#it's. it's. i mean it's warm. 30 degrees celsius is warm almost hot to me.

[piratebay]

i know i'm generally v poor with languages and shit also with time like i had to use 2 calculators to figure out what time and day a package would arrive in my time zone vs utc

but damn whenever i see temps in celsius i'm like aren't you cold holy shit 🥶

[pearlcaddy]

For kiss prompt: 8 or 21 or 30 for your Wizarding World Au (wish by the way is stellar!)

Aww, thank you!

30: Weak, sweaty kisses because it’s unbearably hot (Wizarding World of Food Service verse)

I feel like the point of the kissing prompts was supposed to be “the kisses are sweet,” not “the kisses are sweaty.” Sorry if you weren’t looking for fluff + gross realistic workplace kisses.

Now on AO3!

The fact that Julie feels like she somehow took a shower under her clothes should be a sign to the Powers That Be that the park needs to be closed today. If your employees can run a dry slip n slide with the sweat on their bodies alone, they shouldn’t be working. But here she is.

As she staggers into the break area, she lets out a loud groan. Every single patch of shade has already been claimed by all the other employees working outside today, and there’s nowhere cool left to stand.

“Jules!” Luke waves her over to his section of the wall. As she approaches, she realizes that his Butterbeer shirt, which is meant to be a light gray, is dark gray and clinging to him and—

Okay, she’s not complaining about the clinging, per se, but he’s incredibly gross right now. He nods her into the slim patch of shade in front of him, pressing back against the wall to make room for her.

On the one hand, the shade is a very welcome break from the aggressive midday sun. On the other hand, being squeezed into a tiny space next to her overheating boyfriend, who is currently transferring extra, unwanted sweat onto her, is… unpleasant.

“You doing okay out there?��� he asks.

She nods at his shirt. “Are you?”

He chuckles. “Been out there so long I forgot this wasn’t the original color.”

Drawing her sleeve over her forehead, she transfers a slick of sweat to the fabric and… oh god. He eyes the damp stain sympathetically, and she makes a face. “Is this killing the magic?”

With a soft smile, he waves his pointer finger at her face. “Aguamenti.” He pauses, as if waiting for water to shoot out of his finger, then he bugs his eyes. “Crap, maybe the magic really is gone.”

She smacks him gently on the arm, but she’s honestly too weak for it to be anything more than a gentle brush of her hand. “How hot is it right now? I want to be accurate when I complain about this later.”

He tugs his phone out of his apron pocket and pulls up the weather app. “Uh… it’s 44 degrees.”

“There’s no way.” She is basically a human candle, melting away on the cobblestones of Hogsmeade.

The corner of his mouth slips up into a sly grin. “44 Celsius.”

She tries to smack him again. “That’s, like 110 degrees.”

He turns the phone to her. “111, actually.”

She’s not sure if she actually starts crying, or if it’s just more sweat leaking out of her scalp and trickling down her face. She’s only on her first ten. How is she supposed to survive five more hours of this?

Then a notification pops up on his screen. A very confusing notification. “‘Six-month Anniversary?’”

In an instant, his phone is dropped back into his apron pocket. “Oh, that’s just…”

“Our six-month isn’t until January. You got something to tell me?”

He chuckles nervously and rubs the back of his head, before yanking away his damp palm with a wrinkled up nose. “Uh, it’s the six-month anniversary of the day we met.”

“You know when that is?”

“I did the math one day cause I thought we could celebrate and it would be cute, and then Alex said it was weird and unnecessary, so I—”

“Set an alarm so you’d remember it?”

“That was just for me. I wanted to…” He studies his feet. Either he’s blushing or it’s the heat flush on his pale skin—she suspects both. “I dunno, I wanted to remember to think about half a year ago. Appreciate how amazing these six months have been, and—”

Dante and Fuego, who are standing on either side of Luke, clear their throats loudly. Oh crap, they’re crammed in so close that they’re unable to do anything but listen to this conversation.

Six months ago, Julie would have ducked her head and stood awkwardly in silence for the remainder of her ten. But now? She’s an expo god. Without pause, she grabs Luke’s hand and starts pulling him away. Groaning weakly, he tries to keep his back against the wall. “Please don’t make me go in the sun. I’ve got seven more minutes here.”

“We’re going inside.”

She tugs him in after her, dragging him past the prep cook stations and the dishwashing stations, all the way to…

“The walk-in?”

Julie yanks open the door to the walk-in fridge. Nick, currently swallowed in an oversized coat, hovers over two bins of strawberries, sorting the ripe ones. He jumps when they stumble in.

“Nick, can we sort the strawberries for seven minutes?” Julie asks.

“Uh, aren’t you on carts today?” He gestures at their uniforms.

“Yeah. Can we sort the strawberries for seven minutes?” she repeats, adding more meaning to her voice. When Nick continues to look blank, she waggles her eyebrow.

“OH. Yeah, okay.” Nick lets out a nervous giggle and practically sprints out of the walk-in.

Luke spins around, clearly taking advantage of the cold air rushing over his skin, but then he groans. “I don’t want to sort strawberries. I’m on my break.”

She pushes him gently but firmly against one of the metal shelves, and raises an eyebrow.

“Oh. Nice.” He grins down at her, smirking like this was his idea all along.

She shakes her head and brings her hands up to his cheeks. In her head, it’s tender and romantic, but in reality, his slick skin almost slides her fingers right back off his face. On instinct, he wraps his arms around her, drawing her close. His body still radiates heat and sweat, but the fridge at least makes the proximity bearable.

“You were saying?” she asks.

He grins. “This is gonna be sappy, so prepare yourself.”

“I’m prepared.”

“Like, sweeter than Butterbeer.”

“Careful, you’re going to overhype it.”

His confident grin turns soft and he bumps his warm nose against hers. “I wanted to make sure I spent some of today thinking about the day we met cause six months ago, happiness got redefined for me. That’s worth celebrating, I think.”

And there’s really only one reaction she can have to that. Julie pops onto her toes and tugs his face to hers, bringing their lips together. Her body trembles—less from the kiss and more from the sheer exhaustion running through her dehydrated body—and she almost recoils when sweat transfers from his mouth to hers. His hands press the damp fabric of her shirt closer into her back and, under the fridge air, it’s cool and unpleasant. When his cheeks finally succeed in shaking off her hands, she moves them to his shoulders, feeling the unnatural heat of his skin and the slickness of his sweat through the fabric of his work shirt.

Overall, it is an extremely gross kiss. And if it were with anyone else, she would be absolutely disgusted. But when they’re chased out of the walk-in four minutes later by an indignant Harrison (“haven’t you people heard of health code violations??”), teeth chattering as the sweat freezes on their bodies, she can’t keep the grin off her face.

Apparently the magic’s not gone just yet.

[desperatelyfullforever]

Time for a Badly Written Out Omo Story!

So, remember how I said that I have tons of stories? Well, here’s one.

So, this story is me in marching band. A bit of info: tall dark-skinned girl, with curly hair that reached my shoulders and was often pulled into a puff ball. Tomboy, always wearing sweats/jeans and flannel. On this typical day however, I was not the person in dire need for a toilet. My friend was.

Let’s call her Angie. Tiny Hispanic girl without a lick of an accent unless speaking Spanish. She had long, curly/wavy hair, brown eyes, glasses, and barely stood past 5’0” at this point in time. Average body, she wasn’t overweight but wasn’t skinny either. Just a bit of pudgy belly that’s honestly adorable.

