A funny old time

It's a funny old time in Ireland just now.

The CEO of our second largest bank resigned over the weekend ... because he admitted that he had used the private computer in his office to look at the website of a Las Vegas escort agency, 'with links to sites of an adult nature'. He had made the rules, and he took the hit on himself.

Meanwhile, over the last few weeks, the country's largest bank has been embroiled in a series of revelations about systematic overcharging of customers for foreign exchange transactions, adding insurance premiums to loans without clients' permission, and, most recently, admitting that named members of its former top management benefited from secret overseas investments and had 'tax issues'.

These are revealed on the watch of the same CEO who survived the $700 million Risnak scandal of the bank's US subsidiary some years ago. Arguably a worse situation than the 'curiosity killed the cat' internet browsing of the other bank's boss. But so far, only the 'internet' CEO has thought fit to resign.

And then there's the government minister who, over the last several months, insisted on pushing forward the purchase of electronic voting machines, which were to be used in our forthcoming local and European elections. This despite a lot of opposition from other political parties, and the people of the country. His stance was backed up solidly by his boss, our Taoiseach (prime minister).

There's another angle, as the voting machines were apparently supplied by a company set up by former employees of the main political party in the government.

Eventually, a commission which the minister had picked himself to examine the concerns turned around and told him bluntly the machines were not proven to be accurate, nor was there any way of checking if they had worked properly. He had to back down, and we're now back to the tried and trusted pencil and paper (and its attendant paper trail).

The total cost so far of this electoral farce is more than $100 million of taxpayers' money. But the minister is not resigning, nor is his boss, who is strongly being lobbied to be the next President of the European Union.

As I said, it's a funny old time in Ireland.

And the fun times aren't over yet ...

A champion with tarnished armour

Ever since I was a boy, I've admired America. Initially from stories in books, on TV, in the movies that were where we learned about places we'd not yet been and people we'd not yet seen. And where it wasn't easy to get to then, travel not being as easy and cheap as it is today.

I finally got there for the first time, for three weeks in 1976. To Groton in Massachusetts. And up around New Hampshire for a week of that.

Beautiful places. Lovely people. People who were friendly simply because that was what they were. People who invited us to their homes simply because that was what they did. People who had a relatively short history to look back on, but who cherished their built heritage as if it was a thousand years old, and their local environment as it it was on the point of extinction.

In autumn 1980, I went on a 17-day tour, minding a group of five Irish couples, to LA, San Francisco, Las Vegas and New York. The adventures and enjoyments and the odd tribulations of that excursion are other stories, some written, others the base for some of my fiction. They also helped build further my appreciation for the core of what it was to be American.

The following summer I brought my young family for three months to New England, during which time I started my first novel, spent some wonderful times in every one of the local states with my wife and then three children, and then came home to a new career in radio news.

Since then I've been to America many times, both working and on vacation. Idaho, Utah, Colorado, Florida, New Jersey, New York. Always enjoying the extraordinary variety of landscape and lifestyle that America offers, the unstinting friendliness of the many of its people I met, and the innovation of idea and thought that made it a powerhouse in the world.

Sure, I've always known it isn't a perfect place, or its people perfect either. Nowhere is, and none of us are. But I liked America and its people, and still do.

There's a thing about living in a place like Ireland. We're small, but our outlook has always been further than either our own country or the European Continent, in part because we don't make enough local news to drown out the world stuff. Also, we've tended to travel a lot, often looking for work and a life that wasn't always possible in Ireland before the recent times of the Celtic Tigerr. And a lot of places took us in, notably America.

That's part of the affinity, too. We feel part of the country, because so many Irish were able to make their homes and their lives there, when they couldn't do so at home.

But today I'm very concerned for the future of the America I know. Not because of the threats from terrorism, because that is something the world has to worry about, not just Americans. Rather, I'm worried about a threat from within that seems to me to be much more serious.

Here in Ireland, and in much of Europe, many of us fear that all the good things that are basic American are being cast aside by its leadership, on an agenda of their own. That is certainly my own view. I think the great and varied peoples that are America have been hijacked by an administration that doesn't reflect them or their real aspirations.

I think the atrocity that was 9/11 has also been hijacked by the same people, and used as an excuse for rampant adventurism which is killing both Americans and other people for no good reasons. Greed and exploitation are never good reasons. Revenge even less.

