiing (31 odd years, vs 2 hours) I was happy to be getting my heels in dirt again, finding myself generally swearing a lot less than I had the previous day. Back at the cars, we tucked into lamingtons, enjoyed a beer and laughed at our misfortune. A broken ski! What else couuld happen?

Oh the casual hilarity of that moment. As if we knew what misfortune was…. 

The discussion of Correlation and Causation are one of the subjects I wished could be drilled into High School Students more. A good example of this is herbal (indeed, most) cold and flu medicine. We get sick, mostly unbeknown to us at the time, we generally progress back to our normal level of health in two weeks. It’s around the one week mark that we start recovery and progressively feel better. But that first week of sickness is hell and we load up on remedies. Some of these might alleviate the discomfort of symptoms, and after a couple of days, we start to see some improvement in our health. Thing is, we tend to take such actions around the 4-5 mark of our sickness. The relative improvement we see would have happened anyway, the regression to the mean of our general health. Nominally this is the case and this is largely a correlated effect between treatment and health.  We were going to get better anyways, it just so happened that we started taking the herbal medicine around the same time we would have expected to get better. Because we’re humans and we like to believe in solutions, we often mistake the relationship as being a cause and effect. Ie. I take the medicine and the effect is that I get better. Of course, your mileage may vary, your cold might need real treatment and the real drugs might have some effect.

While the jury is most definitely out on the efficacy of cold and flu remedies and if we see a causal effect, or a correlated recovery, there are other good examples of causal relationships. One of these is rain. When it rains a lot, the effect is that rivers carry more water.

It was this relationship I pondered as we looked out over the now much wider and much deeper river that we had crossed on the way in. More rain = higher water levels. Higher water levels + cold weather   + sleet = river impassable. River impassable = sitting in car, sipping on whisky. Indeed, when the water level reached over Charlie’s knee before he turned around, we were in for a wait, but given that it stopped raining a while ago, we figured that the waters would recede. So we waited.  And waited. Turned the heater on and waited. Sipped whisky and waited.

Looking at the previously marked spot, the water was receding. Not by much.

We waited and waited some more.

The water receded some more. And we waited.

We checked the scrawled instructions again. Keep right (which was on the way in) on the river crossing. Getting out, I checked the depth of the alternate route through the river. It was much shallower. Deeper than when we came through originally, but encouraging to an impatient man.

We waited. It sleeted. The wind picked up and we waited.

“Fuck it, let’s do it”.

Jules and Charlie got out of the car. Everyone was primed to push in case we got stuck. I reversed a little, reved up, took a moment to make sure the doors were closed, waited, took a deep breath and then took off like a rocket. A sluggish rocket. A Sluggish rocket in the mud with the handbrake still on. Literally, the handbrake was still on. I reversed again, took a deep breath, made sure that the handbrake was off and took off. Sliding out a little into the pre corner I hit the water with speed, displacing a lot of water, but still ploughing through, the hot engine turning the cold water to steam as we boated through. It looked good, we were going to make it, we got to the shallow point of the river and I felt like Captain Nemo surfacing. We were going to make it! We were going to make it!

Another real life causal relationship is the relationship between a car’s engine and the speed of the wheels on the car. When the engine stops (and submerged under water in our case) the wheels stop as well.  And there I was, in the river, in my car, with the engine stopped.

But I wasn’t alone and within seconds, I could see the underwear clad bare legs of my friends jump into the freezing river run over and start pushing me and my car. “Heave” came out the call as though it was a whale being pushed up the slip. There was movement, we rolled forward. We moved forward again, the engine got out of the water. The howls of cold water yelled as we move forward, I tried the ignition. Fail. I tried again. Splutter. I tried again. Splutter Splutter. They pushed, I tried and the Splutter turned to a spit and then a turn and then a cough. Juan Antonio lived! He breathed and he pulled himself the rest of the way out of the river!

The heat was cranked and people jumped inside. To warm up. White flesh turned pink in the icy water. We waited, warmed, laughed and clapped!