A bit more information about her: Angie typically, by some ungodly reason can go an entire school day without so much as a glance at a bathroom. I would know, I’ve known her for 7 years and she’s only urgently needed one about 6 or 7 times. So, to see her desperate is a godsend.

So, for this story, we were in high school. I’ll add that we’re both instrumentalists and thus played in our school’s marching band, her playing the clarinet while I played the trumpet. We typically did a football game for our high school varsity team once a week, while almost every week we had a competition. Then there were “double-headers”, where we would have both a football game and a competition in one day.

On this day, reporting time was 9am in the morning. Me being the good friend that I am, I call Angie and asked if she wants a coffee, because I’m on my way getting one. She said yes, got her a large. Got to school and she finishes it within ten minutes. No big deal, it was expected. We all arrive and go through today’s agenda: away football game in 2 hours, leave during halftime, arrive at competition, get home by midnight.

Not really surprised, honestly I expect it. Buses get there at 12:30, so we have a bit of time in between after a couple run-throughs. We get food, with her buying an iced tea and a water to wash the sugar out of her mouth. Both the water and tea are gone within an hour, and by the time we’re scheduled to leave we camp out in front of the school, waiting for the buses to arrive.

Did I mention that it’s incredibly hot on this day? Did I also mention how shitty the band uniforms are? Our uniforms are thick enough to trap heat inside in the summer, yet not thick enough to act as insulation in the winter. The band parents pass out water to all of us, Angie grabbing a couple.

Finally, the buses arrive. The school is roughly about a half hour away, and I sit with Angie. Normal conversation, nothing out of the ordinary. It’s at the tail end of the bus ride that I notice her a bit tenser than usual, wincing when zipping up the band uniform (they don’t stretch at all; sitting down in them is a pain because it typically just cuts into your body). “Are you okay?” I asked.

She blushed a bit. “I’m fine.”

I left it at that. Didn’t pry, didn’t ask. We finished changing and after the bus stopped, got off and heading to the game. For away games, we perform before the game unless a special request is made (such as the away team not having a marching band or some sort of halftime show), so we were asked to fill in for them. We warm up and get on the bleachers, not really allowed to play because we’re using the show as our warmup for the competition later that night.

I sit with Angie, and she’s quiet. A lot more than usual. She’s also a lot tenser than earlier, not saying anything and simply keeping to herself. “Are you sure everything’s okay?” I ask.

Allow me to describe the field. It’s fucking huge and a bit of a ways away from the high school, so there’s concession stands and bathroom (read: port-o-potties) on both sides. Today just so happens to be this high school’s Senior Day, so it’s packed with families and whatnot. She’s sweating bullets so, in concern and curiosity, I ask her, “Do you need something to drink?”

She stiffens immediately and vigorously shakes her head before stammering, “No! I mean, I…I’m good. I had a bit of water earlier when we first sat down.”

No, she didn’t. She hadn’t had anything since the bus ride, and I know the large coffee, iced tea, water bottle, and two smaller bottles of water earlier were starting to go through her. So, I decide to be a bit of a bitch and ask, “I had a lot to drink, I’m gonna head to the bathroom. Do you need to go?”

I can’t even begin to tell you how many emotions went through her eyes when I said that, and that right there told me that her bladder was, if not full, at the very least filling up enough to be of mild concern. Part of her wanted to say yes, while the other wanted to stay put. Guess what side won out?

“I’m fine. I don’t need to go.” Lies, but I left it there and went to the bathroom. Admittedly, if she had gone one of us would’ve been shit out of luck because I left to go pee around the middle of the first quarter, and the marching band leaves during the middle of the second quarter to warm up and prepare to march onto the field. I get back right as we are packing up to head onto the track surrounding the field, and Angie looks worse for wear. Typically, she’s a lot more hyper, but right now she’s quiet as hell and keeping to herself.

As we’re walking onto the field the band parents are handing us cups of water to drink before we go onto the field (right now it’s about 85 degrees, or roughly 29 in Celsius) and they won’t let us go until we finish it, so we do. Angie takes hers like it’s a damn shot and chucks the cup in the trash before putting on a face, marching to her section.

So, from that point we’re simply warming up, playing parts of the show, etc. About two minutes left on the scoreboard we stand on the track, waiting for the players to be done with the first half so we can perform. We march on in a block, with it going by grade: seniors, juniors, etc. Angie’s standing next to me, and she’s fidgeting. It looks more like her being impatient, but to the trained eye it’s clear she’s feeling full. She’s shifting from foot to foot just a tad while fiddling with her clarinet.

Finally, we perform, and let me tell you, our show this year had a TON of kneeling, running, etc. Keep in mind earlier I said how our uniforms don’t stretch, so the material digs into your skin. The show is eight minutes long, and after we perform we march off to load the buses immediately and to use the bathroom when we get to the next high school. We get on the bus, and drive to the next school.

Now, this ride is about 45 minutes long. Angie is clearly fidgety; she’s rocking back and forth and has her hands somewhat in her lap. I ask her again if she’s okay and she insists that she is. Then we hit a hard, hard bump and she gasps out loud before clawing at her uniform, saying she’s hot and wants a bit of fresh air before we march again. Okay, fair, I don’t pry.

Halfway there, re run into traffic. She’s being way too obvious at this point, and I simply watch in silence while increasingly growing turned on. We get there an hour later, having barely enough time to get ready to perform. We’re told that we’ll use the bathrooms after, which is not going to end well; we’re the third to last band, so we can’t wander too far because the second band just gets to the sidelines while the last band performs. We quickly put our instruments away and the vast majority of kids haul ass to the bathrooms or getting food. Angie and I are captains, so we straggle behind to make sure everything’s okay with our respective sections. All five of the kids in her section hands her their clarinet so that they can rush to the bathroom (she’s known for never needing the bathroom, so they just assumed), and she’s squirming like hell. Her legs are crossed and she just can’t seep to get comfortable. By this point in time, it’d be stupid to rush to the bathroom because everybody is already in line, so she’d have no chance in getting in one until after the awards.

Finally, everybody comes back. Her section takes their instruments from her, and the second they do I notice her frantically unzip her uniform (it’s two layers, a jacket over an overall-type pants that zip up in the front) and sighing in relief. It’s still warm out, so the band parents once again hand out cups, and she once again chugs it.

Boring part of it is sitting through awards. She sat near family so I didn’t really get a good look at her, but the awards lasted for about 75 minutes before we closed (about 16 bands performed, and there were a lot of awards and scores such as best drumline, best color guard, etc.), so we ended roughly on schedule (we got to the football game before around 1ish, the game started at 2, we performed at 4:30, left at 5:15, got stuck in traffic until 7:30, performed at 8:10ish, last band performed at 10:15, awards started at 10:45, and ran until midnight).

I finally meet up with Angie who’s looking entirely too anxious to leave. “I’m hungry,” she says to me, grabbing my hand and pulling me from the crowd. “Can we get food?”

I know why she wants to go. The bathrooms are right next to the concessions. Luckily, we need to leave right away because it’s so late, so the band parents had already brought food for us to eat. We grab food and drinks and board the bus again. Of course, people are being asses and using chairs as tables for plates so there are less seats. I let Angie sit in my lap as we sit by the window.

In order for both of us to be comfortable I basically wrap my arms around her so that she stays steady, which means putting pressure on her bladder. The moment I do this she winces and crosses her legs tightly (by this point we’re out of uniform, both of us in shorts and a t-shirt). I say nothing for the most part.

