One Life

For the fact that I have lived not enough

but that I have life left to live

I am challenged by every breath I take

Adrian Lamond 2013

Old School v New School

When the future of technology extends to the frontier's it can create quite an interesting set of dynamics.

As cars become more and more advanced, with integrated computers and more computing power than the average home, the difficulties began as you move away from the source of that technology.

Most modern day mechanics fault find with a laptop, plug it in, look up the diagnostic code and viola there is your problem.

However as s you progress away from the source of the technology you encounter cities even entire countries that have no technological support.

Some of these places don't even have tarred roads, villages without electricity.



What occurs when you drive your new 21st century vehicle into the technological equivalent of the 1980's and your mechanic has never seen or owned a laptop? When the nearest dealer is over 1000 miles away?

What do you do when the warning lights begin to pop up on your dashboard? and they will because as you travel away from the forefront of technology you also encounter other problems like poor fuel, extreme dust / heat  / cold. A million things your new car was not equipped to deal with.

(A Land Rover service interval is 25 000km in Europe, 15 000km in America and environs and 6 000km every where else.)

This is where the old school trumps new school, I have seen some mechanics in the middle of nowhere find a work around on the most complicated faults. Every possible warning light would be up on the dash, yet with a bit of mechanical knowledge and some hard work the car is up and running again.

A modern mechanic (Commonly know in today's parlance as part fitters) would have been at a loss out there in the sticks without his laptop and his parts bin.

The further away from the technology you get the better the abilities of the old school people seems to be, they have to or all this new tech will become useless to them.

Life - What's it worth?

Isn't it frightening that in a world full of knowledge and understanding, a world where humans have the capacity for choice, the ability to reason and choose the noble path, there are still those who will choose profit over all else.

During a recent expedition to Everest, during one of the driest seasons on record there are people like respected mountaineer Russel Brice chose not to climb due to the dangers and an unwillingness to put people in harms way.

Yet there are those like Arnold Coster and Everest Parivar Expeditions when faced with the tragic injury of a young Sherper named Lhakpa Nuru who was suspected of having a traumatic brain injury after being struck by a falling rock which left his jaw broken and his eye badly injured, have the audacity to say that there is no money for a helicopter evacuation. People who decide that others like Nuru who was putting his life on the line for there expedition are worth less than the $5000.00 it would cost for the rescue.

What a shameful state the world is in if we and people like Russel Brice who try to stand tall are living side by side with people who value money more than people, more than our own humanity.

In the end they did agree to pay and the Sherpa was evac'ed to Kathmandu. Thanks in part to Melissa Arnot the paramedic at Camp II, who was treating Nuru and said to Arnold  Coster, "I told him to look me in the eye and tell me this guy's life isn't worth $5,000," 

Urbanity

The insanity of living in the city center.
Well having grown up in a city that was kinda dodgy at best living in the suburbs made sense.
Yet it almost seemed like there was something missing.
Now that Johannesburg is evolving into the world class city it proclaims itself to be (long way to go yet, however the signs are good.) we start finding ourselves drawn to that aspect of life that eludes the suburbs.
That sense of community, the comradeship that is formed over a coffee at a corner side bistro that you and a client or collegue walked to.
The sights and smells of life, as you walk from place to place, unfiltered by the windows and aircons within which you would be cacooned as you drove from the suburbs to the nearest mall.
It may be insanity to live in a box surrounded by millions of other people, yet it brings you closer to both your communiy and your enviroment than living in the suburbs

The things we do

Its amazing how life can throw so many curve balls at you and yet we still don't see them coming. Everytime something comes along that looks to good to be true we are so blinded by it that the curve ball knocks us straight off our feet.

To use the words of Peter Tosh

"I really try try try


But I got to


Pick myself up


Dust myself off


Start all over, again"

So up we get and forward we go. Well at least I think its forward, some days I am not so sure.

No Fear

Standing on the cusp of a life changing event I find myself drawn to a poster that has been hanging on the wall in my office for many years.

It simply states

We take these risks

Not to escape life,

but to prevent life

from escaping us

Dont let your fears stand in the way of your dreams.

Powerful words that make me remember, that being afraid is ok, as long as you still follow your dreams.

So with the desicion already made, I find that even though my heart sits in my gut I am still confident about the upcoming changes in my life.

I have done some truly scary things in life, climbed mountains, rafted rivers, skydived, got married and had children yet it is the choices that affect those very things that are the scariest.

Choices about life and the future, choices where you cannot know the outcome.

Hard choices that you are forced to make, choices that you make because you cannot now what the future holds. You can only make the best choice possible with the information you have at hand and then go forward and live it to it's fullest.

Embrace the change and the challenge.

No regrets



The Death of our Oceans

This photo is of items that were dumped prior to the oceans ant-dumping laws being put into effect.

The scary part is that this means that the tires in the picture have been there for over 30 years and show very little decay in all that time.

Can you imagine the amount of debris and junk including nuclear waste sitting at the bottom of our oceans. The other part of the problem is that although dumping in the oceans has officially stopped (If we cant stop pirates from hi-jacking ocean liners, how are we going to stop illegal dumping?) nobody has worked out how much junk flows into our oceans via polluted river systems.

Just think of the thousands of rivers that flow into the sea and how many cities they pass enroute.

I think its to late to cry for mother earth, its now time to start mourning.