It was Gus’s turn. And rather than guess what was going through his head, I’ll just show the video:

Gus vs The River from Lachlan Yates on Vimeo.

 

We pushed and pushed. Felt the pain in our cold feet on the riverbed. Pushing and pushing, we made little difference. Juan Antonio’s slight, if corrupt, Olympic administrator’s frame was replaced with the bullish stature of a Donut eating cop who’d taken a shine to the new Krispy Kreme in the Penrith Panther’s carpark.  He was not for the turning. 

There was no starting the engine. We regouped in the warm of the car, leaving Gus to despondently wander around barefoot in the snow. This was not the result we had expected.

Weighing the options, we decided the best course of action was to the six of us and luggage into my car and drive out to get help. And swig the rest of the whisky. That was going to help. Well, I was worried that I’d be over the limit, but we wouldn’t have to worry about that until we got to the main road. Baby steps.

We laughed at our misfortune and trundled off down the road. Steak and chips was on the menu at the pub that we were going to stop at. Just a matter of getting this car with all this weight up and over the big hill we had driven in on. But no matter, that’s 5 people who can push, we’d be fine.

We rounded the corner to see the second river, the smaller, shallower one.

Except while the river was smaller, it was anything but shallower. Shit. It was starting to get dark, the storm was now really moving in. The sleet had turned to snow. Everyone got out to lighten the load. Gus fumbled for his shoes while I weighed my options.

I looked into the back seat. “What do you reckon, Gussy? Should I just go for it?”

Gus laughed. I’m not sure what kind of laugh it was.

“Fuck it. Let’s do it” I didn’t wait for him to get ready. I floored it, rounded the corner, hit the river at speed, watched the bonnet completely go underwater. Felt the car float up, lose contact with the road, fall back down, and heard the now too familiar sound of an engine dying underwater.

Perhaps my cavalier attitude was better suited to horses and not driving cars through rivers.

So there we were. Six of us. Two cars stuck and semi submerged in rivers, the sun setting, a wild storm chasing us and we were wet. Shit.

Shit.

Shit.

At least now we didn’t have to worry about too many options before us. We had to camp here, now, eat some food and then think about it in the morning. I sat in the front seat as Gus passed me packs from inside the car, which I then passed out to Connie who was kneeling on the bonnet.  Tents were readied. I looked at my poor metal friend in the river. Turning the ignition elicited a click of acknowledgement that I’d done something, but nothing more. That engine wasn’t starting anytime soon. It was stuck, we were stuck.

Reality is, that I didn’t feel too bad. Life always has a way of working this kind of thing out. I’ve been losing wallets in all corners of the globe for years now and the cosmos always has a way of bringing it back to me. I had temporary setbacks, but I haven’t actually lost a wallet since I was a teenager. And if there’s one man luckier than me in this world, it’s Angus Keenan. The guy could fall out of an aeroplane and somehow land in a pillow filled hot air balloon basket, captained by troupe of models who were complaining that they had too much beer and not enough men.

I’ll admit that I did start to get a little bit worried that our luck had run out. And then, through the dark, some headlights shone through the blizzard.

I wasn’t the least surprised to see a 4wd pull up on this one way street in the middle of nowhere, in a viscous storm, at 8pm on a Monday night. That was always going to happen, and of course he had a towing chain the back, and of course he was going to pull us out of the river. This is Gus and Me, we’re talking about here. 

And that was that, a couple of hours later, our cars were out of the river, thanks to old man Roy. He had heard the forecasts for lots of snow and decided to make the trip up from Canberra to his lodge in the now aptly named Snowy Vale. We talked a little about our plans, but right now, it was good that our cars were out of the water. “Having our cars out of rivers is a good thing” I repeated myself.  Further than that, we weren’t quite sure what we were going to do.

Gus and I walked back to camp in the storm, munched down on some dinner and I rested on Sarah’s bed in my wet gear. Life was good as Gus and I entertained ourselves with the Snake game on my Nokia.

A long sleepless night in a wet tent is good for reading books. Starting and Finishing Animal Farm, I opened the flap of the tent to see a white landscape. Snow all around this plain where scrub had previously been our friend. It was beautiful.