And what really saddens me is that, for now anyway, I have lost interest in ever going to America again, because I'm uncomfortable with the behaviour of a country that is supposed to lead in pursuit of the ideals of democracy and fair play laid down by its founding fathers. Instead of the champion it once was perceived to be by the world, America is rapidly getting a reputation as the world's bully boy.

Which is a shame, not least because I have a son living there. As do many friends of mine too. And also because I still feel an enormous affection for the ordinary American people and their inate good qualities, qualities which I believe they still have.

One of the things the TV in the corner of my living room gives me is access to a wide variety of news channels: Irish, British, European, Chinese, Indian, Middle East ... and CNN and Fox.

Watching particularly those last two depresses me, because from my perspective it seems their journalists and presenters haven't a bull's notion of what's really happening on this side of the world.

I have some competence in this view, given that I've been a journalist for 27 years, during which time I have also taught the craft. Not as a war correspondent, sure. But there are war correspondents and 'war correspondents' and I can usually recognise the real ones.

President George W Bush is visiting our country at the end of next month, staying overnight in one of our expensive old castle hotels. Under the security arrangements currently in preparation, the people living in the towns around where this castle is will actually need to have passes to enter and leave their home places for two days.

That never happened before with all the previous American Presidents who visited here, and who mostly were welcomed with open arms and interest.

It is just, in a very small way, one of the things that America is doing to small people these days. Like the requirement that, if I want to fly to the US now, all the details which the airline has about me, including credit cards and even dietary requirements, must be given to the US Homeland Security people. That was bullied out of the European airlines by America, under threat of refusing landing to any which didn't comply. It is interesting that an equivalent thing was not demanded of US airlines flying to Europe?

The Homeland Security people won't find much of interest in my credit cards. Maybe they'd like to pay them off some month, and then perhaps I wouldn't mind the intrusion?

I don't in any way want to seem patronising, but I believe America is looking into the abyss. Its leaders seem to want to jump in, dragging all of its people with them.

I hope there are still enough people there who care enough to not let that happen. Because I care enough for what I still believe is the REAL America and its people, their generosity and their enthusiasm, to wish that it doesn't all disappear in the short time of a single administration.

And I would dearly love to WANT to go back there again.

AlphaSmart Dana battery field test ... (hic)

Hmm ... I've been in the habit of bringing my Alphie to the pub because it is simple and uncomplicated, though the Dana's keyboard is much better (Please: This is NOT to say that the AS's keyboard is bad, it isn't).

But because I wanted to keep in touch with the outside world by being able to check my email (via infrared and my cellphone), this evening I brought Dana instead. I wrote a car review, edited it, and also did check my email (using no more than a few minutes online).

Because the particular pub was kind of dark, I used the backlight all the time. And now I find that three hours after starting, my rechargable battery status has gone from around 90 per cent to 27 per cent.

On that basis, it is never going to achieve the 25 hours or so that is suggested the machine can do.

On that basis, it might not even achieve the 5 hours which my iBook can again do now that I have given it the present of a new battery.

But I expect that without using the backlight, which I really could have gotten away with, Dana would still have a pretty decent battery life left at this point.

I'm not too concerned, actually. because my working arrangements with my iBook and AS and Dana are predicated on what I require at the time, as I have reported elsewhere on the site.

I fly to south-western France for the day on Monday, back late that evening. So Dana and my cellphone will suffice without any problem. I go to midlands Britain and back on Tuesday (not Munich as I thought earlier) and Dana and my Nokia will again be grand. I go to eastern France on Wednesday for two days, and because I'll have to update a website from there, I'll be bringing both my AS3K and my iBook, the former because I can use it to write on airplanes and in airport lounges, and the latter because I can update the site. Dana stays behind, but by having the AS3K with me, I don't have to bring the heavier accoutrements of power units for the iBook because it will only be used for the 'desktop' work in my hotel.

(Why not use iBook on the planes and also bring power supplies instead of the AS3K? Well, even in Business Class, there are only a few seats where it is possible to use a flip-lid laptop in comfort, whereas both AS3K and Dana can be used even in economy crush without difficulty.)

Now, maybe none of this makes sense, and some of you think I could simplify the whole business of my choice of 'axe' as Tom Morrisey puts it. (Again, I understand perfectly his moniker for his AS3K, because I am also a guitar buff and love my Taylors.)

