Robbo – The Blog of Andrew Robertson 
We are currently sitting on our flight, cruising at 30,000 feet, on our way to Battle Creek (via Detroit).
We just had 3 days at Disneyland in LA to “wind down” from work before kicking into ballooning mode. The weather was really hot, between 35-38 degrees celcius each day. We had a great time but after 3 days we were pretty much ready to move on.
I have to say that having WiFi on a flight is very handy. It means I can spend the 4 hour flight sorting out logistics rather than just thinking about them.
The logistics pain has already begun. As I was about to board the plane, I called the car rental company would have our van ready to pick up tomorrow. I had arranged (about a month ago) to get a 15 seat van and they said they would remove the 2 rows of seats so we can fit the balloon in. I had been assured by the District Manager that this would be done. When I asked them just now, they said they could not legally remove the seats and the District Manager that had told me they could was no longer with the company. Oh Joy!
So tomorrow morning, when we pick up the van, Sean and I are going to have to see if we are going to be able to remove them ourselves and if not, we might have to scramble around Detroit to find a pickup to hire.
Tomorrow is also the day to pick up the balloon, helium, gas, fire extinguisher and a fan. So it is going to be a busy day.
We are sitting at The Qantas Club at Sydney Airport and our adventure is about to begin. Unfortunately our flight has been delayed by an hour because of the 100kmh wind gusts. We have been enjoying the view of 737s and 747s aborting their landings and pulling up as they get baffled by the cross winds.
We are stopping off in LA for 4 days of wind down at Disneyland. I don’t actually feel like I need to wind down because I am actually feeling very relaxed already. However I am sure that I will feel different after 14 hours of flying.
Our last view of Sydney
It has been a while since I have posted, but it is time to resurrect the blog because in 6 days we are heading over to the US to compete at the World Hot Air Balloon Championships.
The Worlds are being held at Battle Creek in Michigan (the home of Kelloggs). I am one of the 3 Australian heading over to take on the rest of the world. The other 2 pilots are Matt Scaife and Peter Wright. Both pilots are really good friends of ours and we all work really well together on the ground and in the air.
I haven’t done a huge amount of flying leading up to the event, but my main preparation at the moment is to make sure I don’t burn myself out during the next 4 days of work. We are going to be taking a few days off in LA to wind down at Disneyland before heading over to Michigan. I have found in the past that it is really important to have a couple of days buffer before diving straight into flying. It allows for any jet lag and work lag to get out of the system.
This year we have set up the Australian Balloon Team Facebook page which will allow us to keep all of our friends and family up to date with our antics. I plan to also keep this blog up to date with more detail thoughts about the event and my performance. When we were at the worlds in Japan in 2006 I found that blogging helped me think about each flight and analyze what I did right and wrong.
The balloon is all packed up and ready to be stuck on a plane and freighted to Detroit.
Sean Kavanagh, who is coming across as part of the team (along with Kath, James and Mum and Dad), has kindly lend me (again) his EX65 racer balloon. I have spent more time flying this balloon in the last couple of year than I have my own, so I can’t wait to get back into it in a week’s time and hit the skies above Michigan.
So the last things to do now are pack our clothes and all the computer and electronic equipment that we will be taking with our personal luggage.
For some crazy reason I got the urge to go paddling this morning. So at 6am I headed down to the Spit Bridge and then I realized the stupidity of my actions. As I was parking, the car was telling me it was 9 degrees outside. Then I stepped out into the wind. Oh Jesus!
So I only managed a short paddle because I had to keep putting my hands in the water the thaw them out.
We are going shopping today so I might see if I can find some paddling gloves.
I just completed my Padi Open Water Dive ticket today with Manly Pro Dive. I did the theory course last Monday night. Yesterday we spent the morning in the pool learning all our diving skills. We then did an afternoon dive at Shelly Beach (near Manly) and 3 dives today.
It was awesome fun. I have been putting of doing it for the last 20 years. So in true “No More Used To” style, I finally got off my butt and did it. I don’t think I am going to have much time to do any more diving until after the Worlds (in August). However, now that I have my ticket, I am set for life.
I have to admit that I went into the Canowindra Challenge completely unprepared. I had only flown 4 times in the previous 12 months and with the Worlds looming on the horizon, the pressure to get some good flying in was starting to wear on me.
Not happy
David Levin, who will be directing the World Championships in August, had kindly agreed to come out to Australia from the US to run this year’s competition. It was going to be great practise for both of us leading up to the Worlds. Unfortunately a few pilots had to pull out at the last minute, so we ended up only having 7 pilots competing. This didn’t seem to faze anyone and everyone took it as seriously as they would a Nationals. It was game on!
