Friday...

After a lazy day, where all our “sight-seeing” plans failed to materialise, Sara and I took the metro to meet our friends for a BBQ on a rooftop. This was all the information they gave us, and so I innocently imagined it would be on the roof terrace of someone’s apartment or something similar. Not in Berlin!

Fabian met us on the street and led us down a small alley towards what looked like some sort of old abandoned factory. We climbed over a tall fence, and followed him towards the building where he led us through a window into the damp dark building. He had conveniently brought a torch to lead the way, which we were very grateful for as it was pitch black inside, and we followed him through twists and turns, up many flights of stairs until suddenly we were climbing out onto the roof to be greeted by around 15 or 20 other people.

The view from the roof was amazing, especially once the sun went down and the lights of Berlin were switched on. Unfortunately we had arrived a little later than originally planned and the grill was rapidly getting cold. We tried our best to cook some sausages, and got surprisingly close to succeeding before hunger got the better of us and we ate them regardless with fingers crossed for no ill effects!



Our base for the next few days was going to be with a very friendly girl called Lena that had kindly offered us a place to stay via Couchsurfing.org. We met up with Lena a little later on, dropped our bags off at her place and accompanied her to a friend’s place for some pre-party drinks. Things in Berlin don’t get started until around 3am so my pre party drinks involved a few cups of strong coffee as well as the usual bottles of cheap sparkling wine – classy ;)

Lena had told us she would take us to some of the more “ugly” clubs for the real Berlin experience and so the venue for tonight was to be a little different to Watergate. Situated in an old railway repair station, M.I.K.Z wasted no money on fancy furnishings, but was full of friendly people, psyched for the music, to dance, and make new friends.

The music was pretty good, but the DJing left a little to be desired and sketchy mix’s between records were not uncommon. I had fun, and it was nice to experience it, but in the future I would be more inclined to stick to seeing the “bigger” DJ’s in the better known clubs as I can get the M.I.K.S experience most nights in Innsbruck. Later that morning we went back to Watergate for an after party. It was in the downstairs section of the club, where all the windows are clear so daylight was allowed to light up the whole place. This really seemed to change the atmosphere and I had a lot of fun dancing in the sun.

Eventually our tired muscles got the better of us and we went back to Lena’s place at around 11.30am to grab some sleep. Sleep came quickly and we woke only at around 6pm when our bellies began to cry out for food. A very brief and sleepy trip out of the house found us eating in a very authentic Indian restaurant in on Kreuziger Strasse, which is famous for its many elaboratley decorated squats, and discussing plans for later that night.



There would be a great night at Arenaclub that I was quite motivated to go to, but on the other hand, the thought of a good night’s sleep, getting to see some of the sights of Berlin and also being fully recovered for my upcoming trip was also quite tempting. One choice was definitely more fun than the other, but one choice was also more responsible. I really didn’t know what to do, so figured I would sleep a little more before making my decision...

FREE RANGE TURKEY #8 - All Good Things...

FREE RANGE TURKEY_dispatch #8 from camp4 collective on Vimeo.

Another amazing dispatch - Renan, you killed it again! Dont suffer too much in Alaska ;)

Cheers guys for an amazing time out there, it certainly brought a lot to my life...

A privilege and a pleasure ;)

I left my last post promising you to upload parts of my expedition diary soon, so here it is...

But before you read on, know that this won’t be one of my typical climbing blogs, and may include thoughts of a random, seemingly unrelated personal nature.

Climbing is great, it’s my favourite thing in the world but it is not my whole world! There are many other things I enjoy, and many other things that I feel make my life more complete. Hopefully the following posts might give you a little look at the life of James – just another random person on this planet, rather than James – the climber...

One of my other main loves in life is music and dancing – there is something I find very special about a room full of strangers instantly being transformed into friends when the lights go down and the bass goes up. Dancing is also one of the more efficient ways to burn calories, and in my opinion is certainly a lot more fun than running 10k every day. Before my expedition, I had no idea what musical opportunities would emerge whilst I was away, and so assuming the worst, I decided the “sensible” choice would be a weekend of decadence and debauchery in the party capital of Europe! My music tanks would be well topped up, i’d be at fighting weight for the fun to come and also ready to sleep on a rather lengthy flight... Enjoy ;)

Monday 29th March - 2010
Its 9am on Monday morning and I have just come home from a club called Goldengate. Partying in berlin is crazy, there are so many options, so much good music, so many people, and the partys go on and on and on – and when the normal parties end, people go to the Goldengate! It is basically a very grimy and dirty building under one of the metro lines. Its cheap to enter, cheap to drink, plays good music and is full of people who dont care to much about anything else


So lets start from the beginning, but before I continue I should apologise in advance for any “questionable” writing skill or glaring mistakes in the following lines. Whilst I feel pretty good, how I actually look from an outsider’s viewpoint is still up for debate, and so the same probably applies to my writing and choice of words. Oh well, at least it might be amusing to look back on...

