Blind Spots

This afternoon I sat down to read the Australian Government Guidance Note on tick anaphylaxis. I’d just spent a couple of hours on my hands and knees clearing weeds out of the garden, and, my brain slowly recognised that I had taken no tick precautions at all. No Deet, no permethrine treated clothing, not even long pants and long sleeved shirt. Instead, I had crawled about the thickest part of my garden in shorts and a tee-shirt in an area where ticks are endemic. Complacency is a state easy to enter but hard to leave.

The tick incident is almost two months ago now, but, when I think about it, I still shudder. Not so much about the airlift incident, but more the tick bite the previous year when I crawled off into the woods, on my own, and lay down in the dirt vomiting. The best I could do raising my head to spew and then collapsing again. Too stubborn to call for help, too concerned that I was being weak or hypochondriacal, and, perhaps, within a hairs breadth of dying by the side of the track to be found a couple of hours later by Doug, cold, white, still, with the froth of vomit on my lips.

When I first got the tick allergy, it was Deet from head to toe, permethrine treated light coloured clothing, long pants tucked into socks, wearing even underwear that is permethrine treated. But, it’s been two months since I got a tick, the weather has been drier, and I’ve been busy, and, for no good reason, I’ve let my precautionary measures lapse. Reading the literature again, I vowed silently to take no more chances, to resume full precautions. I don’t know if any of the things I now do: the Deet, the treated clothing, the worn clothes into a hot dryer for 30 minutes, the body checks, will prevent a tick bite but, if nothing else, they give me the illusion of control. And that’s really all we have, illusory control, but better than none, like the wrong sized cam or a wobbly chock when climbing; a piece of gear that you know will not hold a fall but which allows you to pretend it will so that you can keep climbing.

We all pretend we have control so that we can continue to live our lives with some semblance of normality because, despite what the motivational posters proclaim, it is simply not possible to live each day as if it were our last. We have to attend to the ordinary matters of life in order to allow ourselves those few days, weeks, or if we are really lucky months, when we can escape to the place where our hearts and souls sing.

No group among society is more schizophrenically attuned to the idea of control than the far left. This is the group that believes that all social ills, from the aboriginal outcome gap to gender dysphoria to substance abuse to homelessness and domestic violence will magically evaporate once these “communities” of individuals are ceded control. There is no myth more powerful or more impotent in society today, because there is no “community” of people who all think or behave exactly the same and individuals in the grip of addiction or mental illness are the least likely people in society to be in a position to exercise control. We all know, if we can admit it to ourselves in our darkest moments, that there are elements of our own lives where we have little to no control, and certainly the most vulnerable in society are the least equipped to engage in behaviours and decisions that evince control. Complacency kills and even the most robustly healthy among us sometimes requires protection from our own worst impulses.

There is a general sense in society that we are all making informed decisions and choosing the best course for ourselves, but, frequently this is simply not true. We are buffeted by mental distortions and often caught deep in the murk of situations unable to make decisions or enact behaviours that are both in our best interests and aligned with our stated objectives. A true friend could help because our blind spots are, by definition blind, but although we might listen to advice, we seldom actually hear it.

Spring Days

On Friday we rode out to the “wilderness zone” of the Narooma mountain bike trails. The parking area was hopping, with vehicles in and out doing the ubiquitous (and never not annoying) shuttling, but, once on the trails, I saw one rider on the way to the wilderness zone and no-one else (excluding the shuttle driver) until I got back to the trail head. You never need to go far and the distance you need to go is decreasing exponentially!

Saturday we arrived at Bittangabee Bay just as a group of kayakers were leaving for Green Cape. Doug and I helped Stu – who was roving about the country with his kayak – carry his kayak down to the beach before we made breakfast and then carried our own gear down. NSW National Parks has renovated the campground, and, while it is very nice, the carry to Bittangabee Bay to launch a kayak is 250 metres each way, so Doug and I walked 1.5 kilometres shuttling kayaks! That’s a good loaded carry work-out.

