The hospital, too, has had enough and is ready to take steps. We go into the hospital Tuesday night and will emerge sometime around the weekend with an external baby.

Over the past few days to alleviate the tedium of sitting around, we have made a video. We are going to go offline a little while until we have some news to report, so in the meantime, you can watch this (it looks better in full screen)…

The song is Just Waiting from The Fall, from their criminally underrated Code Selfish album. This song has been my earworm for a fortnight now. OK, we have to go get a baby now. BRB.

Two months into 2010 and my Dad passed away; a few weeks later I lost my job. On the surface, not the greatest start to a year that I had already ear-marked as The Year of Great Change. Being single and with my 40th birthday looming large on the April horizon, it was time to take myself to the mountain, as it were, and have an aul think for myself. I resolved not to look for a new job until the end of the summer (hooray for redundancy money!) for fear of just rolling along into the next unsatisfying chapter. It was time to set aside the Manana Manana motto for a while and make some solid choices.

So over the course of the spring and summer, lots happened – some great kayaking trips, a fantastic hiking week in Corsica, my sister got married, myself and Bex started going out, but mainly I was ruminating on what to do next with my life. In the end I decided that my long-postponed idea of moving away from Ireland had to happen this year or likely it never would happen. I fixed my sights on Barcelona or Grenoble, the latter for its proximity to the alps and its, you know, Frenchness. Barcelona was always the more likely outcome, given that it’s been on the top of my list of livable cities since I first backpacked through there 10 years ago. Every city I’ve been to since has been measured against Barcelona and found wanting. In September I started applying for jobs in Barcelona and by mid-November I was at a desk with this view out the window over Passeig de Gracia:

Bex, being the amazing girl that she is, announced that she would follow me out in a while. 2010 was drawing nicely to a close; I even managed to leave Ireland before the Nordic winter kicked in. I was pretty happy with the way things were starting out, for the first time in years I had laid out a plan, and carried it through. Then, the cosmos decided to have a bit of laugh at my self-congratulatory smugness. You can see where this is going, right? Oh, yeah. My plan for moving to Barcelona and changing my life was about to be taken in a direction I had not contemplated.

I’m here two months, Bex gets here in about two weeks, and a little baby that we’re making will get here in July. 2011 is going to be so far above and beyond what I had hoped. That’s all I’m going to say for now, for fear of getting all incoherent and soppy.

I love you Bex, thanks for taking this big leap with me.

To celebrate, you should click on this link and listen to the Animal Collective song that’s been in my head for almost two months now:

Animal Collective – Baby Day

I’m off to Camp Nou to watch Barcelona, and put the kid on the waiting list for the youth academy. Watch out for a little Hiberno-Catalan kid on the left-wing about, say, 2030. Woo!

This year we were based in the village of Meribel Village (which, confusingly, is not exactly the same place as Meribel). Meribel Village is a satellite village to the main centre of activity, either a short bus ride away or you can ski there via the Golf chairlift. The great advantage of not being in the main town is that there no queues at any time of day. Also, from our chalet to the chairlift was a walk of about 200 metres, with a rest stop on the way for the all-in-one bakery/coffee shop/pizzeria to stock up on a packed lunch.

I’ve added some photos of this trip over on the gallery.

The canyon itself is, you know, deep, and the river is, eh, big. It pushes along at about six miles an hour so manning the oars isn’t the ordeal you might expect, particularly with so many people to rotate on the oars.

If you’re thinking of going you need to get a permit through the lottery system (the ‘waiting list’ system has been scrapped) and get a local rafting company to sort the logistics for you. We heartily recommend Brady at Moenkopi who made the whole thing hassle-free. All we really had to do was get to Las Vegas (Vegas, baby!) and cruise on up to Flagstaff.

The rafts carry everything you are going to need for the duration. There’s no re-supply and only one trail out, about halfway down the canyon. If it’s not on the raft at the start, you are doing without it until the finish. The reality of this sank in as we loaded up, prompting a last-minute panic buying of yet more beer before we pushed off. A total of 3,000 cans of beer, in case you were wondering.

In the photo above, Angie pushes off, Brian at the oars, and Hugh checks the contents of an ammo can, probably looking for biscuits. All the food goes in ammo boxes or in the coolerbox that Brian is sitting on. Other than that, distributed around four rafts you’ve got sleeping pads, a first aid box, spare oars, ropes, one personal gear bag per person strapped at the back, and buried in there there’s also a satellite phone for emergencies, a full breakdown kitchen, tents, ‘loo in a box,’ deck chairs, a volleyball, a ton of camera equipment, yer ma’s drinks cabinet, and so on.