But that's how I do it. When I buy a tool that helps me in my work, I use it in the most efficient way I can. I have various works: I am a writer, a magazine designer, a digital artist, a web publisher, and, when I have time, a bug in the ass of local politicians when I satirise their pompous foibles.

So, like my younger brother - who plays guitar better than I do, but hasn't got my voice - I have a number of machines to do what I need to do.

Dana is doing grand. So is AS3K - my 'bar counter axe' - and my iBook.

But now, three hours and 45 minutes after starting from about 90 per cent, Dana is down to 27 per cent battery.

I wonder how many more pints I can drink, and write stuff at the same time, before we both run out of juice ...

(But now that I check back, 45 minutes ago we were both at 27 per cent, so that last period of time hasn't cost us anything in power terms. Only in cost of booze. Most confusing. Means I have to stay here at the bar and spend money on drink to keep on with the experiment. Not fair. Really.)

OK, I should be doing something more productive, but let's go onwards to some wishlists. For my AS3K.

As a Mac user since the Mac Plus without a hard disk, I feel very much at home in AlphaWord on Dana because most of the keyboard shortcuts are straight out of a Mac keyboard. Which is not unexpected since the founders of AlphaSmart were themselves Mac people.

But there are inconsistencies in the two versions of AlphaWord as used on the Dana (my first AS purchase) and the AS3K.

The CTRL-backspace in Dana which deletes words backwards is very useful to a writer who wants a quick change of mind. But there's nothing equivalent in AS3K, and it slows down change of mind action.

Similarly, to highlight a word in Dana only requires a CTRL-SHIFT-BACK ARROW, but in AS3K needs an individual-letter backspacing right through the word with SHIFT-BACK ARROW.

There are other inconsistencies between the two AlphaWords, and I'd really like if both were the same. Maybe that is not possible because the arrangements between the two 'platforms' are different. But then, maybe it IS possible.

(Hmm ... 20 minutes after my last check, we're now down to 22 per cent battery. Or 18 per cent degradation per hour. Which works out at 5.5 hours total potential capacity so far.)

OK, another pint, and I guess I'd better segue to something more productive in the meanwhile. There's that 5-Series BMW 3.0d that's outside my house at the moment ...

(15 minutes later, and we're 22 per cent.)

(10 minutes more, now at 21 per cent.)

(Now, five hours after (hic ... excuse me) starting this experiment, we're at 18 per cent battery. This is drinking above and beyond the call of AlphaSmart duty. (I have since the last note read a very interesting article about how the principle of 'objective' journalism has gagged US media coverage about the Iraq Adventure. And it was written in the US. But let's not get political here - this is a scientific experiment that has nothing to do with US National Security.)

(Half an hour later - I've researched from something already in Dana about future technology in motoring. Now 17 per cent battery remaining, 5.5 hours out from 90 per cent capacity, using the backlight all the time. I don't know how long I can keep drinking ... or thinking coherently.)

(Now, at 6 hours in, we're registering 17 per cent. I've since the last report managed the first few hundred words of a commissioned piece for The Irish Times, and also contributed a few more thoughts to the AlphaWord debate piece. But it's getting tougher, and if Dana decides to continue to reduce battery at this pace, I'm not going to be able to sh sh..shhh ... urp ... stick the p p p p..pace.


(10 minutes more: I gggg...give up. 'night, all.)

NOTE: this piece first appeared on the AlphaSmart Community website on February 8, 2004. My hangover cured itself, and I also subsequently found that battery readings drop fast but then plateau so that the Dana can carry on for many, many more hours than in this 'test'.

Finding the nuggets in an ideas goldmine

(Everyday life is the mother lode of story ideas, writes William Trapman/Brian Byrne, but - just like panning for gold - you never know when you'll hit paydirt.)



"There's a girl buried on Butcher's Island."

He was one of the oldest men in Kilcullen, and he made that remark one day when we were talking about the river which flows through my home town.

I asked him to tell me more, but he shook his head. "There are people still alive from the families involved."

But the remark stayed in my mind. And one day I began writing a completely fictional story about how a girl could come to be buried on the island in the river. I used the locations I'd grown up with and knew intimately - I had played and swum as a child, and once nearly drowned, near Butcher's Island - and I set the story in the early part of this century.

