eruption on mount blog

Sun, Mar 25, 2012

My Earl Grey and toast nearly ended up on the floor this morning when my reader alighted on Alan Sloman’s blog only to find it encased in a pyroclastic flow from a blogosphere eruption. Normally these continental shifts go mostly unnoticed as I don’t use twiter in a personal capacity but it illustrates nicely the Wikipedia effect, or Crapipedia as I like to call it. I trust nothing on Wikipedia as it’s written by anonymous internet users. If something is worth writing then it’s worth putting your name to your opinions, otherwise it’s not worth reading and even less so, not to be trusted.

It was with such a mindset I approached the edge of the lava lake. As Dante, I was with a guide. My experiences of Messrs. Sloman and Rye’s outdoors writings as well as a failed subscription to the German’s blog. I say failed as it became obvious it was a crackpot affair. Lots of bizarre sounding advice which I forget now but was enough to put me off and relieve my bamboozled reader of its discombobulatory burden. I’m sure I heard it digitally sigh in relief. Anyway, the mantle shift that led to the eruption was nothing more than a gear exchange on twitter between two very nice chaps who had differing ideas. Nothing unusual there you might think but it all seemed to go downhill as the world’s best backpacker (apparently) weighed in with a certain type of footwear. I’ve been reading Alan and Martin’s blogs for years and I don’t mind the odd gear review, especially when it comes from folk who have done the TGO Challenge. I myself can’t be arsed. I’d rather go abroad and get some sun but I do admire those plucky folk who brave the spring elements to walk across the highlands in anything from scorching sun to ten foot snow drifts and the gear reviews that come out of it are worth paying attention to.

But the best bit of the eruption was the comment flow from the crater, with enjoyable names such as Jocking Jock and his flowery language. Jocking Jock got so enthused in his condemnation of the German he starred out the wrong part of an expletive!

So good on ya Alan and Martin for standing up for free speech. As for paclite? Well, I used it on my ML assessment where it blew a hooly for the three days of the expedition and rained 24/7 and my paclite jacket and trousers were superb.

I expect that’s me banned from the German’s site too.