When you only have 7 pilots competing in a competition using the AXMER rule book, the scores for a task can be brutal. Basically if you didn’t get in the top 3 results (i.e. above the median pilot) for a task you would really suffer. There were many glum faces during the event by pilots (including myself on occasions) when they realise they only picked up 400 points for a 14 metre drop.
This brutal scoring certainly impacted on me for the first 3 days of the competition. Initially I thought I was flying OK, but soon I realised that OK was not going to be good enough. By Wednesday afternoon I was back in 5th position and many points away from the Top 3. It was becoming demoralising and it wasn’t doing much for my confidence before the Worlds.
Sean Kavanagh had joined our team for the event. Sean is going to be part of our team (Team Robertson) for the Worlds and this was the week to see how we all worked together. I have crewed for Sean at many Worlds and Nationals, but we have never tried it the other way around. It had been a long time since he had been on the ground for a competition and was heard on many occasions to say things like “it is so frustrating when you tell them where to go and then they don’t do it”.
In an effort to turn the game around, Sean and I spent some time on the Wednesday afternoon psychoanalysing me and deconstructing my flying style. We scrutinised everything I was doing prior and during a flight. It really was incredible that during that hour discussion we discovered a number of key things that I was doing mentally wrong which were affecting my performance. There were things I had been doing for the last 15 years of competing that I had never recognised as being an issue.
Reflecting on a good morning
The next morning I woke up feeling like my brain had been rebooted and things definitely turned around. My pre-flight planning was spot on, the balloon started going where I wanted it too and my marker drops became more accurate. I managed to get Top 3 results in 9 of the following 10 tasks and picked up the 1000 points for four of them. After 2 flights I managed to jump from 5th up to 1st place. I had a 300 point lead over Adam Barrow, who had been leading the competition from the first flight.
James helping pack up
Friday afternoon was the last flight. Having got into 1st place, I was quietly hoping for the flight to be cancelled. Like the previous afternoons (that had been cancelled) it was warm and it had been pretty thermic during the day. David Levin had declared a Hesitation Waltz task at the briefing, however when we got to the field they called a supplementary briefing and changed the task to a Pilot Declared Goal due to a major shift in the winds. The weather turned good and the green flag went up. After letting off a lot of pibals, we found we only had about 10 degrees of steerage. Even worse, there weren’t any easily achievable goals within those 10 degrees. This was going to be a game of roulette.
Seconds before lift-off, I quickly made a decision between 2 goals that were along the same road, and I shoved my declaration into the hand of my observer. I pulled the quick release and instantly went the wrong direction. A lot of swearing started happening in my basket.
With Adam so close behind me points wise and the unforgiving scoring system, I spent most of the flight watching what he was doing. With the rest of the pilots a comfortable distance from me in the points, Adam was my only concern. It had become a match race flight to determine who would win the Canowindra Cup. When I wasn’t watching Adam, I was looking at the arrow on my computer hoping for a light thermal, some random gust or even for a bird to fart. I needed anything that would give me a left turn, but there was nothing.
I was about 5 minutes away from my intersection and I saw Adam drop down low over the other intersection I had thought about selecting. He was low and he looked close. I could see 1st place disappearing. More swearing occurred.
Then something happened. I happened to see Paul Gibbs, who was about 500m in front of me, go up and as he did so, he got a light kick to the left (ironically which he didn’t need). I went down to the same height as him and the kick wasn’t there. Even more swearing occurred. There was nothing else I could do but just sit at that level and hope that a miracle would occur.
And then it did. Ever so slightly the arrow on the computer started turning. It was so subtle that without the computer showing it I would never have known it was there. I only needed 3 degrees of left and I managed to get just 2 degrees. I knew this wasn’t going to get me over the intersection but it was a free throw task so near enough would have to be good enough. When my computer and clinometre told me I was about 60 meters from intersection, I spun the marker as fast as I could and threw it. In typical fashion, the marker looked like it was falling forever and then it finally landed what looked like about 30 meters from the intersection.
Landing in First Place
As soon as I had flown the required 200 metres, I landed in the first paddock I could. I grabbed my phone and rang Adam. Expecting him to tell me he dropped a couple of metres, he informed me that he had actually dropped 34 metres. My observer was just about to measure my marker and I knew it was going to be really close. After what seemed like an eternity, Kath announced over the radio that my marker was 27 metres from my goal. I had won the Barrow/Robertson match race, the task and the event.
