The Apologetic Hiatus

Poor neglected blog. I have thought of you many times in the last month or so, but only in the fleeting, abstract sense with which one thinks about filing one's taxes, rather than any kind of productive way.

Which is not to say that there hasn't been anything to write about. I have, in the fashion to which you may be accustomed, done all manner of stupid things in the last few weeks. It's actually hard to believe that the last post was a mere four weeks ago. It's a long time for a pokey little interwub blog, but it felt like much longer. In the last few weeks I have crashed a car, missed a flight, driven until 2 in the morning twice, scraped roadkill off the highway with a broken piece of a reflector post, been on a relationship building boot-pack, received an awesome haircut, mailed someone a box containing exactly three pine cones and played a one-time-only acoustic cover of "Call Me Maybe". But not only has the moment for blogging about those escapades passed, if I put those stories in the internet I'll have nothing to talk about with anyone who sees me in person.

In fact, I'm only writing this post to explain an even longer break in posting which is about to begin. I am now back in Canberra where I will settle down to something that approximates a real life in what many people think of as the real world. Many people have said that I've been living the dream. While it's true that my time in the hills has been generally awesome, coming back to Canberra feels more like going to sleep than waking up. But if I am going to sleep here it's just a peaceful beauty sleep. So when I eventually leave town again, with my complexion clear and composed, hopefully the blog will spring back to life. The alternative is to regularly email my parents, which I have not been very good at so far.

Thanks to all the folks I met along the way. In Rossland there's my winter family, Robbi, Fleur and Maud, plus the rest of the folks I skied and hiked and hung out with; my artistic collaborator, Brad, and my wealthy patron German Anna; my unnaturally patient boss Brian, as well as Chris, Colin and Vickie at Powderhound. Thanks also to the generous and always motivated Ward in Penticton and all the other folks who shared some rope time with me at Skaha - it was vastly better than soloing. In New Zealand there's Barrett, Lindsay, Caroline, Dan, Doug and Irene (who aren't actually in NZ anymore), Dee, Eric, and Lee. Sorry I had to leave early - I hope you're slaying the pow for me in this latest storm and saving the best for last at Broken River. Thanks also to Joe for showing me around some new terrain at BR and Olympus, and for taking some cool photos. I'll see most of you guys again early in the new year. Stay in touch.

The Magical River of Food. Or, why I am nauseous every night

I have been a dirtbag for many months now. It depends on how you measure true dirtbaggery, but it was certainly underway when I was in New Zealand in July of last year. If you count the time I spent living in Canberra housesitting and bumming and not paying rent then it goes back to August of 2010, but I had a job back then so I guess that's ruled out. Anyway, it's been a long time. In fact, looking back at my life, you could probably say I've been a dirtbag since high school in 2001 with a brief interruption of full-time paid work in 2010-11.

This fine pedigree of dubious living has ingrained in me certain habits that are fundamental to my identity and personality: A refusal to wash my hair, a loathing of paid work, a willingness to eat out of bins, the ability to sleep fully dressed on the floor of a busy room, an abiding suspicion of soap, etc. But the most powerful of these habits relates to food, and specifically free food. When there is free food I am compelled, like a gospel author guided by the divine will, to eat it all.

Generally in the life of a dirtbag this is a healthy habit. Free food is usually scarce enough and paying for food usually distasteful enough that eating all the free food you can find makes for a varied, unpredictable and passably healthy diet. But there are times when free food becomes abundant, and during those times it can be difficult, even impossible, to exercise restraint.

Life at Broken River at the moment is one of those times. I have, through an almost obsessive-compulsive commitment to parasitism, managed to finagle free food and lodging in exchange for volunteer work. This food comes in the form of dinners which are prepared (occasionally by me) at one of the lodges, and which I have come to think of as a magical river of food. At around 7pm each night, a certain bench in the designated lodge is covered first with soup, then with some kind of hearty main course, and then with a dessert. Usually there is a lot of food. Invariably it is free.

