Sore feet and new gear!

Today's task was to get Lucy some new climbing shoes. She currently has some old and smelly Evolv Rockstars and as we're going on a long trip, I thought she was in need of some new shoes. 

We headed out to my favourite climbing shop - Banana Fingers and as we don't live too far away, we drove there but it's mainly an online shop and they have a great returns policy on shoes (free postage if you picked the wrong size) so it's not always necessary to drive there!

After trying on around 15 pairs of shoes, Lucy was feeling broken and her heels were feeling sore. It was a toss-up between the Evolv Shaman, Andrea Boldrini Apache lights and the Evolv Elektra. I think the first two would have been the better choice but it turns out that Lucy has very delicate Achilles tendons, so she went with the less aggressive Elektras.

I also picked up a new Edelrid bouldering mat and 70m rope for those long endurance routes in Europe. My favourite purchase of the day though, was my wooden Lapis brush! Anyone who's had the plastic version will agree that they are an excellent brush but I'm also sure that they would have snapped at least one brush due to the weak handle... I'm easily pleased.

New gear

 So that's pretty much all of the climbing equipment that we need for the trip sorted! I somehow managed to not buy a new pair of climbing shoes and anyone who knows me will understand how hard that would have been for me. I was actually quite impressed with the Andrea Boldrini Apache lights, I preferred them to their La Sportiva equivalent - the Miura VS, but I still couldn't justify buying any more new shoes.

Lastly, the mess in our flat is starting to get annoying and mess doesn't usually effect me. We've only got until the 28th to move everything out, so everything is spread out everywhere. One more trip to the tip and two more trips back to Bristol and everything should be gone. Looking forward to that!

Clutter in the flat

Jobless, carless and summing up of working life

Well today is Lucy's and my last day at work... Truth be told, I've been working part-time for the last year and a half now, so things have been easy for me but Lucy has been far busier!

We've always been 'go, go, go' since we left secondary school. I practically went straight into a 4 year engineering apprenticeship (apart from a year blip when I attempted A-levels for the wrong reasons). Lucy completed her A-levels and then set about training to become a legal executive, which like my apprenticeship was 4 years training and studying on day release. 

The plan was always to take a year or two break from work to go travelling when Lucy finished her training in law but unfortunately, Lucy didn't get the job satisfaction she'd hoped for from law and made the brave decision to retrain in another career - teaching. This involved a 3-year BEd in primary education, followed by an 'NQT' year in a school to become fully qualified as a teacher. Now, I don't know how she came out of this 10-year period sane, some might say she's not (not me obviously) but she's finished! That's 4 years working and studying in the dull subject of law (i.e. remembering a bunch of acts for exams), 3 years commuting to Cheltenham from Bristol 3 days a week with 06:30 starts and 1 year of teaching in a primary school who have been under the hammer of ofsted since the get go... and breath... So yes, a massive achievement to have two well respected careers under her belt and I think she definitely deserves a break!

My job history has been changeable but not quite as 'full-on' as Lucy's. I finished my apprenticeship in 2007 with General Electric and due to a clause in my contract was denied permission by the HR department to join the design team, so I left. I wasn't happy working as an electronics test engineer with GE (basically, measuring voltages and noting them down on a sheet all day), so I decided to move into control systems. My first taste was a year working at Rolls-Royce in Filton, which initially was more IT related. I was the network administrator of the industrial computer network which was supplying program files to the machine tools. A bit of a change from electronics testing and the learning curve was steep, very steep indeed! I initially thought I was in over my head but after about 6 months everything was running smoothly and I was then working 'on call' which meant I was hardly ever at work and I was getting bored at home as there's only so much Jeremy Kyle you can take before you want to end your life.

It was time to move on. Some people said I was mad for wanting to leave a job where I had it so easy but that's not what I wanted from a career, I longed for a job that I would be excited to go to each morning, well at least most mornings! I did a lot of research and discovered 'Programmable Logic Controllers', now I'd seen these things whilst working at GE. We'd build and test the control panels and some external contractors (the 'PLC guys') would come in and do their magic and get everything working. I got in touch with a local control systems company and offered my electrical build and test skills in exchange for free training as they offered PLC training courses but they were around £1000 for a 3 day course and I couldn't afford that. They called me in for a discussion and said that they wouldn't be able to do that for insurance purposes but they would like to offer me a job! Result! 