One of the new experiences of this trip for many of us was getting to grips with working a raft. It’s a tricky skill to get the hang of – there are too many degrees of freedom and the oars can rotate in opposite directions. It’s like rubbing your tummy and patting your head, except with consequences. The oars are fifteen foot long, so the ‘span’ of the craft is about thirty foot, making the action of one blade completely independent of the other. It’s also a good physical workout and it keeps you warm. Above, Karen figures out her aft from her portcullis, or whatever.

Firewood is picked up along the way – it’s the desert so all the lumber is quite dry – even huge tree trunks will burn easily. You are permitted to light fires in your firepans, but only in the winter. You wouldn’t want to contemplate this trip in winter without the fires.

The photo below is a pretty typical view of the canyon, at dusk when the setting sun shows the canyon wall in roses and pinks. I’m not going to try to tell you how amazing the view was or any of that. Get yourself a dictionary and just look up some superlatives. It’s quite overcoming, over days people tended to tune out and just sit in rafts watching the vista change, little by little, around each new bend in the river. The formations soared up, and you knew that the ridge you were looking up at wasn’t even remotely the ‘top’ – the canyon is stepped down and stepped down, like an enormous terrace. The scale gets lost on you fairly quickly but the impression of immensity is always there. Day after day, you see changes in the landscape, the rock formations, the layer cake of strata, in all colours from marble green to redstone to lava black. Some of our crew are geologists, so we got lots of mini-lectures on the way.

Airplane contrails in the evening sky were just about the only sign of civilization for much of the trip. Outside of our own group we met maybe 20 other people in the entire time.

It being January, there was snow up high on the ridge. We met some hikers at one point and gave them a ride a few kilometres down the river and across to the other side. They reported having to wade through waist-deep snowdrifts at the top.

Disco Paddlers in the giant cavern:

The Grand Canyon of the Colorado trip is all about the view. As a piece of whitewater, it’s not extremely challenging – it’s often said that you go the first time for the river and the second time for the side-hiking. A half-assed kayaker can get down the river. Here’s me doing just that:

All the rapids are scoutable and walkable, and you can always clamber into the relative comfort of the rafts as you wish. One could write volumes about this trip, but really, the photos do a better job of it.

At the final campsite, Pink Panther chills by the tent. Another successful mission accomplished with the minimum of fuss.

From here I’m going to point you to MananaManana’s spanking new photo gallery, where I’ve added about 100 of the best photos from the many cameras we took with us.

Click here for the Grand Canyon gallery.

Well, in a continuing series of disappointments, I am now that guy. Not only that, but I’m quoting myself too:

I’m sorry I haven’t posted in a while . . . I’m back now. I vanished for ages to twitter or apathy or whatever but now I’ve come crawling back. I offer my apologies and firmly resolve to post more regularly.

Isn’t that just pathetic?

Anyway, I’ve been having fun since I last posted and have plenty to report – kayaking and hiking in Corsica (two different trips), snowboarding in France, and kayaking in the French Alps. Tomorrow I’ll post on a rafting trip on the Grand Canyon of the Colorado in the states. When I say tomorrow, I don’t mean in the manana sense, I mean real-life tomorrow. I have it written and everything. Other than that I’m adding a photo gallery and generally tidying up around here.

I’m on twitter these days too, by the way. Take your opportunity to berate me here.

• No, it’s got nothing to do with tomatoes. That’s somewhere else and it’s just a bunch of people throwing tomatoes at each other for half an hour. Leave me alone about the tomatoes.
• Yes, it’s incredibly stupid to put yourself in harm’s way like that. What’s your point?
• The bulls run through the streets early in the morning; they die in the evening at the bull fight. It goes on for a week, so it’s a new set of bulls every morning.
• No, bullfighting is not very sporting. Nobody ever said it was.
• No, I don’t know why every New Zealander in Europe under the age of 30 is there. It must be a visa obligation.
• No, it’s not as dangerous as you heard – the last guy to get killed by a bull there was in 1995.

If you go there yourself, it won’t be very long before some local explains to you that only the foreigners get injured in the run. This is nonsense – statistically, Basques are just as likely to get injured as anyone else, despite what they will tell you. Seriously, what? You think because you grew up Basque, you’re genetically better at running away from large animals than I am?