I must thank everybody involved in organising the event; the organisers, the sponsors, the officials, the observers and the other teams. Jan and Graham Kerr (once again) put in a heroic effort to run yet another fantastic event. Special thanks must also go to David Levin for coming such a long way to run the event. I could not have asked for a better practice week before heading over to the Worlds.
Finally, I would like to thank my team; Jan, Rob, Kath and James for being a great family unit, skilled team and doing a great job of tolerating all my mood swings. Also special thanks must go to Sean Kavanagh for joining Team Robertson. Not only did he lend me his balloon and his time, but he also did a great job of fixing me mentally.
Winners are grinners
Our team worked so well together and I am hoping we can be as successful at Battle Creek.
Max and Zoe
I have been really slack posting. Actually I have been pretty slack doing anything since Christmas. We finally got to do some flying in Binalong over Easter. The weather was a bit frustrating, in that it kept being windy at sunrise and then would die down later in the morning. We did get in two flights.
The first morning I flew Carolyn and James. After an eventful, windy launch (including a small hole getting burnt in one panel of the balloon) from the Galong cemetery, we it ended up being a great flight.
The second flight was with Max and Zoe. We managed to fly into the Galong cemetery.
Below is the video from the first flight.
At the end of every year Adobe hosts the annual Sales Kickoff conference for some 2000+ sales folk in Las Vegas. This year, the week before Christmas, we headed over to Vegas for a week of training and hype up to get us ready for 2012. Apart from the resort’s air conditioning causing my eyes to dry out to the point I needed antibiotic eye drops, the conference was pretty good. Probably the best bit was that I managed to avoid partying too hard and not drinking too much.
The highlight of the trip was on the morning that I was due to fly out… climbing at Red Rocks.
Road into Red Rocks
A couple of months before going over to Vegas we had a number of the Adobe Product Managers come out to Australia from the US. One of these was Brent Watson. I had met him before, but while he was in Australia we discovered our mutual love of outdoor activities, especially climbing. So we made a tentative date to go climbing together while we were in Vegas. It was tentative because we did not know whether we would be in a state to go climbing after the conference’s gala dinner the night before.
Fortunately we both behaved at the dinner and skipped the after party, so at 6.30am we both checked out of the hotel (while colleagues were still staggering around the casino) and jumped into a cab to the airport to pick up a hire car. We hired the smallest, cheapest car we could get (we only needed it for a few hours) and drove to the outskirts of Vegas. It was still pretty early when we got out there, so we sat in Starbucks for an hour while the day warmed up a bit. The forecast was for temperatures to be in the mid-teens, but it was pretty still pretty icy at 8am.
Once we had our fill of very average Starbucks coffee and croissants, we headed up the road to the Red Rocks reserve. Brent had climbed there a few times, so we decided to try a crag he had not been to before called “Panties Wall”. The name coming from the fact it looks like a pair of ladies underpants from a distance.
Panties Wall
It took about 30 minutes to find the path and rock scramble our way to the cliff. When we got there we found a perfect sandstone wall with a dozen or so climbs all about 20m high. The area is completely bolted, so all the climbs were pure sport climbs ranging between 5.8-5.10b in the US scale (17-20 in the Australian scale).
How times have changed since I last climbed. Brent checking the guide book on his iPad.
Having not climbed on natural rock for about 12 years, I thought it appropriate for Brent to lead the first couple of climbs. I had not idea of how fit or rock ready I was going to be. I was pleasantly surprised to find that I did a lot better than I had thought. Over the morning we climbed 5 routes all around 5.9 (18) grade. I lead a couple and only took one fall on lead when my arms completely gave out.
Me remembering how to climb
The crag became a very social scene that morning. Even though it was a Wednesday morning, there was about 10 climbers(and a couple of dogs) sharing the routes. We met people from all over the US and Canada and made for a lot of good belay discussion.
One of the climbing dogs
Around lunch time we headed back to the airport so that Brent could catch his flight back to Utah and I could sit around until the early evening to fly back to LAX and then on to Sydney. It was very satisfying sitting at the airport with 20+ hung over colleagues having had a great day in the outdoors. I have also discovered that a day of climbing is a great way to help getting some sleep on a 14 hour flight.
So now I have the taste for climbing again. So once we get back to work after the Christmas break, I will be pressuring Darren at work to get out onto the cliffs around Sydney.
Over the years I have done a lot of driving up and down the Hume Highway between Melbourne and Sydney. There is a small town called Jugiong that sits between Yass and Gundagai (yes… on the road to Gundagai) within a stunning valley. The valley is surrounded by agricultural land and through which the Murrumbidgee River snakes. Jugiong always caught my eye and imagination because I (and many others) had dreamed of ballooning in the valley (which we did about 8 years ago). It also grabbed my attention because I had previously imagined what it would be like to paddle down that stretch of the Murrumbidgee.
