Shame and honour clash where the courage of a steadfast man is motley like the magpie. But such a man may yet make merry, for Heaven and Hell have equal part in him.

Wolfram von Eschenbach
“Parzival”

The Magpie. I finish the first day of the summer swimming series, using a snorkel. It’s not great but its better than watching from the beach. I’m also finishing the year pain-free for which I’m grateful.

Parzival is a medieval German poem written in the 13th century. It’s hero is the Arthurian knight, Parzival (Percival in English) and his long quest for the Holy Grail following his initial failure to find it.

It’s New Year’s Eve and I chose this quote for the last post of the year,  as it sums up 2015 for me. I’ve been on a quest seeking many holy grails: a recovery in health, to walk properly again, relief from pain, to undertake a long bushwalk, to swim from Palm Beach to Manly, to leg-press my body weight, and to reach resistance level 15 on a bicycle. Some of these goals have still not have achieved. My overarching goal – to once more go snow-skiing – remains unrealised. Still, I’ve committed to the mountains once more. Flights and accommodation are booked for three weeks sking in Montana and Utah beginning mid-February next year. Destiny awaits. What will be will be.

Like all human beings, I am like Parzival, seeking that most elusive grail, the cup of happiness. Parzival was seeking spiritual fulfilment and I am too. I’m not there yet. As this year closes and a new one opens, I have survived a challenge built around enduring ceaseless pain and loneliness. Life should not be just about endurance. It should be larger than that. But to live a fulfilled life you have to do start by enduring. I’ve done that.

In three weeks, it will be a year since I broke my leg at Revelstoke in Canada. I couldn’t say it’s been an easy year, but despite all the ups and downs, I have made as good a recovery as could be expected. So roll on 2016. It may be a great year.

Shame and honour. Like Parzival, my life resembles the magpie, some black, some white, some good some bad.

Like him, I may yet make merry.

The finished product

An expert in my kitchen. Rick Ayish from Columbus Ohio makes Dolmades in my kitchen on the last day of 2015

Sunday certainly started well. After a solid Saturday race of about 1 kilometre, at Balmoral, I backed up again on Sunday morning for another tilt. Swim number 1 was a conventional 1 km race around the track in front of the clubhouse in Edwards Bay. The water was so warm it was just a delight. I was off a seven minute handicap, so no favours for the cripple, old and infirm, from Tony Smuts. I think I finished about 30th after weaving through a fair part of the the field. No doubt about it, the snorkel takes a lot of pressure off my neck and allows me to swim faster. Don’t know how much longer I will be allowed to use it at the BBC in swimming races.

Balmoral swim number 1 – about 1 km

After that it was swim number 2 around to Chinaman’s Beach and back. This was out towards the dreaded channel that runs from the Heads up to the Spit Bridge were legend has it, the bull sharks rule supreme. Denise Elder had organised a very merry bunch of swimmers including Rob Johnson, Mike Kirkman, Pete McCormick, Jan Davies, Barry Feyder, Tony Bostock, Meredith Aveling, our English channel swimmer Duncan Adams and Alison Maunder. I really surprised myself and managed to push pretty hard for the whole journey but was pretty tired after the 2.3 km journey.

Swim number 2 – Balmoral to Chinamans Beach and return about 2.3 km

In the afternoon, after a much welcome sleep, in something of a drowsy state, I hauled myself off to the Frenchs Forest gym. I had missed Wednesday’s session because I was up in the country and missed Saturday’s session because I was just too tired. Sunday was a must do. I really didn’t feel like it when I got in the gym and had to force myself to sit on that rotten stationary bike. It has become a form of personal scourging every weekend. I now know how Franciscan monks felt when they walked around bashing themselves with their rosary beads. They must’ve all been recovering from tibial plateau fractures.

Anyway, I started cranking away on the bike doing the normal routine and I got up to level 12 doing the sprints and realised,

“I don’t want to do this anymore. I’m sick of sitting in a gym by myself every Saturday afternoon grinding away on a bicycle. What would happen if I just stopped peddling, got off the bike, had a shower and went home?

I was doing all of this just so I could go skiing again. Was it really that important? Would it matter if I never went skiing again?
Of course, layers of crusted-on Catholic guilt are hard to shift. I knew I could never live with myself if I quit. I can imagine one of the Sisters of Mercy standing over me as a small child admonishing:  “You’ll go to hell if you quit,” and then belting me with a ruler. I cranked on grimly although every fibre of my being wanted to stop.

