Bear With Me, I've Had To Shift A Few Concepts Around
This is also Wednesday's blog that I'm working on, as of late Monday evening while the clock ticks round to midnight. Firstly, I wasted a good five minutes watching the wrong Youtube video on "Bruno Pisani"'s channel. You remember Bruno, he's the unfailingly cheerful Roman character who enjoys dicing with death dangling from the Dolomites. Excellent English pronunciation and vocab, too, a lot better than many of my compatriots. Art!
Just thought I'd throw that one in there to unsettle you. Don't worry, we're not having anything to do with Seventies funk, but we will be dealing with rock.
Mountaineering? Rock? O I'm wasted here, wasted, I tell you.
ANYWAY Bruno's intent was to climb the highest peak in the Italian Dolomites range, a peak going by the name "Marmolado", with a height of 3,343 metres, or two miles in proper measurements. Art!
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| Close enough. |
More apt than you imagine at first glance, because the rock faces and screes that Bruno attacks are of such tallness that, were you to fall off, then you would indeed be turned into a mass resembling strawberry conserve when impacting the ground.
ANYWAY his ascent begins in the foothills, where the scenery is greenery and there is no snow to be seen. Art!
Grass, trees, and the rearing height of Marmolada in the background. Bruno's intent is to overnight in the 'Capanna Punta Penia', a large hut atop the peak that offers accommodation to any climbers who reach it. Note that Ol' Bru isn't wearing a hat or sunglasses or even a jacket, as he is still in the relatively balmy climes of the lower slopes below the treeline. Art!
Capanna (which I think is Roman for 'Cabin') just visible at top centre. This, lest you be curious, is a drone shot, not taken from another mountainside. The ascent begins in broad daylight, and I'll prod Art to put up a couple of shots in quick succession that tell a tale. Art!
Since this is a still, you can't see his jacket rippling in the stiff breeze that is present. He now wears sunglasses thanks to the reflective quality of all that snow, and you can see the absence of plants or trees. Up here there is bare, bleak rock, ice and snow, and that's it. Art!
Judging from the position of the sun, it's afternoon in what I am guessing is Springtime, roughly, so he's only got a few hours of light before night comes down. Being stuck on a mountainside, alone, in the dark, is not a position you reallllly want to be in. Art!
This is where the hiking stops and rock-climbing begins in earnest. As he stated, it's very cold up here, hence the snow and ice, yet the sun has been warming stuff up for at least six hours and things are thawing slightly and getting wet. You can just make out the warning sign next to the steel rungs hammered into the rockface. Art!
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| NOPENOPENOPE |
His right arm obscures his safety ropes (plural) which he clipped onto the guide rail, which he is careful to keep attached at all times, because marmalade, or jam. This is the easy bit. You doubt me? Art!
Here he's shuffling sideways along the rungs, both safety ropes once again attached. You really don't want to take risks here and slip off the rungs, because who knows how long ago those rungs were hammered home, and what friability or corrosion or erosion has been acting on them? You'd probably be alright. Art!
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| You weren't tired, were you? |
Another vertical ascent, which is less terrifying than slowly edging along a precipitous crevasse, yet a whole lot more exhausting. Art!
The Go-Pro video is exhibiting compression and distortion issues here, akin to a fish-eye lens, yet there is no question that this ridge is terrifyingly narrow with a tremendous drop to either side. One can only salute the mountaineers who went up there first to hammer in the rungs and guide cabling, heroes the lot of 'em. Art!
Ol' Bru makes it to Capanna Punta Penia minutes after sunset. You can see that dusk is falling, and it's already very cold, so he cut it rather fine. Carlo, the resident summer keeper at the hut, is pleased to see him, if not a little worried that he was late. Ol Bru gets warmed up by the stove, gratefull! Art?
Now, Conrad was thoroughly convinced that "Marmolada" was the Roman for "Marmalade" because obviously it is.
WRONG! except the Roman for 'Marmalade' is "Marmellata'.
O Noes! I thought to myself, clucking in panic. The entire Intro is based on a foundation of marshmallow!
Wellllll no. It turns out that "Marmolada" does indeed mean "Marmalade" - in Polish.
We may come back to Ol' Bru, as it would be rude to leave him stuck atop a mountain.
Crisis Point 2024
This is the wargaming event that Richard puts on each year, and this year he'd hired out Dungworth Village Hall as the venue, instead of the primary school's main hall. It might be smaller, and a lot less modern, but DVH came with a fully-fitted kitchen, which makes up for a lot. Art!
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| Setting the ambience: DVH |
Richard had tried to run 5 games but - as always happens - two teams dropped out, so we were down to three run on the same basic premise: the Soviet 1948 invasion of Czechoslovakia was resisted by armed force. Ooo-err Matron! Art!
Here our recce units have uncovered the Czech left flank defences: dug-in infantry backed up by T-34s and ST-1s (the wartime German 'Hetzer'). That obstacle on the road is, indeed, an obstacle, known as a "Czech Hedgehog".
I don't want to over-excite you so we'll pause at that point and tomorrow I'll bore you with details of the rules we were using.
"City In The Sky"
The Doctor is wowing his audience, perhaps not in a good way, about his ambitious plans for Arcology One.
I mean, this is outer space, it’s not like construction kit is simply
lying around waiting to be – oh! Hang
on, hang on – I see! This lot don’t realise because it’s been part
of their background for sixty years.
‘The Prof means those two
incomplete space habitats, the Indian and South American ones that never got
completed before the Big Crash.’
A chorus of ooh’s and aah’s
went up from the listeners. Emilia
jerked back as if slapped.
‘Of course! Of course, there’s hundreds of tons of
material there. Oh, why didn’t I think
of that. And, unlike
Ace cocked her head to one
side and tried to remember her off-the-cuff and on-the-job experiences of
re-entry. You needed a heat-shield,
either a physical one or a force-field, and Arc One had neither.
‘You need a heat-shield, and
I had intended that Pangolin be used for that.
My idea is to use lunarkrete, moulded into blocks about a metre thick
and secured against the sphere’s exterior.
Lunarkrete made either in situ or on the Moon and ferried up here.’
Small man, big plan!
Well, that's a wall of text so far. Bring on a few pictures to make the blog light and frothy!
Retro-Futurism
Which is rather similar to looking forwards and backwards simultaneously. Let us pick up a picture or two from "Hazegrayart", the chap (or chapess) who creates detailed animations of spacecraft and astronomical subjects. This vlog was titled "Von Braun's Lunar Lander Landing" and refers to the designs VB was putting forward in the Fifties for lunar exploration i the Sixties. Art!
Crewing up Landers en route Arrival! Touchdown Von Braun's vacuum babies arrive
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| Puny humans for scale |
Finally -
There's a whole lot of gloasting going on over in South Canada, where they were able to follow the solar eclipse, thanks to NOT BEING COVERED IN 10/10 CLOUDS. As we in This Sceptred Isle were. Art!
This frankly creepy shot is from the ISS, showing the moon's shadow slowly gliding over South Canada. If it looks that sinister Conrad The Coward we didn't experience any of it.
Laterz!
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