Cameraman Phil

It’s my birthday soon, and maybe because of that I’ve spent some time in the run up to it thinking about what I want to do. Not on the day, but in general.

That sounds a little vague, but hear me out…

Everyone has a job, works, plays and rests. There’s a familiar pattern inherent in most of our daily routines. I’m not knocking this pattern – I myself am guilty of it – I take utmost pleasure in everyday’s little differences, but ignore the glaringly obvious similarities.

In the last week my mind has drifted somewhat. I have found myself investigating things that I’ve never before considered. A friend of mine is raising money for the MS Society by climbing Kilimanjaro, and this got me wiki-wandering, where I soon found myself investigating “The Seven Summits“. These are the seven largest mountains on the all the seven different continents. This, to me, sounded like a brilliant idea, and something I could realistically acheive over a lifetime.

A short read-up on Everest later, I realised that Everest itself to be one hell of a challenge. Not only am I particularly unfit, I sometimes lack stamina, drink and have been known to smoke. I don’t eat particularly healthily, and have a sporadic fear of heights. I also don’t fancy dying, which seems a remarkably likely option.

I dismiss the idea, and promise myself that I will become fitter over the next year, and perhaps re-consider climbing something a little less challenging further down the line.

This morning I found myself in a similar situation. I was investigating famous events that had happened on my birthday, and I found that Lynne Cox, long-distance open-water swimmer, had swum the Bering Strait on my exact birthday. In the process she helped ease Cold War tensions by swimming from the US to the USSR, causing both the Russians and the US to mutually praise her efforts. That water was approximately 4C. Another impressive feat.

Two mind-bogglingly impressive events. Scaling Everest and swimming the Bering Strait. Certainly events that you couldn’t, and wouldn’t, do every day.

No, I can’t promise I’ll ‘do them by this time next year’. But here’s a little promise to myself that by this time next year, I’ll have done something different.

My friend Alex and I decided to try the age old public transport vs. car race for ourselves for a change. So, spirits high, we set off from London in an effort to get to a pub in Cambridge as quickly as possible. I was ‘Team Train’, and thus not allowed cars, and ‘Team Car’ weren’t allowed public transport. ‘Team Car’ had a passenger, in the form of Web Genius Adam, but I was all by myself.

Read the full review here

We were both set back in different ways, so it was quite close, but that said, it’s often not about how quickly you get there…

I met a nine year old boy the other day who was truly astonishing. I don’t know if astonishing does him justice, to be honest.

This child, who I’ll call Harry, was the latest foster child that a couple I know have agreed to take on board.

Harry is both deaf and dumb. He’s only nine years old, and wanders around with the clumsiness and curiosity that you’d expect from any growing nine year old. I can’t comment on why he is in foster care, as I don’t know.

He can’t communicate very easily, so within five minutes of meeting him, I’d learnt a few odd bits of sign language, and that he could hardly speak at all. Instead, Harry shouted to attract my attention, or used basic sign language if I was in his field of vision.

He warmed to me almost immediately, which is strange for a young child. You’d expect them to shy away and ignore you, but he was keen to show me what he was doing, almost as if he was trying to impress me.

He’s had a few run-ins with the couple who foster him. He has occasionally been known to lash out, but I would be frustrated if I couldn’t communicate effectively.

You find it difficult to appreciate how someone in this situation can feel. I take for granted my speech and my hearing, and meeting Harry made me realise this. Watching him play in the garden, it would be easy to confuse him for a ‘normal’ nine year old boy, but trying to talk to him was monumentally difficult. I managed to make him laugh, smile and high-five me, but I realise in hindsight that that’s no way to develop any form of lasting relationship.

I hope there’s someone out there who can look after Harry and give him the attention he deserves. Someone who is a little more selfless than I. A lot of the time, we take certain things for granted and worry about the most insignificant of things – things that wouldn’t even matter to people like Harry.

You can donate to the National Deaf Children’s Society here

I’ve only recently started getting back into F1. I say recently, I mean the last two/ three years. When I was growing up, F1 was ‘the sport that Schumacher won’. Unfortunately, I’m not old enough to remember the days of Senna, Prost, Mansell and the like. Sure, many of you may envy my youth, but to have seen those names, nay, those personalities at the time would have been sensational.

Equally, my parents were not, and still are not, the sporting kind. As such, F1 was never something they, and thus I, watched. (Mind you, they also didn’t approve of ‘The Simpsons’, so I should have disregarded their opinion on F1 as well, as they were clearly wrong. Bless them.) As such, I followed it loosely, seeing bits of the odd race, but not paying as much attention to it as I do now.