It was only a small company, with only a handful of employees but they were all great at their job. Especially one of the directors, Martyn. He is hands down the most intelligent person I have ever met and I spent 4 years working with him whilst he trained me in control systems engineering. For most of this time I felt like Dr. Watson working with Sherlock Holmes, it was just an amazing experience working with such talent. If you've ever watched Sherlock or Elementary on TV, you'll have an idea of what it can be like working with someone like that. I won't go into details because this blog post is already massive but control systems engineering is in my opinion, the best engineering role I could hope for. I've always been a keen computer programmer since discovering HTML at the age of 14. That probably doesn't sound impressive nowadays but when I was 14, websites still looked like they were programmed in notepad (and they probably were)! HTML led to C, C++ and VB, nothing too fancy but there's something great about computer programming. I think it's because you can do whatever you want in that environment, you can play 'god'. I think that computer games are a manifestation of this, people playing god, creating their own worlds to play in to escape from their otherwise mundane lives... Anyway, I won't judge too much, especially as I wasted a fair few years of evenings playing Counter-strike! I'm digressing constantly in this blog! So, control systems engineering, it's like computer programming apart from your programs don't just move things around on a computer screen, they physically move things in real life! Obviously all jobs have their boring sides (paperwork) but most of my job was like a long episode of the discovery channel program 'How it's made'. I really did love my time as a 'Control Systems Design Engineer' and I am certain that this will be the job that I return to when we get back from travelling.

Control systems making balls

Robot controlled by a GE Fanuc PLC

For the last year and a half I've been working part-time at as an 'Electrical Technician' in a college, which for the most part involved keeping the teaching workshop tidy, ordering materials, etc. Nothing fancy but I needed a part-time job because I wanted to complete my final year of my Electrical and Electronic engineering degree. Completing my degree required 2-3 days burst of teaching at Bradford university once a month, so I needed a job that was flexible. I'll be honest, I'd imagine that I'd have been working at Tesco or something so working at a college was a luxury! I figured that whilst I was working in a teaching environment that I'd have a crack at that too so for around 6 months I taught one day a week to a small bunch of year 11's that came into the college to complete a qualification in construction. I 'taught' them to assemble simple domestic electrical installations (house wiring) but most of the battle was crowd control. I'm very grateful of my time teaching but it was quite stressful and not really what I'd hoped it would be. Anyone who doubts the workload of a teacher should work as one for a few weeks and you'll be begging for your old job back! Whilst teaching I completed my 'Preparing to teach in the lifelong service sector' qualification, so something else for the CV but I'd be surprised if I ended up doing any teaching in the future, unless it's at a much higher level (A-levels or degree standard).

Take a look at yourselves, the parents before blaming the teacher!

Well this blog post is not only massive, it's not really what I thought I'd write. I guess I wanted a summing up of working life so far before moving onto new things. I've been working since around 12 years old when I had a paper round and I'm now approaching 28 years old so not having a job is going to take some getting used to but I'm sure I'll survive... Somehow... I've also never not had a car excluding a brief period where one of my old cars was damaged in a bad accident. Below you'll see my beloved 'Phillip' be driven away from our flat - sad times.

'Phillip' being driven away by his new owner

So that's it. I have no Job, I have no car and in the next few days Lucy and I will be moving out of our flat.

Everything we own will be in our motorhome, Bertha. The big lady will be our home for the next 10 months while we travel around Europe and it's occurred to me that while we'll be doing lots of rock climbing, meeting new people and generally lazing about, I'll need other stuff to keep myself occupied. Partially, that's what this blog is for, it's a record of what we'll be doing. Kept  for ourselves and anyone else bored enough to read and also, it'll give me something to do! I'll be taking my Canon 550D with me, so I envision some photography and videos will be made as well. 

Berth in the rain

Here's a link to the places we hope to visit in Europe;

Here's looking forward to the simple life, until next time...