About five minutes in, she gets a phone call with her parents asking me to take her home. Sure, I don’t mind. We’re gonna get home after 1 in the morning, so I didn’t mind in the slightest. But that meant waitng even longer, because I typically help unpack everything, and that takes about twenty minutes.

Anyway, another few minutes pass and she begins to tremble on and off. There’s times she’s still yet tense, other times she’s squirming like fuck. She slips a bit after a bump, and I naturally tense my arms to catch her. I push a decent amount on her bladder, and she gasps loudly while grabbing herself.

“Are you sure you’re fine?” I ask. “It looks like you need to…”

“Don’t say anything,” she cuts me off as she rips her hands away. “I’m…fine…” this is said while she’s tense as fuck and rocking back and forth in my lap.

I shrug, smirking. “Do you mind handing me my water, then?”

Of course, that fucks with her hard. She grabs it out of my bag and moans, “Oh, fuck,” from feeling the condensation, tossing it onto the seat next to us. She grabs herself again and wheezes, “Fuck, I need to pee damn it!”

Finally! With her saying it she finally gives in, whimpering while rocking her hips back and forth. She’s grinding into me pretty hard, rubbing against me every so often to work me up pretty damn good. “How much time left before we get to the school?” she whispers.

“About a half hour left.”

That only seems to make her need to go more, as she clutches herself. I sit there, not knowing what to say until a few moments later she goes, “Fuck, fuck, fuck!”, grabs my hand and places it over her crotch, pressing her hands over mine while grinding into it.

Cue me overwhelmingly horny and turned on beyond belief at this point. I’d never thought I’d see the day where Angie’s dying for a piss, yet here she is, grinding into my hand while sitting in my lap. Unconsciously, I begin massaging her with the palm of my hand while relishing the sight in front of me.

Allow me to tell you how the hell we didn’t get caught. It was dark as hell inside the bus, and we were near the very back. Plus, the majority of kids were already knocked out from exhaustion. We’d only get caught if someone heard or was looking for it.

Here we are, with her grinding into my moving hand when I feel a spurt against my fingers. She moans and curls into a ball, rocking her hips harder. “Help, please,” she pleads.

Well, she asked.

Instantly I pull her against me even more and tilt her head to mine, kissing her. At first she’s understandably shocked to hell and back, but after a desperate grunt she kisses back. I rub my hand faster against her, making sure to get enough friction through her shorts.

I move from her lips and begin kissing her neck, urging her to keep quiet. She grabs at my legs and cocks her head to the side to give me more access, biting her lip. Did I ever mention that she’s bi, and we’ve had a crush on each other for the longest time? At this point we’ve had unresolved sexual tension like you wouldn’t believe, hence this situation happening like it did.

Anyway, after a lot of heavy petting I decide to risk it and slip my hand underneath her shorts into her slick folds, rubbing her clit while putting a bit of pressure on her bladder to see how she responds. She shivers and grinds harder into my hand, whispering words in Spanish. “Si bebe, no te atrevas a parar.” So, I keep going.

I never fully bring her over the edge because I don’t want her to cum and accidentally lose it, plus it’s just too good to be true for me and I don’t want it to end. By the time we get back to the school she’s leaked a couple more times and can’t keep a hand from between her legs, whether it’s mine or hers. I help pack everything away, with her standing to the side squirming and shuffling around.

I rush a bit and finish five minutes early, hurrying her to the car. Angie lives about ten minutes from the school so it’s not horrible, but right then and there it felt way too short. So, I stop for gas. It’s at this point that she’s on the verge of tears and is frantic as fuck in the car; both hands between her legs, legs moving back and forth, constant crossing and re-crossing, whimpers and moans, and so on. By the time I pull off she gasps again, louder than ever. “I can’t hold it, I’m gonna go, I’m gonna pee!” she whines, looking around as if there’s something she can go in.

“You better not piss in my car,” I warn.

She moans again and rips her shorts down, as if to squat down. “Don’t you fucking dare,” I growl. She finally lifts her shorts back up and continue holding it in, but now I hear steady, sharp leaks. By the time I get her to her house she’s so full it’s insane. She steps out of the car, makes it two steps and the damn bursts. She moans loudly it concerns me, until I notice the HUGE mess. A puddle already is forming, and she looks so relieved.

She takes about two minutes to finish, before inviting me inside and us finally sleeping together. 

[sarafince]

A Possible Future. Manuscript.

It’s January. 2100.

At the tropics, people are cooking from the inside.

Calves are born medium rare.

It’s the month when all dates in your diary are wrong. You are learning to change the year when you date things, don’t be hard on yourself, we’re all in this. In this and in other shit.

I am in my old apartment in Paris. It’s a studio in a student residence where nobody really ever checked if you were a student. I haven’t been back here since I graduated, 80 years ago, but I can’t say I missed it much. I have a park nearby, about five minutes walking, that helps a lot with the breathing when I feel that my new lungs clogged up too much – I can go there and breath for a little while, always with my gun in hand, my back muscles turned on and the hair on the back of my neck up. You wouldn’t say, but if you manage to do that, you can feel movement from yards away. It’s useful especially now, that some had cat legs installed, and you can’t hear them even if they’re breathing on your neck.

I used to be afraid of writing – that I wasn’t good enough, that there are too many trying it already. I’m past that now. I know that if I can, I have to somehow send this to the next intelligent beings that will develop on Earth… that means that I have to engrave it somehow in something not likely to be destructed in millions of years. Then I will have to make it so that after they find it, they understand it.

I will write it in all the languages that I know and more – and then I’ll try to make it indestructible… maybe Stonehenge was such a warning to us – maybe we just didn’t know how to read it, too preoccupied to understand how it was put together… maybe what mattered was how the rays of sun passed through, maybe they point to something, to the place where a million year old bastard wrote on a small piece of stone, a mountain… a grain of sand. Maybe they were trying to tell us that when we discover the steam engine, we have to bury it in the ground and never think about it again. There is no limit to greed, power and the desire to conquer, to have, as if having would ever make life bearable.

What if we never found extra-terrestrial life simply because to arrive at the point where a civilisation is able to make contact, they have to arrive at the point of burning themselves up, and given that the star-galaxies are millions of years apart, it is simply impossible to receive a message from the other part of the universe before blowing ourselves up. What if what is happening to us will perpetually happen forever, or as long as the universe is alive. What if, when looked at from afar, the universe looks just like fireworks, with one planet burning up after the other?

We haven’t had fish in the seas for a very long time. I can’t remember the last time I tasted the sea. It’s so freakin’ acid right now that even dipping a finger in it would make for a nasty wound.

Shit, we were naïve back then… making phone calls for nothing at all, looking everything up on the internet, turning on lights for reading, dancing, to make day out of night; we used to take the plane just because it was cheaper than the train and turn music on just because we were lonely when we could have gone out and talked to people in the streets.

I imagine there is no human being within five kilometres now, and if I would meet one, I’d kill it before it kills me. It helps if I don’t think of them as being human. I was not much of a fighter before… I was slow and had no physical resistance, but fighting makes you strong. The rush of adrenaline increases muscle power by 30% - I read that somewhere. The hardest part is that with everything down, I only have my head for entertainment – I am stuck with everything I know and limited by everything I don’t. I should have learned to play an instrument.

