Week #15: Failure to Communicate

I'm grouping Saturday into this, because I may not get a chance to post anything tomorrow in the final hours before departure. In that case, this will be the final post before the walk starts. Don't panic; despite the account that follows, I'm actually not ill-prepared for the trip.

The first preparation for this walk was a weekend spent testing search and rescue comms gear. We used radios and mobile phones, but no sat phones. After this week, I think I know why. There are two sat phone networks available in Australia, one which is affordable and one used only by those with extreme government subsidies or a seven digit salary. It took half a week and a lot of preparation time going through various satellite phones to work out that they shared a common problem; all of them used the network I could afford to connect to for a month without selling my kidneys on the black market. This didn't seem like a problem at the time, but the biggest ones never do...

Half of my week's moving and preparation time was lost to attempting to connect various satellite phones before I gave up. Secondhand phones had been a mistake, I decided; it was time to cut my losses and try another tactic. Normally I wouldn't bother, but we do need to be able to coordinate with walkers meeting us halfway and drivers picking up those leaving before the end. All I really need to be able to do is let people know which campsite we've settled into each night, something a full satellite phone is over-qualified to do.

A new solution appeared. I had heard of Spot GPS Messengers and Spot Connects before. They're GPS units which relay short messages and GPS coordinates through to pre-selected recipients via satellites. Essentially, push a button when you get to camp and it'll tell people where you are. Press a different button and it'll send a different message along with those coordinates. Another one calls for help from your family, while the last forwards straight through to emergency services. The variation between the two types is that the GPS Messenger sends messages that you set beforehand, while the Spot Connect links to a smartphone via bluetooth to send custom messages. A Spot Connect seemed like introducing a whole new range of points of failure. A GPS Messenger though, sounded perfect. Without the full range of features on most satellite phones, they're pretty cheap, lightweight and their batteries last for months.

By this time, it was Thursday and I had only a few days left before the walk started on Monday. I found one GPS Messenger available for sale in Hobart, snatched it up on Friday morning and opened a satellite account. I set aside some of my remaining preparation and moving time to set it up and sent off my first test message. The lights flashed, acquiring GPS coordinates from one satellite network and then sending them through another. Twenty minutes passed and no sign of the message. I tried again with no luck, and then tried customer service, a mobile phone somewhere in Australia set to redirect to a call centre in the US.

Don't panic, it's just a calibration problem. All I had to do was restart it and leave it in the open for twenty minutes while it set itself up for the local satellite service. Seemed strange, but I gave it a try. Further trials yielded no results and the call centre had closed for the day. They were due to reopen at midnight, and I set about cleaning my old house until then.

Midnight came around and my call soon followed. The advice for fixing the problems grew steadily stranger and more inconvenient. Firstly I had to send a message in one location with clear view of the sky (a process that takes 20 minutes of waiting while it tries to connect) and then I had to move to a different location and try again within ten minutes. The flashing lights at both indicated the messages had been sent, though neither arrived at the phone in my pocket. So, after around an hour of jogging around at 1am and then sitting in the chill Tasmanian spring air, I returned to the house and called them again. Clearly my account settings were wrong. They checked them and lo and behold, I had put symbols in my contact phone number. For some crazy reason, I had thought +61 would precede the phone number! Oh, wait a minute... no after some explaining it was realised their computers had added this when I set my country. Matters didn't improve. After jumping through hoops for a while, even tracking down another set of lithium AAA batteries at 3am, I gave up and grabbed a couple of hours of sleep. Daylight makes everything better.

Satellite phones don't like daylight as much as I do, it would seem. Dawn did arrive, but it didn't bring any great wave of communication capabilities. Another conversation with the call centre and they decided my unit was faulty. No problems though, there was one I could swap it with in a store just over in Unley Road. I'd never heard of it but duly looked it up, only to discover the shop was actually in South Australia. Some careful explaining that I'm in Tasmania and this would be inconvenient clearly had no effect, as I was asked how long it would take me to drive to Unley Road. Why, no time at all. An hour in a car would get me there, getting out partway to take two flights.

"There's one in Devonport, how far away is that?"

Why, that would only take four hours to drive there, a couple of days to wait around until they were open and four hours to drive back. Easy!

"How long are you staying in Tasmania?"

I live here, which is why my account's address is in Tasmania.

"How far is it for you to drive to Adelaide?"

I gave up around then; clearly there's something incomprehensible about Australian geography and our blatant refusal to drive cars on water. I took to the internet, seeking a solution in its depths. Lo and behold, I found it. The problem isn't the device (although the pattern of indicator lights do indicate that it's faulty). The problem is that Tasmania is just too far south for satellite coverage.

That's right, the satellite phone network (advertised as covering another hundred kilometres or so south of Tasmania), actually falls short. Occasional bursts of signal make it through but nothing that the Spot's tiny antenna can use, nor (from what I've observed this past week) anything usable by a more conventional satellite phone to send a two character text message. So next time a mainlander tells me (as is their wont) that Tasmanians have no concept of large distances or being isolated, I'll just ask them whether any of the mainland is so remote that it's out of range of a worldwide satellite communication network*.

So, how are we going to communicate? There's dodgy reception on a few mountain peaks approaching the meeting points and that'll have to do us. Connectivity is intermittent, but is enough for sending an SMS. I never thought I'd say this, but it turns out that (in Tasmania at least) Telstra's restricted GSM network has better coverage than satellites. Considering how bad the GSM network in Tasmania is, that's really saying something about the satellites.

*Yes, I have been waiting years for a suitable response to this comment, frequently used by a few mainlanders I know. Though if any of them read this blog, they probably won't say it again.

Weekend #15: Moving

Second last weekend of preparation is now complete. What did I do with it? Well I dehydrated a few things, obviously, before packing the drier away for a while. It’s work is done for now, though it may reappear briefly in the next few days. I made a groundsheet for the damn sexy tent*, a bright red one to tie on top of the otherwise well-camouflaged tent in the unlikely event of an emergency mid-walk.

Other than that, the weekend was spent starting the move out of my house. Unfortunately, while an emergency is unlikely, there's a certainty that my lease runs out mid-walk, so I have to do all my moving before heading off. There is no way that the amount of stuff I’m taking out of this house could have physically fit into it in the first place. Of this, I am absolutely certain. It makes me wonder exactly where all these boxes did come from, but certainly not from here!

*If you’re wondering what the damn sexy tent is, you’ve obviously been skipping posts. Stop skipping posts!

Week #14: Some food, but not much else to report

Second last week of preparation and last week of work before the walk… Tracked down some quick-dry shorts and a long-sleeved shirt, marvelling as I did that I refuse to spend money on expensive fashionable clothes, but hardly baulk at $50 on a pair of shorts.

Almost all of the food is now dehydrated. A few more ingredients from Sarah to dry and the drier’s efforts will be complete. No doubt it’s looking forward to the break, since it’s been running flat-out for weeks…

It turns out that 160 serves of cooked meals takes a lot of time to cook and then return to a dried state afterwards. It’s meant that our kitchen has been filled with delicious smells for weeks, although still not being able to eat them has been a form of mild torture. Why oh why didn’t I prepare 170 serves and enjoy a few along the way?

Through no effort of my own, I now have a new Whisperlite stove. Work gave me one as a resignation retirement present on Friday. There’s something satisfying about saying I’ve retired, and having it be true. I’ve finished engineering and have no intention of going back to it, retiring from that career with no new job lined up… the fact that I may find a few career path someday is entirely irrelevant.

I feel like there should be more to add here, but really it has just been a week of trying to finish off all my jobs at work and dehydrating food in the evenings. There’s nothing else to add to that.

Weekend #14: Irish and Food

It wasn’t the most productive of weekends, not in terms of preparing for the walk anyway. I dehydrated some more food on Saturday, but spent most of the day loitering around a hall in North Hobart.

There, drawn in through the cunning method of mentioning dancing, I was signed up for an Irish dancing competition. I’d never competed as a dancer before, since I just do it as a social and fun activity. My introduction to the other side of dancing wasn’t a short event; it was an entire day, 8.30 in the morning through until 5. I may as well have been at work!

Of course, I wasn’t dancing for the entire day. Irish dances take only a couple of minutes each and I only had to dance seven times throughout the day. There were different dances, skill levels and age groups, and – with up to twenty dancers competing for each – numerous heats required to get through us all. Most of the day was spent loitering backstage, watching other dancers from the shadowy back seats or practicing steps with my teammates.

