Deep Blue.

Deep Blue.

There is an old Sea Captain (Neil) who just keeps on calling and asking me if I want to go deep-sea fishing with him. I always say “Maybe”, and then when the day comes I just don't pick up my phone and then call up later to say how sorry I am and that it ran out of batteries or I had to work or something. (Sorry Neil) Well every time this happens, Neil doesn't get angry, he just tells me what an awesome time he had, but every time I can hear the disappointment in his voice. So a week ago today, instead of saying “Maybe (meaning no)”. I said “Yes (meaning yes)” and the next day we set out from Avonmouth docks for a three-day expedition. One day out, one day's fishing and one day back. Anticipating mostly boredom I pack a lot of books.

We leave Avonmouth on the ‘Morning Glory’, a 40-foot hydrofoil, capable of doing 39 knots on all but the roughest seas. The hydrofoil, Neil tells me, is also remarkably fuel efficient, as it uses tiny underwater wings to lift the hull and reduce drag; it really is an amazing craft.

We speed down the Bristol Channel in glorious weather passing the lumbering container ships and bouncing off their wake. In what seems like twenty minutes, but was probably much longer, we are in the open sea and headed out towards the south coast of Ireland, where we will pick up more fuel, (it's cheaper there) and then speed off into the Atlantic. Neil has dressed me in a woolly jumper and a dry suit with a life vest sown into the jacket. It's great during the first part of the journey when it feels like I am just being pelted with buckets of ice-cold salty water, but as we start to get up to speed and the wings do their work, there is less and less splash, I realise I am boiling and that no one else is wearing any of this stuff. I strip down to sunscreen and shorts and wait till the rest of the guys had stop giggling about the land lubber's new clothes. Neil tells me not to lose track of them, that we are going to need them where we are going, that they may well save my life.

I realise I have no idea where we are going at all. I just assumed that we would sail in a straight line until we lost sight of land and then just drop a line or two. Neil laughs, ‘No,’ he says, ‘I said deep-sea Fishing and when I say deep I mean it. We’re going to 'Challenger Deep'

He's not kidding.

I learn that Challenger Deep is in fact the deepest part of The Mariana Trench and apparently the deepest place on Earth. It’s a Mecca for deep-sea fishermen who go there in the hope of catching new species. If they do catch something that hasn't been seen before then they get to name it. Neil tells me that people pull up something new, about once a month. He in fact has a bright blue puffer-fish in the British Museum of Natural History, which he is waiting to be verified. I ask him what he's going to call it. He laughs and says that he was just thinking of calling it ‘Spike’.

We stop off in Dingle for petrol, barrels and barrels of the stuff. I feel guilty about the cost of all this, But Neil tells me that it's OK, there is a research foundation that pays for him to come out here. Apparently he's not the only person interested in catching new species.

Leaving Ireland behind we find ourselves being followed out of the bay by a single Dolphin, Neil actually has to slow down so that it can keep up. Something he claims to do purely for my benefit. Its smiling dolphin face comes popping out of the water every thirty seconds or so as he jumps and plays in the wake of the boat. I am reminded of how we did a similar thing with the big cargo ships leaving Avonmouth. We are not even halfway to Challenger Deep and already that seems like an impossibly long time ago. As we get further out our dolphin starts to look more and more nervous, and eventually turns back for the shoreline. That’s ‘Fungie’, says Neil.

Apparently Fungie is a lone male that lives in the bay all year round. He is a major tourist attraction around here; people come to swim with him. Neil guns the engine.

I had no idea that the trench was close enough to Britain to be able to get to within a day, I had previously thought it was somewhere near Japan, living in the UK has given me this idea that anything exotic or exciting should be half the world away. But after 14 hours, of listening to the purring engine, and Neil’s jokes about the movie Jaws, (we're going to need a bigger boat) we have traveled close to 400 miles. Neil announces that we will drop anchor just off Alamagan Island, which is part of the Mariana Island Chain, and is just about the closest landmass to the trench itself. The area we are due to fish tomorrow is marked on the map in his neat handwriting as follows: Challenger deep, Danger Very Deep Water. It is named, Neil tells me, after the HMS Challenger that sailed over it in 1875 and sounded it's depth to be 4475 fathoms. Later, with more advanced technology, it was discovered to actually be nearly 6000 fathoms, a depth of 11000 meters; that's 2000 meters deeper than Everest is tall.