Our tent in the morning

It was beautifully rugged. By fortune rather than good planning, our car had broken down in the lee of a hill, out of the wind of the savage storm. We were being spared the worst of it, and by golly the worst of it was wild. Here’s a short clip of the morning, when it was nice and pleasant. I thought this strong at the time, but this was the calm storm before the Storm.

Snowy Mountains panorama from Lachlan Yates on Vimeo.

 

We were beautifully snowed in, for, even in the unlikely event my car would start, there would be no way we could drive it out now. Thankfully I didn’t have to ponder too long as Connie and Sarah cooked up breakfast and inhaled gas fumes in the back of the car. A fresh cup of coffee out in the snow makes everything seem okay. I mean, it was Woolworth’s Select Coffee, so it was okay. A single origin Yemeni would have made it better, but in this case, wankers can’t be choosers.

Not long after, Roy turned up with his friend Mick from the Lodge. Mick agreed that we were in a fairly significant spot of bother. We popped the hood to my car, tried to start it and they pushed, prodded and discussed the air filter, the starter, the distributor cap, the solenoid, pipes, tubes, batteries, fuel pump. I nodded in a knowingly attempt, knowing that while I can talk at length about the various types of English and Italian bicycle bottom bracket lengths, widths and threading, car engines are a bit of a mystery to me. One big on and off switch. And mine was currently firmly in the Off position.

Mick suggested that they get his truck and attempt to tow us out of the park. And he said this with the air of delight and old man with too many tools has. He probably had a winch that he’d been waiting years to use in anger, and dammit if this snow was going to get in his way. As Charlie remarked of their stubbornness and cavalier approach to fixing our problems:

 “It was like looking in the mirror in 30 years time”

And off they went, skiing back up the mountain to their lodge, to get their truck, to pull us out. Two hours up, two hours back. Sarah, Jules and I sat in the car as Connie, Gus and Charlie skied up with them. I went for a cheeky ski practice, we read books, I ate half a block of cheese, we waited. 4 hours. 5 hours.  6 hours. It’s quite a long time in the cramped confines of a car trapped in the snow. We found a hidden bar of chocolate that perilously contained peanuts. Jules and I ate it, we hope Sarah wouldn’t die.

Eventually Gus and Connie turned up. They had skied off, but it was more than likely that the 4wd had got bogged down in the snow. We were going to ski up to the lodge and spend the night there.  It was about an hour away, so we were on a mission. A hour of skiing in this weather and we’d be inside a nice lodge, a roaring fire and a nice cup of tea to boot.

We readied our things, I said a brief goodbye to Juan Antonio and we were off. Not wanting to slow the group down my clumsy skiing, I set off first, turned the corner and felt the full blast of a storm that had risen in intensity. I’ve seen my share of weather. I once got caught in a blizzard on the top of the Coquihalla pass and got snowed-in at the aptly named town of Hope in Canada. I suffered lashings of Hurricane Stan as it passed through Nicaragua. I even spent 5 years in London where it seemed that the sun never shon. But my god, I have never seen a storm like that afternoon. Such was the ferocity of the wind. Sarah, who was behind me, an experienced backcountry skier, literally got blown off her feet and into a ditch. The snow came in horizontally and stung. I reached a gate and waited for the others. Sarah was behind me, stocks in the air. When she got closer and realized it was Connie, and with a very curt German telling to, she told me off for getting ahead of the group. I thought about protesting my case, but at that moment, she reminded me of an angry school teacher. I endeavored to do better.

We regrouped and pushed on. It was now past 5pm and from our slow progress, it was obvious that we’d be doing the last bit of the journey in the dark.

Sarah wasn’t taking a back seat. “Gus, you’re sure you can find this place”

With a tone that implied a less than 100% assurance, he replied “Yeah”

She persisted “Gus, are you sure that, even in a whiteout, you can find this place”.

“Yep”.