And so I eat. Dear lord, how I eat. At the time I make all kinds of excuses to myself, like "This meal is high in fresh vegetables," or "My, that serving spoon was larger than I thought," but each night it is the same. I eat a great deal of soup and roughly twice as much main course as is sensible, whereupon I feel uncomfortably full.

At this point the rational part of my brain that I rely on for talking to police officers and customs officials kicks in and I resolve not to eat dessert. But I am not so deluded as to believe that I actually a rational agent, and within a few minutes I always find that I have unconsciously piloted my body through the dessert gathering process like some kind of meat robot. Of course, once I have collected the dessert, I feel uncomfortable letting it go to waste, so I push through, tak

OH MY GOD, MY SCREEN IS FLICKERING SO BADLY I NEED TO TAKE A SHORT BREAK AND CRUSH MY EYEBALLS INTO MY HEAD.

OK, the screen on my poor broken laptop is still flickering like a strobe light from some kind of office-job hell, but I'll push on.

Anyway, I was saying that I eat a large serving of dessert that I had previously committed not to eat, taking me from mere discomfort to outright nausea. Despite my best efforts, this process repeats every night.

To make matters worse, the staff all encourage me to keep eating. Indeed, they encourage me to go to dinner in the first place. And in a sense, they are doing me a huge favour. The more food I eat at BR the less often I have to go to town, and since I no longer have a car (a story for another day), that is a huge bonus. Plus, I suspect they see me as some kind of strange starving vagrant urchin child, and by feeding my they keep me from subsisting on moss, leaves and pine cones. Leaving aside for the moment the fact that this perception is largely true, and that the forest in this area is devoid of pine cones, this situation is startlingly reminiscent of aid programs in developing nations. Everyone has good intentions, but a mix of cultural misunderstandings, circumstances and corruption (of my stunted and malformed soul) mean that instead of receiving a nutritious meal to subsist upon I leave feeling bloated, ill, and flushed with self loathing.

All this is made slightly more awkward by the fact that the staff will read this entry, so hello staff. As an aside, the expression "ticket tart" which I used (by in no way invented or coined) way back in July has been adopted for semi official use here. I feel at once proud and sheepish.

And yes, I'll try to post more. Things have been vaguely happening, and I should write about them, but I'm  busy with the eating and the feeling gross and the skiing and all that stuff. Also, it's just a matter of time until this laptop gives me seizures, so I'm trying to cut back on internet use.

I Have an Awesome Towel

I usually try not to toot my own horn, but I think it is fair to say that I own the greatest towel in the world.

Like an alcoholic who cannot hold down a steady job, for many years I have been unable to hold down a steady towel. During the last 12 months alone I’ve been through 3 or 4 towels simply because I leave them behind when I change towns, or in one notable case because I used my towel to mop up spilled wine and it became infested with slivers of broken glass.

Even before I ascended to genuine dirtbaggery I struggled with towel ownership. Back in Canberra I didn’t even own a towel, I just used other people’s. But when I went to Walmart early this year to buy more underpants, something incredible happened. I was about to make an impulse purchase of a regular, monochrome, rectangular towel when my housemate intervened. She had found a towel that had a hood in the middle and could be worn like a poncho. Better yet, when you put the towel on in poncho form you were magically transformed into a tableau of a octopus, sporting a dashing polka-dot bow-tie, adrift in an azure sea. It was slightly more expensive, and typically I am a pretty stingy person, but I decided this was not the time to let a few extra dollars stand in the way of a good idea. The folks at Walmart were all suitably impressed when I chose to wear my towel out of the store and through the car-park.