Over very deep water, Neil tells me, the currents can do extremely odd things. In a response to some eddy or fluctuation in the complex layers of water beneath, large waves will pop up vertically from an other wise flat sea, thirty feet high and to an angle of 60 degrees or more. Similarly sea-pits can open up, sometimes dropping down as much as 40 meters below sea level, only to have the surrounding ocean tumble in to fill the space. I look out at nearby Alamagan. It looks safe and comfortable, and they probably have a bar. Neil’s sees my expression and adds the disclaimer that both these events are extremely rare.

That night as the boat pitches and yaws I dream of sea monsters. I dream that the sea itself is a monster, rising up and tipping us over. I dream myself at the bottom of a sea-pit, looking up at a wall of incoming water, like a Biblical soldier pursuing Moses across the Red Sea. A wall full of strange looking fish, ready to crash down on me, none of them particularly happy to be there.

Despite the long day yesterday I wake up at close to four AM to hear heavy rain striking the deck above me and then suddenly the distant rumble of thunder. I begin to wonder what else lurks beneath the deep waiting for us to find it. What other creatures were so hideous and evil that they must be hidden under mountains and mountains of water. I begin to think, ‘What right do we have to hook them and then pull them up?’

Neil told me yesterday that some fish explode when they reach the surface due to the lack of pressure around them. This is starting to feel like a really weird weekend.

By the time the sun comes up at 6am the storm has passed, the sea is calm and Neil is checking the equipment. We don't use anything that even looks like a fishing rod. We do use a reel. It is massive. It is not even fishing wire but rather several miles of fibre-optic cable. The wire is connected to a large lead weight, about a foot long and streamlined to look like a rocket. This is so it will be able to get down faster into the pitch dark of the trench. Above the lead rocket the fibre-optic line splits into several threads that are kept apart by collapsible carbon-fibre rods. The end of each strand has a bead of glass on the end that glows when light comes down the fibre-optic cable. These get further from the original wire as they go up, so once it's submerged and the topside flashlight is lit, it looks quite a lot like a very large, sparsely decorated, upside down Christmas tree.

Neil says that hooks are not always the best things to catch a deep-sea fish with. There is no way to tell when you have a bite so you cannot jerk the hook to make sure of the catch. Also many of the fish are too soft or oddly shaped to take a hook. Hagfish for example cannot bite at all, but instead force a circular row of teeth onto their pray and then spin around to take out a chunk of flesh leaving the dead or injured fish to sink down to the bottom. They also have 4 hearts and 2 brains, and when caught produce a whole bucket of slime... no word of a lie.

Time is always short and to maximize their chances of a catch, some of the lights are baited with what look like cages which snap shut if anything tugs at the bead. Some are also baited with suction bags which expand and fill with water, pulling in any nearby fish. The whole operation is far more high tech than I thought it was going to be.

As we put the 'Tree' together, I can't help feeling like we are putting together an IKEA flat-pack. Like it's the most normal thing in the world. A group of guys on a project, a few beers, an upside down Christmas tree to light up the impossible depths of the ocean.

We set off with everything ready to go and reach the trench after about an hour. I expect there to be some sign. Like a buoy or wooden post sticking out of the water reading 'You have now reached the oceans deepest point.' perhaps even a visitor’s centre where I could get a Ridge Burger and a Bottomless Coke... but there is nothing. Nothing but ocean as far as the eye can see. The only reason we even know we are in the right place is the Sat Nav. Neil gives the order to drop the line and reports our progress on the radio. It will take three hours for the tree to get to the bottom. Bare in mind we are talking about a rocket shaped piece of lead, falling through water with little or no resistance and it's still going to take three hours, It's a long, long way. During this time we take turns, lubricating the bearings on the reel with refined coconut oil and topping up the cooling system with water. Neil switches on the high compression freezer compartment which is where the catch will be stored. I keep an eye on the sea around us, just in case it does anything funny.

Now we wait. The lure will be down there for two hours and then take a further nine hours to come back up. I read my book. I write some notes on my laptop. All of us catch up on some sleep, yesterday was a long day and today will be even longer. By my calculations we will not get back to Alamagan until at least Midnight. Neil tells me my calculations are wrong. We will not be going back to Alamagan at all. Once the catch is on board it's a race against time to get back home. The longer they are stored, the more likely they are to lose integrity and will therefore become harder to correctly identify. As soon as the tree is up, he says, I'll gput my foot down and you and the lads will sort the catch on the fly.'