The result was my first published short story, 'The Final Sin'.

When it appeared in a magazine, I brought it down to show the old man. He read it and looked up and smiled. "You set it a bit early, but you were very close to what really happened."

'The Final Sin' appears in my book 'Mariseo's House & other stories', and every one of the other sixteen yarns in the publication has its own story of how the idea was triggered.

'Trigger' is the right word. But it is a completely spontaneous mechanism. Most of the time I don't know what's going to be the kernel which will germinate into a full-grown piece of fiction . . . though I always know it afterwards. It can come from something I see, some thing someone says, something that is told to me secondhand. The sources are infinite, and elusive - if I try to look for a story idea, it just doesn't happen. And it can be a very short or a much longer time before what I call the 'story line' jiggles my brain and says: "I want out. I've something to tell you." And then the story writes itself.

Oh, not quite-there's the usual blood, sweat and tears . . . but the story will want out. And will come out.

The 'Mariseo's House & other stories' collection is a veritable goldmine of story line examples. The first story, 'Marching with the Saints', was triggered by a James Bond movie on TV: my wife and I were watching the one which has a New Orleans funeral in it, and she turned to me and said: "I'd like a jazz band like that at my funeral." Quite a while later the story pulled me, kicking and screaming, to my keyboard. The result is one of the most popular pieces in the book. Watch out for it . . . I'm currently turning it into a TV play.

Personal experience is still the prime mover for any writer. A number of the stories in the collection involve funerals, and that's reasonable because in a former part of my life I was an undertaker. A couple were triggeredby actual burials, others by people I met at funerals.

And then there's the last story in the book, 'Waiting for Waves'. One day I was sitting in the central open-plan restaurant of the Powerscourt Centre in Dublin and I noticed a very elegant woman wandering through the crowd.

I regularly notice elegant women. It is one of the nice things in life.

She was later joined by two men at a shop selling pictures, and they spent some time deciding on a print to buy. Afterwards I approached the woman in charge of the place and asked her what picture they'd selected. She showed me a copy. This was one of the occasions when I knew a story would come from the incident. But it took some time before it happened.

Want to know how it turned out? Read the book.

We writers write, after all, to make a living.

There are a few stories set in New England. That reflects a summer I spent in a small town in Massachusetts back in 1982. One of them, 'With All Our Children', came about from when I was in a rather tough bar on the outskirts of town and met a couple of women who lived together. The location of the first meeting is accurately used, the women are accurately described, and the rest, as they say, is sheer coincidence.

That particular piece was originally 14,000 words long, and ended up as 4,000 words without any change in the story. Which says something about the power of subbed words. But . . . we're talking here about ideas, right?

And so, out of the goldmine, the title story.

I was walking up the town one day and somebody called me over to give an Italian couple directions to a local hill which had Celtic archeological connections. They'd arrived by bus, and it was two miles away, so I drove them up and showed them the place. They, some time later, became the models for the characters in the story. A story, 'Mariseo's House', which is completely fiction.

But that story subsequently also gave birth to the idea for the novel 'The Mariseo Legacy', which was published in early 1996.

Watch this space. And keep an eye out (and an ear, and anything else you have that has some kind of sensory facility) for the story line for your next piece of fiction.

Oh yes, fiction.

Any similarity to persons living or dead is purely coincidental.

Yes. Sure. Absolutely.

And I occasionally still wonder about the people alive in my home town whose 'families are connected' with the girl buried on Butcher's Island.


©1994, 1996 William Trapman

(This article was originally published in the Irish writer's magazine Final Draft. William Trapman is a pseudonym of journalist Brian Byrne, who lives in Ireland.)

A friend called Dana

I left it a while before writing about my Dana, because I wanted to find out all its faults first. That I have since bought a second one for my partner is an indication of my level of success in that quest ...

After more than a quarter of a century in journalism and writing, I'm fairly familiar with keyboards, and before them, old clackety-clack typewriters.

I always liked portability, to the point that I never travelled anywhere without my much-loved Olivetti 25 Lettera. I even used it on airplanes, once arousing the ire of a whole section in a night-time across-US air flight because the clacking was being transmitted along the tubes that carried the movie sound to those pre-electronic earphones.

Then, when I got my first Macintosh Plus, I also discovered the Tandy 102, which gave me something that would allow me work electronically away from the office and feed the results back into my Mac afterwards.