Because my towel is so excruciatingly fantastic I have made sure to hang on to it through my bumbling travels in the last few months. It has been my most faithful towel ever, and we are looking forward to a long and happy life together for as long as the fabric will last. But owning such an amazing thing comes at a terrible price. Members of the staff at Broken River have begun to covet my towel, and in the absence of anything meaningful to do with their lives they have started plotting to steal my towel. In response to this, I have been forced to hide it after twice having to race from one hut to another to prevent its theft.

In the past, I would have simply revealed my diabolical hiding place to the internet and trusted the obscurity of this blog to ensure that the information never made it back to the staff here, but now that people around here actually check this blog, the location must remain secret.

The issue reached a head last night after a particularly intense altercation. One staff member stole my towel from its hanger and tried to escape White Star Chalet. I was able to dodge past another staff member who was trying to delay me on the track between the huts and snatch my towel back before the thief could make it out the door. To top matters off, neither the thief nor his two accomplices removed their boots before entering the hut. I figured the safest thing to do was to wear the towel in poncho form, at which the thief (by now slightly inebriated) tried to manhandle it from my body. The dastardly trio only left when their boss dropped in. At the time I was convinced this was simply another ploy to steal the towel, and I conducted our ensuing conversation wearing the towel and clutching at it to ensure that no one tried to make a sneak attack. It turns out that he had no idea what was going on, and in retrospect my actions may have made me look a little weird.

The biggest problem I face now in keeping my towel safe is getting it dry after using it. At this very moment, the towel is actually hanging up in a completely stealable place and is not at all hidden, but I’m keeping an eye on the staff to ensure they don’t go nicking it. Once it’s dry I’ll return it to its hiding place, but if it goes into hiding too early it will get mouldy.

But seriously people, this towel is regularly used to dry my junk. I cannot for the life of me understand why other people would want to steal it. Apart from the fact that it’s awesome. But other than that, eww...

The Chosen Onesie

I mentioned a few posts back that I have been trying out some new ski gear here at Broken River. Today I would like to introduce you to the most daunting and serious item of clothing I have ever worn. Around Broken River, it is known simply as “The Onesie”.

In my experience, the best things in life are rarely encountered as the result of any kind of deliberate search. Instead, greatness occurs when you put yourself in a position where it can find you. So it was with The Onesie, which came to me through a staff member at BR. Somehow we ended up discussing retro day at Red Mountain, and she claimed to have a onesie more awesome than both of the outfits I wore that day. I must admit that I passed this off as idle banter – everyone claims their onesie is the best. I was more than a little surprised when she delivered The Onesie in all its faded blue glory. I could tell straight away that this was no ordinary ski suit. It was, somehow, different. More...

Rad.

I tried it on and found that it fit like a glove. Snug around the thighs, ample in the shoulder and bust. Long enough through the body to not squash my man-parts, but not so long that the crotch prevented me from walking normally. Sleeve length, perfect. Legs tapered, but tastefully so. This was no mere fashion piece made to adorn an après ski bar or catch the eye in a cafe. This onesie was made for a real skier, for big mountains and epic runs. Wearing it I felt stronger, faster, more inclined to jump off things.

But there was something more. This onesie promised greatness, but beneath the incoming tide of confidence and control was a surging rip of fear. The Onesie demanded great skiing. It would not be content with mere tootling down the main basin, or cruising through the open bowls of Allan’s Basin. The onesie hungered for glory, and if I was to wear it, I had to deliver.

A crowd grew and thronged around me in White Star Chalet. They demanded to know: Who was I, where had I found The Onesie, would I wear it tomorrow? But I was daunted by the burden of expectation. Was I ready to don The Onesie? Could I satisfy its desires? Could I do it justice? I dodged their questions, took off The Onesie and made excuses.

I slept fitfully that night, tortured by visions of blue nylon, tight chutes, and big drops. As I sweated in my sleeping bag, the cold light of the moon cast through the windows of the hut and lit upon the onesie crumpled beside my bed. The fluoro pink highlights on the sleeves took on an eerie glow. I shuddered and turned my face towards the wall.