Fortuitously, cameras aren’t allowed in most Irish dancing competitions. Something to do with being allowed to question the judge’s decision, I assume. Thus no photos will be appearing here showing me fumble my way through the dances. And if photos were still taken of some of my events… well they still won’t be appearing here.

Sunday brought more food dehydration, but all in all I was getting closer and closer to completion, and the remaining meals had been neglected as the time-consuming, fiddly ones. Come days end, there wasn’t much to show for my labours.

Week #13: Another week of food.

Well, I took down the damn sexy tent on Monday morning and it was with some regret that I went off to the airport, bade it farewell at check-in and moped my way back to Hobart. Even when I had the tent back, it wasn't the same tucked away in a pack as it had been lying out in the Adelaide sun.

So... maybe I shouldn't be allowed to use tents.


The week was spent buying, cooking and dehydrating food. I had to spend a lot of time buying it because I could only fit so much in my bag for the ride home each time. It really is pretty bulky and heavy before monsieur dehydrator and I get around to turning it into proper hiking food.

The menu was finalised and industrial mass-production of tiny shriveled vegetables, different coloured powders and strange containers of what looks like dog biscuits began. I've been preparing bits and pieces for a while but now the dehydrator is running more or less non-stop, only pausing to change its setting to match the latest load of trays.

I think I mentioned before that there are going to be eight different main meals, cycled through every eight days along the way to give us our requisite four weeks, plus some emergency meals.
Here's the menu:

• Wallaby Chilli Con Carne with Polenta and yoghurt (guacamole having failed)
• Sweet and Sour Vegetables with Rice
• Vegetable Curry with Rice
• Moroccan Spiced Couscous with Vegetables
• Wallaby Bolognese with Spaghetti and suspicious-dehydrated-cheese-stuff
• Sweet Tagine with Moroccan Fruit and Nut Rice
• Spicy Noodle Soup
• Aloo Palak and Daal with Rice

Also doing a few desserts. They won't be every day and there isn't as much variety in them. Also, two of them would only be done immediately after a food drop.

• Passionfruit Cheesecake
• Mango and Coconut rice pudding
• Choc Ripple Cake
• Honey Dumplings

I spent some time working out the cheesecake, grinding, drying and mixing ingredients until I had produced a recipe I was satisfied with. Then, what did I find on the supermarket shelves the very next day? Powdered cheesecake filling, just add milk. Oh well. I ended up making an adaptation of their mix and my recipe. It's tasty and lighter than the one I was planning, but it does detract somewhat from the achievement...

I now have a pack-based charging setup running. My 12W Sunload fabric solar panel arrived, and is possibly a slight overkill but it is capable of running the Unipal charger under overcast conditions. Tested with light cloud cover at 6pm, it was powerful enough to charge my camera battery. The panel clips onto the pack (and generates enough off ambient lighting while facing away from the sun to still work while walking north, provided it's a reasonably bright day), charger goes in top pocket.

The fabric for my groundsheet arrived as well. I'll hack that into pieces and sew it up soon. That's about it for now.

Week #12 and Weekend #13: Adelaide and Sexy Tents

This post is about dancing, preparing food and damn sexy tents... Actually it's mostly going to be about the sexy tents. I've written about preparing food and dancing before and there's not much to say there that wouldn't be a repetition of the old.

Early last week, I took delivery of a box from the US. Significantly sooner than the predicted 7 days, my tent had arrived. I resisted the urge to set it up, instead packing it away for use when next I found myself camping. When oh when would this be?

Friday, as it turned out, after a few days of cooking and dehydrating.

One of my habits, which I shall write more about another time, is journeying to small towns in Tassie or across the seas to the distant "mainland" for a few days. Almost without fail, it's because the town is playing host to a festival. I'll turn up with a complement of kilts replacing my pack's normal contents of wet weather gear, pitch a tent and spend a few days dancing until my feet hurt and listening to music.

This weekend's town of choice was Willunga, a couple of hours' train and bus ride south of Adelaide. I swapped my weight vest for a pack and toted it across kraken-infested waters to reach South Australia. A while spent exploring the city (my travels had never taken me to the state before), some time on public transport and I was faced with a patch of empty grass. This seemed in dire need of filling, and it was time for the tent to make its appearance. It was pretty quick to set up once I'd figured out what was what. Once it was set, there was really only one description that seemed appropriate: Sexy... That's right, the Jannu is a damned sexy tent.

Let me start with the fabric. It feels like it'll tear if you glare at it because it's so ridiculously thin and light. But it doesn't. Actually, it's one of the tougher tent fabrics around. It doesn't feel like it can stop a gentle summers breeze though, certainly not storms!

The tent poles are on the outside of the tent, which perplexed me until I worked out that this serves as an extra frame to allow the rather clever ventilation system in the roof. I love that ventilation system! If you're familiar with venturi pumps, it's essentially one of them designed to work with wind striking the tent in any direction (also, apologies for the horribly crude diagram I'm about to attach). If you're not familiar with a venturi pump, please refer to my amazingly brilliant diagram. The ventilation opening in the top of the fly can be adjusted from inside the main tent without even stirring from your sleeping bag.

OK, moving right along.

It's a few details that really made the tent. While setting it up, I kept stopping and looking at what I was doing because I would realise that some tiny detail that annoyed me on other tents had been fixed on this one. The pegs have a loop of cord on the end of each one. Those fancy new extruded alloy pegs, so easy to put in and without the tendency to bend on contact with the ground? They're on most tents now and are also almost impossible to remove simply because it's hard to get a grip on them. That loop of cord sounds ridiculous, frivolous, until you reach down to pull out a peg. The peg-out points on the fly are adjustable, so when you get to that final peg and discover there's a rock there, which you can't peg through, you adjust the length of the strap rather than moving the tent. The fly opens on the side of the tent, so you don't need to crawl over packs to get out, or zips off completely to make a small groundsheet where you can sit sheltered from the wind while preparing breakfast... I think I'll use an actual groundsheet but I appreciate the sentiment.

It's also a very spacious tent. A lot of two-man tents require the two sleeping mats to be stacked on top of each other and still don't have space to fit so much as a torch inside as well. Provided you didn't mind being cosy, three people would fit in the Jannu with ease.

All in all, seriously impressed.


I didn't just sit admiring the tent all weekend. Although it was a struggle, I got up eventually each morning to wander around the festival, listen to some great music and do some dancing, maybe snack on some of the tasty food they had on site. I would, of course, return periodically to simply sit beside the tent, admire its form in the Adelaide sun, stroke it... Ahem. As I was saying, nice tent.

I would attach photos, but I'm afraid of the jealousies that might arise in the community at large and that people would soon hunt me down to kill me for my tent.

PS. OK, you got me. I would attach photos of the tent if they weren't sitting on the other memory card a few suburbs away. I'll add them in an edit later.

Edit: Happy now? Photo attached.

Week #11 and Weekend #12: Belated Postings

A somewhat delayed post. I was delayed a few days, which spiralled out of control when I spent five days without internet access. Um, tragedy I guess...

As mentioned in the last post, so very long ago, I was contemplating tents and had been thoroughly won over by my introduction to the Hilleberg range. Unfortunately, I'd left the actual purchasing a little late to order from overseas and the full range isn't stocked in Australia. Some browsing of the interwebs discovered Moontrail, a site with reasonably priced express courier postage (really reasonable; that's normally prohibitively expensive) from the US. As an added bonus, their customer loyalty system meant I would be able to get a free Exped Synmat with my chosen tent. Since I needed both, the order was placed to arrive within a week. I went for a dark green tent as opposed to a red, because I hate climbing up from a campsite for the view and having the tents be so obtrusive that they ruin the whole view. Of course, any SAR volunteers reading this are probably wincing now. It's pretty hard for a rescue chopper to locate campsites, and they hate tents with natural colours for that reason. Thus I'm making a bright red groundsheet. If a rescue is required, that simply gets strung over the top of the tent instead of under it.

Food preparation continues, mostly basics this week. I have to start doing some serious cooking as well as drying now, so that there's enough whole meals made ready rather than assorted random ingredients. This week's challenges were kidney beans (alright, that wasn't a challenge but it did hog the drier for a while), guacamole and cheese.

I've concluded that my hopes for devising a way to dehydrate and rehydrate guacamole are best forgotten. There was a result, but it was almost completely inedible. We'll just have to cope without guacamole to accompany the chilli. Cheese though, cheese is another matter. It's heavy and anyone who has taken it walking in summer has probably seen what happens when it stays warm for a day or two. But there's a pasta meal on the rota, for which I'm determined that we will have cheese!