In for a penny, in for a pound, we pressed on.  Crossing a plain towards Gus’s stricken car, we were even more exposed to the growing storm. Words can’t really do the experience justice, suffice to say that I’d be happy never to have to deal with 80km/h winds in the snow again.

We pushed along the plain and up the next ridgeline. Deep snow around, it seemed hard to believe that we had all driven up here just a few days earlier. We reached the plateau to find the weather even worse. We weren’t panicking, but we were all wearing head torches now. Gus in the lead, then me, then Sarah, Jules and Connie. 5 light bulbs in the darkness, looking for a crazy looking tree that marked the turnoff for the lodge.

Though I was soaked to the bone, I could taste the tea and feel the warmth of the fire. Luxury was nary a bend or two away.

That the path didn’t look familiar to me at all was a little disconcerting. That the path didn’t look familiar to Gus or Connie, who had been through here two hours ago was even more so. We looked around. Gus did a quick scout around, leaving four headlamps in the snow.

We weren’t exactly lost. But we didn’t know where we were. We didn’t know where the turnoff to the lodge was. We could barely see the trees 3 metres away. It was time to make some hard decisions.  We had to abadon hope of finding the turnoff and the lodge. We had to turn around and go back slightly down the hill, find a quiet spot and make camp. It was foolish to do anything else.  We turned around in the deep powder snow and Gus headed off while I tripped, falling in the deep snow.

“Yo, stop” I yelled out, picking myself and my heavy back out of the quicksand-like powder.

I looked up to see everyone pushing on, they hadn’t heard me, they were leaving me. Truth be told, it probably wasn’t that perilous a situation, but this being my first time on skis, trapped in a snowdrift, in a blizzard, watching any experience nearby fade off in 4 lightbulbs, I was a little concerned.

“WAIT” I bellowed with a little more urgency. This time they heard me, thankfully they couldn’t hear my heart.  

What the hell happened? When most of my friends and family are getting married, buying houses, having children, being grownup and responsible, I’m here. And this isn’t even fun anymore.

I struggled up and we pushed on down the hill.

Setting up camp was a logistical nightmare. The wind was strong and only got stronger. We built a snow wall to deflect the wind, we filled plastic bags with snow and buried them for guy ropes. Pegs were supplanted with upturned stocks, buried in the ground. Everything was wet. We clambered into two cramped tents, wet sleeping bags, wet clothes. We could hear buffeting winds coming from a while away. The trees at the base of the hill would thrash around, the wind would move up the hill, the thrash would reach a crescendo and the tent would shake as though tearing in two. Cooking was out of the question. A box of Rivita, a stick of Salami and some chocolate would have to be it. We were actually rationing our food now. Books being our only flat surface, we cut up on them.  Laughing at things, laughing at our predicament, I joked the joke that we’d said a few times already. “Well, how bad could things get now” but this started to sound a little ominous. If things did get any worse, we’d be in some pretty serious trouble.

Salami a la paperback

And that was how we spent the night. Three sardines in a tent, when one of us rolled over, the other two were obliged. The tent shook, I barely slept a wink in that long dark night.

But even the longest, darkest, nights have a sunrise. And it was a surprised Charlie that was the voice outside the tent in the morning. He’d spent the night in the lodge, sat by the fire, and drank the tea that I’d been dreaming of. F*cker. Mick and Roy were not long off, remarked that they hadn’t seen a storm like this in the area since they build their lodge in 1989. All three amazed that we’d attempted to come up so late. It had been rather foolish.

 The weather had dropped somewhat, still viscous, but a friendly type of viscous compared to the previous night.  The sun was shining and we had a plan. Get to the top of Nimmo Hill, make a call to a guy called Mark and he would drive up some of the way to pick us up.

And there began our day of skiing. With packs lightened, headway was easy. I found picking up skiing to be quite easy when not trapped in the darkness and then wind at our back practically pushed us out of the park. We passed our cars, dead in the snow, and skied out. Climbing Nimmo Hill, we saw what destruction the storm had brought. Not only had trees been uprooted and strewn across the path, some of these great trees had been literally snapped in two above the ground. It was a short story of our weekend.

