When The Wheels Fall Off The Wagon

The front wheel of my mountain bike is wobbling and when I look down the axle has almost pulled right through the hub. Upending the bike, I effect a quick repair very glad that I had noticed the wobble before I began bombing down the single track at high speed. The problem is operator error, the axle improperly installed after our last mountain bike day at Coondoo. Years ago, 14 to be exact, I had a similar operator error incident when the back wheel fell off our pick-up truck (known as a “ute” in Australia) on the highway when I was driving home after skiing up an insignificant peak (Mount Midgeley) in the Selkirk Mountains of British Columbia.

Basin on the SE aspect of Mount Midgeley

On that day, I left home at 6 am and drove for about two hours, initially on the highway but then up a forest service road (FSR) to a patch of snow which stopped further progress in the vehicle. I strapped my skis to my pack and set off up the road. The snow patch was, as is so often the case, big enough to stop the car but not continuous enough to be skiable, so I walked four kilometres along the FSR until I reached continuous snow and started skiing. Two hours later I had skied to the summit passing on the way a small trappers cabin. The ascent, which had taken three hours, was reversed in just over an hour, such is the delight of spring skiing.

Final ski to Mount Midgeley

Driving home on the highway, I noted a strange noise and wobble in the truck but, having no idea what was about to unfold, I ignored the noise and wobble and kept driving. Until, there was a tremendous bump and thud and I saw the back wheel of the truck roll off into a ditch and I was driving on three wheels and one brake rim. No-one ignores that. The wheel was, with some difficulty retrieved from a ditch beside the highway and put into the back of the truck and I, in a pair of what are called “Sorrels” in Canada (the most common brand) but are similar to Ugg boots (but meant for snow travel) walked all the way into Nelson (another five or ten kilometres), down the steep streets of the mountain town to a friends house where I luckily found him at home and was able to telephone Doug. Doug arranged for a tow truck and my friend kindly drove me home, another 15 or so kilometres from Nelson.

Trappers Cabin

How did this happen? Well, I had taken off our winter tires and rims and installed our summer tires and the lug nuts had not been sufficiently tightened to keep the wheel on. It was an expensive repair as the brake drum was bent out of shape and had to be replaced. What’s most notable is how far I was willing to drive to ski up a new peak. Four hours of driving, yikes! I don’t know if I would do that now. I’d certainly think twice about it.

That time we went spring skiing and came back 

to find avalanches had blocked the road, PC: DB

I’m just back from a visit to Sydney which is about four hours driving either way and always an unpleasant experience. The driving sucks, as does simply being in Sydney and dealing with the traffic, congestion, noise, crowds, all of it. Living in Sydney seems a bit like the boiling frog analogy. Things worsen slowly and incrementally until life is just about intolerable but the inhabitants are so inured to the issues they never leave.

One way I make my Sydney visits tolerable is to give myself a small treat or reward if you will. No, it’s not a restaurant meal or a big cake or any other consumable item, it’s a visit to Climbfit at Kirrawee. I love this gym. They have long opening hours – I arrived at about 6.15 am - and four auto-belays, masses and masses of routes on tall walls, and a great bouldering area. I was happy to see that there were less volumes than last time on the bouldering walls. I climb until I can’t hold on any longer and then leave. It’s a blast and always makes me wish we had a facility like that near us, especially as we are in for another round of flooding rain!

Limit Your Options, Expand Your Life

It’s the most liberating thing in the world. ... When retreat is no longer an option ….. it’s only up and [it’s] an amazing sense of freedom because there is no longer a choice. Mark Twight.

Bicycles are fantastic. Single track flowy mountain bike trails are awesome, but so is riding your bike along the shared path beside the ocean to the local park run.

Our first home renovation project, a pretty simple one – tiling a splash back – I realised how over-rated choice was. Even in the small town we lived in there were a thousand different tile options, and you had to look at them all and work out which was the right colour, shape, cost, how easy the installation would be, on and on and on, looking at f**king tiles until gouging your own eyes out would be preferable.

Grocery stores are the same, 47 different cereal boxes (all junk), 23 different types of jam (also junk), 40 different packages of frozen fish (coated in glyphosate soaked junk). How much time and energy is wasted comparing the different packets of junk?

Saturday, if I’m home, is Park Run day so I don’t have to make any choices. I get up, charge up on coffee, ride my bicycle down to Rotary Park and participate. There is so much power in limiting your choices, so much space made in your brain and your life. No-one really needs 37 different options that is really only one option packaged up in a different brightly coloured mess of plastic and paper. Limit your options, expand your life.

Sport Climbing and Mountain Biking

Discipline is doing what you hate to do, but none the less doing it like you love it. Mike Tyson.