I've managed to produce something like the fake parmesan sprinkles you see in supermarkets, only based on real cheese and tastier. It weighs slightly under half the weight of the fresh cheese and is essentially cheese with its water and oil content removed. The process is slow, very slow, slower than any other dehydrating I've done. It also requires a dish to be put on the rack below. DO NOT LOOK IN THE DISH IF YOU ENJOY CHEESE! The end result is pretty potently flavoured. I've considered the possibility of making cottage cheese using powdered milk and combining this with the dried cheese for use in lunches, but this remains untested (and would use a reasonable amount of fuel).

I mentioned getting a satellite phone a while ago, a GSP1600 that I since discovered is a model far more common than its chargers. The easiest (and by far the cheapest) charger I encountered was one which came with three free sat phones and two extra chargers. It was a lucky find of someone replacing some old gear, and means I now have spare sat phones if anyone feels the need for one. Frankly, I don't need four of them.

I should probably point out here that I'm not being paid by any of the gear companies or shops I mention, in money or gear. So when I mention a name or expound upon a particular piece of gear, it's because I like it rather than because it's my job. That said, if anyone felt like bribing me to write said things by sending me nice free gear, I'd undoubtedly capitulate pretty easily (emphasis is on the nice gear. If anyone decided to bribe me with lame gear, my commentary would degenerate accordingly...).

Weekend # 11: It's gear time

The time has come at last to stop browsing reviews, haunting outdoor stores and drooling over descriptions of tents. With just over a month to go, I set about selecting the last few pieces of gear.

• An ongoing issue mentioned a couple of times is the matter of keeping everything charger. I've mentioned this once or twice along the way and actually came to a decision fairly early on but wanted to make sure the solar panel would work with the chosen charger. In the end, I went for a slightly more powerful module than I'd originally planned. The weight difference is negligible and it should still be able to run the charger on cloudy days. It'll be four weeks during a Tasmanian summer so there are  at least 50% odds of getting a sunny day, but could we charge everything on that one sunny day? Probably not. A 12W panel is now on its way from the factory in Germany.
• For the sake of comfort, I'm sticking with the Exped sleeping mats. A few years using one of these makes it nigh on impossible to even contemplate returning to the old thermarest, let alone a closed-cell foam slab. This wasn't so much a decision to be made as a procrastination. The advice I had from the start was to get a Downmat 7 or Synmat 7, avoiding the less durable fabric in the UL series mats. While I had heard that this fabric would be up to the job, I've done a trip before with a sleeping mat that had started leaking beyond repair and had no intention of repeating the experiment. The added comfort of not needing to worry about condensation getting into the mat eventually sold me on the Synmat over the Downmat.
• I had been looking seriously at a few tents. Exped actually had a few that had made the contended list, vying against MSR, Macpac, Mountain Hardware and Black Diamond. I had almost come to a decision and was on the verge of placing an order when a discussion with Jess, another of the walkers-to-be, brought me to a crashing halt. She made a single comment in passing, "[I] have been totally sold on Hillebergs... but they aren't sold in Australia ..." that caused me to cast aside half my research in disgust. Somehow, I had read every review, browsed every forum thread and searched through every product catalogue that didn't mention these tents. I gave their site a cursory glance, and threw out all my research in disgust. Three of their tents immediately entered the top five list. They ranked reasonably highly in pricing as well, but weren't the most expensive I was looking at and certainly outstripped the shortlisted models of equivalent price in terms of quality. After a Sierra Designs tent our family used to use, I've had something of a soft spot for geodesic tents, tempered only by their lack of ventilation for summer use. On discovery of a high-quality, reasonably lightweight two-person four-season semi-geodesic tent with good ventilation allowing for summer use, I was sold. Some intensive research followed as I sought fault with the tent of choice, but the only design fault that I came across is that the poles are susceptible to damage in extreme gales. Sounds bad, until you realise that none of the hiking-weight tents you'd want to spend more than a night or two in could withstand those windspeeds unscathed. Also, if you are expecting winds at those speeds, there are a few ways to compensate with the Hilleberg tents so that they can withstand them. Yes, thoroughly sold.

Week #10: Food, food and more food...

Well another week down and physical preparation remained fairly steady. I'm pretty much satisfied with my level of fitness and am simply aiming to maintain it through the next few weeks of continued office work.

Gear-wise, I'm still yet to get the last few pieces but the various options have been narrowed down to one or two. I'll be ordering them shortly, which really just leaves food (and a million other things, but I'm choosing to pretend that I just need to think about food for now).

One of the trays of freshly dried wallaby bolognese.

One of the meals on the rota is spaghetti bolognese. There's not much in the way of pasta on the menu, as it's by far the bulkiest and probably the slowest of the carbs we're going to be having. Instant pasta would take care of the cooking time, but is no less bulky and certainly less tasty. But to provide some variety along the way, there is one spaghetti meal. Since it's my favourite meat, I decided to make a wallaby sauce. The problem is that I've never used wallaby in a dehydrated sauce before and was concerned it would be so lean that it wouldn't rehydrate. It wouldn't do at all to finish one of the many inevitable days of bad weather looking forward to a filling meal, and then find that instead of bolognese sauce we're actually having soup filled with rubber pellets. So I made a small batch to start with, just 12 servings and one spare.

To test how well it can rehydrate with limited fuel consumption (ie. no extended simmering), I rehydrated the spare serve for a lunch by just pouring boiling water onto it. It absorbed about 2.5:1 water by volume and came out notably rubber free. It was a relief, else I'd have wasted a reasonable-sized pot of tasty bolognese on an experiment.

Tried out some dried snacks as well. Although the spiced sweet potato crisps were delicious, they're also far too bulky to be able to take anywhere the quantity required (one handful wasn't nearly enough) so alas they had to be consumed now instead. Fortunately I found a few volunteers to help me work my way through them.

Weekend #10: Cathedrals and the boundless energy of youth

Well preparation was put aside for half the weekend, that I could spent time with family (particularly my nephews, who are vying with each other for 1st and 2nd on the international scale of cuteness and one of whom has near-limitless energy).

Walk-wise, Sunday was more productive (although much less cute) in doing a daywalk up Cathedral Rock. I was forced to divest myself of vest, when someone else wanted to try the steep ascent with the extra weight to test her pack-fitness. A few litres of water in my daypack were scant substitute, but I think I'm theoretically still meant to be resting that knee... Pah, details! Some of the walking time was also quite usefully spent discussing more gear and food preparation.

The view from the top was as pretty as it always is, though marred by the approach of the day's promised showers... Grey, featureless blobs had been strewn across the patchwork green, sapping the light from the sun that might otherwise have shone upon the verdant forests. Oh well, the view was worth it regardless of the rain's intervention.

Filled with planning energy, I started a round of dehydration experiments that evening. Lunches are my present focus. Wraps and the old vita-weats are great, but only with sufficient flavouring. Lacking the array of fresh cuisine that I'd normally use, thoughts have turned instead to relishes and dips, particularly to which of these can be stored in dehydrated form for later use. Some ideas on how to preserve some vegetables in fresh form at the food drops (some food is being walked in and left in advance, which will have to survive a few weeks unattended) are being tested on my kitchen bench. We'll see how successful they are when I break the seals in a couple of weeks.

I also started making some flavour-bombs to spice up the blandest of meals (which ours won't be, of course). A previous dehydration experiment demonstrated the brilliance of dried onion. It tastes like concentrated onion rings, despite lacking both the grease and greasy batter. In short, sprinkle some flakes on a meal to give it crunch and added flavour. Dried garlic is apparently similarly useful. I always dry mushrooms and some other veggies. What other flavours can I concentrate and improve with the miracle that is warm air?

Week #9: Gnom gnom gnom...

Again, the week was lacking in adventures and insane exercises (although capoeira did feature a couple of times, as well as some more irish dancing training). What it lacked in those, it made up for with further explorations of gear and notably of food. A menu of sorts was planned out, considered, reconsidered, debated (tell a lie, it was only really considered once and then left as is) and finally settled on. Eight different meals, cycling through every eight days or as we choose to eat them. Everything that can be dehydrated will be dehydrated. Everything that can't be is likely not to appear on the menu.

Each food drop gets its subsequent tasty evening meal and dessert, plus some fancier lunches the next day or two. One of the problems over a walk of this length is that we'll be gone long enough to risk the onset of scurvy. Now vitamin C tablets and supplements are pretty easy to obtain, but I'm not overly fond of using supplements where food can provide. The issue here is that dehydrating any vegetable will rob it of most of its vitamin C content. Note that I wrote "most" rather than "all". So, use a lot of capsicum in some sauces (particularly high in vitamin C) and use lemon as the requisite acidic preservative pre-dehydration and I hope we'll be alright...