So preamble and FAQ out of the way, here’s how it went for Donnie, Razz, and I in July 2008 when we went to the Basque country to see the sights and run away from the bulls. We spent some time on the beach, at the Guggenheim museum, and so on but you don’t want to hear any of that, do you? No, you want to hear about stupid people being chased down by angry bulls. So, onwards. Ola!

First of all, there’s the dress code: white pantalones, white shirt, red sash, red neckerchief. Ridiculous as this get-up looks, you’re more self-conscious dressed otherwise, when the whole town looks like a ‘Where’s Wally?’ convention.

Razz, the very picture of sartorial elegance:

At the opening ceremony, the txupinazo, on July 6, the mayor makes a brief speech, sets off a firework (the titular txupinazo)…

… and everyone sets about demolishing the European Sangria and Red Wine Reserves.

On the night before their turn in the sun, the bulls wait in the pen at the bottom of Santo Domingo street. It’s always strangely calm and quiet down there, regardless of what party mayhem is going on just up the road.

The origins of the running of the bulls is that it was the most practical way to get the bulls for the evening’s bullfighting from the corrals at the edge of the town into the bull ring in the centre of town in the early morning. The colour scheme stems from the uniform of first people who thought it would be a laugh to run through town ahead of the bulls – the butchers.

San Fermín is the patron saint – a bishop of the area martyred back in the day. This is your host and protector:

Ahead of the run this statue sits in a little niche in the wall above the street where the run takes place and everyone says a little prayer:

“A San Fermin pedimos, por ser nuestro patrón, nos guíe en el encierro, dándonos su bendición. Viva San Fermín. Gora San Fermin.”
(“We ask San Fermín, because he is our Patron, to guide us through the bull run, giving us his blessing. Long live Saint Fermín. Long live Saint Fermín.”)

I’m not religious but I’m hoping the guy’s looking out for me too. I’ve adopted this prayer as my drop-running mantra on the water too, but I usually only get as far as “A San Fermin pedimos…” before the lip.

First of all the six bulls are run through the streets in the morning from the corral to the bullring. They are accompanied by about six steers (they’re the ones with cowbells) that make the journey every morning, adding a calming female influence. The theory being that an orderly pack of animals being lead by steers that do this all the time will result in less carnage. Single, isolated, confused bulls are really dangerous and apt to do all sorts including turn back and charge the other way back into the crowd. I’ve seen it and it gets ugly, because you have a horde of people running one way having been over taken by the bulls, only to have one of them come back at you. The look of horror on the faces would be comical, but when you’re close enough to see those horrified ashen faces up close, it doesn’t seem all that mirthful.

In the morning Razz has procured more shiningly white attire and is ready to go.

For the duration of the run, all the side streets are blocked off at the sides with double rows of these stout fences so that the bulls can’t go on a complete rampage, just a location-specific rampage. The fences act as filters for the bulls, but can be surprisingly porous to people in a hurry. The no-man’s land between the fences is where you’ll find the Red Cross setting up shop.

Last-minute hose down for the course. The cleaning crews never seem to stop working all week, all hours of the day and night sweeping everything in front of them.

For the runners, it’s a long and tense wait…

About half of the run is along this street, Calle Estefeda. It’s fairly crowded, as you can seen, but space does tend to appear when the bulls get close. Balcony space is at a premium – literally – with local residents and businesses renting out these viewing spots. Ernest Hemingway watched the corrida from his hotel balcony further up this street on the right.

Anyone can run, all you have to do is be on the street by 7 AM and sober enough to avoid being removed by the police. There’s an unofficial, halfhearted ban on girls, but only if the police are feeling macho. There’s a ban on intensely stupid people too – a few years ago a pair of Chinese rollerbladers were prevented from participating. Bulls, crowds, rollerblades, and cobblestones – can you imagine?

Contrary to what you may have heard, most of the crowd is not drunk – the drunken ones tend to be passed out at that stage. That said, most people on the street have been up partying all night, but sobering up rapidly as they realise what they have got themselves into.

Sorry to be so long-winded, but I’m trying to clear up some of the misinformation you hear about Pamplona. That things that the locals tell you (no, boast to you) that it’s only foreigners that get injured, because being born Basque somehow gives you an insight into the mind of the bull and allows you to run safely, really bugs me. Everyone quotes you this as a fact, and it’s just not true.

