Back home to Dublin

Niece’s don’t even notice you’re gone for extended periods: so long as you’re willing to help with the important work project of decals on the wall of course ;)

And that’s a wrap, we’re back in the City after an almost six-month recharge! I’m lucky enough that I’ve put myself in the position to value time over shiny, expensive things (even if I’m still partial to experiencing shiny, expensive things: see item 3) so being able to step away from work last year, and recharge the batteries, is something I’ve been grateful for. Time to see new cultures, partake in amazing physical activities, sit in the dirt out in nature, and hang out with a range of friends is something that I’m always glad I made a choice about. So, three-plus months spent trekking around Europe and getting the opportunity to live in Siurana or two months after all these years of going there was amazing!

Still, those trips have to come to an end, and I’m grateful also be able to come to the city to see another group of friends and family, as well as take in all the delights of the city. That’s not to say it’s all rosy either - there’s definite moments of missing the space (the population of Cornudella is 1,000, whereas Dublin is 1,000,000-plus 😂). But again, taking it slow and appreciating the benefits of Dublin is the perspective.

Also, I’d forgotten how expensive it was here of course (two coffees and two croissants here is around €12 - it would have cost less than €5 in Spain!), but hey ho, you can’t win it all!

What’s been noticed since coming back?

Traffic is a disaster (no seriously, the city is a wreck for traffic during peak rush hour) and the government really needs to step up with proper visions for future transportation (hint: it involves micro-mobility - scooters, electric bikes - and much better buses, trams, metros).
Hearing from friends, the rental market is also a disaster: a reminder to all that the population of the Aran Islands is going to arrive into Dublin every month for the next thirty years according to current projections. That leads to obvious issues with there are an extra 500,000+ people in the city and how to resolve this situation! (I’m lucky enough to own my own place, but I’ve so many thoughts for anyone not in that situation).
Climbing? So. Many. People going indoors! Woah, the climbing gyms are jammed. The weather has been rubbish by all accounts also so most people are full-time indoor climbers for the most part. See point number 5 on my own plans here.
being able to go out to a show or movie, or a range of cafes is an item it’s easy to not appreciate when it’s around you all the time. Coming from a tiny village with a single cafe, it’s almost overwhelming here.

Back in the house on a sunny winter’s day with two temporary guests….

2. Sea Swims

It wasn’t always this sunny, but there’s always a turn-out :)

Back in Dublin wouldn’t be right without the obligatory sea swims of course! At this time of year, the sea can only be described as, ehhh, ‘fresh’ but you sure do feel amazing after it:)

I definitely wasn’t the first to get involved in this, however, even for myself who’s only been going regularly for the past two years, it’s interesting to see just how popular it’s gotten. Sure, the obvious days like New Years Day are crazy, however, most weekends now, there’s a consistent stream of people going in, no matter what time you arrive.

For anyone interested in what’s so good about sea swims, I point you at this lovely article on the New Yorker on ‘The Subversive Joy of cold-water swimming’ to inspire you.

Other amusing asides? Arriving for one of the last sea swims of the month, totally psyched for a dip….and then realising that you’ve left all your swimming kit at home, sitting on the kitchen table. Doh!

That expression when you’ve realised you forgot your swimming gear (and Claire/Terry are in the water behind!)

3. Rented a Tesla (they’re wild :)

Oh, my flipping word! So, due to imminent changes on the job front, I’d set myself a goal. I used to do this regularly for items to recognise achievements as well as celebrate them: i.e. if I applied myself and got the result I wanted, I have a planned treat proposed (and I obviously don’t get if I didn’t hit the goal target: which does occur). It’s a great way of motivating yourself, by the way, as well as excellent discipline towards buying yourself shiny items. Give yourself deserved reasons and they’re even better :)

In this case, I’d committed that once a job was sorted, I’d rent an electric car, and in particular, a Tesla!