So yes, Thursday...

I arrived in Berlin, with heavy bags and tired legs. Meeting friends old and new at a metro station at around 11.30pm, we all walked together back to their house which was fortunately not too far away. Thursday night had always been marked down in my mind as a night to sleep, but the guys had other ideas and excited talk of partying filled the air. I decided I had to motivate, if for nothing else but the sake of group dynamics. I looked online at the listings for the various clubs, and saw something at first I could not believe – Laurent Garnier, possibly my favourite DJ of the moment, was playing at a club called Watergate, one of the coolest, trendiest clubs I really wanted to visit!



Motivation was no longer a problem, quite the opposite in fact ;) We got ready, went out and found Watergate. On arriving at the club there was a group of very well dressed, trendy looking people talking with the door-men. There were two guys, two girls, all good looking, the kind of people who normally push past into the VIP section but not tonight! They actually got turned away! This made me a little concerned for our chances of getting in and I began to worry that the club might already be at capacity! I need not have worried, as on reaching the door-man, he simply asked us for the name of the DJ, and on replying LG, we were let right in!

This was my first experience of Berlin clubbing, and I liked it! It’s not about what you dress like, or how much money you have - just all about a love of the music :)

As could be expected, Laurent played a great set that was both long and eclectic. Watergate has a very powerful soundsystem, and when when I first entered the club i was blown away by the intensity of the Bass – It really made the whole place vibrate! The music started off as minimal Techno before moving in standard Techno, and then getting really crazy!


First LG dropped some hard drum and bass tracks, which I actually really like in small doses. He played about 4 tracks back to back from this Genre which really energised me and found me bouncing up and down like a mad man ;)

The style then changed to more funky, with lots of trumpets and other Jazz inspired sounds. Latin style followed the funk, which is a sound I like a lot and always gets my hips swinging ;) (if you want to get a better idea about this type of music listen to the track “la Mezcla” or any sets by Luciano

After latin came the style I really like Laurent for at the moment, the smooth vocal inspired remixs. Some of my favourites are Everything in its right place, a Radiohead track and The End, by The Doors

At around 6.15, we started to talk about leaving to save some energy for the rest of the evening. I knew LG had more gems he was just waiting to play, so decided on staying for 4 more tracks, after which I promised the others we could go. My fingers were crossed for something truly special to finish the night on, and Laurent did not let us down as the 4th track he played after deciding to leave was probably his most famous track ever – “the man with the red face”. What a brilliant way to end the night!

But that wasn’t quite the end, one last thing that is worth mentioning is the amazing floating river terrace attached to the club. As we went downstairs to retrieve our coats, we noticed it was light outside and decided to spend just a few minutes sat on the terrace, enjoying the early morning sun. This has to be one of the best views of any club in the world, and with a slightly fuzzy head it seems even more perfect...

Free Range Turkey 7 - The Stone Rider

FREE RANGE TURKEY_dispatch #7 from camp4 collective on Vimeo.

Climbing with Yuji was an inspiration for us all - I think the video says it all...

Thanks for an amazing trip guys, catch you all again soon...

Greetings :)

For the last month I have been doing a little globe-trotting. Many amazing experiences with countries/places/people have been enjoyed, but one experience that left a little to be desired was the internet access!

First up was Tasmania, which turned out to be one of, if not the actually the very worst country I have ever visited for everything and anything connected with the interweb. It was slow, super expensive and twice as unreliable – the cause of much hair pulling and the occasional swear word.

I hoped that on returning to the mainland, things would improve substantially. One would imagine the surfing situation in Australia to be pretty sweet, but unfortunately, one would be wrong – it sucked almost as much as tassie!

Which brings me on to Turkey – The Tease! Turkey promised so much, and almost delivered, but ultimately the frustration continued. We were staying in a beautiful, luxury, wooden house, in a pristine location in the mountains above Antalya and on top of all that there was fast wireless internet – had I died and gone to heaven!

For the first 3 days of my stay, I enjoyed my connection with the world, but as a storm rolled in, the power went down and the internet failed to return. Coming and going would be too kind a way to describe the signal; for sporadic 30 min periods once or twice a day the wonderful world of wireless would return, restoring hope in humanity, but inevitably leave us crippled and cursing faster than it came.