The Tandy was really good, with some 20 hours of duty available from four AA batteries. It was light, and tough, and because it only was for writing, it didn't distract me from that part of my work, which was also increasingly bringing me towards layout and design. It did have a limitation: even though I was able to add a larger chip to it, it only held the equivalent of 4,000 words.

Then, when the first Apple Powerbook came on the scene, I bought in early to what was to be a long line of Apple portables, culminating in my current beloved iBook, which has allowed me do everything from magazine design to website daily management from many parts of the world when I travel.

But I still used the Tandy also until recently, when it rather died at my hand after I tried to repair a broken Caps Lock with superglue. It ended being permanently locked in caps! Sorry, really sorry, old and faithful friend.

Enter Dana, which I'd been conscious of for some time. And coincidentally, though US-spec wouldn't have put me off, a British spec one was available. While on a business trip to Spain I called one of the UK suppliers - Chromasonic Computer Centre - and two days after I got home to Ireland this machine was sitting in a space cleared from the normal debris on my desk.

Have to say, 'machine' is not the right word. Never has been for my various laptop computers, which have for so many years been my constant companions. And after three months with this particular companion, I hope my iBook isn't feeling too jealous ...

The AlphaSmart people really got this one right.

Dana is a beautiful shape. It is trim and trendy. It has probably the best keyboard I have used in a career that has brought me from print journalism through radio, magazine editing and production, photography, and, most recently, internet publishing in both local news and national automotive journalism.

I spend quite a bit of time on airplanes, and like to use that time to catch up on work. Even on the times I fly business class, there's not really enough room to comfortably use a computer with a standard flip-up lid. So now my iBook remains stowed in the overhead locker, while the Dana toils through the airborne hours with me. And in airport bars and lounges.

And in my local pubs too, or maybe the coffee shops, depending on my humour: I'll often move out of my office when I want a change of place to do a different kind of writing. The other customers are used to seeing me with a laptop propped on the bar. Now I've introduced Dana to the same bars. Hope it isn't a corrupting influence.

I've been impressed with the thought that was put into the different facilities which Dana provides. Nothing too high-flying, but all useful for time and work management. I think how the Dana interacts with my desktop eMac and my iBook is as painless as it comes.

There are a couple of minor shortcomings. The screen can be hard to see in poor light. I don't like the backlight, so I'll be buying a Kensington Flylight for those conditions. And I always bold the font when I'm writing because the plain text reads a little thin.

I also think throwaway plastic screen protectors would be a good idea. I've made my own by cutting it out of a 30-cent acetate sheet, and just feel more comfortable that the main screen won't be accidentally cut.

With the help of correspondence in this community forum, I've added functionality: backup to an SD card, a Psion Travel Modem which has already proved its worth, and a USB/SD gidget for transferring files to and from press office computers which don't have synch programmes installed.

In short, my Dana can do almost anything I need to do on the road, or while watching evening TV as I'm doing while writing this. Its basic cost was more than paid for by pieces written on one trip abroad a week after I got it. And the 475 euros cost is at a level where I wouldn't have to worry too much about a replacement if it is damaged or lost.

But I wouldn't really like anything to happen to it. Dana, and all my other computers now and past, have been extensions of myself, have helped me to build a satisfying career, extended my leisure options, and have been largely responsible for me being able to raise my family.

They are more than machines. 'Friends' gets close. Thanks for introducing me to this particular one, AlphaSmart.

NOTE: This piece first appeared on the AlphaSmart Community forum on July 19, 2003.

Hot and cold in the Utah desert

If you don't like heights, especially the precipitous unguarded edges on crumbling rough trails climbing up the sides of canyons, then don't go on the Land Rover G4 Global Challenge.

I hate those kind of heights, but I did go. Through the canyonlands of Utah with Irish participant Paul McCarthy and his team-mate for the last leg of the month-long event, Canadian Kitt Stringer.

And though there were times when I was terrified, as I knew I would be, I wouldn't have missed the experience for anything. Because it was an awesome trip. And that was just the scenery.

They call south-eastern Utah the 'Colour Country'. For very good reason, because I was immediately gobsmacked by the variety of the colouring in the landscape on only the first day we got into the area after wending our way from Las Vegas.