In Dublin, there’s two options for electric vehicles (correct me if I’m wrong): GoCar who have some electric vehicles that you can rent by the hour, and the company UFOdrive. With GoCar, it’s only Hyundai Kona’s and BMW i3’s, of which the latter I’m a big fan of, however they weren’t what I was looking for. UFOdrive, on the other hand, has Tesla Model 3’s, Model S’s and Hyundai Kona’s on offer. Perfecto!

I’d originally planned to go for the big daddy, and their ‘flagship’, the Tesla Model S (equivalent to an BMW 5-series, or Audi A6) until I realised one important item. When renting a Tesla, there were two criteria I wanted: bonkers acceleration (a given in them all) and autopilot. It turns out the Model S to rent in Dublin doesn’t have autopilot enabled, so it was back to the Model 3. Thankfully, on the Model 3, it turned out it did have basic autopilot enabled (albeit it didn’t have the full ‘self-driving’ mode where it can automatically overtake cars, etc.) where it can steer independently. With electric vehicles, you don’t buy on engine size as it’s usually based on battery capacity. The Tesla’s to rent are the base model (the ‘Standard Range Plus’) but they’re still amazing.

Just look at the dashboard, right (there’s no display in front of the steering wheel, everything is on the huge screen). What are they like drive?

Quiet, with the exception of the tyre noise
You can essentially drive it with just the accelerator pedal (as when you let off the pedal, the electric motors ‘brake’ the car to recharge the battery). That means a small learning curve for when you want to just coast in the car as wheras in a petrol/diesel you just let off the pedal and the car will roll, you can physically feel the car braking. So, you have to progressively soften on the pedal. It sounds weird, but is totally intuitive within a minute or so.
Bonkers fast. For the people who like numbers, this is the ‘slowest’ Tesla and it still does 0-100km/hr in 5.6 seconds.
Autopilot is….great! It’s definitely a bit of a work in progress in town where you really have to keep an eye on it, however on motorways it’s flawless and I was totally comfortable letting it drive itself (you obviously still have to pay attention and keep your hands on the wheel at all times, also as Tesla advises and the car reminds you regularly by telling you to move the wheel). In town, it was impressive to see how much it ‘saw’ pedestrians, bikes, cars, trucks, buses however, it was still a bit erratic. I’d love to have a go in one with the full self-driving feature enabled (it’s a €6500 software upgrade) but that’ll be for another time. Still, it’s great fun and I’m so psyched for when I can get a camper with this feature so that it can drive me across Europe and reduce the fatigue factor there.
Range-anxiety is a hot topic with all electrics. This is the base Model 3 so has ‘up to 409km’. Over the course of my day, which included a bunch of acceleration demos for friends and family, I was on to get around 300-320km of range. Not bad, considering it was winter also where temperature also affects battery range. For context, Lahinch from Dublin is 260km so that’s within range without charging. They’re really viable for people now I think.

In short, if anyone wants to rent one out, reach out to me with your mobile number and I’ll send you a referral code. An aside on the cost, GoCar is around €70/day for a rental and this Model 3 to rent for the day was €140 (with comprehensive insurance, and an 300km of mileage, and free charging ). Note also, that isn’t even very expensive : a Porsche would set you back twice that, and as I’ve actually looked into, a Ferrari or Lamborghini is likely north of €1,000. Per day 😳

In short, it was a blast, and I’ll definitely be renting one again, most likely the Model 3 interestingly also as the autopilot was so good and even that model felt plenty fast :) I’ll also definitely be looking at electric cars going forward for myself as a permanent purchase.