Then all was well again and we gleefully stumbled around the virtual world, naively thinking the problem had been fixed until a few days later we were left alone again. This pattern continued for the duration of our stay despite the best efforts from numerous geeks and currently lays unresolved! My current favourite theory involves the local homeless hounds and a partly chewed up cable – not because it is any more probable than 10’s of other likely scenarios, but because it makes me smile a little during this lonely and isolated time ;)

My time away has almost come to an end and soon I will get to sleep in my own bed (albeit only for 2 nights before jetting off again). This means fast and stable interweb, and a chance to upload the first part of my expedition diary. I’m sure you can find it in your hearts to forgive me this delayed release, but if not, just blame it on the hounds...

FREE RANGE TURKEY_dispatch #6

FREE RANGE TURKEY_dispatch #6 from camp4 collective on Vimeo.

Yesterday the crew explored a totally different venue and resource off the coast of Olympus, the deep water soloing! We are continually blown away by the culture & climbing potential here in southern Turkey.



EDIT:
CAMP4 COLLECTIVE

Since coming back home from England, I have just been training training training! Good for me because I'm feeling strong and fit, but bad for you because its even more boring for you to read about it, than it is for me to write about it, than it is to actually do it! So today I thought I would write a little about the other little adventurous journey I have been taking - that of becoming a better free-skier :)


I began skiing a few years ago after being what I would call a competent snowboarder (by that i mean I could ride almost anywhere in a resort, onpiste and off, but nothing to gnarly or fancy). After one of the worst mornings of my life, where skiing just felt wrong, something clicked and I have never looked back. To me skiing feels more natural, I can go faster, with more control, and use them to actually get to places. I have been pretty much only skiing since first trying it out and thanks to a lot of help from a lot of good friends (who all happen to be amazing skiers) improved pretty fast to a level that surpassed my snowboarding by quite along way.


This year has been a particularly good one for my skiing (although it would have been a hell of a lot better if we actually had some snow!) mainly from being able to go out any day I choose. I can now enjoy seeing cool looking lines, knowing that I can ride them, which is where I always wanted to be. The only issues with this, is just like in biking, progressing usually involves going bigger, further and faster, which is all good until something goes wrong, and then the consequences can often not bear thinking about. I find myself in almost constant discussions with the two little friends on my shoulder - one saying throw caution to the wind and the other telling me to check myself...


Injuring myself in a non climbing sport would be really irresponsible of me, and I like to think I have a good hold on things, that I know my abilities and don't push myself too hard, but you never really know what life is going to throw at you! Perhaps tomorrow you'll get hit by a bus?


So today I went Skiing to a local mountain called Axamer Lizum, which is where they twice held the winter Olympic games (1964 and 76 I think)! I met up with Keith, Emi and Jack as I was sleeping when they left this morning. The day was perfect! Blue skies and sunshine, and very cold so the snow wouldn’t get slushy (although it also makes my fingers and toes numb!)


It hadn’t snowed for a few days, so most of the powder was already tracked out but if you were prepared to hike a little to the more difficult to reach areas you could still ride fresh snow. We made a few cool runs, and jumped of a few small cliffs which all went well, and then moved our sights onto bigger fish towards the end of the day!


After making the long traverse and short hike to the top, I was pretty nervous and thought briefly about backing out. As always, the cliff looked so much bigger from the top than it had from below, and to make matters worse, you couldn't even see where to land – all you see is the lip, and then sky! I found my moment of confidence, took advantage of it and pointed my skis towards the edge.


I left the earth watching the ground fall away beneath me, shocked at how far away it had suddenly become, but before I knew it I was back in contact with the snow and riding away with a big grin on my face. When I looked back up at the cliff I was happy, but couldn’t help feel like I hadn’t taken the true BIG line, more of a “chicken run” variation ;) so decided that one more run was in order before I could go home truly happy.


The traverse and the hike were repeated and I found myself back at the run in to the cliff, feeling just the same emotions as the first time. I looked at where I knew the correct exit point to be, and also briefly looked at other “lesser” possibilities before scolding myself for looking for an easy way out. If this was really going to be my last line of the day, I wanted it to be the biggest and best it could be, so I could look up in pride from below, for sticking it or at the very least having a go.


The confidence came, I let my skis go, and rode off the lip. As my tips became airborne, I got my first glimpse of the drop and the snow below and without warning a girly scream found its way out of my mouth ;) It was way higher than expected, but I was in for the ride and had no option but to see it through. My skis found the snow, which by this point in the day was quite heavy and wet. I rode away and a smile began across my face, but it was too soon! Leaning too far forward, my tips were pulled under the heavy snow and the dream was dead. A few forward rolls and a brush down later I was back on the piste, finding myself surprisingly happy considering I had ultimately failed.


I guess “failure” ultimately depends on your perspective towards certain things, and just like life, is not normally black or white.