"Hope" isn't very reassuring, is it? An idea was proposed that really was so logical that I felt a little silly for not considering it myself. Hang some stockings off the backs of the packs, keep them filled with mung beans, alfalfa, et cetera and dunk them in the odd stream along the way. That way, we get fresh greenery for lunches and non-dehydrated vegetables with their vitamins intact. Coupled with the rest of the planned meals, the vaguely concerning use of "hope" can now be put aside.

Dehydration experiments are required for some of the meals, pushing the boundaries of what can and can't be rehydrated (anything can be dried, but some things refuse to absorb water again afterwards. We learnt early on that minced beef hydrates in minutes while minced white meats turn into balls of rubber). I have no intention of eating instant noodles every day for a month! There shall be courses, different flavours, textures, a variety of colours and where's my wine?

Weekend #9: A "relaxing" break

Well, under orders not to over-exert myself lest I do horrendous damage to my knee, what could I do for a weekend? There was a contra dance on Saturday night, with a guest contra musician visiting from the US. Ordered not to push myself... Contra dance... Ordered not to push myself... Contra dance...

I'm pretty predictable when it comes to dancing, particularly contra which is a fast-paced dance style with plenty of chances to spin you and your partner silly. Of course I spent most of the evening dancing while loaded down with weights, not the entire evening but enough that my leg told me in no uncertain terms I was to stop being so silly. Saturday was far more restful, devoted to digging, hoeing and weeding. That's relaxing isn't it?

It's been pointed out to me that this blog has featured a distinct lack of adventures of late, that the pace has dropped off a lot. I knew setting the precedent of those first few weeks would be a mistake, but oh well. It's about preparations in general, not just going on adventures. Ideally, it would all be adventures, but then I wouldn't have any time to write the blog now would I? Alright, so I still would have time but I'm using that as an excuse anyway. I'm fairly confident in my fitness at this point, so a lot of the posts are going to start being about less exciting things. Food will probably feature heavily from here on, as well as more discussions of gear. Sorry, but that's what's needed right now.

Week 8: Knees

Well, it turns out that knees don't take side impacts well. The encounter between my knee and a raft was being felt throughout the week, until I gave in and went to a physio. He used the same method of checking the injury, generally prodding and twisting my leg, then repeating specifically on the areas that hurt. There must be a better way of checking the severity of an injury!

The prognosis was that I had been very lucky. His initial reaction upon hearing the description of how I'd been injured was not promising but he relented somewhat after examining it. Tape the knee for a week, not do anything "too crazy" for another fortnight and I should be fine. That's what he said anyway. But either my knee's not injured at all or he uses a different definition of crazy from mine. By luck, my knee was spared its triple round of capoeira this week by dint of our instructor being away. But next week it'll be back to business as usual because capoeira is normal, not crazy.

So, bereft of physical training, what did I do for a week? The entire track is now loaded into the GPS. This was more difficult than you might think, as several sections are walks not so heavily frequented and there are no track files for them either on the built-in maps or on the numerous sites online. I've narrowed choices of sleeping mats down to three. I'm actually seriously considering an ultralight model, which I'd initially removed from the list out of concerns for their durability. While I'm still concerned, they're only less puncture resistant, not more prone to valve failure or delamination. Punctures are something that can be fixed on the track, and the weight of the UL mats is half that of their full-weight equivalents. Not yet fully convinced, but they're worth considering.

That about sums it up, not the most productive week as they go. I'll have to improve on that.

Weekend #8: Water

In a way, this was something of a rest weekend. My weight vest, building weight steadily these past few weeks, was barely worn at all.

Saturday morning came around and the vest went on as usual. Some driving, a bit of standing around, some more driving, some jumping up and down... Then I sneakily swapped the lead-weighted vest for a different bulky vest designed to have very little weight. I may do some stupid things, but white water rafting while wearing lead weights isn't one of them.

It's been a while since I've been rafting and I'd almost forgotten just how pleasant it is to spend a day mingling long periods of exercise, beautiful scenery, shenanigans and patches of adrenalin-pumping excitement together. We were rafting the Esperence. It's not a challenging river by any means and has barely a whiff of adrenalin to be had throughout the day, but it's a fun and pretty river.

There were the usual shenanigans, a few unusual ones, some solid paddling along the stretches of flat water, a couple of fun rapids, some rafters of... limited experience and a few minor injuries. Irritatingly (for me at least), one of those was mine. Dragging rafts out of the water, one struck the side of my knee at not inconsiderable speed. Generally, I'd be knocked over in that situation, but alas this time I was wearing shoes with excellent grip which refused to slide out from beneath me and I was against a rock with nowhere to be thrown to. That left my knee as the only place to absorb the impact. It did, quite admirably in fact. By the feel of it, the joint was momentarily popped open, significantly over stretching the innocent soft tissue on the far side of the knee. In summary, it was rather painful, agonising even.

The initial blast of pain faded after a while, subsiding to a dull throb. I can still walk on it without any dramas, but some movements are somewhat uncomfortable. A doctor determined that he could make it more painful by prodding parts of it. I assume this knowledge was useful to him, and was hopefully necessary for providing the advice not to apply too much lateral tension to the joint. If it wasn't, I subjected myself to a fresh round of pain for nothing...

Unsure of whether it would be a good idea, I didn't wear the weight vest on Sunday. I was later told that this wouldn't be a problem, so no more slacking off. Sunday remained a rest day though, with the only prep being some gear research and locating more maps for my GPS. This had it's first extensive test (ignoring all the short walks and rides) on the rafting trip, logging the trip downriver. It successfully tracked us down the river (while overshadowed by rocks and trees) accurately enough to show the maneuvers performed through each rapid and when I was pacing on the bank while doing safety.

Week #7: Capoiera

It was a week that lacked excitement, but kept me busy nonetheless. Mostly, I was kept busy with three evenings of Capoiera. There have been three sessions running every week for a while now, but clashing activities have prevented me from making all of them in a single week. At last, this goal was achieved! In celebration of this momentous occasion, I met up with my housemate one lunchtime to practice some Capoiera down at Salamanca.

Until now, I've been sensible enough to remove the weight vest before all of the different Capoiera classes and have made sure that I'm driving to and from the sessions. They're utterly exhausting at the best of times, I wouldn't be able to finish a class if it was much harder and there'd be a decent chance of not completing the walk home. This week the format changed slightly, bringing near an hour's walk to and then again back from each class. On Friday, I also included the weight vest. The fully laden vest would still have wiped me out halfway through, so I removed a lot of the weights before the start and brought it down to around 2.5kg. Now before anyone tells me that's nothing, a pathetic addition, I want to see you complete the 2.5 hour Friday Capoiera session and manage the walk back up to my house with just 1kg extra weight. It's not much, no, but it's enough. The result was a somewhat leaden walk (now with all weights restored) back up the hill after class. It was satisfying though, to finally do that; if I can get to 10% of my body weight in a vest while doing Capoiera, I'll be pretty pleased with that.

I dried some more rice and tried to find a way to keep cameras, torches and GPS charged for 30 days as well. It took a while, but I've finally found a combination of solar cells and a charger light enough to do the job and be worth carrying. The problem has been that I'm trying to find a lightweight solution to power all the different types of devices of various brands. I think that has been achieved at last, though I'll have to test the somewhat makeshift setup for myself to be certain.

Weekend #7: Shoes are important...

I’ve decided - for no particular reason, just because - to write about the weekend just passed in terms of footwear.  If you object to this… well I won’t actually change it back, so there’s probably no point complaining about it.

 Folk dancers use a range of different shoes, generally based on the style they do most or that first introduced them to dancing. Scottish and Irish soft dancing shoes are exceedingly common, swing dancing shoes as well, Irish hard shoes less so. I’m possibly unique and certainly rare, in that I dance wearing hiking sandals. Essentially the sole of a hiking boot held on with a few straps instead of leather and laces (straps, leather and lace… somewhere along the way this post took a turn for the strange). They’re heavy, the grip’s all wrong for dancing and they look bizarre, but they’re also extremely comfortable. I’ve learned to work around the rest. That said, I still dance barefoot half the time because it’s even more comfortable. That’s how I spent Friday night, dancing barefoot through a few hours of Irish and folk dancing.