4. Got me a climbing coach

In the worst possible English, yes, I finally stepped in to get some advice from a climbing coach. I’ve been looking for training advice since I started out in climbing: I still remember going into the gym in DCU in my second year of university to try and use weights in there. Of course, I hadn’t a clue what to do but it drove me to dig into the topic, starting off with this seminal article from the Anderson twins, Making of a Rock Prodigy and books such as Eric Horst’s Training for Climbing. Over the years, I ended up self-learning as there was no-one locally in Ireland to advise, and while abroad, I could never really make it work. Partially because I wanted to see the coach in person every once in a while! With hindsight, I probably could, and should, have made it work in that manner years ago but I’m also very glad of all the knowledge I gathered myself over the years and applied with relative success. Interestingly, there were some things I did that were largely useless and arbitrary for strength, however, training to be ‘able’ (i.e. hold for around a second, never perfectly) to do a 1-arm front lever, or one-arm 2-finger pockets, or do 35 pull-ups on a doorframe edge (although interestingly, I never got to the point of being able to one-arm hang a crimped edge), likely make me realise now that I under-achieved my potential on rock. How so? I’m way off those benchmarks these days but almost climbed my first 8b in December. Interesting….. What that really showed was there was gaps in my mental mindset, and likely some other pieces also: I’ll be factoring that into plans for this year too.

But forget about that, and back to the coach! I’m working with Rob Hunter of MyTherapyPhysio and I’ve done the one assessment, and put the foundational programme in place. Rob is now well-known in the Irish scene for, well, loads of things including his own climbing successes as well as his psyche for coaching (coaching numerous others across all standards) and passion alongside partner, Veronica, who is a brilliant physio. He also works with the team in Lattice and having used some of their programmes at the beginning of 2019 to re-introduce my body to strength training, I was keen to merge all knowledge. I’ve gone into this with a completely open mind, and very excited to be following someone else’s plan for a change. I always personally find it hard to go back indoors after an extended period of time away and on real rock, so having this plan is keeping me pushing on - I’d normally be relatively unmotivated for the first couple of months.

So, I made the drive up to their AMAZING training facility in Lisburn for an assessment. Over the course of a couple of hours, we got to work out the benchmarks and measurements to allow Rob to develop the training plan that is sitting open on my screen alongside this browser window I’m writing into. Interestingly, a couple of items stood out: I self-assessed myself for a few items after coming back in October and I’m weaker now! It would appear that the peculiarities of Siurana’s style (largely vertical to slightly overhanging, and just edge with intricate climbing) mean I’ve lost a lot of power everywhere. Fascinating and I’ll have to keep it in mind for…..

What’s the goal? Well, there’s that route out in Siurana that I tried many years ago once or twice (here’s the original post: I never did make it back), and I’d love to put some time into. It’s one of the King Lines of Siurana so putting some time into it sounds genuinely exciting! There are also a few local goals in Ireland to keep the fire burning, so looking forward to sharing some motivation with others over 2020 :) So, if you see me ignoring people at the climbing gyms, I’m not being rude: I’m just in training mode - see you for a tea/coffee/drink after to chat ;)

5. Writing Writing Writing Writing Writing

So. Much. Writing.

I’ve been head down writing loads on the blog. It would appear the motivation is back to start writing again :) To the 1,000 people who’ve read the site over the past month, thanks and as always I love to hear advice on what you think I can do to improve. You’ll see a link to contact me above, or pop me an email or a message through any means you know. Individual links are all below, however, you’ll see also see them clearly on the sports blog, and some on the tech one also.

Personally, I love to be back to writing. It allows me to reflect on what occurred, what I’ve learned and also flesh out ideas as well as get interactions from others. The writing about emissions from travelling from Ireland to Spain generated huge interest (to the point it required a follow-up post as we all interacted and learned from the information), as well as older posts suddenly getting more traffic again (unclear who linked to it, or why). What is shows is for anyone else out there who’s thinking about it, you won’t regret. By posting to your own personal webpage also, you also take control back from Facebook/Twitter, etc. and can express yourself as you please, not to mention keep a permanent record that is searchable from Google (a huge amount of traffic to the site this time came from the USA and Spain) instead of disappearing down the social network feed, never to be seen again. I’ve personally noticed also my writing is getting better again: stuff I wrote in 2019 is rough at the edges, and it’s nice to get the flow/skill back again Writing is a modern superpower that is underrated!

Sports blog:

Tech:

With that, thanks for reading as always, and any advice/feedback, let me know :)

January 2020: 5 random things from the month

Back home to Dublin