In that forest of snow gums, we had some peace and I felt more than a little love for our alpine region. The special silence that you get when snow falls in a forest, the stillness, the quiet, the peace.

Snowfalling in forests. 

And that was that.  Where smartphones ran out of batter and had no signal, the trusty Nokia made a phone call, Mark picked us up from where the snow level stopped and drove us to Cooma. Returning my boots, I walk around in socks. My nearest pair of shoes stuck behind a mountain of snow, lying wet in the boot of my car.

We had a beer, laughed at the rediculous of the situation. Laughing at the fact that our cars are still behind a mountain, the highest base since 1990 with more snow to come. Still Laughing. Still laughing at the fact that we don't know when we'll get them back.

Laughing. All the way to the bus stop.

 

A jazz-muzak version of Feliz Navidad plays over the speakers in the brand new Starbucks of Xiamen, the first in Southern China. Located in a giant 4 storey building that overlooks the picturesque harbour, the entrance is lined with green carpet and flowers, tailings of the premier opening. Green coffee themed drinks line the counter, the queue stretching back scores of people. The carpet, the queues, the coffee, It's a complete absurdity. One that is not too out of place here in this huge mystery of a country. It's an absurdity that I'm here in the first place.

It's the usual story:

Boy makes website, creates blog. Boy travels the world, filling blog with stories of other places. Boy stops travelling, stops writing. Website boring. Lachlan boring.

 

And so, a new one is created as a small holiday project.

More things to follow soon. Tales from China, Asia and the couch (whenever I get one).

We spied him out of the corner of our eye.

We were sitting down enjoying our well earned 5 o'clock beer in the garden of the Milano Hotel in Anuradhapura in Northern Sri Lanka. We had left the beaches and the pink tourists of the south coast behind and obtained our Indian travel visas. We' watched 'Avatar' at the cinema, laughing at the absurdly named planet 'Pandora' and the insultingly obvious mineral called 'unobtainium', cheering and clapping with the chaste, modest, local crowd as the two main characters kissed for the first time.

We'd had the third of our musketeers disappear into the smoke. A baby elephant had taken a shine to Jackson’s company and a desire to headbutt me in the dying sunlight of a big day. By chance we had wandered into a local cricket ground to watch some young kids play and  in doing so, bumped into a coach that had convinced a young cricketer named Muttiah Muralitharan to give up fast bowling and batting at the age of 15 to take up spin bowling and become the greatest bowler of all time.

We had left Kandy behind, the town seemingly devoted to the storage of a tooth that once belonged to The Buddha, we'd seen the sun set and sun rise over the jaw droopingly beautiful Sigiriya – a thousand year old city and monastery built atop a massive boulder. We (or more correctly, 'I') had lamented on the fact that there seemed to be so few places where we could get a beer to end the day with. Bus upon rickety bus we had taken, overtaking on blind corners, an unwavering faith in reincarnation pushing the driver on to our destination.

Figure 1. Sigiriya.

We spied out him of the corner of our eye, carrying a cricket bat.

Game on!

We leapt out from our chairs and skipped down the drive to meet this young man of 8 years old. As is the case in Sri Lanka, within 30 seconds of leaving our beer behind, we had set up a wicket in the middle of the street and started a game of impromptu street cricket. Locals that walked past jumped into our game. Jackson talked up a storm, bowled hard at our wickets fashioned from a garden chair. Jackson batted confidently at the crease as the workers of the hotel railed down balls upon him. I with all the talent I could muster, couldn't bowl at all and when batting, struggled to hit the ball and when I did, very juniorly hit them for six, forcing us to search the front gardens of the surrounding houses.

A great game. I put my wallet down on the side of the road as we played the sunlight away.

All good travel stories require the loss of a wallet at some point. To further this point, I walked away from my wallet with a spring in my step, leaving it there to have its own travel adventure. We finished our beer, shared another one and went to our room to enjoy the luxury of watching Al Jazeera before heading out for a spot of dinner in the local roti house.