Anyway, I ended up doing the standard bike routine – 5 mins on resistance 9, 10, 11,  12 and  13 – about 27 minutes. Sprinted to 100rpm, five times on levels 10, 11, 12 and 13. How indescribably boring is that? I raced through the rest of it as fast as I possibly could.

Leg Extension…………….10 x 30kg  x 24    both legs

Adductor…………………20 x 40kgs    …………20 x 45kgs

Leg Curl …………………..10 x 35kg  x 3      both legs

Plyo Soft Box No 1 ………………..20 two footed jumps

Leg Press………………….10 reps x 60kg  both legs  warm up

Leg Press………………….10 reps x 70kg

Leg Press………………….10 reps x 80kg  x 6

Pretty pleased with 6 reps of an 80kg leg press. That’s leg pressing my body weight 60 times. It was only a month ago and I couldn’t do it at all. And then I went home. Hooray, all over for another weekend. I know I’m starting to sound like a whinger but I really never want to go through this again.

Christmas is fast approaching and that means Ian McNamara’s radio program, Australia all Over is winding down for the year. Usually I go in to the studio at Ultimo as a guest on his last program and talk about what happened during the year. I enjoy this very much as writing and radio broadcasting are really my great passions. This year was no different. We talked about recovering from a tibial plateau fracture, the incidence of melanoma is in Australia, the share market and grapes. Specifically, Muscatel grapes. On the same program last year I had lamented the fact that Muscatel grapes are now impossible to procure in supermarkets. The Muscatel sweetness, with its crunchy seed in the middle, was always a symbol, to me, of Christmas and a little bit of luxury in small farmhouse devoid of luxury of any sort. Listening to the program a year ago was a grape grower from St George in Queensland who still grows Muscatels. He invited Ian and myself to come up and do some grape picking. I just may do it.

Anyway it was very enjoyable and I headed down to the beach club afterwards. I was too late for the regular swim, so I just did a couple of laps around the bay on my own. It was a burning morning, the water glassy and still.  It will shortly be the longest day of the year and we will be on the slippery slope to another winter.

Sunday with Macca at the Ultimo studios in Sydney for the last radio programme of 2015. I am holding a bunch of muscatel grapes sent in by a listener. I subsequently ate all of them much to Ian’s dismay.

Mt Hood. Oregon. USA. My American guide, Ben Randall making the evening meal at our top camp before our summit attempt later that night. His mother was killed the same day on the Matterhorn in Switzerland.

When I began the journey of recovery from a skiing accident, I identified four elements for successful rehabilitation from a broken tibial plateau:

1. Determination
2. Discipline
3. Patience
4. Perseverance

There are two other factors which I now know impact on tibial plateau recovery. This probably applies to rehabilitation from any form of surgery – an ability to tolerate pain and an ability to endure solitude and boredom.

There is nothing more solitary than a gymnasium.

During today’s Saturday exercise session,  I really started to hit the boredom button. I had a beautiful morning swim at Balmoral, albeit with a snorkel. The water was warm, I went in the race for the first time at my assigned handicap rather than hanging at the back and managed to finish reasonably well, although I’m terribly unfit.

The gym in the afternoon was another matter – it became an endurance and determination test. I started with the now familiar warm up on the bike: ………..5 mins on resistance 9, 10, 11,  12 and  13 – about 27 minutes. Sprinted to 100rpm, five times on levels 10, 11, 12 and 13.

Dawn Mt Hood. Ben and me on the summit

I found this a chore. Adding to my woes, the stationary bike I was using was positioned in front of a dominating, flatscreen TV on the wall of the gym. Unfortunately, it was playing the documentary of the accident that occurred on Mount Hood in Oregon in 2002 and the helicopter crash which occurred during the rescue.  Three climbers died that day on Mt. Hood, with many others seriously injured. The toll could have been even higher. While trying to perform a high-altitude rescue, a US Air Force Pavehawk helicopter clipped the mountain and tumbled end over end, 1,000 feet down the slope, ejecting its crew and sending parts flying.

Ben Randall, my climbing guide and me on the summit of Mt Hood, Oregon, USA. At about the same time his mother was killed while climbing the Matterhorn in Switzerland.

I climbed Mount Hood several years ago. A wonderful, enjoyable event, it was nevertheless, sobering as we climbed the wall of the caldera and of course the guide, Ben Randall, recited those inevitable words, “We mustn’t fall here.” How many times have I heard that? While we climbed, Ben talked about how he had introduced his mother to mountain climbing in her late 40s/early 50s. As we summited, just after dawn, the Colorado River, winding through silent forest in the valley below, was burnished by the first rays of the morning sun. Ben revealed with some excitement, that at that very moment his mother, Carolyn Randall was climbing with three friends on the Matterhorn in Switzerland. The climb, which was unguided, would coincide with her 57th birthday. When we returned to the Lodge at Mount Hood, he was greeted with the news that his mother had been killed in a fall along with her three companions. I will never forget the look on his face or the unspoken feeling that he held himself responsible as he had introduced his mother to climbing.