In particular, Snow Canyon State Park was a wild wash of sandstones - white, pink, red and purple - punctuated by some unusual volcanic black rock uptrusions. The vegetation on the rough floor of the canyon has an extraordinary blue-green tint, seeming almost artificial or even mutant to an Irish eye.

It was here too that I got a view of the kind of hardship which the G4 Challenge contestants had already put themselves through during the previous three weeks in the eastern US, South Africa and Western Australia.

By the time I joined the global 'wagon train', Dingle stonemason Paul McCarthy had come out 8th, 6th and 5th in the three previous legs.

Earlier in the year he'd qualified for the trip in an elimination International Finals held at Eastnor Park in England. That was also a training exercise for the participants - and their finals colleagues from each country who were eliminated then - in outdoors pursuits that included climbing, abseiling, orienteering, mountain biking, running and, naturally, offroad driving.

There had been one casualty. The original Canadian competitor had cut himself badly at the start of the second leg in South Africa, and his colleague beaten in the International Finals, Kitt Stringer, had been drafted in.

Paul had chosen Kitt as his team-mate for this leg, having previously partnered Tim Pickering from Britain, ??? from Germany, and Nancy Olson of the US.

He had also gained a reputation as one of the most laid-back of the contestants, some of whom were taking their race for the prize of a top-spec Range Rover very seriously indeed.

"This is such a big competition that everyone taking part is a winner," he said at one stage in the last week. "Where else would you get to travel around the world for free?"

In Snow Canyon the competitors undertook a Maximiser, a one-and-a-half hours slog at speed over the challenging terrain of Snow Canyon, 'dibbling' into electronic sensors hidden around the area and which they had to find through a series of map coordinates.

The effort concluded with a race around a convulated course on their mountain bikes, where time was vital towards gaining the points for the event.

Paul and Kitt did poorly in the Maximiser, coming in 6th out of the eight teams. Kitt was disappointed that he'd picked a wrong location and lost time which pulled both of them back. Paul displayed the sanguinity which had given him his reputation.

"Life's too short to be worried about things like that."

And then it was time to navigate the Land Rover Discovery convoy of around 50 vehicles - each team had a support vehicle and a number had several Discoveries carrying news media covering the event - to camp for the night. Accompanying Paul and Kitt there was only myself and a Canadian photographer. I travelled in the back seat with the lads, while the Canadian travelled behind with support driver Karen McDonald.

The camp was several hours away, in another Utah National Park, the Pink Coral Sand Dunes. Unfortunately we got there at dusk, and there was no opportunity to take the Discos offroading in the dunes as had been suggested by the organisers.

"You really don't want to be going in there and find yourself having to dig out a vehicle in the dark," Paul warned Kitt, drawing on experience gained by his spending three months of every winter in Morocco over the last several years.

For yours truly it was time for a couple of new experiences. Setting up my G4 Igloo tent, which is an excellent patent but needed Karen's help for me to learn about, was the first. Then there was the 'dinner' of freeze-dried food in foil bags, reconstituted by pouring in boiling water heated by 'volcano' kettles that use a drop of diesel for starting and which are subsequentially fed by twigs and scraps of paper.

'Texan BBQ Chicken' was hot and spicy, but quite glutinous, and by choice I survived each of the next few days on bread and fruit and the odd snack grabbed when we stopped at service stations to refuel the somewhat thirsty 4-litre V8s.

In the dark, knackered after just three hours' sleep in the previous 42, I hit the sleeping bag ...

... and woke at dawn to the unmistakable pitter of snow on the tent.

It's no fun breaking camp in the semi-dark in snow, particularly when you've been expecting the 'desert' to be hot..

But when it was done, Paul and Kitt and the other teams headed for the 'Strategy Pit', where they were given a number of 'Hunters' for the day: six locations to be plotted, at each of which there would be a task lasting anything from 30-40 minutes and involving one or more of the disciplines at the core of the competition. All against the clock.

The scoring system was complicated by the requirement for teams to 'predict' in what placing they would arrive at each of the Hunters, compared to other teams. Extra points would be available for successful predictions, and the element of strategy in this aspect often ended up in negotiations between teams at the location about swapping or sharing the points.

We set off in still-snowing conditions for the first Hunter, in a small canyon about 30 minutes away. Kitt drove, while Paul tapped in way-point coordinates to the GPS unit as if he was playing a Nintendo game.