The police closing off the street to latecomers is a great excuse if your courage fails you and you need an ‘out’ – this is the excuse used by a certain Cork paddler for partying all weekend in Pamplona, but never coming within breathing distance of a bull. There’s no shame in not running (clearly it’s a stupid idea) but the elaborate stories you hear from guys telling you how they would love to run, but didn’t, are great. The best one I heard was a local guy who’d never run because as a kid, he told me: ‘I promised my mother I wouldn’t.’

So anyway, at eight in the morning they signal the release of the animals by firing a rocket. The popping sound you hear from halfway up the road around the corner makes the heart jump. If you weren’t awake and sober before, you will be now. A second rocket lets you know that the last of the bulls has exited the corral. The closer together those first two rockets, the better it is for everyone. It means the animals are running as a tight pack.

The street section is about 800 metres from start to finish. Bulls are really fast and get total right-of-way. You can’t run the entire course with the bulls – you’ll get left behind. Most people pick a section and try to stay the pace as long as they can. Imagine thousands of people running one direction in a narrow street, while looking over their shoulders. People are falling over other people, tripping, diving to the side – it’s not a sprint, it’s a hurdle race. And bulls are not very tall, so sometimes you see them too late as the crowd parts behind you.

At the top of the course there’s the bullring, and everyone streams through the narrow gate into the arena. This is traditionally the most dangerous part – because the gateway is so constricted, mounds of bodies build up in the alleyway, and then the bulls arrive and try to force a way through.

That said, the feeling of elation when you emerge out in the sand-covered bullring ungored and wheel away to one side or the other is the reason you’re here – the parallels to kayaking are fairly obvious here. You know how it feels to break into the eddy below some rapid or waterfall and realise it’s over, you’re not going to die today, and you’re going to be just fine. It’s exactly like that.

I have no photos from the run itself, due to being kind of busy with self-preservation issues. It all went according to plan the two days we ran, and the three of us met up again in the bullring at the end of the course; I was never so happy to see Donnie and Razz. Here’s how Spanish TV covered the first encierro of the 2008 festival. We’re in there somewhere.

In the bull ring…

In case being chased down the road by bulls isn’t enough fun for you before you’ve had your breakfast, there’s a little extra item on the bill. Once all the bulls are safely secured in the pens located in the bowels of the bullring, they release young bulls “toros bravos” back into the crowded arena for a while. They whizz around and around tossing people up in the air for sport. They are not anywhere near as big as full-grown bulls, but it’s quite exhilarating.

Thanks to Lee for the picture above from his Flickr stream.

Jim and Razz contemplate a good morning’s work, still being alive, sudden overwhelming tiredness, and the need for breakfast…

Some people we know from the states and other parts – regular visitors to San Fermin:

Kelly (from work), husband Jonathan, Pamplona author Ray Mouton, John Hemingway (author and grandson of…), and Micheal. Read about their Pamplona experiences here: Pena de Los Gatos.

Razz befriends a purple bull, to show there are no hard feelings.

Giants – Los Gigantes de los San Fermin.

In an annex off the old bus station in the center of town, for most of the year the giants sleep. For the festival, these massive depictions of kings, queens, and assorted nobles of the court parade around the town. There’s a king and queen for Europe, Africa, Asia, and America.

The procession is lead out by the European king and queen, followed by the American king.

The Gigantes are accompanied on their leisurely strolls around the streets by a court of Cabezudos (the Bigheads) and a band. The children follow them around, in turns delighted and terrified as the medieval cabezudos ‘attack’ them with spongy maces. It’s traditional and the meaning is lost in history.

Here’s Donnie, posing awkwardly with what looks like a certain legendary footballer, I think.

Nightly fireworks…

When it all gets a little too much, there’s also sangria and siesta in the park.

You should probably go this year; you’d love it.

…but sometimes you get two increments in the one day.

Congratulations to Daithí and Fiona. Nobody else could hope to keep up with either of them, so they’re a pair that deserve each other.

Since the put-on is near the Sally Gap on the road to the Glenmacnass you never really get to ‘pass by’ and check it out. Maybe it’ll get run more often now that Warren has put up a river description over on IrishWhiteWater.