It helps imagine being killed when I’m training, I see it as motivation, but I can’t do that too much, it makes my breath intensify and I take in more methane than I am allowed per day. I should have gotten the self-clearing lungs… but back then I had to choose between that and a place to stay and I was too afraid of the streets.

People kill to eat nowadays. Hah.. nowadays. There is no day anymore, only a red shadow cast between us and the sun – and it’s very hot. I remember reading in some book Marquez wrote that in Colombia next to a railway there was a time when the rain was so ubiquitous that everything was permanently wet, moist and mouldy. It’s like this with the heat. Everything is hot. To cool off, I have to hang myself on a rope by the torso, to use no energy, to let the air touch my body in its movement – but it isn’t moving, the bastard!

We were like the toad in boiling water – we boiled ourselves to death, like the Ferrari driver who pushed the machine so hard that it broke, like the…..I don’t remember.

We were idiots.

We should have stopped when the wind started to put down trees in Paris more than twice a month. The news people didn’t help. Because they were told not to sound “alarmist”, they always delivered the climate news smiling: “The weather in Paris is out of the charts again, it’s the eleventh day with wind so strong that people are advised to stay inside because of the danger of being picked up and smashed against a building. At least people from the west will be smashed against the Eiffel Tower, haha.” Yes, these were the jokes – and they laughed, and the audience laughed, and some people got smashed, and they continued to laugh, like it was all make-believe, like it was impossible to be true, like the images were touched up, like there was nothing to worry about. We all behaved like underage children in front of our authoritarian parents when there is a criminal on the loose – don’t worry, darling, he can’t reach us here.

I remember asking myself why we wouldn’t read more about this in fiction, why art almost completely ignored it… it must not be as important as they say… usually when something is important all media talks about it. All fiction on the matter was banished to the sci-fi shelf, like there was any science behind it, like it was something else but hypothesis about the future based on facts. What I would give right now to put my hands on a copy of Paradise Lost…

Don’t turn bleak about the climate, S, it will wrinkle your forehead and then who knows how hard it will be to finally settle down?

Those comments. The good part in running away from humans is that I don’t get these anymore.

I miss I. we used to fight all the time – for her, like for so many others global warming was just a kind of thing you speak about at cocktail parties; without too much emphasis so as not to polarize the conversation and put yourself too much out there. She thought that Greta Thurnberg is looking to build a persona for herself. Nevertheless I somehow enjoyed her presence – she was lively and made me forget that I thought we were all going to die any minute now. She was one year and a half into her PhD about modest houses when she got the plague which had emerged after a glacier melted and released it into the air. She was travelling to Russia to establish a connection between the Romanian kitsch and the Russian contemporary avant-guard architecture when she came upon a village close to Siberia where people were so nice and cooked so well that she had to stay for a while and immerse herself into the culture. For a hypochondriac, she took little precaution. She left the village after the third case of plague death, thinking that somehow her European blood would be incapable of being seized by eastern afflictions. But the Russians are Europeans too. She died after a few months barely remembering her PhD subject, in her mother’s living room.

I was in Barcelona when I heard that the Dengue fever is knocking at our doors – I had never thought of it before, but +5 degrees Celsius meant that southern Europe would behave like Africa; and that meant the diseases too. I bet now we wished we invested enough in eradicating the diseases of the poor. Whatever you leave undone, comes back to bite your ass sooner or later, as my mom used to say – or was it Churchill?

I fled, of course, with my cowered back at the disaster in the city I loved so much. I fled north in the hope that I could find some solace in the coldness left behind by the melting glaciers, but now I’m stuck here, with no real chance of getting anywhere, as I depend on the park for clearing my cheap lungs – why, why was I such a parsimonious little shit? Like with the phones, I always went for the cheap, uncomplicated version. It is true, this is the less stressful choice, as the more complicated ones break more easily – and I heard it’s excruciating to die of collapsed lungs. At least this pair will last a while if I manage to keep automatic updates at bay.

Small doomsdays have been happening everywhere, but they’re relevant only to the disappeared.

There is war, famine, and economic collapse I want to tell you about, but right now I will go hang for a little while.

[coilbuilds-blog]

7 things you need to know before coil building with Kanthal wire

If you are looking to get into building your own coils for vaping, you need to be aware of the different vape wire types,there are have Kanthal a1, stainless steel, nichrome,nickel and tianium wire. and kanthal a1 wire is widely used in vaping.as it has a high melting point and can handle temperatures of 1400 Degrees, perfect for making e-liquid turn into vapor.

It is important to know everything about kanthal a1 coils when building for your rebuildable dripping atomizer to ensure you get the great clouds or flavor at the very first time. I have created this blog post to clarify all the confusion between different Kanthal vape wire if you are considering building your own coils. I would recommend building any day, over purchasing prebuilt coils because it’s more cost effective and you can be more creative.

1.What Is Kanthal A1 Wire Made Up Of?

Kanthal is an alloy form from the family of iron-chromium-aluminum alloys that are used in a varied range of applications that have high resistance and high-temperature. The alloys of Kanthal FeCrAl comprises of Aluminium (4-7.5%), Iron, and Chromium (20-30%).

2.What is Kanthal Vape wire?

The Kanthal A1 is made up of ferrite iron, aluminum, and chromium alloy combined and is majorly used to build the coils for RDA or RBA. as it can be heated at high temperatures of up to 1400 degree Celsius.(2550°F).It can also handle the stress without creating any oxidation, creating a safe vape for you, without releasing any nasty toxins.it is the most used wire and most common on all the coils in the vape market and it can be used on a regular device on regular power or volts mode.

3.What Are The Types Of Kanthal vapor wire?

Now that you are aware of what Kanthal wire is, you need to develop an understanding of the different types. Before start your owner coil building you need understand how kanthal wire works and how you vape.Most vaper that build their own coils build from the 24 to 34 (AWG) range. The size of the actual wire and the diameter over how many wraps you create rules out a certain level of final ohms placed on the vape mod.

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To find out the diameters of Kanthal wire, you must be aware of the size, as thinner wire creates a higher resistance per foot. Having larger wire is the total opposite, it creates a lower resistance per foot. You will find that this will make it longer for the wire to heat up, increasing ramp-up time.

I always suggest that you ensure that the ohms resistance and the voltage found in your 18650 batteries is a current lower than the amps you require. I suggest that you vape between 0.9 ohms to 1.9 ohms as it is considered a safe level. You will get good performance and great flavour from your RDA without risking anything blowing up.

kanthal wire Ohms can be confusing, but at the same time, they are very important for your own good. If you are using a regulated vape mod, it will have internal protection to stop anything going wrong. But If you are using a mechanical mod, you need to be more serious when calculating the ohms provided by your Kanthal coils. The fewer ohms, the larger the amount of current flowing through your battery, so you need to have a battery that is capable of delivering the amps the coils are going to consume.

I am going to provide you with two examples, with different sizes wires to give you a brief understanding of what will impact the kanthal a1 resistance. 24 Gauge wire with a very short wire build, having 2 to 3 wraps would create a very low final resistance, resulting in very low ohms. Typically, it would range in the 0.6 to 0.9 ohms range, making it sub ohm level. Great for huge clouds and having a warm vape.

However, if you made a coil out of 34 Gauge wire, with a long wire build, having 7 to 8 wraps gives you a high resistance. This would usually result in very high ohms, typically around 2.5 ohms to 2.9 ohms. These are just estimates I have provided you with when you build the coils yourself, you can customise them to what you want your final ohm resistance to be.