When the sun finally rose the next morning, it was the day after the day after a big storm. There were still plenty of fresh lines to be found and things to be jumped off. The snow would be powder, but stiff and heavy – perfect for skiing aggressively. But after the rigours of the previous day’s skiing, I wasn’t sure whether I could handle another hard day on the hill. I looked long and hard at The Onesie lying by my bed, but I didn’t have the courage to put it on. Sighing, I stuffed it into the bottom of my pack, threw on my normal ski gear and headed for the lifts.

In my first run, I tried a few jumps and stuck the landings. On my second, I opened up my turns and put on some speed. By the time I reached the bottom I was ready. I returned to the day lodge, stripped down to my inappropriately tight and hole-ridden thermal pants, and climbed into The Onesie. At once I felt the heady rush of power and expectation. I put Kanye West’s All Of the Lights on endless repeat, cranked up the volume, pulled down my goggles and got rad.

The rest of the day is a blur. I remember skiing lines I’d never had the courage to ski before, jumping off everything from medium sized rocks to small children and skied as fast and as hard as I could. At some stage I bumped into BR local, ski writer and photographer Joe Harrison who was also seduced by the power of The Onesie. He showed me some new chutes and got a few shots of The Onesie in action.

Picture courtesy of Joe Harrison. Don't go stealing it. Even if it is awesome.

I did everything that I could to satisfy The Onesie, and I probably skied better than I ever have before, and yet it still wasn’t enough. The Onesie knew what it wanted, but I couldn’t deliver. Again and again I stood below a line called “Ten to Five”, a tight chute that leads to a straight line exit with a mandatory cliff. The Onesie whispered constantly for succor. It wanted to ski the line, but I was too scared. Mostly because skiing that line would break lots of my bones and generally hurt a very large amount.

At the end of the day I returned to White Star, exhausted. Despite making a respectable effort wearing the ski suit, I had by no means satiated its infernal appetite. But I haven’t put The Onesie away. It sits in the corner of White Star on an unused bunk, waiting for the day when I’m ready to ski the line of death. And when conditions are right, and I’m more rad, I will put the onesie on and complete my end of the bargain.

Reaching New Lows

It has been a long time between posts. For those of you for whom new entries on this blog represent highlights in your otherwise dull work days, or in any way contribute to your general happiness, I am sorry. And not just for the gap in posts - this blog actually making your day is a bit sad. There are two reasons for not updating sooner. First of all, I don't have very much internet access, which makes spontaneous "impulse updates" impossible. But many of the entries on this blog are not acts of impulse, but rather deeply thought and considered entries that I have intellectually sweated over for days. And I haven't written any of those entries because I've been really busy.

"Busy?" you ask, "How can someone who contributes as little to the world as John be busy?"

In all honesty, I am asking myself the same question. Obviously, I spend a lot of time skiing, even more time sleeping, and a quite unnerving amount of time eating. Aside from that there's baking (which is a diabolical way of eating bread without having to pay for it) and repairing my skis (which is required on an all-too-frequent basis). There are also lots of people staying in White Star Chalet at the moment, and they keep going to be early, which means I don't get as much time to sit around and agonise over this blog as I did in the past. In any case, I have recently reached an intersection of busyness and slovenliness where I need to write "Take a shower" on my lists of things to do.

This baffling condition of being busy combined with the fatigue of continued skiing and the peculiar mix of isolation and crowdedness that comes from living in White Star Chalet has produced a kind of alienation from regular society and its norms. I have become obsessed with wiping down the benches in the hut's kitchen, but am perfectly happy to wear the same ski socks for a week. I am personally offended when people wear their shoes inside, but I don't mind eating bacon that has pretty clearly gone off. I regularly check the shower to see if it needs cleaning, but I don't actually use it. The other day I spent almost two hours wandering around the hut in various states of sartorial disarray muttering and hooting to myself like a crazy hobo before I realised there was a another person lying in bed about two metres away THE WHOLE TIME. The only consolation I can give myself is that I still had the decency to be embarrassed.