We took a chance that it would be running and headed that way when the Dargle was running at one-and-a-half blocks (or ‘bananas’ if you prefer). Another reason the Inchavore isn’t run that much is that the shuttle is perhaps the longest one in the country, with the usual takeout being the bottom of Lough Dan. Yes, you have to paddle the length of the lake after the river.

It turns out there wasn’t really enough water to run it, but we were a way into the forest before we accepted that it wasn’t going to pick up sufficiently. That said, there are no bad days on the water. It’s quite the remote and beautiful stretch, dropping away through the forestry, picking up water as it goes, before eventually and gradually becoming a proper river, with rocks and even some drops. Many, many rocks at the low level we experienced. There was plenty of practice pulling boats off rocks, and even a little two-point broach extraction ‘scenario.’ I love the use of the word ‘scenario’ in kayaking. It’s like a management buzzword.

For comparison, this little drop had to be portaged last time I was in there, due to a horrible towback. That’s Dave Cox…

Although most of the group were unhappy at being dragged down some low-water rockfest, the Inchavore is definitely one of my favourites in the country. It just needs a tad more water to show its potential.

When you take the time to look back up the valley, you realise just how beautiful the place is. Actually, the main reason I’m posting this at all is that I like this next photo – I got exactly two pictures this whole day, but this one makes it alright.

Daragh Power on the island section…

When the river widens out further down you catch a glimpse of the slopes of the hills around dropping down into Lough Dan. The final section of the river meanders around bends before feeding you into the lake. It’s a long slog across the lake, but we had a trailing wind and it was a fine afternoon.

With huge water spilling out of the other end of Lough Dan we pushed through the overgrown entrance to the Annamoe and on for a big water run down to Annamoe Bridge. What’s the worst thing you can do on the longest shuttle in the country? Leave the car keys at the top of course, which is what I did. I got off at Annamoe to try and figure a way back to the top, and most of the group pushed on for a full trip to Jacksons to pass the time. Huge, huge thanks to Paul Armstrong who happened to be finishing his own shuttle and offered to run us all back to the top, a long, long way. In the end we were back at Lynham’s with the vans before the paddlers.

If only the summer rain would continue and we got a run on the Cloghoge Brook, this might be the best Irish summer ever.

What The Fu$% is wrong with this site??

With all the recent rain, surely people have been out paddling?Why are paddlers not talking?This has to be one of the shittist summers on record but a boom for kayaking. So why is this site not buzzing? Whats running? When? Where?What are paddlers experiences?

This weekend alot of rain forecast, why are kayakers not talking?

In recent weeks I have run various rivers purely on gut instinct and Met Eireann forecasts, surely as a supposed kayaking community it should be better than that?

It seems to me we buzz about all the sh1t abroad,and yet fail to talk to each other at home.

He’s right, of course, and we really should make a better effort. In response here’s a quick account of what some of us (well, me) have been up to with all the lovely summer weather we’ve been having…

I haven’t been out much myself lately despite it being the wettest August in the recorded Irish metrological history, mostly for family reasons, but I did manage a run down the Dargle last week. A classic six-and-a-bit-blocks level made it clean enough to be cruisey, but dirty enough to knock the rust off your paddling.

Don’t you love the colour of Irish ‘white’ water?

Then on Sunday after a second trip down the Dargle, a lovely time was had by all on the Annamoe all the way from Lough Dan. The Annamoe was running really high turning pretty much everything into big old wavetrains, with plenty of scope for zipping around the river.

All that made for an incredibly quick trip to the top of the run-in to Jackson’s Falls, where we halted for a confab. With eight in the group you don’t want any confusion about where you’re getting out to look at the drop. Sorry, but we’ve no photos at all; you’ll have to judge yourself from the Annamoe gauge. The screengrab below is marked…

I may in the past have run the Annamoe higher, but certainly not Jackson’s. For the record, two lines were probed and both go – hard and fast down the middle works if you hit it like a freight train, while riding up the curler on river-left works also, but requires that you moderate your speed and focus on hitting your spot exactly right.

Warm summer boating with lots of water and daylight. Would that it were like this all the time…

This is not really a post, just an ad…

I’m selling my Pyranha S6X 185 as I don’t need it and I have no clue about playboating. It’s in good nick, with the usual scratches, but with new ratchets too! I’m looking for €350. If you want to try it out, the boat is in Dublin but I can have it in Cork easily too.

I’ve put up some pictures; and there are some specs and information on Playak and Eddyflower.

Give me a shout if you’re interested.