Saturday morning brought a new challenge. Riding uses particular footwear as well, but I normally ride wearing work shoes because that’s where I’m going to or from. So when I go mountain biking, I don’t have any special riding shoes to wear. Though it makes people wince to see all the exposed skin, I often ride wearing my hiking sandals (look, they’re really comfortable!). I deviated from that this weekend by using some high-top volleys. The track was pretty narrow and I didn’t want my feet getting too shredded by passing shrubbery. As it was, I should have worried more about my hands and face, which both sustained injuries when falling in the line of duty.

I’ve done very little climbing over the years and have no fancy climbing shoes either. So I stuck with the volleys on Saturday arvo, figuring that the grip they gave would be good. Wrong, very wrong. The toe on a pair of volleys is a soft thing that bends easily, regardless of how your toes are positioned. Trying to maintain a grip on a precarious toehold proved nigh on impossible. I also wore half the remaining tread off the soles trying to use their grip on the weathered dolerite. If you’ve not spent much time in Tas, it’s entirely possible you haven’t studied this rock up close. Freshly cut, it’s a mottled grey and can be quite smooth. It weathers to an ochre hue with a texture like grit 1 sandpaper, if there is such a thing. Nice and grippy, but death for any soft-soled shoes.

Sunday morning was an easy choice. Making cheese requires no special footwear, so I could wear my hiking sandals! Alas, some exercises in the afternoon required some creative thought. The soles of my volleys were already worn thin by a couple of the exercises at Hell Night in Wellington, and the climbing had nearly finished them off. They wouldn’t give me any good grip. A discussion at Hell Night had me tempted to just go barefoot. The guy running it mentioned that cushioned modern shoes encourage really bad practices when running, which cause a lot of additional wear on the joints. He had us practice a running style that avoids those problems and mentioned that it was almost instinctive whenever running barefoot. I’ve tried and I think he’s right. Unfortunately I’m less inclined to run around in the dark barefoot, lest some unkind person leaves glass strewn amid the concealing grass. So I needed a thin but tough sole, with no padding… Something I had already considered for the next time I go rockclimbing is my old pair of rafting shoes. Turns out five fingers are pretty much ideal, with a tough grippy sole and absolutely no padding. I’ll give them a try next time I go climbing as well, though I’m told I will soon have to try climbing in walking boots.


(I actually have some photos, and not all of shoes! For the sake of not delaying this any longer, I'll post this now and upload the photos in an edit later.)

EDIT: See, one of them was of people who'd just donned their shoes!

Week #6: Capoeira and rice

Another week down and it wasn't completely wasted. A return to Capoeira on Monday set things off to a flying start. I took the weight vest off for my two hours of intensive exercise, hoping that perhaps that would spare me complete muscle failure at the end of a two hour session. It was a nice idea, but that extra weight would have just hastened the inevitable.

I'd missed that feeling of muscles collapsing beneath their own weight. It sounds unpleasant, but it's actually invigorating. Like the feeling of floating when I take the weight vest off, the end of a Capoeira class brings with it a feeling of ease. Walking, running, pushups... all seem that much easier compared with a few rounds of switching legs from Negativa. Think doing your normal exercises, all while remaining in a low push-up position.

There was another session on Wednesday night as well, followed by a nice relaxing forty minute uphill walk back home. Once more, I removed the weight vest as the lesson started and donned it again when we slowed afterwards. I think next week I'll try keeping the vest on with most of the weights removed. It may be an insanely stupid idea but, if I can manage that, a mere bushwalk should present scant little problem.

I also returned to my previous habit of balancing on bollards at lunch. Again, I seem to have a knack for only doing this when it's extremely windy. This time it wasn't my legs that gave out each time. Instead, I would remain balanced until a gust arrived that was powerful enough to shove me straight off. Only one of the bollards was reasonably sheltered, so I took to swapping legs on that one rather than working my way along the line.

Next week, I'll have three nights of Capoeira. Maybe wearing the weight vest for them isn't such a good idea if I'm doing that many. It would be sensible to take it easier... Sensible? Me? Not going to happen!

I've got no further with planning what meals to start preparing. We have to sort out for sure who's going and meet up to work out that and myriad other details soon. In the meantime, I've started preparing some complete basics. Since longer cooking times mean more fuel and weight, just carrying bags of rice is a terribly bad idea. Quick-cook rice tastes really odd, some product of its commercial production. But it's very easy to make your own tasty quick-cooking rice. Take rice, cook it (steam, boil, simmer, soak or even use a rice cooker. The choice is yours), spread it on baking trays and put it in an oven with the door jammed slightly open. I find that 75 degrees fan forced works pretty well for my oven, though its dubious thermostat means that probably translates to anything from 65-90 degrees on a normal oven.Turn it and break up the lumps that form after an hour or so, then again after another hour. I can completely dehydrate white rice in a little over two hours. Brown rice is up around 4 hours. The result is rice taking up the same volume and weight as raw rice, but which cooks by pouring in some boiling water and sitting for a couple of minutes while you prepare to dish up. Since we're sure to need some, I've started drying rice en masse. Whatever isn't needed for the walk can go into the pantry for when I'm feeling hungry and don't feel like waiting for our stove to potter its way through cooking the rice.

Week #5 and Weekend #6

Alas, the delayed posting wasn't caused by a trip into the wilderness, a bridge being taken out by the recent gales and a forced week-long detour. So why the delay? I've a plethora of excuses at the ready but far less reasons. Came down with a cold last week and was floored for half the week. The extent of the physical training was some riding, continuing to add weights to the vest and an Irish dancing session. Started working out what food has to be prepared (since that much food will take a long time to dehydrate) and it looks like there'll be a crew of 5 or 6 for the Arthurs, then 3 or 4 after that.

What of the weekend then, did it bring a sudden increase in planning and activity? The cold loitered still, but faded enough to do a spot of manual labour, shifting and laying sandstone blocks. Started making some new weights as well, since I'm almost wearing all of those which came with the vest. Up around 6 kg now. Still noticing it, but that 1/2 lb a day seems a like a rate I can maintain fairly easily.

As for gear, I've been looking at what I have and I'm pretty much alright now. One potential problem is my sleeping mat. I have one of the early Exped inflatable down-filled mats, which is lightweight, packs down small, is the most comfortable comping bed I've ever used and I've never had a problem with it. Sounds perfect; what am I worried about? It was purchased in a batch of four. Of those four, all the others suffered catastrophic failure (when an exped goes flat it has absolutely no padding left, so any failure is catastrophic), only reaching around 20 nights of usage at best. At last count, mine's managed around 70. Now I'm hoping that's because I got the lucky mat and it'll make it clear through 100. The odds are against it though, and with 30 days of rough ground, I'm considering whether I can take the gamble. I haven't replaced it yet, but am looking at some options for doing so.

Well that's about it. No pretty pictures to accompany this time. So you'll have to cope with boring text.

Weekend #5: Wellington Wanderings

Belatedly posting about the weekend, because I've been somewhat short of time these last couple of days.

Saturday came around and my legs were in no mood to be up and walking. After so much quadrupedal work up and down flights of stairs on Friday night, they wanted a rest. I forced them outside to the bus terminal and they got to rest while I caught the bus out to Eastbourne. I was curious about the eastern side of Wellington Harbour. From the arbitrary point where I decided to disembark, I set out along the shoreline. It was yet another beautiful day, bereft of the wind and rain I had been promised. Suffice to say, I was disappointed at Wellington's efforts!

There's a gravel road that follows the coast another 11km beyond the end of the public streets and looks like it'd be a great bike ride, but on foot I decided against doing the whole walk out and back (though I was tempted). Around a 6km walk out until I found a suitable rock to scramble onto for a view, and then back to track down a bus into the city.

As much as checking out the University, I was in Wellington to check out the other activities on offer. One thing that's a regular part of my life in Hobart is dancing, and I fully intended to test out the local groups. One of the numerous Scottish Country Dance groups in the Wellington area is the Lower Hutt group, who were quite conveniently running their Annual Dance on Saturday night. Kilted up and laden with weights, it took a while wandering the suburb of Lower Hutt to find the event. It was definitely worthwhile.

The first dance had 72 dancers on the floor in nine sets. A few more arrived late and some left early, but there were still nine sets for the last dance, four hours later. We rarely have more than six sets on the floor at our large dances. When I eventually found my way back to Wellington (some 4 hours after the dance finished; I may have taken detours), it was another hour before I sought out my hostel. Too many unexplored streets to wander while having rambling phone conversations back to Australia.