The above is from my collection of pithy quotes which I add to from time to time. I’m not sure I agree completely with the sentiment. I think you need discipline when beginning a new habit, but, the longer you persist the easier persistence becomes, and, if the new habit supports a goal you are committed to, persistence will lead to pleasure and then you’ll persevere because the results are motivating.

We just had a couple of great days away only a couple of hours from home. If our trip database is correct – I have no reason to think it isn’t – it’s three years since we went sport climbing at Nowra! In that time I would expect my capacity to collapse, but – back to the trip database again – that does not appear to be true. I climbed 15 pitches, Doug did 14 pitches, we led every route, and it was a blast. Rock climbing is one of those sports that gets more fun and offers more opportunities the better you get. It was gratifying to find that all the training aimed at getting better to have more fun was working and that is enough impetus to keep going even if I don’t always love what I’m doing.

Our second day, we rode the mountain bike trailsmountain bike trails at Coondoo. These are volunteer maintained and the full loop at Coondoo is in the order of 10 or 12 kilometres. We rode it twice and it too was a blast. So much easier than riding the Dam Loop from our place which always involves a big grunt up a steep and loose hill and a reasonable amount of elevation gain in the form of short steep climbs (and some longer climbs) on an increasingly narrowing track around the loop itself.

Today, it’s back to training, and loving the training because the results are worth it.

Best Before Date

The last few years have been all about long sea kayaking trips. People call “trips” expeditions these days but that seems a bit pompous to me when, for the most part, it’s a few people throwing a bunch of stuff in a kayak and heading out on the ocean for a couple of weeks. The terminology, however, doesn’t really matter. What does matter is that since the end of 2021, I’ve done an awful lot of endurance training in a sea kayak.

PC: DB

The trips we have done in the last couple of years (Bass Strait in 2022, Bangalee to Seaforth also 2022, Bangalee to Clairview in 2023, and southwest Tasmania in 2024) have all involved consecutive long days paddling - averaging around 40 kilometres every day with peaks up to 65 kilometres - mostly in dynamic conditions. Pulling that off, with enough margin that you aren’t wiped at the end of every day and can enjoy the surroundings by, for example, walking up mountains, requires training. Lots of training, most of it sport specific, but, ideally including enough strength training that you don’t lose your hard won muscle mass. Remember, muscle mass and strength are THE best predictors of healthy and active aging.

Coming back to mainland Australia from Tasmania in early 2024, I had two goals for the winter: see if I could rebuild some strength and muscle, and have an epic season of rock climbing. Both are a bit daunting when you’ve passed your best “use before date,” but, not impossible. My version of Peter Attia’s “centenarian decathlon” is maintaining the ability to say “I’m in” when an adventure comes my way. For me this means: I can walk 20 kilometres easily and jog about the same (but faster), jump in my kayak and paddle 30 kilometres in a reasonable time frame (under five hours), carry a climbing pack up and down steep tracks, climb a dozen pitches a day, carry a backpack and bushwack to a summit somewhere, run five kilometres at my lactate threshold, and ride my bicycle on the local single track. I also want to be able to do full push-ups, pull-ups, and, I’d love to get a front lever and a full pistol squat. The last two I’m still working on.

Depending on your outlook, those sound like worthy goals or absolute insanity. If you are a regular reader of this blog (someone, anyone?) you might note that I tend to the obsessive. It suits me, because what makes me happy – and we are all different – is setting audacious (for me) goals and working towards them. When you finally reach the end goal, there’s enormous satisfaction; a deep inner joy that never goes away. Luckily, with practice the journey can be just as fulfilling as the goal. Each time I put weight on the bar (something I haven’t been able to do consistently for a few years due to all that endurance training) I feel a frisson of pleasure. That frisson of pleasure is extra special because I know that if I want to, I can train strength in the morning, and jump in the kayak after lunch and go out for a couple of hours in the kayak on a winters afternoon and have a mini-adventure. Capacity is under-rated.

PC: DB

I plan my training a week in advance, and I do something every single day even if I feel a bit beat up and fatigued. In fact, in life and training, there is incredible power in doing something specifically when it feels hard and scary. As Gadd says uncompromisingly in this article “Don’t fucking weaken in training, and you won’t when it’s uncomfortable and shitty in the defining moments of life.”

PC: DB

Changing habits (or systems) is the best way to change a life because most of what we do is habit driven even if we don’t realise it. Also from Gadd: “You’ll forget how to quit if you don’t, and you’ll never know how to push through big uncomfortable moments if you don’t do it every single day.” Pushing through in training or when a mini-adventure comes your way is how you develop the habit of not weakening.

As much as habits play a role, I think fear does as well. So many of our fears have so little grounding in reality. I reminded myself of this just a few days ago at a difficult move on a rock climb. I was a metre or so above a piece of protection, so if I fell, the worst thing that would happen was not much at all. Often times, the worst thing that can happen is not much at all. If the worst thing that can happen is being a bit more tired at the end of the day than usual, use that as an opportunity to practice “not quitting.” When life really gets difficult, you’ll be glad you did.