The route
After I bought my sea kayak, I was thinking about possible multi-day paddles I could do in NSW and the idea of the Murrumbidgee hit me. I went online to see if anyone had done it and written about it. To my surprise there was a guide in the NSW Government website describing a 7 day paddle that covered the exact section of the Murrumbidgee that I was thinking of paddling.
Knowing that I would not be able to get enough time off to do a major expedition (i.e. 7 days) for a while, it happened that we were coming down to Binalong (near Yass) to our family property for the weekend. So I thought it might be a good chance to do one section of it. The challenge though would be organising the car shuffle so that I could leave my car at the top of the river and then get back to it once I had finished. Fortunately there is a great cafe (The Long Track Pantry) in Jugiong, so it did not take too much convincing for my family to agree to meet me there for lunch. This was the deciding factor in choosing the Nanangroe Reserve to Jugiong section.
The guide described the first leg of the paddle as being 32km and should take 6 hours of constant paddling. You never know with hour indicators in guides and on walking trail signs what type of person and fitness they rate it on. However based on the 6 hours, I know had to get up pretty early to drive (about 30 mins) to the start point and try to be on the water first thing so I could be in Jugiong by lunch. Plus the forecast was for 33 degrees Celsius, so I wanted to get the bulk of the paddle done before it got unbearably hot.
To get to the start of the leg you turn off the Hume Highway in Bookham, you head down the Childowla Road through spectacular hills and valleys. You head through a couple of sheep properties down to the river. Nanangroe Reserve is a tiny piece of crown land on the edge of the river that sits in the middle of nowhere. When I got there I was pleasantly surprised to see that the water was flowing quite quickly because it is about 10 kilometres downstream from Burrinjuck dam. This would mean that the current would help make the paddling easier.
The road to the river
I ended up getting on the water at about 7.30 and headed downstream. As I went around the first corner, I heard the sound of rapids. To my surprise there were quite a lot of rapids (little Grade 1’s) on the river. Whilst they were not difficult rapids, it was interesting learning how to use navigate my Sea Kayak around the various rocks and snags. It reminded me of watching the barges steering around obstacles in the canals in Europe, in that you had to turn early on and hope the boat made it around in time. I also spent a lot of the paddle lifting and lowering my rudder so it didn’t get ripped off by any of the rocks.
One of the mini rapids
The bird life on the river was fantastic. Every variety of Australian bird and duck you could possibly imagine to see or hear was there. The two stand outs was what I assumed and later confirmed was a massive white and brown Sea Eagle (that apparently do come this far inland) and a cormorant sitting on a rock that proceeded to cough up a massive fish as I went by.
Getting warm
About 2 hours into paddle, I came up against my first major obstacle. The river forked around a small island, and both forks (which were moving very quickly) were blocked by fallen trees. I knew I would have to somehow carry my boat around these blockages and since the banks were too steep, the only option was to push through middle (at some speed) of the fork and portage through the bushes on the island. Paddling as hard as I could as not to get sucked left or right into the trees, I smashed up onto the rocks on the island and proceeded to carry the kayak through the bushes to the other side of the island.
Portaging through the trees
At the point where I felt like I was about half way to Jugiong, I managed to get some mobile reception and called Kath to tell them to meet me at Jugiong at 12.30pm. I don’t know why, but for some reason I had convinced myself that it was a 5 hour paddle rather than the 6 hours in the guide book (I only just realised this as I am writing this). So my good old friend Murphy and his stupid laws visited me as soon as I had committed to a meeting time. The river suddenly widened into what felt like a series of mini lakes, hence slowing the current down, and a strong head wind picked up. So what went from a leisurely drift down the river became a 2.5 hour workout.
The times when the river did start speeding up from that point on was generally because the river got shallower. I was met with a number of “pebble runs”, which are shallow rapids that you end up dragging your arse across lots of rocks and scratch the shit out of your boat. On one occasion I had to get out and walk my boat down the pebble run because I was stuck and fear trashing my boat too much. There is nothing more painful the sound a rock screeching down the bottom of your new kayak right under your butt. However my philosophy with kayaks (and it is the same with new cars) is that you need to get a scratch them early on, otherwise you spend your whole time fearing you might get one.