Once again, the location was quite fascinating, bright red weather-smoothed rock all around, but with the added contrast of snow lodged on the shanks of the formations. And the greenery again had that very blue tinge, almost fluorescent, adding its own eeriness.

The Hunter involved the teams running through the narrow canyon, then scaling a rocky wall to find the hidden tag, and then getting back to the start again. As Paul ran home through the narrowest part, I could see him limping.

"More bloody running," he grimaced.

Running on the flat, he'd found, had resurrected an old surfing injury to his knee. "I'm OK running on rough ground, though, and often I can pass out the others then."

But there was no time to small-talk. The thing about Hunter days was to keep moving, because the more of the events they could finish in the day, the better the points. Strategy came into deciding which ones were feasible, taking into account that teams also had to reach the next camp by a certain time or forfeit all points gained during the day.

That had already happened to Paul and his partner in Australia, but they had appealed the decision on the basis that they had been held up by a request from one of the Land Rover photographers for a picture opportunity. And they retained their points.

The G4 Challenge was as much a media event as it was an adventure race. Naturally, the idea is that it gains publicity for the brand, and while there were just 16 contestants, more than 200 people were involved in the event, many of them Land Rover personnel preparing the way and providing logistical support.

Equally as many were people waving still and movie cameras, and poking microphones and scribbling notes. Land Rover had their own full TV crew and a number of still photographers, and almost every move made by each contestant was recorded over the course of the event, pictures and copy being made available to journalists around the world on a daily-updated media website.

Every time a competitor finished an event, he or she was interviewed by the TV people, clips that will eventually find their way into several documentaries of the Challenge.

Anyway, Paul and Kitt decided the next Hunter to do would be one located near Bryce Canyon, about an hour and a half's drive away. So off we went, with the weather improving by the mile. By the time we got to the spectacular canyon itself we were somewhat mesmerised by the landscape and took a wrong turning that brought us towards the top of the thousand-foot 'wall' which has no less than 60 discrete colours in its sandstone.

The GPS unit kept pointing towards where we were supposed to go. It was only 12 kilometres away ... but right over the canyon edge!

Considerable time was lost, and when we finally got down to the right location, although we'd seen parts of the trip that others hadn't, there were points to be made up. The Hunter was a relatively easy one, requiring a navigation on mountain bikes to a series of sensor spots.

"I ended up dropping the bike and running through the rough fields," Paul said afterwards. "It was the kind of place where that worked better for me."

After that - and these guys didn't bother with waiting to have food - there was time for one more Hunter before we had to head for the camp. That turned out to be a 'scramble' on what looked to me like a seriously dangerous rough rocky cliff. The targets which had to be reached were in a sequence which meant the competitors had to do a lot of cross-travelling on the face.

And they enjoyed it! Actually, I shouldn't use the exclamation mark, because these people enjoyed every difficult and dangerous activity, quite a few of which Paul, for instance, had never done before. I guess it takes a sense of adventure first ... and then fearless nerves.

The first I have ...

And so to camp. Except that it was three hours' drive away. And the only way to make that trip on time was on what was called The Burr Trail.

I was already suspicious of anything called a 'trail'. The signs at the beginning ('Travel at Your Own Risk') didn't help.

But there were spectacular views of various canyons. It was some time after the tarmac had changed to dirt that we came to the bit that required us to drive from one canyon floor level to another, a mile of track downhill with sheer drops. Very loose, very hairy. I kept my eyes closed most of the time.

Our camp for the night was at Lake Powell, which had been formed by the damming of the Colorado River to provide water for much of mid- and Western America.

It was a lovely spot, but I was curious about the site where we parked our tents, because it seemed to me that it might have been under water some of the time.

"Yup, the water level is 95 feet lower than it should be, because of drought here over the last three years," a passing Park Ranger confirmed. "There's not been enough rain to keep the lake full, and there's too much draw off of the water, before and below it."

It seems that there is a very serious water problem developing in this part of the US, and the stuff may well become more scarce and more contentious than oil in a not-distant future.

It was a situation later confirmed by a couple of rangers I met upstream near Moab on the Colorado River. They'd been checking on the numbers of a particular pike native to that river, but which is now an endangered species because of changes in the river habitat. That day, they'd found none.

"It is no longer the 'mighty Colorado'," one said.

Meanwhile, back at Lake Powell, I slept again the sleep of the exhausted ...

