Wednesday, September 30, 2009

Photos

Here are some photos I took on the trip: our apartment in Switzerland, a view from the train going to Austria, and Wiz climbing in the competition.





Wednesday, September 23, 2009

World Youth Champs comp

27 August

Comp Day 1

We caught a bus to the wall. Me, Damon and James were early, because I was first up and Damon second, but they changed the order later and I was 53rd up. My number was 393.

"Everybody climbed well," that's what James said, but my climb wasn't so good in my opinion; I cut loose and swung off because I didn't think. In the afternoon we, all the teams, went on a parade across town from the climbing wall to the speed wall.


28 August

Comp Day 2

We went to the wall again and climbed. My second climb was better than my first. In the afternoon to evening we did speeds. There were two different routes on the speed wall: one was the official speed route with extra speed holds added in and the other route was new. My grade was the last grade to do speeds and it was lots of fun.


29 August

We went to the wall and watched the semi finals, and I bought some climbing holds. Then we went around shopping and after that we were given five Euros each for dinner. I bought some carrots, a cucumber and a can of fruit salad. I ate some of the carrots and ate the cucumber, but I couldn't open the fruit salad so I had to eat it the next day. After dinner we watched the finals and some of us swapped tops with other climbers, but nobody I ask wanted to or could swap :(

Wednesday, September 16, 2009

Imst to Valence

21 August

We, Youth B, made lunch for the Youth A's and Claire, and then we went and watched the climbing in the IFSC Kletter Weltcup. The climbing was cool to watch and our guys climbed well.


22 August

Watched the semi-finals in the morning and the finals in the evening. I thought the presentation of the finalists was weird and it was fun to watch Adam Ondra top.


23 August

We went on a bush walk to a place where there was an alpine coster; you went up on a gondola thing and down on the luge track. Apart from slow people it was lots of fun.


24 August

We caught trains to Bern, Switzerland, and went climbing in the evening.


25 August

We took a train to Geneva, walked into France, and took a train to Valence.


26 August

We did lots of stuff and this is not in order:

We met the Australian and Equadorian teams and played frizby with them and Wiz's cousin Jamie. We went to Valence2, the mall, and then went to the supermarket to stock up. We also wrote our pre-comp plans and took photos of me and Wiz in dresses at the mall. This was so that James would give us pain au chocolat. I didn't get one though because I'm vegan.

Tuesday, September 15, 2009

Milandia and zoo

15 August

We went to Milandia and did competition onsight/flash practice, and we had to get our warm up routine sorted.


16 August

I wrote the team diary.


17 August

We got Euros turned into Swiss Franks so we could go to the zoo, and we had money left over to spend on things.


18 August

Went to Gaswerk again and did packing etc.

Thursday, September 10, 2009

13-14 August

13 August

After breakfast we guessed what we would do tomorrow, one guess each and if one of us got it right we all got ice creams. We guessed in reverse number order:
No. 1 Claire
No. 2 Sarah
No. 3 Damon
No. 4 Mark
No. 5 Rowan
No. 6 Jesse
No. 7 Speedy
No. 8 Olivia
No. 9 Irmak
No. 10 Emily
No. 11 Josiah
No. 12 Charlotte
No. 13 Wiz

We got some clues, and Claire guessed correct. So the next day we got ice creams.

At Gaswerk we did hard climbing and my hands hurt from the day before. We also had to work out our warm up.


14 August

We went to the Mammut factory and got a tour of the factory, the different steps of making ropes and other stuff. At the end we each got given a Mammut mammoth and it was lots of fun.

Wednesday, September 9, 2009

Switzerland

11 August

On the next flight I attempted to sleep. Then I did some more stuff on the computer and had breakfast.

When we got to Zürich Jesse's luggage didn't come so it had to be sent to us. We met Emma and Rob at the airport, and we ate breakfast again. We then caught a train to Oerlikon.

When we got to our apartments we sorted out who shared a room with who, me and Rob in our apartment, and after that we went to the supermarket. We then ate lunch at a small bit of grass, and we then played games afterwards. After that we went back to our apartments and made dinner.


12 August

We went to Gaswerk, where you're not allowed loose chalk or bare feet, and on the way there we caught two trains and then did a lot of walking. I touched a poisenous plant with my hand on the walk and it really hurt. Gaswerk is so humongous it makes HangDog look like a home boulder wall. We then did some pumpy leading and bouldering and I got a B5 on the outdoor boulder wall. One of the boulder rooms had a 45° angle boulder mat so you could do really high and long problems and everyone thought my yells were funny.

Monday, September 7, 2009

My journal starts

I had a good time on the trip, competing, training and doing other stuff. My journal of the trip will be posted here in instalments over the next few days ...


10 August

At the Airport my bag weighed just under 18 kg and nearly everyone was early to arrive at our meeting spot. When James arrived we got given a box with our uniforms in it and we had to sort out who got what: a pair of TOTA shorts, a singlet, a t-shirt and a long sleeve top each. We put stickers on our passports so we knew whose was whose, but Wiz's passport was red though. I played hacky with some of the others while we waited to board our flight.

On the plane I watched a few movies, monitored our progress, played games and watched TV programmes, all on the computer in front of me.

Singapore Airport is humongous! We went to a butterfly place where they had lots of big, colourful butterflies and I saw a small lizard. We went on the free Internet and I sent an email home. We then played bungy tug of war hoop shooting on a bouncy castle. Me and Charlotte put on harnesses which were attached by a bungy through a hole in a blow-up wall, and we had to run in opposite directions and get beach balls in a hoop. It was lots of fun, and we got given medals and a $10 voucher for anywhere in the airport. After spending the voucher we played knucklebones until our next flight.