There was a knock on the door. My wallet! It had returned. For some reason, no matter how many times I leave my wallet somewhere, it always comes back to say hello to me. I put this good karma down to having been someone very nice in a past life. It was a welcome return and the three of us – Jackson, my wallet and I went into a great sleep in the warm air of Anuradhapura.

Waking up to have Jackson complain about more mosquito bites, 'Cheeky buggers' is what I said when I realised that the money in my wallet was now gone. Always finding the silver lining to a grey wallet cloud, the money I lost was clearly worth the inconvenience of having to replace the cards and identification contained within. It was when Jackson couldn't find the cash that I'd given him the previous night that something twigged. I actually had all my money the previous night after getting my wallet back. The only explanation was that while we had been sleeping, someone had come into our room and brazenly stolen the money from us. It didn't seem possible, but when we counted back our steps, the bedroom door had been ajar when we'd woken up and there was no other explanation. I should have felt a little violated that this had happened, but instead I had a cool anger that someone was trying to disrupt the good direction that my travels in Sri Lanka had been taking.

Robbed!

Figure 2: It was like playing the French in football

This was worse for Jackson. While I had already fallen in love with this beautiful little island of friendly people, he was still making up his mind whether he liked it or not. The thief had taken some money for us, but also made a significant withdrawal in the happiness account of Jackson's bank. We politely got angry with the hotel staff knowing that it would be to no avail – they had honestly returned my wallet earlier, full of cash. They felt terrible, we weren't happy and I was beginning to think that in my past life I mustn't have been as perfect as I thought I was. In a situation like this, there is very little you can do apart from hire some bikes and go for a bike ride.

And that's what we did. Like every single bike ride I've ever been on, the frustration and anger ebbed away little by little with every pedal stroke. We rode through town, over the railway and in the direction of a large dome shape of bricks. We thought that if we could get away without having to buy the $25 entry fee, we'd feel a little bit better about the money we lost. Sure, Anuradhapura was one of the great sites of the ancient world, several thousand years old and beautiful beyond belief, but if we were able to scam our way in for free, we were sure as hell going to try.

We checked the map. Got a little lost and ended up at a road that led to a set of gates that led to a Bodhi tree. The religious ignoramus that I am, I didn't know that the bodhi tree is the species of tree that the Buddha gained enlightenment under. In a nutshell, Buddha was a guy who lived in Northern India, had a wife and family, left them and went on the road. He thought about life a bit, and came up with a philosophy of living. H worked on being happy and content – not a bad life really. After a while, like Newton getting hit in the head with an apple, contentment came to the Buddha in the form of enlightenment, enlightenment found chilling out, sitting under the shade of a Bodhi tree. He did this about two and half thousand years ago and in the time since then, he’s attracted a lot of followers and years after his death he became a religion of sorts. Contrary to what I thought of with Buddhism, he wasn't Chinese and apart from a throng of attention seeking Hollywood actors, the great holders of the faith seem to live in Sri Lanka. Sri Lanka – that tiny country you might have head of where 70% of the population of the country are Buddhists.

Looking in the guide book, the Bodhi tree in Anuradhapura is the oldest historically authenticated tree in the world, weighing in with a hefty two thousand years of monk maintained history behind it. Unbeknownst to us at the time, it is considered the most sacred Bodhi tree in the world, itself born from a cutting of the original tree that our friend Buddha gained his enlightenment.

'Walk in like you own the place' was my bit of advice to Jackson when we made our way up to the gate. Immediately we looked a bit stupid when we were told to take our shoes off – clearly if we'd owned the place, we would have done so already. Damn. The good news was that we didn't need to pay to get into this one and we walked barefoot up to the tree to see what all the people had come to see.

Score! We were making money!

We walked up to the front gate to see a golden Buddha sitting as though he was sitting under a tree, his expression of half smiling giving off the impression of total contentment. Well, if I was covered in gold and spent eternity sitting under a tree without a care in the world, I imagine that I would look pretty darn contented too. We snapped some photos, looked up into the branches of the tree and did some people watching on the crowds that had come to visit this bit of wood.