But Does It Work?

When Paxlovid was first approved for use, I looked up the trial data. This is almost always quite easy to do but as most folks don’t learn how to read medical studies in high school or even university, interpreting the findings can be difficult. In the case of Paxlovid, it wasn’t difficult at all for a number of reasons.

First, the EPIC HR trial tested Paxlovid in unvaccinated adults. This is fine if you are going to restrict Paxlovid to unvaccinated adults, but, if the drug is going to rolled out in the western world where almost every adult has had at least two Covid vaccinations, there’s a problem. These are two different populations. This is medical science 101 and understandable by anyone of average intellect. Subsequently, of course, Paxlovid was made available to vaccinated adults, and, foreshadowing here, we should have some idea how that is going to end.

Secondly, while Paxlovid in unvaccinated adults did show a treatment benefit, the effect size was modest. The primary outcome was Covid related hospitalisation or death from any cause over the full 28 day study. Death from any cause is an interesting endpoint and one would hope but I would not trust, that “death from any cause” did not include random events like bus accidents etc. In the full intent to treat analysis death from any cause in the placebo group was 1% versus 0% in the treatment group. Not much can be concluded from this as the signal to noise ratio is too high given the paucity of “events” (death from any cause is the event). Six percent of patients in the placebo group were hospitalised for Covid 19 versus just under 1% in the treatment group (0.77%). This is certainly in favour of Paxlovid but again, the numbers are small in both groups. Either way, this is not a blockbuster drug by any stretch of the imagination and given that many commonly used medications are contraindicated in conjunction with Paxlovid (check the list it will surprise you), Paxlovid should be approached with caution, as should all newly released drug treatments.

Thirdly, it’s also worth noting that the original EPIC HR trial was done when Delta was the main Covid variant in circulation and more recently circulating variants are producing considerably less severe disease.

In April of this year, the EPIC SR trial was published to remarkably less fan fare and remarkably less action by public health officials. This trial was open to both vaccinated and unvaccinated individuals and people at no risk of severe disease from a Covid infection. This is the real life population of people who are likely to take Paxlovid which makes determining whether or not Paxlovid has any efficacy in this population of paramount importance. In the EPIC SR trial the primary endpoint was “time to sustained alleviation of all targeted Covid-19 signs and symptoms.” This is an imprecise endpoint (the data is self-reported) but one that is commonly used in anti-viral drug studies. Covid related hospitalisation and death were secondary endpoints.

There is no point going into detail about the EPIC SR trial because the conclusion says it all: “The time to sustained alleviation of all signs and symptoms of Covid-19 did not differ significantly between participants who received nirmatrelvir–ritonavir (Paxlovid) and those who received placebo.” There was also no difference between Paxlovid and placebo on either of the secondary endpoints (hospitalisation or death).

As of May 2024, we have not seen any statements from our public health officials that address the newest data on Paxlovid. In fact, the latest press release I could find was basically a publicity campaign for both Paxlovid and the Albenese Government advising that more people would be eligible for Paxlovid. You get to decide if you think this is appropriate and representative of the currently available science. Of course, you should also carefully read the trial data, consult your own physician, and make your own decision based on what is important to you.

One day I’ll write a long post about why I, among so many other citizens of the world, have lost faith in public health and our regulatory agencies. You could consider this a first instalment.

Knock On My Door

This is not theatre. Do your work, do what you must do to get through it, and know that each action leaves a mark. Enough marks paint a picture. A portrait of who you are and what you stand for.

The difference between the real thing and posers is simple. It is a choice. A history of choices executed over time. Your actions have consequences. What kind of mark do you want to leave?

Live deliberately. Train deliberately. Mark Twight.

Would you organise a weekly outdoor training session for people in your neighbourhood? I had to think about this, but, in the end, I decided I would not. If someone approached me and asked to train with me in my home gym, I would say yes. And, it would be a pretty enthusiastic yes. There’s a difference however, between someone taking the initiative and proactively searching out a training partner, and randoms turning up at a neighbourhood training session. To understand why, we have to go back in time to the early 1980’s when the Alpine Club of Canada ran sporadic mountain leadership conferences for Alpine Club members.

When I say sporadic, I mean, to my knowledge two. The first was before my time, the second was not really that good except that the final night of the conference featured Barry Blanchard giving a slide talk. Slide talks were a thing before YouTube. I remember the second conference, which I attended, had some “mountain dietitian” who spent an hour banging on about eating “complex carbohydrates” every two hours to fuel mountain activities. As if “complex carbohydrates” are not simply sugar, and, eating every two hours, whether it is a ten hour mountain day or a two week expedition is ridiculous. Better to follow Blanchard’s completely untutored advice which was to have a “triple bypass breakfast” at the early opening cafe before post-holing like a moose for two hours to gain the base of some far flung waterfall ice climb.