Sunday was a relaxed day. Nothing to mar its calm but a few more hours wandering the streets of the city, a quick run up Mt Victoria and over the back to scope out the best way out to the airport and running up and down the hostel stairs because I could.

Technically into the following week, but so early that it was still the weekend in parts of Australia, I checked out and set off for the airport. A sensible person would have caught a shuttle bus, rather than walking through the night with a bag full of wine bottles and a weighted vest. Having established that I'm not a sensible person early on, I had no interest in acting like it now.

It was tempting to head over the top of Mt Victoria, getting a last view of the city by night, but I had already gone that way a few times and I wanted to try something different. Besides, I was in New Zealand. "If we cannot go over the mountain, I say let us go under it!" Wellington is riddled with tunnels, for trains, buses, cars and people. One of them is the Mt Victoria Tunnel. Another is a pedestrian tunnel conveniently going under the airport. Between the two of them, an hour's mixed jogging and walking had me at the airport.

After that, it was the new week throughout Australia so we'll say the weekend had ended.

Week 4: It is a good pain!

Well, the end of another week has arrived and it's time to write about what happened. Mostly, what happened is that I've done foolish and tiring things, which were nevertheless fun. This week was never going to be about planning; from the start, I intended it to be about purely physical preparation. It started innocently enough, walking down the street as dawn’s light broke with a shovel in hand. From there, it took a turn for the painfully fun…

I had my usual fortnightly visit to the local vampire clinic, where they’ve decided they don’t want most of my blood and just take the plasma. They replace it with saline so that I barely notice the change, but having a gargantuan needle hanging out of my arm for nearly an hour tends to leave the limb a bit useless for a while afterwards. By now, you’ve probably gathered that resting injured/tired limbs isn’t my specialty. There was just enough time to ride home, change and head down to the Monday Capoeira class. Half an hour holding a percussion instrument was a nice gentle lead in to the hour of intensive exercise. Normally I would have struggled with the movements we were doing but, with a weakened left arm and my right thumb still in a splint from a skiing injury back in July, it was especially difficult. Totally worth it.

What of Tuesday? Would this be a day for some Rest, Recovery and Relaxation? Not really…


Tuesday morning came around and I seemed to have gained weight overnight, quite a bit of it. Indeed, I was coming in a full 4kg heavier than the previous night. Something was definitely strange; perhaps I was wearing heavier clothes, but 4kg heavier? Surely the lead weights didn’t weigh that much.

Weight resistance training commenced today, using a weighted vest. I came up with the idea of making one of these years ago, but was stumped when it came to making it comfortable enough to wear constantly. Recently it occurred to me that this was probably something that already existed. Sure enough, there’s a plethora of the things. Most are just a vest with large pockets front and back for lead weights. They’re bulky and there’s no question of wearing one discretely beneath work clothes. I decided to use something more refined. The vest of choice is from a company called Ironwear, because they make a low-profile vest out of a breathable mesh rather than neoprene (aptly named a Cool-Vest). I’ve started pretty light at around 4kg. It’s just enough to notice but mostly I’m trying to get used to the feel of wearing the vest under my clothes while doing day-to-day activities. The aim at the moment is to add an extra ½ lb weight every day until it’s at 20kg, so that a 25kg pack won’t be such a shock come day one of the walk.

I tested it out by going back to the cenotaph during my lunchbreak to balance on bollards. The extra weight’s evenly distributed so it didn’t throw me off-balance, but did put a bit more strain on the leg. I didn’t time myself before to compare, but it was seven bollards in 22 minutes this time. I should set a fixed time (say 30 minutes) and just track how many I do in that time. Unusually, achieving less is doing better.

Tuesday night brought no reprieve, with a few hours of Scottish country dancing (still wearing the vest; from now on assume that I was wearing it unless I say otherwise). I hadn’t been up to Oatlands for the weekly session before, though a few friends from the Hobartian dancers always drive up. Scottish country dancing is far from the most vigorous of the dance styles I do, so it wasn't really a challenge to dance with the weights on. The real dancing difficulty begins when I try dancing Contra at the end of September, by then with around 11kg weighing me down.

A bit of walking around on Wednesday morning, before I settled in to sit for the day. First on a bus. Then (after having an extensive security check when they realised I was wearing a strange body-armour style vest) on to an airport chair, a cramped seat on a plane, a few more airport chairs, another plane and a bus to finish it off. It wasn't tiring, just boring. I was glad to dump my bag and set off for a wander around the unknown streets of an unknown city when I finally arrived at 1am. First impression of Wellington: they love their films
here. I counted half a dozen cinemas in my wandering, while only exploring a few blocks of the CBD...

Dawn brought new impressions, of course. Wellingtonites/Wellingtonians (anyone know the group term for the residents here) really like their films. I found more cinemas, large and small, and countless posters advertising film festivals. Then I venture out to the Uni campus I actually came here to visit. To think I used to believe UTAS was built on a hill. The stairs inside Vic Uni  are no steeper than the hills outside. There's an old cable car up to it. I was really left wondering at the wisdom of walking around the campus wearing a weighted vest.

I now dread the sight of stairs

Wisdom would have suggested I then learn from that, and not run up Mt Victoria on the other side of the city later in the day. Perhaps it was a glimmer of wisdom shining through, but I took the weight vest off for a while, not while running up the mountain, but while doing a two and a half hour capoeira session. Different format here, not so exhausting but no less enjoyable. At the end of it though, the pinky finger of my left hand had received the greatest workout, balancing a berraboi through a music session and a roda.


Friday brought a fresh round of walking up and down countless flights of stairs and steep hills at the Uni campus, before hell began. I checked out the local Parkour group before heading over, to see what events they'd be running. There's one that isn't really part of the training but is just general physical conditioning. They call it Hell Night. For anyone in Wellington of a Friday evening who thinks they're pretty fit, I recommend giving this a try. Frank Kitts Park beneath the yellow mast, 6-7pm. There's a range of exercises that use the features of the park for gym equipment. Fun, intense exercise. I realised it would be absolutely stupid to do it wearing the weight vest, so transferred the vest into my bag at the start. This demonstrated a certain lack of foresight; we were carrying our bags for half of the evening anyway, doing exercises as we moved from location to location, and the bag straps are a whole lot less comfortable than the vest.

Another week complete. No photos, because I left the cable for my camera at home in another country. I'll add them later.

Edit: A few photos now included

Weekend #4: Balance is everything...

It may not have been a quiet weekend, but it certainly lacked the excitement of previously posted ones. There was no climbing (well, almost none), no snow-covered mountains (no camping on them, at least), no extreme sports (actually, I think the verdict came back as extreme for that one) and no trips to remote places (... alright, I've got me there).

I took one of my kites out on Saturday. I do love going kiting and it's a good few weeks since my last trip up to the cenotaph to play. My kites aren't the little diamonds tied to the end of a string with a tail of ribbons, nor sharply angled stunt kites like brightly coloured stealth fighters (interesting and unrelated note: apparently pink aircraft are better camouflaged than black). They're power kites, for snow-kiting. In lieu of standing on a ski field, I often take them out to the cenotaph if the wind's high at lunchtime, and get launched around on the grass. As power kites go, mine are just babies. The three of them range from 2.5-4.5 m2 and all have entirely different controls. The most insane one is the 3.5, running on a pair of handles instead of a control bar. It's safety features are that the handles will probably be yanked out of your hands in a strong gust. I prefer to keep a tighter grip and see how far it'll pull me. In a decent wind, it's pretty easy to go from sitting down to jumping five metres across the grass with just a twitch of the kite lines. School long-jump, eat your heart out...

The general consensus on kiting is that it's more than dangerous enough to be classed as an extreme sport, whether it's on snow, land or water. Me, I think it's a fun way to get outside during the day. It isn't much of a workout for the legs, but it's still pretty exhausting. I don't have a harness on my smaller kites, so all that power goes straight through the arms. An hour of that in a strong wind and I (almost) wished I'd been doing chinups instead.


Walking back toward North Hobart, I noticed something interesting on the cenotaph. I've seen this feature countless times before, but never considered its potential. There are timber bollards there, probably meant to keep cars off the grass. Walking past them, I was struck with the desire to see how long I could balance on one of them on one leg. I didn't have a timer, but it turns out that it's long enough to set the calf burning. That's not exactly balanced exercise though. It works the core muscles, but only one leg. So when I finally toppled off my chosen bollard, I swapped legs and tried again. When that leg eventually gave up, too, a sensible person would have kept walking home. I'm rarely accused of being sensible, and looked up to see a line of wooden posts stretching roughly in the direction I was walking. They were too far to jump between (without kite assistance), but they would do for setting a challenge. Still bereft of a timer, I settled for going from one to the next, seeing how long I could balance on one leg before I fell off. Anything less than thirty seconds (calculated using the precise method of good enough) didn't count and I had to try that bollard again. I was only a dozen or so bollards away from the end, just enough to test it out. By the time I reached the highway and returned to contemplating the uphill walk home, both legs were once again considering seceding their affiliations with my body. I had to make it up to them, and soon.

