We squinted in the sunshine, sipped our coffee and enjoyed the brief respite that rest days bring. I stretched out my feet. Pasang Temba was making Dal Bhat for lunch, the team were all acclimatised and passing the day reading or re-arranging their tents.

“Have you seen this?” Mike said, as he handed me an old copy of the Guardian.

“Blimey...” (Er yes, there are still a couple of us old enough to be using that kind of language)

“...Jesus..Crikey” I said (well.. at least I didn't say “knock me down with a feather”). The Guardian reported a speech George Bush had given to a group of Palestinians. He told them that God had instructed him to invade Afganistan, then Iraq and now God was telling him sort out the Palestine problem and By God he was going to. Here is the link:

http://www.guardian.co.uk/frontpage/story/0,,1587077,00.html

I was reminded of that piece of news yesterday. It has been two weeks since my last blog. On the first day of December Jo and I pushed our skis up the Kandahar piste for another pre-breakfast outing. There were now tracks everywhere, a spaghetti of criss cross lines showing the perpetrators had no sense of symmetry or style; or maybe they did, in a rebellious grunge sort of way. Perhaps they wore dreadlocks and spoke in verlen (a local slang where the syllables are pronounced in reverse order: l'envers = verl'en, popular with the kids here). In any case they were not those neat parallel tracks you see in the all the posters.

The next day Jo went ice climbing at Fionnay while I flew to Inverness where it was raining. It was that wonderful soft Scottish rain that makes the trees mossy, the ground you walk on mushy and squishy, and makes the climbers retire to the pub to get really wet.

I was there to attend the the AGM of the BMG (British Mountain Guides). It was 3 December. On the same day the SNGM (Syndicat National des Guides de Montagne) had their annual meeting. They had issued, rather stylishly I thought, invitations to arrive at particular GPS reference, where the invited would find themselves attending the annual meeting. The Alpine Club had their AGM and there was a mountain medicine conference in Plas y Brenin tall on the same day. As far as I was concerned the timing could not have been better, surely a human brain can only take one of these events a year though there were some masochists at the BMG AGM who actually complained; they wanted to attend a plurality of these functions.

A week later I find myself in San Francisco. The first thing that struck me was the bicycling armed policeman. Well to be honest, he managed to swerve in time. It was entirely my own fault, wandering around the airport in a traveler's daze; it was in fact me who nearly struck him. He smiled, he welcomed me to San Francisco and let me take his photograph. Here it is. What a happy, contented man he is. We could do with a few of those in London.

[happy contented Policeman]

Yesterday I was free for the day, and had thought of driving over to Tahoe to sample the snow and maybe bump into a couple of the other bloggers, but in the end a slight hangover and the thought of spending another seven hours traveling when traveling is all I seem to have done this last fortnight made the prospect unappealing. Moreover Adam, who I have been staying with, was not too keen because he had a hard week at work in the law firm. Here the lawyers don't seem to be required to wear suits. This makes it hard for them to be recognized, and often they look just like normal people. Adam has a copy of a climbing guide book to the bay area, which he keeps by the loo to while away the hours. Very wise. Looking at the guide book over our breakfast coffee we decided to go bouldering on those beautiful beaches under Muir wood. It was the right choice, Stinson Beach faces west and though there was a chilling sea breeze, the rocks were still warm to touch. There were other people wandering about in distant groups. A Chinese family were collecting mussels from the tidal boulders. A couple of brave souls surfing the short breaks in waist deep water.

We met another lawyer in disguise, Mark, who pointed us at some quite delightful problems. Some of the micro routes had slap finishes, some needed pulling on sea scooped pockets lined with small barnacles, there was one that was easier if you used a family of black mussels as a swift foot hook. And then we found the remains of the beached whale. It was maybe fifty feet long and had been there for a while, providing a banquet for the Western Gulls. The sun began to set. The sky turned a salmon pink, underlit by the sinking sun.

[the Whale carcass]

[hard to believe this is not Asia]

I have spent most of the last few days in the Geary Street area of the town, and at times it is hard to believe this is the USA. The shops have Russian, Korean, Japanese and Chinese written all over them. And the food here is extraordinary. Dim Sum, Sushi, Pilmeni, Kimchi, Burritos. Everything. You would have to be very tired of food not to want to eat your pants off here. The week was full of discoveries and surprises for me. But perhaps the the most astonishing this was the Onion. Not the vegetable, but a local newspaper.

December 7, 2005. WASHINGTON, DC—Telephone logs recorded by the National Security Agency and obtained by Congress as part of an ongoing investigation suggest that the vice president may have used the Oval Office intercom system to address President Bush at crucial moments, giving categorical directives in a voice the president believed to be that of God.
http://www.theonion.com/content/node/43189

As a foreigner I cannot tell whether it is to be taken seriously or whether it should be enjoyed with a very large pinch of salt; whether the story should make you roar with laughter or what. The Guardian is a serious paper, I would have to assume the Onion is not. But if it were serious, all I could say about this is ...Crikey...blimey...and well... that really does explain the Guardian article; it would be hard for me to believe that the God of the Christians could ever have given the President those particular instructions. It must have been someone else.

[bouldering on Stinson Beach]