Anyway. I read the course notes for the previous conference to the one I attended and I can still remember the best article which tackled the thorny topic of whether outdoor clubs should try to increase their membership. The author (it could have been Murray Toft, but equally I could have that completely wrong – it was a couple of decades ago) stratified potential club members into five different categories. I think three would have done as categories one and two were similar as were three and four.

The easiest category to start with is category five. These are the people who will never join your neighbourhood training club no matter what. Categories three and four are people who are motivated in the short term often because they have friends who are involved, or neighbourhood training is trendy right now, or it’s the new year and getting fit is their new years resolution. Category three and four folks will hang around for a while but they’ll never step up and offer to train the group if you can’t make it, and, within a relatively short time period, they’ll get tired of neighbourhood training and drop out, or at least attend only infrequently.

Category one and two people are the folks who are highly self motivated. They will seek out opportunities to train in their neighbourhood. They are self-directed and self-educated and, to quote Mark Twight, will “Live deliberately” and “Train deliberately.” You don’t have to advertise to find these people because they will find you.

It’s a bit like inspiration, the motivation of strangers or even friends and acquaintances doesn’t really exist, although lots of people want to believe it does. People also want to believe the ‘rona wasn’t a lab leak and our regulatory agencies aren’t captured. It’s a nice idea, but it just doesn’t hold up in the real world. I train strength every third day; knock on my door if you want to join me.

The Insidiousness of Fear

Over the years, the British have given us many things: the Whillans sit harness (very similar to my first harness, yellow, heavy, with floppy gear loops that were impossible to use), gritstone climbing, the Wide Boyz, skeg boats and rudderless kayaks, and my two favourites: “conditions” to describe rough water encountered while sea kayaking, and “let’s crack on” a general exhortation to get moving or speed up the pace.

Sunday promised “conditions” but disappointed. The BOM forecast was verging on desperate with a strong wind warning, and a 2.5 metre swell, although inshore, MetEye was only predicting light winds. The wave buoy, located - when last spotted - about three kilometres east of the Tollgate Islands, peaked at a Hmax of seven metres and HS at three metres on Saturday evening so conditions were favourable for getting “conditions.” We paddled out of Caseys Beach as the sand on our local beach is not really sand but a coarse grit (all the sand has been dragged out by frequent storms recently) and in bigger swells, can have an annoying dumpy wave.

My plan was to paddle out to the Tollgate Islands, head south for an hour or two, find a beach to stretch and drink tea (always more important to me than food) and head back closer inshore. Inshore (west) of Black Rock as you paddle past Mosquito Bay the sea floor is dotted with reefs and rocky islets in shallow water of only 5 to 10 metres. In conditions, these break crazily, and, on rare occasions we have been forced to paddle around the east side of Black Rock. Conditions, however, were pretty much absent and it was a routine uneventful paddle.

Monday we cracked on climbing. Doug and I are good at cracking on. I have been known to tie into the end of the rope before Doug has got off abseil from his pitch. Seven pitches near or - given the number of times I fell - beyond my limit. I was irrationally scared on the first pitch which I top-roped as Doug led the route. Fear is like that: irrational. The likelihood of you getting Covid at this late stage in the “pandemic” (I don’t think I’ll ever not put “pandemic” in quotation marks) with any serious sequealae is vanishingly small, and yet we are still exhorted to wear masks (don’t work) and take “vaccines” (still a dangerous experiment with the vaccinnee as subject).

I dislike fear. It drives irrational behaviour which is almost always counter-productive. When fear is overwhelming - as a terminally nervous climber I’ve felt overwhelming fear too many times - options narrow to such an extent that it can become impossible to see a way forward. It’s visceral when you are rock climbing – suddenly the wall you are on becomes blank and there are no holds anywhere, you could be climbing a vertical or even overhanging mirror. As fear deepens, your legs shake, your hands sweat, your breath becomes shallow and panicky, your vision literally narrows to a pinprick. None of these reactions are conducive to best performance or even mediocrity. It’s a terrible experience, the opposite of flow. If I could never feel fear again, I would.

Fear, of course, is a response to risk, a theoretical concept that humans are even worse at quantifying than we are at determining how many genders exist. Some risks are wholly imagined, such as falling while on a top-rope climb, while others are very real, hearing the deafening crack as the snow slope above you fractures. Most risks are in the grey middle zone wherein our intuitions play havoc with reality. We often classify risks as real versus perceived as if we could wipe away fear by cognitive semantics. Sometimes, we can wrangle our brain into submission and quiet the fear response by separating real from perceived risks, but when fear is too full blown, this seldom works. In this state, we simply cannot think clearly, and it is the emotion we need to address not the objective reality of the risk.