Like most descents into madness this has been a gradual process where the subtle daily changes go unnoticed. Just like the steady creep of gambling addiction, in which an addict may only realise there is a problem when they have gambled away their entire pension cheque, it can take a moment of revelation and horror to realise just how low you have sunk. For me, that moment came last Saturday, when I allowed a six year old to take credit for one of my farts.

Obviously, this blog is much too high-brow to indulge in fart humour, but for the sake of historical accuracy and personal integrity, I shall recount the story. White Star combines its living, sleeping and cooking areas into a single room, and while standing roughly in the centre of this room I - in a moment of inattention - let out an especially vile and malodorous silent fart. But in the short interval between the emission of the fart and its detection by my companions, a six year old gleefully cheered "I just farted". This at first brought great mirth to all in the room, but as the true scope of the problem was revealed, and the residents of the hut increasingly found themselves pressed outwards by the stench, people began to marvel that such powerful flatulence could be produced by a child so small. Meanwhile I, flooded with both relief and shame, said nothing.

So this is my public apology to Winnie, who probably did fart, but was not responsible for the true horror experienced in that room last Saturday evening. Winnie, I am sorry. However, my promise to keep your teddy bear if it ever falls onto my bunk again still stands.

I am still alive

Yep, still alive. I'm at BR, so I don't have much internet access at the moment. I've just submitted something to NZ Skier magazine's website, so if that gets on I'll post a link. It's quite terrible, but hopefully it's a foot in the door and I can claim to be a ski journalist and people will give me stuff for free.

We've just had two bluebird days after a big storm, so there's lots of good skiing and powder turns hidden around the mountain. I've been skiing hard and jumping off lots of things, but now I'm tired and I've got the hut to myself tonight so I'll walk around in my underwear and play wierd music on the stereo and go to sleep early.

I've also found two talismanic items of clothing - a lucky white jacket and an intimidating onesie - which I have been wearing this week. I'll get some pics and write something more detailed to explain.

Help Pay My Bills

OK folks, here's your chance to help make me NZ$100 (AUS$8.40). All we have to do is win a contest to create a promotional slogan for Lake Tekapo. Entries are due on the 16th of August, and the winner gets some kind of gift card worth ONE HUNDRED KIWI DOLLARS. This is worth a small number of Australian dollars and, given the woeful purchasing power of the kiwi dollar, will pay for maybe a potato or a sausage or something. But it will also provide glory and self-worth and some meaning to my life.

All we (you) have to do is come up with a slogan of the form:

Lake Tekapo, ________ ________ ________ ________ ________ ________.

Whatever you come up with has to be six words or less, and apparently shorter is better.

Here are a few we've been working on to get you started:

• Lake Tekapo, great in any season. (Thanks Barrett)
• Lake Tekapo, it's pretty... Great!
• Lake Tekapo, boil before drinking.
• Lake Tekapo, better than Lake Wakatipu.
• Lake Tekapo,it's fantastic!

And my favourite,

• Lake Tekapo, great when it's not raining.

In other news, I'm staying in Lake Tekapo township to ski in some new places with some of the Broken River crew, hence the whole Lake Tekapo tourism thing.

Who Will Feed Me Now?

It is perhaps fitting that this, the 100^th post on this blog, is being written from the White Star Chalet at Broken River Ski Field in New Zealand. It is also fitting that I don’t have internet access here and that I’ll have to take my computer on some kind of road trip to actually post this to the blog. My journey of skiing, climbing, committing social faux pas and generating strong body odors effectively started here, and it is at once immensely satisfying and deeply disappointing to return to where things all began. Satisfying because coming back to Broken River, with its strong sense of community, ramshackle facilities and diabolical skiing feels like catching up with an old friend - one with a crazy beard, faded jacket and determination to get rad. And deeply disappointing because there have been a number of changes in the staff here, and I don’t know the new cook or ticket office person.