I couldn’t wait to get off the bike as I couldn’t endure the remainder of the documentary. The rest of the session was pretty standard although I did have one major breakthrough.

Leg Extension…………….20 x 30kg  x 4    both legs

Adductor…………………10 x 40kgs    …………10 x 45kgs x 2

Leg Curl …………………..10 x 35kg  x 2      both legs

Jacobs ladder ……………….5mins @ 90 spm

Plyo Soft Box …………………20 two footed jumps 

I jumped up onto the green soft PYLO box no 1 for the first time. This is a low impact form of exercise especially beneficial following a tibial plateau fracture

Leg Press………………….10 reps x 60kg   x 2 both legs  warm up

Leg Press………………….10 reps x 70kg  x 2

Leg Press………………….10 reps x 80kg  x 2

Leg Press………………….10 reps x 90kg 

Jumping up onto the PLYO box was new for me as it is quite high. Also deciding to leg press 90 kg on the spur of the moment was something of an achievement. I hadn’t planned to do this but felt reasonably good at the end of the session and thought I would give it a try. One of the worst things about gym rehabilitation is the loneliness of it – it’s a solitary undertaking with no one to talk to, going through an endless routine of repetitive exercise. I wish I had a few people to do this with.

“Buy a ticket, take the ride.”

Better than sex: Confessions of a Political Junkie

Hunter S Thompson

This morning broke hot and still, the ocean a glassy lake unruffled by wind or swell. I had a very trying Thursday and decided to sleep in and catch the 7 AM Friday swim at Manly. My old mate Don McClean was also in the swim and we had a very leisurely race over to Shelly Beach and back. In his heyday, Don was one of the best swimmers at the Bilgola Surf Club when I first joined in 1971 as a callow recruit from the bush trying to learn to swim. We go back a fair way in the ocean. It’s great to see him still there.

I am sitting in Manly Wine Bar enjoying Friday morning breakfast, looking out at the sparkling ocean and pondering the year that is drawing to a close. Yesterday was one of those days. In the morning I saw Dr Tanya Gilmour to get the results of the four biopsies on my head. One came back positive for squamous cell carcinoma and it will have to come out. That’s a surgical procedure so I’m off to see my old friend, plastic surgeon, Dr Jonathan Stretch. I will end up with a big scar down my right cheek but that is minor-league compared to everything else this year.

In the afternoon, I saw Dr Ian Farey, the orthopaedic surgeon for a final prognosis on my neck. I had my list of questions and we had a very learned argument about the merits of cervical spine laminectomies, posterior cervical foraminotomies etc. It got pretty weird with some very big words, and a little bit of tension when I suggested to Dr Farey, tongue in cheek, that I now know more about cervical laminectomies than he does. Given that he is a world-renowned spinal surgeon I guess that’s understandable, but he doesn’t know how much I have read in the last month. Never mind, the end result is I’m not going to submit to surgery. I will have to participate in a management plan involving an annual MRI scan of my spine. I’ll probably have to do this for the rest of my life. Again, this is minor-league stuff.

More importantly, last night I finished the first step in my Hunter S Thompson retrospective: Better than sex: confessions of a political junkie. I’ve decided to read all of Thompson’s books again as I’m planning a road trip through the south-western United States in the latter part of 2016.

Better than sex details the 1992 presidential campaign when a young William Jefferson Clinton took on first-term Republican president George H. W. Bush. The election followed hot on the heels of operation Desert Storm and the liberation of Kuwait. Bush was expected to win waving his hat in the air. He lost. It is a very, very funny book. No one can match Thompson for vitriol and he was a very angry man, particularly about the state of US politics.

A pivotal part of this memoir is a lunch held in Does Cafe, Little Rock Arkansas, in 1992 when Bill Clinton was still governor but winding up for his grab at the presidency. For the first time, a member of the sixties generation was running for President of the United States. During the campaign the measure of the man was taken using a 1960’s yardstick of hip and cool, Rolling Stone magazine. Clinton broke new ground and agreed to a group interview with the sixties’ most influential and durable media voice. The interviewers were Jann Wenner who, as the founder and owner of Rolling Stone, had been top of the hip and cool scene for two decades; William Greider, a leftish political journalist who had quit The Washington Post to join Rolling Stone; Hunter S. Thompson, Mr Cool himself; and P J O’Rourke who was morphing into one of the great conservative writers in America. Bill faced them down over lunch on the vinyl topped tables.