I wake up at seven. It's still very light. The others are up already. A meal has been made. But before we eat, Neil asks me if I fancy a dip. This seems crazy. 'What's the matter,' he says, 'Afraid to get out of your depth?' This is once in a lifetime stuff. This is an offer I cannot refuse.

'Lets go for it'

Neil dives in first followed by one of the crew. The next in is me. It's impossibly cold. I am just about able to gasp a few breaths and swim around. I can feel the depth beneath me. The theme to Jaw's won't stop playing in my head... I can feel the life down there - nasty spikey life, rising up at 1000 miles an hour to bite my toes off. Something grabs my foot I panic and make for the boat like a man possessed. It's Neil goofing around. 'If you’re scared now, Wait till we get the tree up.' he says. 'Then you'll see what we've really been swimming over' I start to wonder if anything can match my imagination for horror.

We get out of the water. Once I am dry, as a reaction to the cold my whole body starts glowing like a furnace, it is an amazing feeling. It's like how those adverts from ReadyBrek, pretend ReadyBrek will make you feel, the lying bastards. More than anything else I feel great because I am still alive.

The meal, seafood chowder, tastes amazing. We are all laughing and joking when an alarm starts going off. I panic inside, I’m half sure it means a sea-pit or a freak wave is coming but apparently this is just the signal that the tree is up. It's merely a wake-up call. It's time to stop goofing off and get busy again.

We all get the tree on board; four of the cages are shut and three of the bags are full. There is even something that looks for all the world like an aquarium goldfish on one of the hooks. I mean exactly like a goldfish. It's the very last thing I was expecting, and shocked for a moment I just stare at it, look into its little black eyes. I go to touch it, when one of the crew stops me. 'Gloves' he says. 'I know it looks like a tiddler, but you never know’ Neil gets us underway and very carefully, in the ships lights we get the bags, cages and fish into the compression freezer. Some of the cages have what look like tentacles sticking out of them. One even has a bone-white stick with a blob on the end. A blob that glows on and off in a series short bursts. There’s something weird about it, like there is a sequence there, something it is trying to say. One, Three, Five Seven… The crew seem unimpressed and pop the creature into the fridge with the others. The weather takes a turn for the drizzly and I am glad of my drysuit. Neil sits in a chair in front of the throttle with three cans of Red Bull and a little plastic tub of chewing gum. I tell him about the prime numbers but he seems more interested in the goldfish, he hasn't seen anything like that before, thinks I might be making it up. 'Screw the stupid goldfish,' I say, 'What about the numbers?'
He looks me in the eye, 'Since when did you learn to talk to fish?'

We come into the Bristol Channel at around 8pm. We've been gone for three days, but it feels like a month. Back at the docks I give back my woollies and my drysuit. Neil reiterates that ‘flasher's’ are pretty common; he says he'll let me know about the goldfish. I feel kind of shell-shocked as I get back into my little silver Peugeot. It's not just the lack of sleep. The past few days have been a brave new world, new people, and new creatures.

I don't even remember how I got back to the flat. I don't remember parking. I don't remember Ali asking me how it was, or my grunted reply. I do remember falling into bed at about 10pm and not waking up until well past midday. Andy Murray was struggling against some old timer in the first round of Wimbledon. I think he won in the end. Everyone knew he was going to... Neil called this morning to say that the goldfish is actually a kind of dwarf eel, and a Swedish fisherman named Armond Jacobson had already discovered it about four months ago. The jury is still out on his puffer fish, and when I asked about the ‘flasher’ he just laughed.

Climbing in Seattle

10 am... a little bit of me still on UK time, news spreading around the world about the deadly swine flue that is as we speak killing people in Mexico and causing the British government to request that people do not come to the US unless it's totally urgent. (too late! Suckers) I am unfortunately blissfully unaware of the fact that all this is going on as my brother in law, his wife's brother and some kid that lives in his house all show up with the desire to go climbing.

They have ropes and tools and everything that we'll need and I have the upper body strength having in the past few weeks been climbing every week or so as part of a protracted fitness campaign. I don't know what my current weight is but I'm no longer the soft chubby bastard I saw in my wedding photo's .