4. Advantages Of Using kanthal a1 vape

Kanthal wire itself has many benefits, hence why it is so popular today. The main factor is

Easy to work with using your hands, while at the same time it can hold its shape when formed into coils.

Easy to twist and braid without breaking and has the slowest ramp-up time

It has the most stable resistance value among all heating wires, and the resistance hardly changes during heating which means it’s hard to happens short circuit even at high temperature oxid

Most of coil builder will use the it as daily use since it is one of high cost-effective vape wire types

It comes with variable wattage.which make it will be a good choice for guys who like vaping with mechanical mod.

It is very popular in the vaping community and I always use it when building single wire coils.

It’s inexpensive and works wonders if you build correctly.

There are many video tutorials that you can find on the web, that will teach you how to build your own coils our of Kanthal wire.

5.Disadvantages Of Using kanthal a1 coil build

The only many disadvantages of this wire type would be that

it is not compatible with temperature control mode.

Personally, I hardly use temperature control mode myself, as power wattage mode is perfect if you always keep your coils wet. For those that are not aware of what temperature control is, it prevents burning the wick in your coil and stops you experiencing any dry hits.

The science behind TCR is clever. The vape mod knows the cold resistance of a coil and the wicking material that you are using. It is also aware when the coil hits a certain temperature. If the coil is too hot, the vape mod will reduce the current that is sent, this stops the cotton burning out. If you want to build your own coils that are compatible with temperature control, you might want to consider other wire types such as stainless steel, nickel or titanium.

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6.What Gauge Of Kanthal Wire a1 Should You Use?

Personally, based on my experience building over the years, I would recommend that you start off with 26 gauge Kanthal a1 wire. Reason being it is easy to work on almost every atty/screw/post setup and you can achieve the right ohm even in tight spaces.Heats up quick and gets down low enough for me, it’s flexible and due to being cheap, you can practise making different coils without breaking the bank.

Once you become an experienced builder, I would recommend that you use thicker wire, as you have more potential to build coils that have more surface area. This results in bigger clouds and enhanced flavour if build correctly on the right deck. However, bear in mind thicker wire is not so easy to get hold of and is very difficult to work with.

I would recommend if you have not already done so, is to purchase a coil building toolkit to make your life easier. It will have all the bits you need to make your coil building process much simpler. Bending the coils with your bare hands can be tricky and you risk cutting yourself, as Kanthal wire can be sharp at times.

Although i recommend you start off with 26g ,However There is really no standard wire should you to use. Since everyone experiments with different sizes.and it mainly depending on what you are buiding ,and if its a dripper or tank, dual coil or single. Just always be sure your Ohms’ resistance and voltage in your battery create a current that is lower then you need per your Amps.

7.What is the best kanthal a1 wire for coil building ？

PURE ATOMIST KANTHAL 28 AWG GAUGE A1 WIRE

Pure Atomist has been strive to provide its customers with high quality wire products since 2014. All vape wire products are packaged in their facility in Southern California,it is one of of professional vape wire supply in the United States.i have been using it for my RDA for a few months ,had great results, Never a bad taste. I find in pretty easy to work with as well.if you are just starting to build coils and are looking for wire, this is a perfect wire to get.

A 100 ft. spool less than $6 on Amazon, It’s a great deal at this price! Way way cheaper than you buying the wire from a vape shop.  Check It At Amazon Now.

TEMCO KANTHAL A1 WIRE 26 GAUGE

TEMCo is a solid manufacturer right here in the U.S.A,the wire itself conducts electricity at a reliable resistance as it ought to, and there’s 100 feet for under 5 dollars, you’ll be hard pressed to find such a value deal from any other high quality brand. Click it Buy Now.

MASTER WIRE SUPPLY 24 GAUGE KANTHAL A1 WIRE

Well I can’t say anything for the whole Master Wire Supply thing(it’s about as good as anything else I’ve used in the past), but this wire this most excellent when it comes to the flavor of your E-juice,the wire came clean with no debris on it and was wrapped snugly around the spool. It is easy to wrap ,with excellent high/low temperature performance. Got It At Amazon Today.

[wayneooverton]

Scuba diving Milford Sound – one of New Zealand’s greatest adventures

As the first trickles of water snuck their way into my super thick wetsuit, I felt a shiver travel all the way up my spine as I bobbed on the surface. Yes, this would be the coldest water I’ve ever dived in.

Giddy with excitement, I could barely take it all in. Milford Sound, the most iconic fiord in New Zealand, was a place I had been to many times on my travels here. I’ve cruised, kayaked, flown (fixed wing and helicopter) hiked, and even driven to Milford Sound in an Aston Martin.

But yet something was missing; there was one aspect of Milford I had yet to tick off my Fiordland bucketlist: scuba diving. And I had never seen it from this perspective before, with only me head above water, looking up at the endless mountains.

Hiking the Milford Track

Flying to Milford Sound in a tiny-ass plane

Helicopter flight to Milford

Kayaking Milford Sound in the pouring rain

Girls road trip in an Aston Martin to Milford

Cruising Milford Sound (incredibly hungover on Christmas)

Choosing between Milford Sound and Doubtful Sound

Now, to be fair, I don’t think anyone comes to Milford Sound and gives one thought to getting into that water. Not even a toe.

Far from inviting, beyond its jagged beauty, the fiord actually looks a bit dark, cold, and kinda creepy (from the surface). In fact, it’s not a stretch of the imagination to picture dinosaurs living beneath the ripples. After all, this part of New Zealand was the last bastion of many creatures thought to be extinct. And by creatures I mean birds. Which, funnily enough, are related to dinosaurs.

But I seriously digress.

Guys, there are not dinosaurs in Milford Sound (wink wink).

Wracking my brain as we boated out into the middle of Milford, I truly can’t remember the first time I heard that scuba diving here was a real thing. All I can say is that for the longest time it’s been on my big New Zealand list to dive there myself.

Every time I heard whispers of how incredible the diving was there, I would make a mental note and file it away. One day I would make this a reality.

Many of my old school Wanaka friends and South Island locals have long known the wonders of diving in Fiordland, heading down on boy trips in the boats and helicopters and checking out their craypots.

While it is far from the tropical, warm dives I’d done from Bali to the Maldives to Thailand, diving in Milford Sound is not really a casual “hmm, want to go for a dip” kind of dive. You kind of really have to want to do it to make it happen. There aren’t dozens of operators elbowing each other for the opportunity to take you down beneath the sea, only one.

You have to want it.

And guys, I wanted it.

Scuba Diving in Milford Sound with Descend NZ

And that’s how I found myself using plastic bags to squeeze myself into an 8mm thick wetsuit on a beautiful summer day in Milford Sound. Why oh why did I eat that burger, fries and shake the night before?

Ok, suck it in, Liz, you can do it. Diet starts tonight.

Seriously, the thing I always hated the most about diving was the wetsuit part, and why I prefer to five in places like the Maldives where the water temp is 30 degrees celsius and as warm as a bath.

But once it was on, it was on, and we were ready to roll, piling into the back of the Descend Dive boat, and making our way out into the fiord.

I was giddy with excitement at the possibility of seeing Milford, such an iconic part of New Zealand, from an entirely new perspective. We zoomed all the way up and back down the fiord in the early morning, as potential dive sites were pointed out to us.