Slowing down
After a couple of hours of paddling against the wind, hoping I would make it on time (my GPS said I would be there dead on 12.30pm if I didn’t stop), the river turned West and I started hearing traffic on the Hume Highway which meant I was getting close to the end. I pulled up against the steep bank at the finish point and scrambled up to the top to see Kath, James, mum and dad driving up to the meeting point. So it was perfectly timed in the end.
With the kayak lashed to the roof of dad’s car, we headed across the road the Long Track Pantry and I scoffed down my lunch in record speed. Apparently I was somewhat hungry.
The Long Track Pantry
Despite the hard work, the paddle was fantastic. In hindsight, I will not try to do a 6 hour paddle non-stop. A leisurely lunch half way along would have been a better plan. As write this it is the following day and I am happy to report that I am not sore in the arms at all. I did however crash last night at about 8pm.
One day I will take on the rest of the Murrumbidgee.
I have been down in Melbourne for the last couple of days for work. I ended up having some meetings on Monday, so I have stayed down here for the weekend. Rather than just hanging around mum and dads doing nothing, I thought I would get out and do something interesting.
When this trip to Melbourne was planned, I thought about doing a 2 day hike somewhere. The first place that came to mind was the Cathedral Ranges, which are about 100km NE of Melbourne. I used to go there a lot when I was at Uni, because we used to go climbing there. Plus it was the location of 2 of the Big Bush Bashes, which were camping trips I used to run for my friends who did not normally go camping.
Cathedral Range
I read a couple of blogs about the 2 day work in the Cathedrals and decided quickly that it was not a great idea. The blogs described the pain and awkwardness of lugging gear up to the top of the range and the scrambling over rocks with a full pack. It also was going to be a hassle to organise the gear, so I decided a day walk would do.
The plan was to do one of the legs of the 2 day hike which goes from Neds Gully (at the north end of the park) and hike up to the top of the ridge to the Cathedral Peak and to Little Cathedral. The guide book “120 Walks in Victoria” and the various signs said the entire walk was 4 hours.
The climb to the top of the ridge is brutal. It is just constant up. I don’t think my heals touched the ground for about an hour. The video below sums it up.
On the way to Little Cathedral I had my first encounter with a horrible little plant. The area looked like it had been burnt in the bad bush fires a couple of years back. This plant seems to have taken over the undergrowth and has horrible little spikes. My legs got really scratched up, plus because of my hay fever they got really puffy and itchy. It ended up that half the walk had the path surrounded by this plant.
Spikey little bastard
The view from the top of Little Cathedral was stunning. There was absolutely no wind and I remembered that I had always had an ambition to fly over the range in a balloon…one day.
Cathedral Peak from Little Cathedral
I then hiked up to the top of the Cathedral Peak, which was meant to be the turning point of the walk. Another spectacular spot to sit and contemplate the view.
On top of Cathedral Peak looking back at Little Cathedral
I had only been walking for a couple of hours and I was not ready to head down yet. Plus it was only about 11am and it was such a nice day, so I decided to extend the walk along the ridge to Jawbone. This basically meant I was embarking on the 2 day walk in just one day.
The walk along the ridge is spectacular. You have to basically scramble along the top of the angled rocks that make up the knife edge ridge. I eventually passed a couple of other walkers along the ridge.
The Ridge Walk
Unfortunately the path ended up getting very overgrown with the prickle plant and made it a bit difficult. So as soon as I got to the Jawbone Creek track I headed down the 100s of steps down the hill. On the way down I passed the North Jawbone cliffs on which I basically learnt how to climb with the RMIT climbing club in 1993. It was a very nostalgic moment.
North Jawbone cliffs
The Jawbone Creek track meets up with St Bernard track that takes you down, through the forest, to Cooks Mill camp site. This was where the Big Bush Bash was in 1993 & 1995. It hasn’t changed much. It was nice to get down to the river and cool off. I was pretty low on water at this point.
The final leg of the walk was along a relatively flat track along the river. My feet had developed some blisters on the way down the hill. Fortunately I had stopped off at the supermarket in Ringwood on the way and built up a basic first aid kit. So a few Band Aids later and I was on my way.
Little Creek Track
Four and half hours later I was back at Neds Gully. I promptly stripped off my shoes and socks and stuck them in the river. It was freezing but a refreshing way to end the walk.
Ahhh... bliss
I had basically done a 7 hour walk in 4.5 hours. So it was good to see I am fitter than I thought. I do have a niggle in my left knee’s tendon, but I normally get that after long walks. Hopefully it is something that a beer will fix.
The route... I went anticlockwise
All in all it was a fantastic day. I really needed to get out and do something like this. Lots of things on my mind and it definitely help having some time to go through my thoughts.
Robbo - The Blog of Andrew Robertson 