Clearly apologies aren't my strength, as this one ended up being four hours of very energetic bush-dancing, tied off with a polka endurance test between dancers and band. If you haven't done much bush dancing (other than at school, which resembles it in name only and doesn't count), that might not mean much to you. If you're not an obsessive dancer, a polka is somewhat like skipping around the room with a partner, while spinning. It's fast, energetic, exhausting and a lot of fun when there's a room full of couples all trying to avoid high-speed collisions.

The legs definitely deserved their rest after that, so they got a night's reprieve. A new day dawned to reveal Mt Wellington thoroughly doused in snow, and I was sorely tempted to go for a wander up there. Driving up would have felt too lazy though, and I was pretty sure my legs weren't up to walking up and back in the snow (something I'll really have to work on...)  so I decided to try a few of the exercises from last weekend's parkour instead. Finding a suitable ledge to jump off repeatedly is always easy enough, and amounts to doing high speed squats. A kids' playground provided a wonderful rope... thingy, which gave me a chance to have fun leaping through restricted spaces to try and land on loose ropes. There are always plenty of walls to be found for practising throwing some weight around for speed climbing. I also discovered a good rail at last. Horizontal, around twelve metres long and with a choice of a moderate drop onto concrete on one side or a much larger drop onto grass on the other, so plenty of incentive to fight for balance. Walking forward along a rail isn't much of a problem and I'm getting the hang of walking backwards, but I'm still struggling with turning around on a rail. I had plenty of bonus practise landing while I tried to figure that out...

Week #3: Burning legs and not much else

Well, I was right about not wanting to exercise after Sunday. I didn’t let myself go so far as to drive or bus into work, but the ride in was certainly painful on Monday morning. A few agonising stretching sessions during the day seemed to help, but the burning thighs I got from riding home convinced me I shouldn’t push the friendship any further. Alas, that meant no Capoeira on Monday night.

Found a few handrails near work to try balancing on at lunch-time. You know, it's a lot harder to do with shaky legs and the breeze to contend with than it was at the indoor Parkour area. I struggled to walk forwards along the bar, let alone backwards. Despite the minor sessions of abuse, my legs forgave me enough to trick them into doing the Wednesday Capoeira session. Was that really a good idea when they were still struggling? Of course not, but it built character!

So, other than being cruel to my poor legs and doing my usual rides to and from work, what did I achieve this week? Any great feats of organisation? I did a lot of organising and planning, but it was for next year rather than this summer. I fear I actually achieved very little this week and, unless I think of something quickly, I may have similar results from the coming weekend.

Since posts about getting nothing done are exceedingly dull to write (and I imagine to read as well), I’ll think fast and make sure there’s something more exciting to report by Sunday night. At least I can rest assured that I’ve planned plenty of physical abuse for next week, so much that I probably won’t be able to walk come the following Saturday… um, hooray I guess…

Weekend #3: Cafés and Parks

This weekend's preparation was a mix of looking at gear and some physical prep.

As a nice gentle warmup, I did some capoeira on Friday night. For those who haven't tried this before, capoeira is a martial art designed to be disguised as a dance. The training for it is a mix of cardio, weights and yoga... all at the same time. Add a music and singing session to the mix and you've probably got yourself a complete mess. Just try capoeira instead.

It's a while since I've been along to training, and it showed. My technique (such as it was; I was pretty much a beginner before the break) was shot and I was feeling even the easier exercises. Fortunately it was a beginners' session, or I'd have struggled badly.

Saturday's dawn found me fast asleep, trying to make up for the early start by snoozing on the flight to Melbourne. It probably didn't help; snoozing on the plane never does. Several hours after my demonic alarm clock dragged me from a warm bed, I wandered into Little Bourke st. It's Melbourne's outdoor gear centre, and I took the chance to compare a few stoves. This was an opportunity to compare the different brands side-by-side and see what they actually looked like, not what their manufacturers wanted them to look like.

That was the theory anyway. To my surprise, I discovered that Melbourne's stores aren't what I remember... or more that they are exactly what I remember. Somehow, I thought that they would have expanded their stores and range at the same rate as their Hobart counterparts. There's twice the range of gear available in Hobart now than there used to be, and it's far surpassed Melbourne. There were a number of different stoves there, but only one Optimus and none of the Primus models. It's looking like Primus stoves aren't that common in Australia and I'm leaning away from them now because of that; I can order one online, but online stores have notoriously inadequate after-sales support. That brought me back to the MSR range or a solid fuel stove.

It seems I might have unfairly maligned one of the MSR models in my last post. My past experience with the Whisperlite wasn't positive. When I mentioned the problem of a blocked nozzle, the salesman was stunned. He said, quite correctly, that it must have been at least a 15 year old model, from their previous design of fuel nozzle. I was skeptical until he dismantled the entire burner head of their demo model to demonstrate, taking it apart in 10-15 seconds. Looking at it, I could see his point. Short of mixing chunks of coal into the fuel, I wouldn't be able to block that nozzle. Lighter, cheaper and far quieter than the dragonfly or even the Omnilite, the Whisperlite has taken out first in the shellite range. How does it stack up against solid fuel? That remains to be seen.

I didn't spend the whole weekend admiring fuel stoves. I spent a while sitting in a café with some Melbournian writers, one of whom is undertaking a personal challenge far more ambitious than mine (check out 100firstdrafts.blogspot.com.au). Olio, my personal favourite of Melbourne's numerous obscure Italian cafés and restaurants (in part because they didn't attempt to abduct me and force me inside when I first walked past), provided some most satisfying repast. China-town yielded some delightful street-food. Chez Regine proved a suitable substitute usual for my usual usual of the Lark in providing fine whisky. I had the best shower I've ever encountered in any hostel or hotel, in an old mansion that's been converted into a backpackers.

Clearly a strenuous weekend, and that should really suffice for exercise, shouldn't it? I guess not.

I've always wanted to try Parkour, an activity of French origin where participants train for fleeing the zombie apocalypse by taking the fastest route through their surrounding terrain as possible. It incorporates running, climbing, descending and balance. The entire Melbourne weekend was actually because I'd heard there's a group who teach it over there.

A session of vaulting, climbing and walking along rails at their indoor centre tied Saturday off nicely.
Sunday was outdoors with more of the same, and also had a look at rolling out of drops. We practiced our rolls on concrete so that we'd know if we were doing them wrong (I was doing it wrong the first few times, as my bruised hip and shoulder will attest). Both sessions were a lot of fun, and I wish now that I'd found someone to teach me Parkour when I first took an interest a few years back. In hindsight though, doing Capoeira for the first time in months and two sessions of Parkour for the first time ever in a period of 48 hours might not have been the best idea. The lingering pain is a good thing (or so sadistic trainers have told me before) but it'll make it that much harder to motivate myself to do any serious exercise these next few days. I just need  to remember to stretch frequently and keep well-hydrated, one of the less sadistic and most useful pieces of advice I've been given for reducing muscle fatigue.

EDIT: I've no idea why this post decided it had to have a white background. Alas it seems that once the background is there, it is unwilling to be removed.

Week #2: Stoves

Gear, gear, gear… Half of my posts seem to be about camping gear. There’s been mention of boots, a brief discussion on GPSs, some talk of Satellite Phones… It’s time for a change of pace.

Today’s discussion: Camping Stoves.

I’ve used a few different stoves over the years, and have come up with some pretty firm opinions about them. The problem with those opinions is that they’re based on stoves that are at least a decade old. The advances in stoves aren’t as sudden or spectacular as those in GPSs, but things do change over a decade. To start with, though, I’ll mention the stoves I’ve used before and what I thought about them. Then I’ll have to forget all that as I look at the new contenders. In no particular order (really, it’s just as each one occurs to me), here they are:

 

MSR Whisperlite

This Whisperlite is the first shellite stove I ever used, and one of my earliest memories of camping was of watching the ring of blue flames as they sputtered and then died. The Whisperlite we had was light, quiet, cooked quickly and had excellent control. The three legs were stable for any but a large pot and it could cook a meal for a family (parents, three ravenous children and any accompanying friends). The only problem with it was one of reliability. It was a fool that took it more than ten metres from the house without a maintenance kit. It was a genius who could actually fix it with that maintenance kit. The fuel nozzle was almost permanently blocked, and no amount of work on track, back home or in the shop seemed to be able to fix this for long. Thus, the theoretically powerful stove would usually stop working within a day or two of setting out. It also suffered from pumps that needed frequent maintenance. It was usually pretty simple (sometimes just a new o-ring) but it always seemed to be required at the most inconvenient times.