Needless to say, I was thrilled when F1 became something I could be excited about again. Be it the split-second finishes, the overtakes that seemed impossible, the heart-wrenching moments when a driver lost control and you assumed the worst, or the constant leap-frogging in the standings. I mean, no-one really expected Vettel to become world champion until that final race of 2010.

A fine example of the nature of F1 was Button earlier this year in Canada. No one expected that to happen, and when Vettel slipped out of line on that final lap, I remember everyone in the room I was in screaming with joy.

It’s a massive shame that F1 has gone to Sky. It’s not only a shame because we won’t get to see most of it (without paying) from 2012 onwards, but it’s also a shame because the BBC has done a sterling job with their coverage. The preamble has been spot on, the quasi-dysfunctional relationship between Eddie Jordan, Jake Humphrey and David Coulthard merely adds to the charm, and heck, I’ll even miss Martin Brundle’s ‘Gridwalk Ramblings’. It’s also a shame that by having to pay for it, Sky will make F1 something much more exclusive. Yes, it is only a sport, but still. It’s a great sport, and why should it only be available to those who can afford it? Also, surely those with Sky Sports will be too busy watching the football? That’ll be the biggest shame; the fact that this excellent coverage will cease, and moreoever, F1 as a sport won’t be so readily available. Generations to come will be like I was as a child – sheltered from one of the most excitingly unpredictable sports out there.

I would like to think this situation’ll change, but when money’s involved, it’s difficult to have such a hope. It’s just a shame that those responsible are unlikely to realise that F1 is about much more than money.

Here’s an online petition to keep F1 on the BBC.

A near-novice’s perspective of Snowboarding

A common view for the novice snowboarder

I was recently lucky enough to be invited to the Snowbombing Festival in Mayrhofen, Austria, with Volvo UK.

I’ve been teaching myself to board slowly over the last 6 months. I have had three two hour long lessons. Thankfully, I got my last one in the Saturday before I drove out.

This means I only knew the theory. As any accomplished snowboarder will tell you, the theory is often drastically different to the reality.

Due to the group we were in I figured I was going to get the best experience going right to the top of the Hintertux glacier with the experts, rather than staying lower down with the novices. We were told the run at the top was a ‘red’, so not as bad as it could be…

The ‘pros’ had told us that the best snow would be right at the top. I politely agreed, despite having little idea what they were talking about.

Making our way up the lifts was daunting enough, but the only thing that outshone my vertigo was my fear of the decreasing visibility as we entered whiteout conditions. My palms sweating, we escalated slowly into the heavens, finally reaching a standstill in a noisy gondola station at the top.

As we stepped out of the station I was not paying attention to the others at all. I was simply focusing on sorting my board out. By this point, the adrenaline pumping through my system was causing me to concentrate exclusively on surviving.

As we stepped out the door (that said, I couldn’t see the others, so referring to them as “we” is a little optimistic), the wind and snow spattered me in the face. I could just see people snaking down the hill, but they disappeared within seconds.

I made my way to the end of the slope. Rory Reid and Drew Stearne (the two other near-novices with me) were in a similar situation, so we had delayed while the ‘pros’ vanished into the cloud.

Almost as soon as I had stood up, I fell over. This was the theme for the first five minutes. Thankfully, Rory and Drew befell the same fate, and so we fell over one other for the first 50 metres down the hill.

A combination of having no clue which direction we were going and poor visibility kept us slow.

The journey down was arduous. We face planted several times and regularly spotted Drew flying off over a snow lip at high speed, normally screaming.

Despite the poor visibility, the repeated stacks and a number of near misses, we all eventually made it down the hill. Nothing was more relieving than seeing the restaurant at the bottom of that run.

On top of this, as we found the others at the bottom of the slope, we found out that the run we’d been treated to was a black, not a red run.

What’s my point? It was great fun. I fell on my face, side and arse, flipped every which way it was feasible to do so, but I had a great time doing so. And every time I fell, I picked myself up laughing.

I’ve always thought that life is about getting a sense of perspective. Knowing that I was doing something that pushed me to all I could manage was a challenge, but right now I miss that experience more than anything.

I’m currently sat on a comfortable sofa with a cup of tea, but I’d do anything to be freezing cold sliding down a mountain, and occasionally, crashing onto my face.

A much more refreshing perspective

Listen to the Gas Station Podisode Road Trip’s to Snowbombing with Volvo UK here

You can find all of the Gas Station Podisodes here