We rounded the corner and found somewhere to sit in the shade. We sat alone in the coarse sand, Jackson several metres to my right. The wind rustled through the heart shaped leaves of the tree, the warmth of the sun drenched gardens caressed us, the scent of the flowers laid out as an offering danced around us in the midday heat, the smoke of the burning incense wafting to and fro around us. To my left, a man stood in a small alcove chanting with the Buddha in a loud and searching voice. To my right, a woman and her daughters sang prayers softly. Layers upon layers of voices could be heard murmuring around us.

It was a serene calm of people sitting and praying in what seemed total peace. Words cannot describe the sheer beauty of the hour we must have spent in the sand.

The Real World™ of work, travel, commercialisation, modernity and progress didn't seem to make sense under the tree. All the thoughts of money being stolen, getting in for free and sarcastic quips about a religion based around tree and a 'dude' were lost. The idea of Enlightenment and Contentment made sense in a beautiful and perfect moment. And while I'm not about to convert to a religion that I don't really believe in, I don't think I will forget that moment as long as I walk this earth. 

FIgure3. The Bodhi Tree

I'm not sure about a lot of things, but if there's one thing that I know about religion, is that after a few hours of it, it makes me hungry.
 
As such, we joyfully drifted off on our bikes for some food, returning to our ruin walking mission at the site of a big dome of bricks. The Buddhists call this style of pile of bricks a dagoda. The one we came across is called the Jetavanarama Dagoba. Built in the 3rd century AD, it stands at 70 metres tall, it's tall steeple now broken, taking it down from its original 100 metres of height. At the time of its construction, it would have been the third tallest structure in the world, only overshadowed by two piles of sandstone blocks in Egypt. That gives an indication of how impressive the ruins of Anuradhapura are. The ruins surrounding this temple housed 3000 monks and the sheer scale of the place is unbelievable. Jackson and I walked up to it. We were the only people within earshot. We had this magnificently magical structure all to ourselves. Unbelievable.

Eventually some local tourists came to pray at the temple and we took this as our cue to move on to another site. Spying an equally impressive, more modern white and gold dagoba through the trees we trundled off. Again we walked through to the temple unimpeded by tickets, everything was falling into place, the path before us was being laid out. We walked the path with happy and light feet, the path bringing us to a massive procession of worshippers. All dressed in white, their deeply brown limbs carried a length of orange fabric to the grounds of the temple. 150 people carrying a length of orange cotton into a temple, we followed them. With dozens of people chanting, the heavy smoke of the incense clouded the sky they carried the gift of cotton into the grounds. Was it a funeral? Was it a ceremony? Was this put on for the dozen or so European tourists that were there?

We followed the orange train around the huge white arc of the dome. The river of orange cloth came to rest in the arms of some waiting monks, beautifully dressed in robes of the same colour. A ceremony started, prayers were sung, candles were lit in memory. Jackson got to talking to one Grandmother and her family. They were from Colombo, the capital of Sri Lanka. 150 of them had got up at 3am that morning and made the long journey north. All funded by one quietly pious lady, they come up to Anuradhapura every year on January the 10th to show their respects and bring this length of cotton 365 metres long. We sat and watched as the resident monks and the men of the contingent jumped up on to a brick wall encircling the dagoda and wrapped the cotton around the circumfrence of the white dome. The orange of the cloth contrasting with the white of the dome and the brilliant blue of the afternoon sky.

She explained to us that this length of cotton would be used to make robes for Buddhist monks in the poorer temples of Sri Lanka, in villages where they couldn't afford to donate the cotton themselves. We sat with them, playing with the giggling granddaughters and their lotus flowers for a long time in the shade of the dagoba. Serenity.

We thanked them for their time, donned our shoes and left the temple, whiling away the last few hours of sunlight riding through ruins, looking at trees and grinning marvelously at the setting sun.  Sri Lanka had shared its beauty with us.  

We ended the day running barefoot through the streets in a heavy downpour of tropical rain. Life was beautiful.

 

It's pretty easy to get stuck in a rush. Stuck in a rush for days, weeks, months, until it arrives at a point so natural that it's no longer a rush, it's just normal life.