 

MSR Dragonfly

The Dragonfly was our replacement for the Whisperlite. Similar basic concept but with fewer parts, easier access for maintenance, a more powerful burner and sturdier legs. The fuel pump was slightly different from the earlier ones, and I don’t think it’s ever needed on-track repairs. The stove only failed twice. The first time was when a brazed joint was melted by the heat of the burner, apparently a problem only with that particular generation of this model. The stove could still be used (if awkwardly), and the repair was fairly simple. The second failure really wasn’t the fault of the stove, rather of someone who stored some metho in one of the MSR shellite bottles. No one has ever owned up to this act, but 50-50 metho and shellite wouldn’t work in the stove. This was years before the omnifuel model seen today. Sounds like a pretty much ideal replacement for the Whisperlite, apart from one thing. It’s ridiculously noisy. Conversation in the entire campsite, let alone around the stove, is almost impossible. It sounds like a jet firing up.

Coleman (I believe) Brick

I have no idea what this stove was actually called, but I think of it as the Brick (those who know my nomenclature habits would be aware that I call most pieces of technology Bricks, regardless of their size, shape, weight and reliability). The burner was of the same style (though not nearly as loud) as the Dragonfly. The fuel tank and pump were built into the base and the whole thing was incorporated into a metal box. I can’t recall is ever failing, but it lacked the power of a dragonfly and did weigh about as much as a house brick.

 

Trangia

On school camps, we were forbidden to bring out light, compact, efficient shellite stoves, and had to use the school-approved Trangia instead. I believe this was a safety precaution, though someone did manage to detonate theirs on the first school camp I can remember using them. The fireball (and subsequent attempts to repair the distorted borrowed stove) was caused by the contents of the pot, not the burner. To this day, I find it hard to believe that he didn’t realise butter was an oil and shouldn’t have been extinguished with water when the half-packet he’d melted caught fire. Aside from that minor incident, the Trangia is a pretty reliable design. In essence, a cup gets filled with metho and set alight. There’s not much control over the temperature of this. Where most stoves suffer from problems simmering, the Trangia had trouble doing anything else. Cooking took forever. Despite its simplicity, the Trangia was nearly as heavy as the Brick, and easily three times the size. It could only use Trangia pots, which were small enough that it could actually heat them and thus too small to make food for a group.

Jetboil

This wasn’t a family stove. I went walking with someone who used one a while back, and liked the idea. Quiet, light, efficient, fast, reliable. Sounds great. But while the pots were idea for one or maybe two people, they were far too small for three. I have disagreements with gas canisters, both because it’s hard to obtain them sometimes and because they stop working in the cold. The cold is the one time a stove cannot be allowed to be unreliable. So, despite the novel design, I never felt the Jetboil was a serious stove for me to consider.

Gas Canister Stove

As with the Brick, the name of this stove eludes me. I never actually used it, but someone else in my group did on one memorable trip. It was a precursor to the Jetboil, suffered all the same problems and lacked the efficiency and speed; however, turned upside-down it could be used as a blowtorch for browning the top of a pasta bake (well, pasta boil and torch). Alas the fuel coming out of the nozzle was liquid rather than gas, so a fair amount of it sprayed onto the food before burning and left a distinctive taste behind. Beside the detonating stove, the plume of orange fire rising from the food rates pretty highly in camping stove experiences.

 

MSR Windpro

Another MSR, and another stove that I haven’t used that much. It’s quiet, fairly powerful and not too heavy. I’d consider it somewhat like a Gas version of the Whisperlite, with one major advantage. The nozzle never once blocked up while we were using it. It wasn’t without its foibles though, one of them being the name. “Windpro” implies a certain resilience in the face of adverse weather. I believe this is because there are many small burners around its edge, and if the wind blows half of them out the others can keep it alight. Unfortunately, half the stove isn’t working until this happens. If a particularly hard gust comes through, the entire stove can go out. Now this was really no worse than the Whisperlite, and a heat shield would protect it from the wind anyway, but the name implied so much more…

 

Esbit Solid Fuel Stove

This little piece of folded tin takes out the award as the lightest and smallest stove. Without fuel bottles and pumps, it saves additional space. There was nothing to go wrong with it, as it was basically a pot stand with space to put a few cubes of fuel underneath. Most people think these are a bit of a joke, a slow stove for pretend bushwalkers. I admit that I was swayed by that, until I bought one for $15 as an emergency stove. When I didn’t end up needing an emergency stove on that walk, I decided to try it out at home to see how it performed against a proper stove. Its competitor was a Dragonfly, and in terms of rapid heating, there was no contest; the MSR took line honours with ease. But it wasn’t really a fair contest, with the Dragonfly using its aluminium heat reflector around the pot. So I tried again, borrowing the Dragonfly’s reflector and putting it with the Coleman. Discounting the time taken to start the stove, it boiled 2L of water only seconds slower than the Dragonfly. Considering the essentially instant start-up, it was really the faster by far. The weight of fuel consumed to boil 2L of water was almost identical, and it didn’t require the carrying of bottles as well as fuel. The only drawback to these nifty stoves is that there’s no variation of temperature. There’s boil (two cubes) and simmer (one cube). You can’t boil and then drop it to a simmer. Given the reliability and weight though, that seems a small price to pay.

So what does all this mean for considering stoves now? Well reliability is key, which puts the solid fuel and dragonfly up top. Weight’s important too, which puts the little $15 stove out in a league of its own.

As I said, these aren’t the latest stoves. The Jetboil probably hasn’t changed since then, likewise for the solid fuel, but the others have.

Whisperlites are meant to be far more reliable now, thanks to new nozzles designed to burn pretty much any liquid fuel in existence. Quiet, adjustable and now (supposedly) reliable, they’re certainly back in contention.

The modern Dragonfly is heavier than a Whisperlite, but still heats faster and remains immensely reliable. They also have the new multi-fuel nozzles.

Optimus have a new equivalent of the Brick, called a Hiker+, which looks pretty impressive. They’re certainly reliable, and the weight’s come down a lot. Having the fuel bottle built into the stove does save having a separate pump that can go wrong. The only issue I have with them now is that it’s nearly impossible to install a wind-shield because the lid gets in the way. The case provides partial protection anyway, but that’s not the same as a full shield and protector. Without that, fuel efficiency will drop.

Primus (alright, does anyone else laugh every time they see “Optimus” & “Primus” written together, or is that just me?) has a very nice stove called the Omnifuel. Its design and specs are around the same as a Dragonfly, though it’s meant to be slightly quieter. I’ve always likes MSRs and was going to ignore these, until they released the upgraded Omnilite. It’s a titanium version of the Omnifuel. Now it’s not much lighter, but it seems to be the most fuel-efficienct shellite stove around, and that is definitely worth some attention.

I never liked Trangias before and, while there are a few new designs around, none of them spark my fancy now either.

Gas canisters are still a no-go. Loss of reliability in the extreme cold is one problem, but not the only one. On this walk, I’ll be refilling fuel halfway through while passing Melaleuca. With shellite, I can reuse the same bottles. With Gas, I’d have to get new ones and carry the empty ones.

So where does solid fuel stand in all this? The stoves haven’t really changed at all. Some super lightweight ones around, but no real change to the technology (such as it is). They are light, reliable and quiet. They are not adjustable.

Most food is going to be along the lines of just add water, because that’s lighter and needs less cooking (so less fuel). All you really need for that is boiling water, which the solid fuel can provide. It’s easy to turn it up to a higher temperature (add another cube) but can’t be turned down afterwards. I can’t think of any meals now that will actually need to turn down the temperature partway through. Everything will be pre-cooked and dehydrated beforehand, so there won’t be any slow stewing going on…

Essentially, I’m left with two legitimate contenders. While I like the silence of a Whisperlite, I can’t bring myself to trust one for a month. The Omnilite seems the way to go in shellite, where every gram of fuel I don’t burn is going to count. If I don’t need the adjustability, solid fuel sounds perfect. I guess it all comes down to the menu; I’d better start planning that next.