I’m far from an expert diver, with only my advanced open water certificate under my belt, though I had dived all over the world. It was new for me to wear such a thick wetsuit, not to mention gloves, booties and a hood, but you need it for the 14 degree water.

You also have the option of diving in a drysuit or doing a course.

Part of what makes diving in Milford so spectacular is that the water is several degrees colder on the surface, and man when you step off that boat for the first time and get a facefull of the freshwater on the surface, boy it wakes you up!

Why does that matter, enquiring minds wish to know.

Milford happens to be one of the wettest corners of New Zealand, receiving almost seven meters of rainfall every year.

As the fresh water runs down to the fiord off of the steep mountain cliffs, it is colored darkly by the tannins from the plants creating a layer of a few meters of dark freshwater on the surface. Combined with the shade created by the steep surrounding mountains, it tricks normally deep dwelling sea life into living much shallower than it normally would, like black coral. But I’ll get to that in a minute.

What is really cool as the darker freshwater on the surface is colder, and as you descend the first few meters, you can actually see a weird blurry line where it transitions into the warmer saltwater. And its fun to bob back and forth in between the layers. Or if you’re me, you hang out in these top two meters for en embarrassingly long time as you try to figure out compensating for such a buoyant wetsuit before descending further.

Wait, who peed next to me?

Nope, it’s just the temperature change.

Milford is home to some incredible cliffs to dive along, and Descend has about a dozen dive sites they regularly dive in that are incredible.

The Piopiotahi Marine Reserve in Milford Sound is incredible and one of the best places to dive and stretches for 16 kilometers along the northern side of the fiord from the town out to the Tasman Sea.

Established in 1993, it protects one of New Zealand’s most unique ecosystems.

Here seals, dolphins, sharks, rays, crays, cod, nudibranchs and all manner of creatures thrive beneath the soft waves.

As you dive you have the chance to see over 100 species of creatures, and that’s what surprised me the most. As soon as I was underwater I was blown away by the vibrancy and life beneath Milford.

Far from the gloomy atmosphere I was imagining, it was blue and colorful and alive. My old pictures here don’t do it justice. It was clear and blue, not bright but easy to see still. It wasn’t murky or gloomy at all.

We were given dive torches to use as well, and though I’ve been night diving before, this was a totally different experience.

Once I was below, following Simone, one of the owners of Descend, I was mesmerized by life I could see here, it was so much more than I imagined.

It almost looked tropical.

We descended along the walls, marveling at the biggest crayfish I’ve ever seen, bold and huge, they had no fear of us as they poked out of their dens to get a look at these bubbling black (and in my case, ungraceful) humans.

It didn’t take long for us to get a glimpse of the legendary black corals that inhabit Milford Sound.

Normally these black coral trees (which, BTW, are actually white) grow at depths of 100 meters or more, far deeper than any recreational diver like me could ever experience. But because of the dark rainwater on the surface combined with the shade from the steep mountain walls in Milford, they can be seen at much shallower depths.

At 10 meters below the surface, you begin to see this ghostly coral trees. Bright white and seemingly fragile, they grow out from the walls of the mountains, seemingly waving at you in the gentle currents.

This alone makes diving in Milford Sound worth it. Nowhere else in the world can you have this experience with black coral.

Milford has a great diversity of dive sites, with something for everyone and every level, and you can even do intro dives there or complete your courses. If I had more time, I would love to learn how to dive in a drysuit.

I’m hooked now on what chillier waters have to offer.

So mesmerized by the first experience, I almost couldn’t believe it when it was time to make our way back above the surface for our first interval.

I had withheld all liquids since the early morning in the vain hopes I wouldn’t have to pee and therefore have to pull down the wetsuit (or worse, pull it back up) but like most women I know, I was dying to go as soon as we resurfaced.

How, body, how?! I didn’t even have a coffee!

We warmed up with cookies, lunch and hot liquids, but the strong New Zealand sunshine played a big part.

As we had to wait above the sea for our surface intervals, as our body safely gets rid of the nitrogen. We then had the opportunity to get up close with one of the iconic waterfalls, swimming out to land and walking beneath the spray.

Though it wasn’t long before it was time for round two and to see what more Milford Sound had to offer us lucky few.

Around half a million people make the journey to Milford Sound when visiting New Zealand, mostly for a quick boat cruise. Few bother to stay the night, and a tiny fraction ever get a glimpse at the world beneath the water.

Plan to stay the night in Milford to avoid the altitude of going over the high alpine pass on the Milford Road back to Te Anau.

Now I can heartily say that diving in Milford Sound is one of my favorite things I’ve ever done in New Zealand.

Unique and unforgettable, I’d squeeze back into that wetsuit in a heartbeat.

Have you ever heard of diving Milford Sound? Would you do it? Share!

Many thanks to Descend for hosting me diving in Milford Sound. Like always I’m keeping it real, all opinions are my own, like you could expect less from me!

The post Scuba diving Milford Sound – one of New Zealand’s greatest adventures appeared first on Young Adventuress.

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[landcruising]

“I’m here to tell you that your husband will be the last to arrive, but he is alive,” Victor said, walking up to me.

I laughed.

“Yes, I already heard that. And that he is cold,” I responded.

I stood waiting next to the plastic, red-white line on the ground, his down jacket in my hand, ready to throw it on his shoulders. I had hiked to the snowy top of the Falaza Mountain and back, 5 kilometers up and 5 kilometers down, and felt the muscles in my legs.

This, however, was nothing compared to running up and down that same, steep trail, plus running an additional 30+ kilometer, as Coen had. Not just that, a part of this trail wasn’t even a trail. Parts consisted of rock climbing/clambering or fighting his way uphill over scree; two steps up, one step sliding down again.

After 7,5 hours and with the sun long having disappeared behind the clouds and dipped beyond the mountains, Coen was still out in the woods in shorts and on minimalist (five-finger Vibrams) shoes without any cushioning. At least he wore a long-sleeved woolen merino shirt and a thin windstopper jacket. While early autumn, the mountaintop was covered in snow and the nights brought freezing temperatures.

A beautiful, inspiring day was coming to an end.

The Train Ride

Yesterday morning we had taken the slow train from Vladivostok; the 120 kilometers or so had taken two and a half hours. The early morning light cast warm colors across the bay and through the trees, most of which had lost their leaves.

We watched the world go by, from urban scenery to harvested fields interspersed with hamlets where houses were built of wood or stone. We arrived in a hamlet and I walked into the first building along the tracks in search of a toilet. But clearly I was not supposed to be here, and a man walked after me.

The Toilet

“где туалет?” (Where is the toilet) I asked.

“туалет tam, he answered.

Lo and behold, I had made myself understood and figured out what his answer meant. In any new language, ‘toilet’ is among my first vocabulary. Frustratingly, after all those months in Korea I had never managed to pronounce the Korean word – “hwajansil” – in such a way that people understood what I was asking.

“Over there,” he had answered.

It was a bit vague, but we walked back outside. The toilet was behind a metal door and consisted of a hole in the ground. No Korean or Japanese toilets here: clean, with toilet paper and water. In that respect, we left paradise behind.

Annoying as it is, it is something we always do on arrival in a new country: despite knowing how useless (and often unfair) it is, we compare things/places/people with the place (country) we have just come from. But I’ve learned that this is a few-day issue; it will disappear as we stay longer in any given place and take it in ‘as it is’ rather than ‘compared to X, Y, or Z’.