8pm becomes a normal finish time from work, pubs become more familiar than the kitchen, breakfast becomes a decadent indulgence, you can't find time to fit seeing your friends in because you're too "busy" with other things. Months become weeks that fly by.

I ride to and from work everyday. The freedom, the movement, the singlness of the act, the races you find yourself taking. I  love it and preach about it like a reborn evangelist.

But like a junkie, I've found to keep loving it, I've had to keep on pushing the boundaries. Gone are the days I used to balk at dodging incoming traffic to get a better position. Long past are the times I would give ways to cars because they're a lot heavier than me. Welcome heady days of adrenaline, danger, risk and a pretend life as a cycle courier. Hello to the view that traffic is nothing more than a moving mountain biking trail.


In recent times, I've been thinking about slowing down. Realising that the sketchy moves I've been pulling, I'll only be able to pull for a certain amount of time. Seeing those few accidents I've had recently could have quite easily ended up with me having more than a broken bike.

The other morning I was riding to work, deciding to take a different route to the normal one that I take. Figuring it was a nice day, I had an espresso in the sun before hopping on the bike, throwing some tunes in and flying along.

Over the Thames, in and around the busses, and up the dangerously blind shoulders. I notice that there seemed to be a slowing of the traffic.

I sccoted around the inside of a bus to get up a bit and sat a car stopped in the middle of the road.

Beneath the back of the car lay a man.

His legs bent the wrong way around a wheel. He's eyes glazed over, gazing blankly into the face of a man on a mobile who was calling the ambulance.

I noticed the pool of deep red blood circle around his head, eventually spilling over and forming a trickle towards the street gutter.

It was a surreal chaos, the driver of the car was distraught, the blood flowed and all the people waiting for the bus were just standing there and watching,.

I got off the bike and started to help out. There was nothing we could do for the injured man, so I calmed the driver, spoke to the guy on the phone and started directing traffic until the ambulance arrived. Some plumbers got out of their truck, surveyed the scene, propped his head up with a cloth and then deftly maneuvered their truck around the prone man, speeding off to their next job.

Surveying the scene, it looked as though the man had made a dash across the street to get to the bus stop, running into the path of the car he was trapped under. In a rush.

I left a short time after they lifted the car off him and started getting him ready for the ambulance. He was conscious as they loaded him into the stretcher.

I left the scene, not looking back, riding soberly up the vacant street. The sun, the espresso and the tunes had all left me, replaced with the thoughts of wine coloured trickles in the gutter.

 

Doing something completely different for a change, Adam and I decided to go and see a band together at the Mean Fiddler in London.

Mixing it up a bit, we decided that we'd take in a punk band. We haven't done something like this since the last time we saw a punk band at the Mean Fiddler , which was well, weeks ago.


But this time was complete different, instead of seeing one of the greatest shows by one of the greatest punk bands out of Boston (which was the Bouncing Souls), we saw one of the greatest shows by one of the greates punk bands out of Southern California - Lagwagon.

We've even got photos to prove how much fun it was:

http://kransky.com/lachlan/pictures/20070416_lagwagon/



 

People complain about the weather in London, it's too hot, it's too cold, too wet, too smoggy, too...too.. too, well something or other.


I've experienced some bad weather in my time and London doesn't really cut it on the world scene. Which leads me to believe that people complain about the weather in London purely because they are in England. And in England, complaining about somethign rivals football and queueing as the national sport. What I will say about the weather here in London is that it's generally more bland than anything else. Not bitter enough to be harsh and never beautiful enough to be delightful - it's the vanilla ice cream of weather, the Prince Charles of extremities. Exceptional in the fact that it is so boring.

But this morning something different was upon us. A heavy blanket of snow coated London. And with housemate Christina waking us up at the ungodly hour of 6.30, we were treated to seeing it early on. Here are some shots of my house, the ride to work, and my nerd workmate Crafti and his snowman.

The photos of can be found at http://www.kransky.com/lachlan/pictures/20070124_London_In_Snow