We paddled down to Green Cape in good conditions with a north to south running current and, a couple of kilometres from Green Cape met the other group returning. Harry had headed off to Merrica River while Doug and I continued around Green Cape and paddled along the cliffs on the south side of Green Cape before coming back and paddling home into the current. Our pace was almost a kilometre slower where the current was strongest. I headed down bouldering in the afternoon.

On drizzly mornings, it’s easy to think that a second cup of tea is a better idea then putting your wet gear on and heading down to the beach, but, luckily, we took the second option. Ten paddlers went to Saltwater Bay where there was a really nasty shore dump on a steep beach. With good timing, the landing was a doddle but with a group of ten and deep water immediately off the beach, someone would swim!

Doug, Stu and I paddled up to Mowarry and landed for about five minutes before paddling back. We saw Humpback Whales, Southern Right Whales, dolphins and a ton of seals on the steep, little island near Mowarry Bay.

An unexpected trip to Canberra appeared on Thursday, and, in order to make the drive more tolerable, we took our mountain bikes and rode Mount Majura on Thursday and Mount Stromlo on Friday. The trails at Mount Majura run through planted pine forest where the smell of pines in the sun reminded us of pine forests in Canada in summer. There are pines around Mount Stromlo as well but the real lure of Stromlo is the plethora of trails and views from the top of Mount Stromlo.

Make Good Decisions

It’s harder to know if you have made good decisions than you think because, as Statham expresses in this podcast, there are multitudes of people out and about in uncontrolled mountain or other wilderness environments, and, most of the time nothing happens. Sometimes that’s because you made good decisions but most of the time it is just luck. Decoding the two is impossible, even when viewed after the event.

If you are interested in decision making and risk mitigation in uncontrolled environments, think mountains, oceans, white water rivers, this is a really good podcast. It is mostly ACMG guides (Association of Canadian Mountain Guides) being interviewed, and, as a Canuck, I can honestly say Canada has some of the worlds most highly trained and intensely skilled mountain guides in the world.

After listening to a few episodes (I’ve only listened to about 5 or 6 out of 67 episodes) I thought a lot about my recent experience paddling to Bass Point. Did I make a good decision having a stronger paddler tow a weaker, slower paddler? I’ll never know for sure because the action I took conclusively averted what I was concerned about (not making it back to the launch site) but did not in any way prove that we wouldn’t have made it back.

One of the guests on the podcast, a Sea Kayak Instructor, said that if the consequence of the decision is minor, don’t worry about it too much. It can be demoralising for adults to be towed by peer group members, but, that consequence is minor compared to having to call Marine Rescue for an extraction in an offshore wind.

One thing all the presenters agree upon is keeping the group together if at all possible. I don’t know what happened to the group of five that followed us in that Saturday, but personally, I have a huge aversion to splitting groups unless absolutely necessary. To often when groups split, the division is anything but orderly and is more commonly the stronger, faster group abandoning the weaker team members. A maxim of mine is never do something that you cannot explain to the rescue team. Many group splits fall into this category.

One of my ski buddies once told me a story of a ski trip that went awry. A party of three (my friend, Delia, and two blokes) drove up to Kootenay Pass for some backcountry ski touring. Delia and the second skier were much faster than the third skier and got to the top of the peak they were going to ski before the third skier. Instead of waiting, Delia and her buddy skied down from the summit leaving the third skier somewhere out in the backcountry in avalanche terrain alone. After skiing to the bottom of the run, Delia and mate put skins on skis and skied back to the top of the run, but the third man was nowhere to be seen. The rest of the day and part of the evening was spent looking for the third man.