You might be saying (although it’s incredibly unlikely, since you probably know nothing about Broken River and its staff) “John, many of last year's staff are still there – you still know Doug the snow safety officer, or Barrett the ski patroller, or Dan the guy who fixes the grooming machine all the time even though no one seems to ever intend to use it”. And you’d be right, those people are still here. It has been great to see them and I’m looking forward to various forms of shenanigans with them during the season. But to truly know and master the beating heart of a ski field there are two people you must schmooze above all. First is the ticket office person (which is a euphemism for ticket office lady, which is a euphemism for ticket tart), for they hold the power to charge you for things, to ensure you pay for everything in advance rather than building up a large tab, and to save you a bed if the accommodation fills up and you haven’t made a booking because you’re an idiot. A good relationship with the admin person can mean turning up just before a storm and knowing that you'll get a bed. A bad relationship can mean spending four days in a 14 bunk hut with 13 high school boys from Queensland who balance their raging homophobia with bouts of late-night wrestling in their underwear*. Second is the cook, because the cook controls the food. A good relationship with the cook can mean scrubbing dishes like a high school dropout and eating like a prince. It can mean that extra loaves of bread or bottles of milk find their way to the dodgy hut with the cheapskate guests rather than to other less worthy places. But a bad relationship means that no matter how many vegetables you chop or cakes you bake you will never taste the wonders of BBQed chicken or hot muffins while night skiing.

It is also very handy to schmooze the ski instructor, because they can provide you with helpful ski advice for free. But in the grand scheme of things having somewhere to sleep and something to eat must take priority over video analysis of your turns even if that analysis is very helpful.

It was, then, with some dismay that I learnt that neither Giuliana, the ticket office person, nor Ray, the cook, would be returning from last season. I have to start all my schmoozing from scratch – a grave and concerning situation.

Also of concern, it appears that Broken River has made a concerted effort to have more women at the ski field. Last season, Giuliana was the only female staff member for most of the season. This year, the ski instructor is also a woman, and there seem to be other women just hanging around – possibly even as guests. Women choosing to be at Broken River for employment is understandable, but their presence here in a recreational capacity suggests something is amiss. Barrett recently informed me that earlier in the season he was at one point the only man in the daylodge (I can only assume from his tone of mixed awe and terror that he was not alone in the daylodge, because that would not be at all exceptional). The prospect of there being multiple women at the ski hill, some of whom are not staff, is unfamiliar and unnerving. After so many months of non-stop sausage partying, the thought of the party ending in one of the sausageiest places I’ve ever been is like returning to your home after a long absence to discover that, unbeknownst to you, your best friend from childhood is in fact imaginary, and that everyone has been humouring you all along.

I should probably say that I look forward to meeting all the new staff members, but most of you know me better than that. I am of course completely terrified of meeting them and having them dislike me. I would desperately like for things to go well, and indeed have a considerable emotional and financial investment riding on a positive outcome, but lack the capacity for self-deception required to believe that this is likely.

Wish me luck people – I don’t want to be expelled from here and end up spending the season at Mt Cheeseman.

*Thanks Giuliana.

Kicked Out Like a Bum

My hometown of Canberra is notorious across Australia for being terrible. Add to this the tendency of those returning from international travel to scorn the worn and familiar places they left, and it would be natural for me to loathe returning to my home city. But, my return to Canberra has been quite the opposite. Despite chasing winter for the last twelve months, visiting a Canberra winter has been an exceedingly pleasant experience. Canberra winters are cool, rather than cold, and crisp clear days with open skies and mellow sunlight are the norm. They are the sort of days that make you want to plant bok choy.