The Village

Anyway, with an empty bladder I inhaled the crisp air of the countryside hemmed in by forested mountains. A small convenience store was open. No fresh coffee to be had (only cold coffee in cans) but the owner did sell muffins and a kind of cookies that we like – in the Netherlands called taaitaai – and bought a bag of them.

We hoist our backpacks and set out for the 7-km hike uphill to a mountain cabin-cum-hotel, passing barns, wooden houses, harvested vegetable fields fenced in by wire. After a while houses were cut off from the road with high, wooden fences. Was this for privacy or to protect them from the dust when tons of weekend visitors and vacationers drove up and down the unpaved road? Many houses advertised with signs “banya” – hot baths.

Later this weekend I learned about the origins of this village. There used to be two camps in the middle of nowhere. One was for political prisoners, and a second was built for Japanese prisoners of war. Eventually, the Japanese were sent home and the political were released from prison. However, the latter were not allowed to return home but had to settle here, colonizing the area.

As the road meandered uphill, the village made way for the forest. It was such a leisurely, beautiful walk.

The Cabin-cum-Hotel

Oh yes, he ended #1 – at the bottom of the list 🙂

At the foot of a hill stood the building we were looking for. The adjacent short ski lift had not yet been equipped for winter to take snowboarders and skiers uphill. From the veranda with picnic tables we looked up slopes partly covered in autumn colors but also partly covered in snow.

A couple of men stood chatting and we asked for Alexya, the organizer of the trail-running event. He hadn’t arrived yet. Our (late) request to him to book a room hadn’t reached this place, but the caretaker informed us there was one room left for Friday night and Saturday night we could sleep on the ground. The latter turned out to be common for many of the 100 runners who joined the event.

The Gear, The Food, & The Room

Four men had driven all night to drive the 600 kms from a city north of here. The run and climate were discussed. The men judged that Coen’s outfit didn’t do at all, and we realized we had always run in summer or tropical climates. Alex handed Coen one of his windstopper jackets, a gesture for which Coen would be extremely grateful the following day.

No, there was no food and no there was no coffee but we had brought oatmeal and lentils and could use the kitchen. The room consisted of a mattress on the floor, a couple of blankets and sheets put in a corner. With all guests we shared three toilets and one shower. The toilet paper was, like in Vladivostok, of rough, crepe-like paper. No towels and we hadn’t brought any, but a used T-shirt would do.

After all the cleanliness and organized ways of Japan and Korea (yes, there it is again, the comparison) – which are wonderful but in some ways also always felt somewhat not of this world – we were back in the ‘real’ world as the one we had mostly known during our first 12 hours of travel. Each has its charm.

The Drinks & The Training

More surprises we noticed that evening. There was no vodka! No beer! No alcohol! Weren’t we in Russia? No smoking either. The running community turned out to be a very healthy one. In fact, one runner told me that this was what appealed so much to him. With family members smoking and drinking too much, he had felt the temptation of alcohol in his early twenties.

“When I was 23, I felt I had to take THE decision: a life of alcohol, or of running and being healthy. I chose the latter.”

He was training fanatically and trying all kinds of things: running on a course, in the city on asphalt and had recently run his first marathon in Vladivostok. This was his first mountain run and decided to stick to the 11-km course.

In Russian houses you take off your shoes.

Victor, a Catholic priest, had started running only last year and had found a new passion. This was his first mountain trail and he had visited the region a couple of times to train here. He felt ready for the 11-km run. Most ran the 11-km trail. Only 20 or had signed up for the 39-km and 50-km run.

We had arrived early, to be in time for the 4-o’clock briefing as was mentioned on the website. But at 4 o’clock only a few people had arrived, and no organizer. The briefing turned out to be at 10 pm. The start would be at 8 or 8.30am.

We didn’t mind at all but it was a good reminder to better bring your flexibility to this country.

The Run

Coen fretted all morning, as he does before any run, (reorganizing his pack, which he already packed last night) checking his water, food (“Do I have enough? Do I have too much?”), fumbling with his gear (“Do I listen to a podcast or not”), and clothes (“Is this not too warm?” not being used wearing long sleeves, let alone two layers). He doesn’t mind the sweating, the discomfort that is inherent to challenging yourself, but he wants his stuff to be in order.

At eight thirty we cheered the runners at the start and off they went. Coen last. His mind was set on going slow, on finishing without injuries and especially to enjoy the day and the run. His longest run ever had been 26 kms and that was in hills, not mountains. His longest mountain run, only weeks earlier, had been 22 kms. So to jump to 39 kms – well, 43,6 as it turned out – was yes, a massive jump.

The Hike

I had decided not to run the 11 kms as I’m still troubled by an old injury and with the 650-km hike in Jordan ahead of us (in December/January), I am not taking any chances. However, the weather was way too beautiful to stay put. I joined Ana and Kathy uphill, who were going to be manning the last two checkpoints. The hike was Baekdu-daegan-style steep (that means very steep), through the forest.

“Go to the top,” they encouraged me. “It’s another 3 kms.”

Tough to see on the photo, but this was a steep, slippery path

Beautiful views along the side of the trail.

With the surroundings being so beautiful, it took no effort to enjoy the walk. The brown soil got a couple of white speckles, white patches, white stretches and before I knew it I was walking in the snow. What a joy! It was reminiscent of our hike last year in Yakushima, Japan (read about it here).

Snow turned to ice, the steep trail became slippery due to a large number of day hikers using it. Pulling myself up using trees and tree branches I almost reached the top when the first runner was flying down – he had been running a bit over four hours to cover the first 33 kms. Number two followed a few minutes later.

At the top hikers sat on stones eating lunch, taking selfies and taking in views. A group of hikers arrived, one of them lighting a bonfire. I appreciated the heat as it was around 0 degrees Celsius. One after the other runner came flying by after which the strugglers arrived. It was fun to watch. But no Coen.

The Waiting

One and a half hours later and with the sun behind the clouds I was chilled to the bone. 66 runners had passed when I started my descent down the slippery, icy trail, holding on to trees without gloves, which was freezing my fingers. I was happy to be back on steady forest ground again.

At the last checkpoint, Kathy stood waiting for the last runners. She had grown cold and I gave her my jacket. For me it was just another 2 kms down.

Back at the hut-cum-hotel, ‘everybody’ asked,

“Where is Coen?!”

“What! Still up there?” shaking their heads.

With his shoes, shorts and never having run so far before many were worried and/or anxious combined with a fair share of curiosity.

“How is he doing that?!”

Contrary to Coen, who only cared about enjoying the run, these guys were here for going as fast as possible, breaking their records or finishing with a place on the podium.

“I have to interview him,” Victor, the Catholic priest said. “How do you go from 26 to 39 kms and then on such terrain?”

He shook his head in bewilderment.

The last checkpoint was at 36 kms. That should have heralded the last 3 kms, but already this morning we had understood the trail was 41 kms. However, one of the runners said his GPS had measured 43 kms (and Coen’s would say 43,6 kms).

Having missed him at the checkpoints I was set on seeing him finish. I went outside when Kathy returned, who handed me back my jacket.

“I saw your husband. He is not tired but very cold.” (Coen, however, disputes that this is what he said, or at least he can’t remember it – maybe he just looked cold to her).

For more than an hour we stood waiting outside, cheering on when, little by little, the last ones rounded the last corner and made for the finish.

The Finish

It was after five when Coen turned that corner, taking his typical tiny steps and with a face that told me he could have done another 10K, had he needed to. This guy knows how to run, my god! Cold, yes, sore feet due to the minimalist shoes, yes. Otherwise totally fine.