What is most bizarre about this story is that my friend D did not see a single thing wrong in her behaviour and, in fact, was vitriolic in her complaints about the third skier and how annoying it was to get home late from a ski day! This is a true story completely devoid of good decisions and most of us easily recognise that. As an aside, after nearly a decade of recreating with my friend, D, we had an irreconcilable split due to differences in risk mitigation strategies. It’s probably fair to say that D, who wobbled her way solo up rock routes, slipped and slid down innumerable snow slopes because she could not self-arrest, skied above other skiers in avalanche terrain or failed to attend to partners skiing avalanche terrain, could never read a map or stay oriented, wandered onto slim bridges over big crevasses eventually became too big a burden to carry mostly because, despite being good company and physically strong, D never understood that out in the Canadian wilderness your risk becomes my risk.

Don't Comply

The southerly has just blown in and the temperature has dropped ten degrees. It was fast paddle day today. Yes, yet another day I didn’t feel like going! Apart from a shore dump and very high tide, an easy launch off the beach, my usual one kilometre warm up and then trying to keep my pace at 8 kilometres/hour. It was a tough haul today, as indicated by Garmin’s measure of my stress (94 out of 100). Of course, I never look at my “stress” score. No-one, not even the software developers at Garmin know what a stress score is or what it means. It’s another way that the tech bros game the system to keep you engaged. My advice is, as always, don’t comply.

Anyway, you can see I didn’t quite make seven kilometres because it was such hard yards out there today. For a while, every fitness influencer on planet earth talked about the concept of recovery, frequently saying nonsensical things like “it’s not that you are training too much, it’s that you are recovering too little.” This is like watching a couple of kids on a see-saw and not grasping the very simple concept that when one kid rides the see-saw up, the other kid must go down. Sure, you can sleep and eat well, perhaps do some stretching or some yoga, but at the end of the day, training is a see-saw. If you do a lot, you will get tired, fatigued, possibly injured and the only way to recover is to do less. Lots of things in life have two complimentary levers. Training has intensity and duration. You can not increase both at the same time. If you increase intensity, you must decrease duration or you’ll blow yourself up.

More Old People Adventures

Doug and I climbed Whale of a Time on the way to Sydney after our Windang weekend. I wouldn’t normally drive to Sydney to climb, although, to be fair, Sydney actually has a lot of good climbing locations, micro crags I would call them. Short routes around 15 metres at most but some are good quality and you have to remember that this is a major city in a country where every level of government is populated by terminally nervous bed-wetters. Yes that is a pejorative. Any culture with such an extreme aversion to risk is not a system wherein humans thrive.

Anyway, I would know nothing about the route except my nephew had asked me to climb it with him. Luckily, and appropriately (a 32 year old man should not be climbing with his 62 year old aunt) he found another climbing partner to complete the climb with. Whale of a Time is insanely popular! Possibly because it is one of the few multi-pitch climbs within striking distance of Sydney, or because it is a short walk in (although I feel like I spent more time walking than climbing), or maybe because it is well bolted and the overlook is scenic. Strangely, it seems that, much like my nephew, most people who climb the route climb only Whale of a Time, not any of the other routes on the crag! An Australian thing, I suspect.

Access is via abseil and we got to the top anchors just a few moments after a couple of young blokes with an 80 metre rope. For some crazy reason, Australian climbers have been seduced into buying 80 metre ropes although most pitches are less than half of 60 metres. Eighty metres is a lot of rope to deal with on 15 metre pitches. But, in this instance it was handy as we asked the young blokes if we could abseil on their rope which saved us doing two abseils to get to the start of the route and meant that they could start up the route without waiting for us to clear the first pitch.

It’s a funny climb. A weirdly stiff start, followed by a long traverse which apart from a couple of moves is shuffling along a small foot ledge with good ironstone plate handholds and then a very easy pitch to finish. The ironstone plates look strong but there are broken holds all along the route! It was outrageously windy by the time we were at the top of the first pitch although the young blokes climbed quickly they had 80 metres of rope to deal with and that takes time. We scurried up the last pitch and really took very little time to enjoy the ambience as it was freezing! Typical Australian spring weather, from 32 Celsius to a howling gale and driving spittle.