That is not to say that everything about my return to Australia has been rosy. It seems almost traditional to sigh about how nothing has changed when you return after a few months absence, but in my case a whole bunch of things have changed, some for the worse. But you, dear reader, don’t care at all about changes in my personal circumstances. Staying with my folks because I broke up with my girlfriend? No one cares. None of my keys (from just twelve months ago) work? Boring. You all read this blog to hear about my embarrassing or unpleasant experiences. Have I had any of those in Canberra? A couple, perhaps, but nothing of notable quality. I haven’t been on any dates if that’s what you’re hoping for.

Perhaps the most telling change upon my return to Canberra was getting kicked off the climbing wall at my old high school. A few preliminary statements are in order to understand the situation. First, the climbing wall is on the outside of the school gymnasium. Second, it is excellent quality – really well thought out climbing, interesting holds, neat moves. It’s made from real rocks epoxied onto a brick wall, so the texture and feel of the climbing is way better than your average artificial wall. Third, to get to this wall you have to climb over a large and very easy to climb fence. Now, some people would take the presence of such a fence as an indication that the school did not wish for members of the public to use their bouldering wall. But to my mind the idea of putting such an easy to climb fence in the way of a rock climbing wall suggests a more subtle intention is at work. To me, a fence like that says "Climbers, it might look like we don't want you here, but in fact this fence is just to keep riff-raff away. Please, come in and avail yourself of our excellent facilities." In my mind (and perhaps nowhere else) there is a clear distinction between climbers and riff-raff.

You might think my opinion of the fence somewhat fanciful and absurd, but it has been borne out by experience. I have been noticed using the wall on several occasions by school staff who have either turned a blind eye to my presence, or (especially if they recognised that I was an previous student) struck up a friendly conversation. But this time, two staff members wandered past and one of them KICKED ME OUT.

First they asked what I was doing and I pointed out that I was bouldering.

Then they asked how I had gotten in and I explained that I had climbed over the fence.

Then they said I shouldn't do that and I explained that I had been climbing over that fence for ten years.

They made the valid point that it wasn't a public climbing wall, and I countered with the equally valid point that it was a very good climbing wall. Although this argument is strictly non sequitur I think that it was a reasonable rebuttal in what was essentially a comparison of competing values.

She clearly did not find my value claim convincing and rather indignantly pointed out that I should leave. I agreed to do so.

At this point, the other staff member (who taught me chemistry back when I used to learn things) said hello and we had a quick chat while I pulled off my climbing shoes and hopped back over the fence.

Getting kicked off the climbing wall is more that just inconvenient. It’s a sign that I’m no longer a welcome dirtbag in my own home town. In cities all around the world, there are dirtbags and climbing/skiing/mountain biking bums living alongside regular folk every day. Not long after regular folk have left for their jobs in the morning, these dirtbags and bums will wake up and face the prospect of choosing what they will do for the rest of the day. Their lives are intertwined with those of the hardworking decent folk who fill the offices and businesses of the town, but different in all kinds of financial, recreational and hygienic ways.

I was once such a person in Canberra. I was more of a skiing and Frisbee bum than a dirtbag per se, but I was still tolerated or even welcomed by the institutions from whom I leeched resources and opportunities. But it seems my absence, and perhaps my graduation from bum to dirtbag, has put a stop to this. Now the familiar and reliable haunts of my youth are denied to me. The lady who kicked me out doesn’t realise that I still know the sequence for traversing the wall off by heart, or that I can tell which holds (or bits of holds) have broken off or where new holds have been attached, or that my initials are written above the ingenious arête climb I worked out in 2002 (and then couldn't repeat after I replaced my ailing climbing shoes). In all honesty, I should probably have kicked her out, but she probably wouldn’t have been comfortable climbing over the fence.

Does this mean that any return to Canberra to live must be accompanied by a submission to the norms and expectations of a real job and a normal life? I think (and hope) not. Does this mean I will hide in the bushes at the Narrabundah College bouldering wall if I hear people nearby? Most certainly.