With Alex, the lender of the jacket.

With Alexya, the organizer.

  “It was beautiful. It was wonderful,” he commented.

The only question he had for others was, “Did you enjoy?”

It was an uncommon question, for sure.

The Falaza Trail Run (Russia) “I’m here to tell you that your husband will be the last to arrive, but he is alive,” Victor said, walking up to me.

[mediafocus-blog1]

When Life on Earth Was Nearly Extinguished

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When Life on Earth Was Nearly Extinguished

It has been referred to as the “Great Dying.”

The planet’s maximum profound catastrophe struck 252 million years ago, at the give up of the Permian duration, killing 90 percent of existence within the ocean and seventy-five percent of the land. The fossil report almost goes silent and remains startlingly impoverished for millions of years: timber disappear, bacteria update coral reefs, insects hush. What seems like fungus spikes within the fossil record, perhaps the sepulchral rot of a death global.

It changed into as near as earth has ever come to being sterilized altogether, and might take 10 million years for the planet to completely get better, putting the degree for the eventual upward thrust of the dinosaurs.

“The End-Permian mass extinction is unique in earth records,” said Seth Burgess, a geologist with the United States Geological Survey. “Nothing else is as intense, and it’s no longer even close.”

A growing body of proof indicates that this historic Apocalypse turned into added on, in a massive element, with the aid of tremendous emissions of carbon dioxide from volcanoes that erupted across a sizable swath of Siberia. Today the result of fast injecting big pulses of carbon dioxide into the air is discussed as though the chance exists only inside the speculative output of pc models. But, as scientists have observed, this has taken place frequently earlier than, and every now and then the consequences have been catastrophic.

This month the journal Palaeogeography, Palaeoclimatology, Palaeoecology published a unique difficulty that explores a growing body of proof that past volcanic releases of carbon dioxide may have helped pressure many of the maximum excessive die-offs in earth records.

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Continue studying the principle tale

While cautioning that there may also have been different killers involved in those Armageddons, as properly, the paleontologist David Bond and the geologist Stephen Grasby write within the journal that maximum mass extinctions were marked by way of “international warming, anoxia and ocean acidification, driven by means of adjustments in atmospheric CO2.” After synthesizing a substantial frame of literature and reviewing nearly 20 worldwide mass extinctions over the past 1/2 billion years — including the most severe ones, the so-known as Big Five — the authors concluded that “huge scale volcanism is the primary driving force of mass extinctions” and that “most extinctions are associated with global warming and proximal killers inclusive of marine anoxia.”

The journal’s special issue displays a research community that, failing to discover asteroid impacts at the crime scenes of most of the planet’s worst pre historic calamities, has grown to become its interest away from the sky and closer to homegrown killers.

Today, in the lonely reaches of Siberia, piles of historical basalt stack up, in places, miles thick. During the peak of the End-Permian mass extinction 252 million years ago, this lava would have protected hundreds of thousands of rectangular miles of what became then the supercontinent Pangaea. But it wasn’t clearly the lava that nearly exterminated existence on the earth.

As the paintings of Dr. Burgess files, whilst this magma started out spreading into the shallow crust of Siberia, it intruded into one of the International’s largest coal basins, cooking huge deposits of carbon-wealthy rocks. The superheated fossil fuels then ruptured on the earth’s surface in dazzling gas explosions, as documented by a group led by the Norwegian geologist Henrik Svensen.

Though volcanoes in Siberia had already been erupting for around three hundred,000 years, Dr. Burgess’s work indicates that it wasn’t till the magma began burning fossil fuels on a massive scale that the mass extinction started. The carbon dioxide becomes delivered to the atmosphere simply as correctly as by means of any coal-fired electricity plant or minivan muffler these days.

In the resulting chaos, as temperatures rose and life died within the acidifying, oxygen-starved oceans, the planet almost lost its pulse. I requested Dr. Burgess what a time tourist journeying the End-Permian earth might have skilled. “It would be hot and it would be horrible,” he stated, guffawing.

Though the asteroid that would wipe out the dinosaurs 186 million years later may get more attention, the Great Dying dwarfs that disaster in destruction. It added approximately the give up to a less well-known but in addition captivating, and lots older world — a super continental wasteland stocked with a peculiar collection of uncanny pre-mammal forebears and, within the seas, an archaic hallucination of shells and tentacles that had prevailed for the reason that dawn of animal existence.

Today humanity performs the position of that primeval Siberian supervolcano, burning via the sector’s historic stores of carbon, long buried underground in the form of oil, coal and herbal gasoline. Though there had been likely different killers afoot within the Great Dying — like ozone-destroying halocarbons, acid rain and a heavy dose of poisonous heavy metals raining from the volcanic smog — it changed into the chemistry-warping pulse of carbon dioxide that has attracted the most suspicion for its role in almost finishing the arena. And we’ve most effective to observe the contemporary ocean to see why.

Excess carbon dioxide reacts with seawater to make it inhospitable to the animals that use carbonate to build their skeletons. Our modern oceans have already emerged as 30 percentage greater acidic because the begin of the Industrial Revolution, and the shells of fluttering planktonic snails — which form a foundational part of the meals net inside the Antarctic and the Pacific Northwest — have been found pitted with holes in our newly souring seas.

By 2050 the Southern Ocean will no longer be capable of host the one’s creatures, which additionally form an essential part of the weight loss plan of salmon. Acidification will even doom, possibly by mid-century, the already in poor health coral reefs that host 25 percent of the ocean’s biodiversity. And the world’s shallow oceans are dropping oxygen as the planet warms and nutrient pollution pours in from agricultural heartlands and concrete watersheds. Paleontologists have visible some of these modifications before.

It’s nevertheless an open query what will result from our continuing chemistry test with the planet, however, the history of mass extinctions counsels severe caution.

Luckily, we’re nevertheless an extended way far away from an End-Permian level mass extinction, even though some paleontologists warn that a few more centuries of environmental extra may additionally properly get us there. But you don’t need to get all the manner to the Apocalypse before lifestyles start to get markedly much less comfy.

Even earlier than America’ harebrained exit from the Paris weather settlement, the planet turned into well off direction from its 3.6-degree Fahrenheit (2-degree Celsius) goal for 2100. We’re presently on pace for about 7.2 stages Fahrenheit (four ranges Celsius) of warming with the aid of the give up of the century, a temperature that at instances within the past has intended no ice at both poles. But the calendar doesn’t prevent at the stop of the century and continued warming beyond so that it will begin to make elements of the planet uninhabitable for mammals like ourselves, due to the risks of warmth stress. And, as the bleaching of the Great Barrier Reef shows, the oceans are already suffering to conform to a hotter, greater acidic world.

Though the Great Dying changed into absolutely severe, and probably blanketed some stresses beyond the scope of humanity’s armamentarium, we’ve got emerged as an impressive geological force in our own proper as we maintain to tweak and warp the complicated earth structures that preserve existence.

“The fee at which we’re injecting CO2 into the atmosphere these days, consistent with our exceptional estimates, is 10 instances quicker than it changed into at some stage in the End-Permian,” the paleoclimatologist Lee Kump, dean of the College of Earth and Mineral Sciences at Penn State, told me. “And charges depend. So nowadays we’re creating a totally tough environment for life to evolve, and we’re enforcing that trade perhaps 10 instances quicker than the worst occasions in earth’s records.”