The book brought back so many memories: Bill Clinton playing saxophone on the David Letterman show, Gennifer Flowers accusing Clinton of a long-running affair and the accusation that Clinton used his connections to avoid the draft. But the most memorable and most ridiculous jibe, now that time has passed, is that Clinton admitted smoking marijuana during his student days at Oxford University but that he had never inhaled. This dogged him through the election campaign and Thompson mercilessly lampooned him for it.

The title of Thompson’s book suggests that US presidential politics is even better than sex, although at the end of it he is not entirely convinced. At one point he reports on Dan Quayle, Bush’s VP running mate, attending a preschool in Manhattan. During a spelling lesson a young student writes the word “potato” on the board but Quayle corrects him saying that potato has an “e” on the end. No matter what you think about the United States, its presidential campaigns are pure theatre and very entertaining.

In the end, Thompson reserves his most biting sarcasm for someone who wasn’t even campaigning – former president Richard Nixon. At the end of the book is reproduced Thompson’s obituary for the former president.

Nixon was so aggressively evil that he almost glowed at night. His political instincts were so dangerous that he made politics of total opposition a very honourable trade for two generations of the best people in America. He gave no mercy and expected none. He was fun

He was a swine of a man and a jabbering dupe of a President. Nixon was so crooked that he needed servants to help him screw his pants on every morning

He believed that Nixon had the fighting instincts of badger trapped by hounds. He described Nixon’s VP, Spiro Agnew, as a flat out knee crawling slug with the morals of a weasel on speed. This reminds me of when I wrote that a female friend’s fur coat resembled the pelt of a tubercular rodent or possibly a stoat that had died of venereal disease.

An act of bravery that would never be repeated in a Presidential campaign: Bill Clinton confronts Rolling Stone. Clinton (right) and Hunter S Thompson (second from right) at their famous lunch at Doe’s Cafe in Little Rock Arkansas, in 1992 as Clinton begins his campaign for the Presidency. Sitting opposite Clinton is P J O’ Rourke. Both Thompson and O’Rourke were journalists for Rolling Stone at the time. Their politics could not have been more different yet I enjoy the writing of both. Jann Wenner is at the extreme left of the photo and William Greider is third from the right.

I think I would have liked Hunter S Thompson. It would have been an honour to meet him. His most famous quote, which first appeared in this book, and which referred to American politics – buy a ticket, take the ride – has since grown to describe our lives. Doesn’t it sum it all up? When we are born we buy the ticket and we take the ride, whether we like it or not. What a wild ride it has been for me this year.

Today was my first day in the gym with Belinda since the all-clear from Dr Matt Lyons to begin skiing again. I plan to leave for the United States, mid-February 2016, so I have approximately eight weeks to finish off the strength and coordination work. Belinda – She who must be obeyed – was keen to hear the surgeon’s decision. She wasn’t surprised that I have been given the green light but was not convinced of the wisdom of Dr Lyons’ advice that I could increase the resistance levels on the leg press and bicycle machines.

“What for?” She enquired. “I’m not sure what that would achieve. We are in advanced rehabilitation now.  I’m concentrating on exercises specifically aimed at the mechanics of skiing. I think that’s more important than strength work.”

“Yes, but if there’s no chance of injury I think the stronger I can get the better, especially in my quads, ” I replied. She has been excellent so far so I have to listen to her opinion. We agreed that pain, or absence of pain, could guide me on further strength work and she would concentrate on the skiing exercises.

The session went something like this:

Warm up on the bike: ………..5 mins on resistance 9, 10, 11,  12 and  13 – about 27 minutes. Sprinted to 100rpm, five times on levels 10, 11, 12 and 13.

Two legged squats on the vibrating plate x 35

One leg squats against the wall
using large gym ball on my back……………….. 8x x 3 sets

Two legged jumps onto a bench…………………10x x 3 sets

Two leg cycle squats……………………………….10x x 3 sets

Cable hip abduction (both legs) …………………1.5 kg x 10
………………………………………………………… 3.0 kg x 15

Freeform plate back arches………………………. 10x

Stretching for 10 minutes

Quite a bit of this was new. The two legged jump ups, were onto a gym bench about 30 cm high. This was hard at first but at the end I could jump up, land squarely on both feet and jump backwards down onto the floor. The cycle squats were on a small stand where the heels are jacked up and the aim is to squat and sit on the back of your heels, hold a moment, then stand up again. This almost mimics the position in skiing of extending and squatting consecutively when going over moguls or initiating turns.