On Thursday I started my “fast training.” To paddle long distances (or run or bicycle) you need good aerobic capacity and the only way – despite what the headlines might say – to build aerobic capacity is the usual – loved or hated (it can be both) – long aerobic distance. This used to be called long slow distance until the people who name things realised that some people have such massive aerobic capacity that their aerobic pace is not that slow. Hence, long aerobic distance. The only problem with long aerobic distance is that if you do nothing else, you risk being really slow. So, in addition to long aerobic distance, when I am training I try to get some fast short distance. This goes something like: 10 to 15 minute warm-up (or paddle about a kilometre) then try to keep an 8 kilometre/hour pace for an hour or so, followed by a 10 to 15 minute cool down or one kilometre. I’ve pushed this as high as 1.5 hours at an 8+ kilometre/hour pace, but, as with all training, you have to build up. Consistency is better than one shot and you are burnt out. It’s much easier to do this on flat water but I don’t do big flat water trips so I usually tough it out and do it on the ocean. Sometimes conditions are such that hitting 8 kilometres/hour is a tough gig.

On Sunday, I risked the crowds to ride the Mogo trails only there were no crowds! I don’t know if it was lunch time or too hot or the other riders could smell the waft of my Deet and Permethrine tick repellent but the trails were really quiet. For the first time since the tick incident I rode on the shady side, down Al Capone’s Garden – what a hoot – and up Jackhammer. Of course, I had literally a dozen phantom ticks coming up Jackhammer as it is still damp down there and the forest is very green and overhangs the trail but luckily all the ticks were mere imaginings.

Sometimes It's Better Not To Know: Burrewarra Point and Beyond

It’s another one of those days when I’m doing something I don’t really feel like doing. Briefly I wonder how many of these days there are in the average week and consider noting them down in my training log but then decide it would be depressing to find out that five out of seven days I’m heading out to do something I don’t really want to do. It’s probably better not to know.

PC: DB

We are heading south at a rate that is too fast for my paddling effort, we are going to pay for this northerly current. It’s bumpy and I feel queasy all the way to our turn around point. There are dolphins at the mouth of Sunshine Bay, a whale in the bay north of Burrewarra Point, and seals around Burrewarra Point resting, as they do, in the break zone.

PC: DB

On long training days I like to schedule our land break after we pass the half way point in the paddle. Today we are paddling 30 kilometres so around 20 kilometres is a good time to stop. At south Rosedale, the odometer ticks over 19 kilometres so we stop for a break. North from Rosedale, the easterly wind has ticked up and it’s a bumpy paddle all the way back to our home bay. Current and wind, clapotis and chop. It’s good to finish the day.

Five Islands: The Perfect Paddle

Last time I launched from Fishermans Beach we parked at the south end near Hill 60 and enjoyed carrying four kayaks over our heads along a narrow walkway and down some steep steps. Forewarned, as they say, is forearmed so this time we parked on Gloucester Boulevarde (busy on this sunny Sunday in October) and trolleyed the kayaks down a cement ramp all the way to the sand.

PC: DB

After an easy launch, we paddled north to Flinders Islet watching dolphins and whales breaking the surface as we went. We lapped around Flinders Islet and continued to Bass Islet. Half way between the two islands a friendly whale swam leisurely past our kayaks slapping it’s massive fins into the water. This is, apparently, the closest Paul S had been to whales and he was ecstatic. After the whale departed we cruised around Bass Islet and continued south to Martin Islet. Last time I paddled past Martin Islet the gap between Big Island and Martin Islet was completely closed out. This time we paddled close in beside the seals that live on Martin Islet and drifted leisurely through the gap.

PC: DB

Big Island was a wash with birds. Pelicans at the acme of the island, cormorants, gulls, oyster catchers occupying lesser locations. Finally, a lap around Rocky Islet where, even on this calm day the swell picked up over the western most gap and back to Fishermans Beach and left over cake from the AGM the afternoon before. What a day, couldn’t be better.

PC: DB

It was not, however, a day without wind because by 4:00 pm the westerly was blowing 40 knots and I had trouble walking against it as I hiked back from Windang Island.

PC: DB