I call shot-gun. Word is that it has already been called but I want to stamp my claim for alpha male down early and claim that as I was not around the count cannot be called legal. No once complains and I get to ride shotgun. Things are going well. For some reason I am nervous. I have been reading a Bret Easton Ellis novel in which he talks about his manic cocaine fueled orgy of a life. It has left me feeling some what guilty. Like I am hiding something from the world. Which is odd considering I do not even drink. Tom, My brother in law drives. I sit in the shotgun seat.
Toms been drunk every night since we got here.

In the back seats are My bilbm, (brother in law by marriage) thought the acronym bilbm has been shortened to bilf, which everyone still finds funny. Some guy from Tom's house turns out to be Danny a dreadlocked natureboy of about 21 who is so clearly full of life that you want to stick a fork in him and watch the stuff come pouring out like fat from a sausage. He is my main competition for alphadom. Even from the start I know I am destined to lose and go for a counter stratagy of being OK with not being the best at everything and just be the person that is most OK with that.

We cruise listening to the presidents and some other Seattle bands that sound similar to the presidents. We cruise out over the floating bridges, looking for Bill Gates' pad, which I am then told is not visible from the interstate. Which makes sense. Why would the worlds richest man want to be able to see a motorway from his bedroom window. I wonder if I could use my BBC credentials to get into bills 23rd century show home. But then realize that since I cannot access my BBC email and do not have my pass with me this is probably a fools errand.

After the bridges there is a small tunnel and then we are into the mountains.

Bigger more impressive yet still more cartoon like than the mountains in the UK these do not look like mountains in which foolish tourists lose their bearings and die. These look like places where women go to dress up like Germans and sing. Perhaps it is the presence of the interstate. So at odds to the one lane road I expect to see when surrounded by NATURE.

We are off to exit 38, a climb spot. Once there we pull over and start the trek up to the ridge. Danny tells a story about how he once free climbed something he shouldn't have and nearly died. I don't believe that anyone could really be in danger in this Disney mountain range, pale green grass , dark green trees and a pale blue and diomand white sky. This insn't anywhere real. This is the cover of a chocolate box.

We get out o the car. Danny starts the hike in bare feet hoping that his life energy will protect him. Richard my Bilf, luckily has some extra flip flops. Richard is less charismatic, less deadlocked, but seemingly far more use than Danny the pup. Different rock faces have different names. I don't remember the first face we climbed, or the second, they were two easy, the main event of note being able to watch as kids from some camp or other struggle to climb the 5'6s and 5'7s only to have Danny literally run past them, like a mountain goat. No harness no helmet no nothing. He later takes to scampering up after people who are climbing, finding a good spot and taking pictures. Danny can name all the birds, Richard has brought food for everyone. The climbing equipment belongs to Tom.

We are a novelty on the rocks, the two English guys and the glowing with life Danny. Women start conversations with us, they expect to be asked for numbers, but since both Tom and I are married and Danny is quite frankly too busy scampering around like a loon to pick up women they slowly start to loose interest. After a while we realize that we can all pretty much race climb the things we are on and head off to the 'We Did' face. Routes here are harder, starting at a 5.9 in the American rating. Basically that makes them... a little bit tricky.

Like any sport at it's inception climbing came a long with a lot of male bravado and teenage gusto. The first person to climb a ridge gets to name it. On the We did face, you can climb, your mum your sister or some drugs. There are others too, all hilariously frat boy funny. They are all tough routes. Tom has to lead climb, which is much more dangerous and since it's been over a year since he went climbing he's a little bit reluctant to go up a genuinely hard face. He delays and delays, we are also delaying as none of us want to see him die. Danny begins to balance rocks, and then take quick sequence photographs of them as they tumble to the ground, sometimes smashing as they go into tiny higs-boson like fragments. I don't think the sight of falling rocks does Toms confidence any good. Danny and I start picking targets and trying to hit them with rocks. It's a light hearted pissing contest while tom get's his courage up. I have no idea what Richard was doing.

Tom is finally ready to ascend. We strain our necks to watch is long skinny limbs struggle up the vertical face. He reaches a tricky section. And much to everyone's releaf is able to clear it, it's a triumph for Tom. The weight drops of his shoulders as he repels to the ground. He can still climb and he is still not dead.