Today doesn’t sound like a hard session, but it was. I think anything new such as the jumps onto the bench, cycle squats or the hip adduction, is difficult when first attempted.

I have just clicked over 10 months since surgery

Today was supposed to be the big day. Sunday, December 6 was the day Barry and I had planned to swim from Palm Beach to Manly. This was goal no 3 in my rehab program. Alas. it was not to be. Anyway, everything has a bight side. I swam on Wednesday at Manly with flippers and snorkel, Thursday at BBC and again on Saturday at BBC. Most swims were about 2kms. Slowly getting stronger each time. But I’ve noticed the flippers are starting to make my broken knee ache. This happened when I first got back in the water after surgery. Flippers seem to be a lever that exerts pressure on your knees. Anyone using them in a rehab program after a tibial plateau fracture should be extremely careful.

Anyway, Sunday morning I decided to ditch the flippers and make an honest man of myself. Well almost, as I still have to use the snorkel. It was a great swim, although only 1km.  I almost caught my nemesis, Mike Munro, but ran out of gas over the last 25 m. I only felt a little bit ashamed walking up the beach with my snorkel. I am seriously unfit. Understandable as I missed the entirety of the autumn swimming in Sydney and so far I’ve missed most of spring, so I haven’t had a serious swim for the better part of a year. Still I’m not whingeing. It was great to be in the water which was warm and clear.

What might have been. Looking north to Long Reef from Manly, Sunday afternoon December 6 about 5.30pm. This was the time we would have swum into Manly, nevertheless the conditions were probably not good enough to attempt it anyway.

Late afternoon, I went for a walk out to Fairy Bower and couldn’t help feeling wistful as I looked up the coast towards Long Reef. Beyond that lay Palm Beach. It was about 5.30pm which is roughly the time Barry and I would have been swimming in to Manly if we had successfully made the journey. Nevermind. It was pretty blowy, coming from the south, with a fair swell running over the Bower and into Manly. We probably wouldn’t have been able to do it today in those conditions. I would have postponed it. For a 30 km swim from Palm Beach we need a westerly or north-westerly wind to make it feasible. Anything from the east or south would make it way too hard.

Life goes on. I try and remember Epicurus:  Not what we have but what we enjoy, constitutes our abundance.

I was sitting on the stationary bike, pumping away, at the French’s Forest gym, on a quiet Saturday afternoon. Then it hit me. I realised that the most lasting damage from 2015 would not be to my leg or my neck but to my auditory canal. I think I will end up deaf if I don’t go completely insane first. The music is beyond description. Indescribably bad. Some African American whack job, who never spent enough time at school to work out how to sign his name, torments me in Australia with tuneless rap music. The most frequent vocabluaric metaphor these guys possess is the word “Yo.” What does it mean? I know you can’t dance to Beethoven, but melody sweetness the soul. These guys haven’t got a melody in their entire musical repertoire. When it’s not guys with sophisticated, original names like Tupac or Biggie Small, its disco. That’s what we need in here! A disco ball. Now why didn’t I think of that before? The boys with the hair dryers and the pomade would probably love prancing around with a disco ball in the gym.

What is a Tupac anyway? I know you can get Two Pack epoxy resin from Bunnings Hardware. Maybe that’s it. It’s a glue. I wish he would glue up his gob and let me spend Saturday afternoons suffering in peace at the gym. It’s hard enough on the leg press machine without listening to that crap.

I did the now standard warm-up on the bike: ………..5 mins on resistance 9, 10, 11,  12 and  13 – about 27 minutes all told. Sprinted to 100rpm, five times on levels 10, 11, and 12  and six times on 13. Not struggling so much on level 13 now. Might move up a gear.

Leg Extension…………….20 x 30kg      both legs

Adductor……………………30 x 40kgs

Leg Curl …………………..15 x 35kg           both legs

Walking lunges……………20

Jump turns………………..20

Leg Press………………….10 reps x 50kg   both legs  warm up

Leg Press………………….10 reps x 60kg

Leg Press………………….10 reps x 70kg  x 2

Leg Press………………….10 reps x 80kg x 4  

This is a new milestone. I hadn’t managed four sets of leg press at 80 kg before. I might try for six next time.

I have to admit after 10 months of gym rehab, it’s getting really tedious. I have to keep going though and find some way to maintain the discipline. At least I’m not in any pain now with my leg. It would be wonderful to have some company doing this.