Winter sale

Hi everyone.
As always Dennis and I need money to have enough funds for our climbing (training, comps, trips, gear).
So every year we have a big sale.
See Dennis website for more details and e-mail him if you need anything you haven't found on his site so far.

Home...pt.2

In my own house again. I live 'anti-squat' (for the Dutch: antikraak). I have a massive villa which is slowly breaking down. Starting with rats in the livingroom, mice in the 'sun room' and a bird in one of the bathrooms. And then all the millipedes and spiders... It took me hours to vacuum and mop the whole house.

It is strange to live in the luxury. We have water just instant out of the tap and if you want it's even warm or hot! We have machines to clean the floor, your clothes, heat up dinner and much more. All works on electricity.

And theres (for your feeling) an infinite amount of it! You plug in your phone and it's being charged and you can do that on all hours of the day.

Life this way is easy and, because of all 'extra's', complicated in the same time. I have the feeling that, because we have so much around us, we have the habit of wanting even more then we have. We want more then we need. All the time.

We want to eat more then we need, we want to live bigger then we have to, we want to watch more movies then we have time for, we want more clothes then we can ever wear...

Once having lived in a cave (what I did quite some years ago) and being a mountaineer *waking up in your sleeping bag because it's light and my biological clock says it's time to rise, walking a bit to get snow to melt into water for breakfast and getting ready to 'work' (climb) all day. Back home again in the evening when it's already getting dark. Happy with whatever the food is, it will be tasteful. Tugging up in my sleeping bag, convincing myself I have to wash myself tomorrow...or the day after... And being asleep straight away because it had all been so heavy on the day*

I can just not describe in words how it feels to be a climber, to live this life. But those moments in a bivouac somewhere up on a mountain are just the best there are. I can trade my mansion, car, all clothes, food, electronics for this moments in a bivouac in the mountains.

Renan Ozturk, artist, photographer and climber, tried to give a view on 'life as a climber' in Yosemite. And the result is pretty beautiful:

On Assignment from renan ozturk on Vimeo.

My home/van

On Sunday I made all kinds of plans of how to improve the interior of my van. Making more shelfs, decorating the seats, putting a top window in the roof, painting the roof... I had the feeling I could make it a real home now. Ready for the Summer in the Alps!

On Monday I brought my van to the garage because it made a bit a weird sound.

That midday I heard it would cost me €900 just to get a new axle, not to mention all the costs to get the car through the next MOT in September.

All together to get it through MOT it would cost me around €3000. As much as a whole new van. The mechanic showed me the axle, shock absorbers, the rust, the oil leaking out and all other things. I was surprised that the thing was still driving at all.

Fuck! €3000 is way too much for me. I really can’t afford fixing the van. €3000 is enough for half a year of full-time climbing, a plane ticket to South Korea and all additional Iceclimbing competitions, €3000 is a lot of money.

Even if I’d do most of the things myself, like fixing the rusty parts, get parts from some scrapheap...It’d still cost me more then €2000 and a lot of time. And time is something I don’t have these days...sort of. It’s actually a matter of priorities: if I want to climb something in the Alps I have to go there now, and not next month. So, I need a working car now...

Hopefully Dennis’ van will do the job!

So, if you know a good car mechanic who can weld some new plates on my car, get an extra long Ford Transit axle and knows how to deal with oil leaking out on some places...

I’m thinking of selling the car in parts. The engine is pretty good with just 120.000k on the counter and the rest just works fine as well.

Any ideas of what to do now??? (Please mail me:)

Next week we planned to go to the Alps. Take Dennis’ van and climb, on real rock. Join the Tout a Bloc competition, try to climb Far West (8a) and get into real multipitch climbing! Dennis wants to climb on Dibona (just Google it) and I, eh, well, I want to climb all routes, just as much as possible, as long as it’s trad and difficult ;)

The pictures are taken on the Worldcup in Eindhoven. Was this the last trip of my good van and home...?

Iceland has become a Russian colony

Today President Putin of Russia gave Iceland a nice birthday-present. (Putin has his birthday today) (http://mbl.is/mm/frettir/innlent/2008/10/07/gudni_og_putin/)
He sponsored Iceland with 78 billion Krónur. (Probably a loan) To save the banks and economy in Iceland.
The Icelandic coin (Krónur) has seriously gone down the last weeks and it doesn't seem to stabilize.
Banks get in trouble, pensions get in trouble and as more then half of the population got a loan at a foreign bank, the whole country seems to be bankrupt.
I went to do some shopping yesterday and saw my favorite food getting almost twice as expensive. A lot of food here is imported from Europe and the States and they, in some cases, even stopped importing it.
Great, now I have an ok job but no money to spend in Europe. In other words: do you live in Europe, fly for 300 Euros for a long weekend to Iceland including hotel and all...(See Icelandair.nl)