Danny is currently wearing the shared harness so he gets to go up next. For the first time today he looks intimidated by the wall. Quickly though he reaches the difficult section. Is briefly stumped by what to do, and then finds a way past it. Next up it's me. I climb up pretty fast, confident that anything they can do I can also do. I've been watching from the ground and have a strategy. Unfortunatly upon getting to the tricky section my stratagy proves to be impossible and I slip and fall, the rope holds good and nothing by my knee and my pride are hurt. I hang for a moment 40 feet off the ground. Get back on the wall. Find a tiny grip, it doesn't look big enough to hold me but miraculously it does and I pass the section and find my self touching the anchors and repelling down quickly after that. Richard is the last up. He struggles hard. Can't make the grip, eventually kind of cheats, but gets up anyway.

Were all done. It's probably time to go home but we decide not to. We decide that it might be a better idea to head off up a side trail that leads to the top of the mountains. The sign says that the trail is only one and a half miles long. That translates in my imagination to about 100 yards. The trail takes a 45 degree angle up the side of the mountain and doesn't stop. Highlights include us boldering up a small almost perfectly square rocky outcrop, the top covered with soft moss. We pose for pictures on what we have dubbed the Thrown of the Forrest King. Tom decided that he should come back with swords and maybe shoot a short film up here. I start to feel that we are all 12 years old again. We climb up. We start to approach the snow line and the trail becomes more and more like a computer game as Danny starts lobbing snowballs down at us through the trees, often smashing on the branches and dissolving into a cooling mist. We find ourselves having to navigate small patches of snow. Richard complains. he wasn't prepared for this. Danny laughs and runs ahead. Me and Tom just kind of keep on climbing up.

When we get to the top, it is worth it. A great view on all sides only partly spoiled by the surreal line of the freeway weaving it's path along the valley floor like some kind of accelerated glacier. All the colours are pure. Tom decides to take off all his cloths and have Danny take some pictures. He has apparently always wanted to have some naked top of a mountain shots. Then he decided that he want's to tweet naked. Luckily for the gods of mother nature he cannot find his phone and he will not be able to access Twitter, until we find it again. I'm pretty sure it will be with all our other kit that we stashed about a third of the way up this trail.

After many jokes, my favorite being that he could do with gaining a little weight... especially in the penis area, Tom gets dressed and we all go back down the trail. Pick up our gear, find Toms phone and hike back down to the car.

Everyone talks about how this has been just the perfect day for this, and that it's great when you get a day where you can accomplish something. But a niggling voice prods me in the back wondering exactly what is is that has been accomplished. What have we done that has not already been done. What have we done that will leave a mark. What have we done that will even colour the next week of our lives.

As we drive back towards Seattle the car enters the formerly small town of Issaqua. I ask if it's an Indian reservation but i's apparently named after the Indians that once lived there. “The people we kicked out”

I said that we should go head and call it Genocide. Lets not faff about here. Lets call it what it is.

Issaqua rent is slightly cheaper than Seattle's and people are starting to flock here in droves. We see two or three neighborhoods of identical houses, not just identical within the neighborhood, but identical. Three sprawling expanses of cookie cut homes. A total contrast to downtown Seattle where it seems no two buildings are alike in the whole damn city. I say something I've said before about how the word develop could be replaced with Shit On and the meaning would be the same. This area has been earmarked for shitting on. This expanse of wilderness is in fact under-shit-on. The down town area has been densely shit on... from a great height. It seems to win me some cred, a little counter-culture environmentalism from the sarcastic Englishman. Tom disagrees with the term. He says life comes from shit. There's no life in the homes we pass by.

Its been a good day and part of me wants to put a downer on things. Wants to point out the hipocracy. Even though we spent the day in the wilderness, Even though we climbed the cliff face, faced fear and death, stood naked at the top of mountains, laughed and danced barefoot in the last of the winter snow.

Was it “the wilderness” TM? Was it a McDance with death? Would it have been true to say that we all knew that the ropes would hold, that the mountains would not get us. That the cookie cutter day would lead to another one, that if the danger had been real we wouldn't have come?

Danny puts on 'Furr' the one good song by 'blitzen trapper.' It's about a boy of seventeen that leaves society to join in singing with a pack of wolves. He loves the song, wants to live the song. It gets played another three times. The chorus is terrible.

Within two hours we are eating Steak, with steak sauce and bushman mushrooms, within three I am back home in bed with my wife.