And the next day followed much the same pattern as before, though prefaced by a warning from G4 organiser Nick Horne.

"Four vehicles were pulled over for speeding yesterday, and the local cops are getting anxious," he said. "It would be a real shame if this event was pulled because we didn't observe the speed limits."

I'd been warned by Paul at the beginning that the Discovery would be getting rather smelly by Thursday. He was so right. The mixture of sweating competitors and their sweaty clothes, and the sweet rotting of abandoned apple butts and banana skins, was building up a very rich environment indeed.

The guys seemed to mostly live on Power Bars which had been provided by the local Land Rover organisation. Maybe they provided physical boost, but they tasted vile, in any of the three flavours available. And somehow those flavours also seemed to permeate the vehicle. Maybe secondhand.

Anyway, after more running and abseiling, and more running and rock climbing, and more running and mountain biking, we eventually drove to the penultimate camp in the hills above Moab, 'The Adventure Capital of America'. After the last Hunter, because the Canadian had abandoned us to have dinner in town with a friend, I travelled with Karen to keep her company.

Her vehicle smelled an awful lot better. Mind you, after three days of not washing properly, not bothering to shave, and living in essentially the same clothes, I probably didn't do much to keep it that way!

The drive to the camp involved another of those 'trail' sections which had my nemesis sheer drops off dirt roads. I didn't like it, but Karen is an off-road instructor who was also the first woman entrant in the much-tougher 'Camel Trophy' adventure races of the mid-90s, and I managed to keep my eyes open almost all the way.

In the early hours of the morning, when I woke once again in a little tent, I came to an important decision. I wasn't going to do the camp bit any more.

Not because of the tent hassle, or the discomfort. It was a problem of my workstyle.

Out in the wilds of southern Utah, for all its dramatic beauty, I was suffering withdrawal symptoms. Not from fear of high places, or even agoraphobia - the psychological allergy to wide open spaces - but from being 'unwired'.

Apart from a very occasional use of the Iridium satellite phone with which every vehicle on the Challenge was equipped, I'd not been able to talk to my outside world.

My cellphone didn't have coverage. I couldn't access my email. I couldn't find out what was happening in Ireland, in the Gulf War, or even in the State of Utah.

I couldn't upload the stories I'd been writing.

Now, that's REAL roughing it.

So, when dawn broke over the Manti-LaSal State Forest where we were then parked, I went to find my apple and bread bun and requested that, on the grounds of essential deadlines, I get into my near-Moab hotel a night earlier than planned.

"I'll see what we can do ..." I was told. Politely, even sympathetically. But not with any degree of definite.

And then we had another tough day of events. Toughest for the contestants, of course. By now in the kind of weather I'd originally anticipated. Hot. Sunny. Non-Irish.

There was just one very hairy trip left, as it turned out. Which was up the side of a canyon on a road mostly disintegrating, and along much of which were those perpendicular drops. I was still with Karen, and when it got rough I just closed my eyes again. I was sure she wanted to get home safely too.

But when we got to the venue for the Hunter, it turned out to also offer the most fabulous view of the trip, with the canyon through which we had climbed framed in the distance by the Rocky Mountains.

It was worth every fearful flutter I'd endured on the way up. On the way down, I again kept my eyes closed until Karen hit a particularly hard set of bumps, then opened them involuntarily, said 'Oh Shit!', and closed them again ...

And that night, instead of a tent where I couldn't 'wire up', Land Rover DID get me into my hotel.

After checking my email, and showering and shaving off four days of white beard, I went to the restaurant and ate a rib-eye steak and trimmings, drank a bottle of wine, and then strolled back to my room and worked for five hours.

Elated, not by the food and wine, or even by a prospect of a real sleep, but by being 'connected' again.

In the following day's 'Separator' event, where the competitors were no longer teamed and were fighting to improve their final placings, Paul McCarthy enhanced his position by two levels to finish sixth in the overall competition.

He went on to 'chill out' in Los Angeles with family and friends for two weeks. And he didn't expect to eat any more freeze-dried food.

It was great. But when the next G4 Challenge comes up in 2005, it is only fair that somebody else gets a chance to cover it.

I've been there. Done that.

Didn't bring home the T-shirt. It was too sweaty.


(This article first appeared in the Summer Edition of Irish 4x4 & offroad.)


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