outsidesports · 8 years ago
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Red Bull Defiance 2017
by Joanna Williams
Experiences of Team Outside Sports and PAK'nSAVE
I was excited to have the opportunity to race Red bull Defiance again with Sia Svensen. We raced together last year and previously tandem on the C2C. It is always a fun couple of days.
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"To race locally is also a real privilege."  An opportunity to venture into areas which are otherwise hard to access!" As the event approached and with talk of a highly competitive field, it does make you nervous, but you just have to trust that you and your team mate have done enough to get through and you can only do your best.  So after a bike check with Outside Sports and a body Attack at body works with Kevin, there wasn’t much else I could do, apart from get race gear ready.
Sia arrived on Thursday, which was great, it gave her an opportunity to have a practice at clay bird shooting and have a bit of a rest day before the gruelling event started. Gear checks, and registration, hanging out with all these extremely fit looking athletes, can make sleep hard to get.
Day1
Off on the bus and to the barge to Minaret Station.  It was a cold overcast day, but not windy which was promising for the kayak later in the day. Great to catch up with everyone on the barge crossing, enjoying the unusual start to a race.  Then to the start line and we were off… it was all a little crazy, so many people charging on bikes, hard to keep track of team mates. It is the most stunning ride, which I always enjoy, despite the pain of getting up some of those hills, but we made it.  Then onto the run up rocky hill alternative route, it is great to find so many different ways up a hill, it was hands and feet at some points, but we made it to a point where the volunteers pointed us in the direction of the abseil, and that meant down. So it was with relief and a little inkling of cramp that we descended.  It was great to catch up with Floortje and Hamish at this point waiting for the abseil, as we had spent some time training together over the last few months.  A quick zip down and a run across some farmland to the West Wanaka bridge onto the Matukituki river and out to the lake. The change in activity did set of a little cramp at this point for me especially if some steering was required. But it did improve after a while. We had a few mixed teams ahead on this paddle so it gave something to chase. Although, all teams ahead were close to over shooting the buoy turn around in Glendhu, I guess when you could see Wanaka it was hard to turn off to the right! It seemed a long slow paddle, Ruby Island taking a long time to get to and then Wanaka township itself took a while... running out of steam a little towards the end…next time more liquid food for me! It was great to find we were the first female elite team over the line day1. We just hoped for as much of a buffer as possible for day2! It was 15 minutes between us and second and 20 or so between us and third.  So not much time to spare!  A clean up of gear and a look at the weather revealed southerly gales on tops with snow for the next 24 hours or so to 1400m.  Knowing Mnt Alpha was at least 1640m, I was packing my red bull duffle bag with all sorts of warm gear.  Wondered what shoes to wear in the snow!  E-mails later that evening from Sally confirmed we were in for a cold day on the tops, but that a risk of change of run coarse was a possibility.
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Day 2
We woke to snow across the hills and constant rain on the roof. At 5am we were up and about to get down to start line, check kayak and see if there was any quicker way of getting into kayak with Spray skirt ….We tried sliding in, seemed to work, starter hooter went off and Sia and I slide into our kayaks only to find I couldn’t steer, the kayak only wanted to go right! Meanwhile everyone was charging away from us, I straightened for a minute only to turn right again. So off with the spray skirt and move my pack which had jammed against the steering peddles causing it to malfunction. Then we were off trying to catch everyone, knowing we had lost valuable minutes and what’s worse, less potential for getting any drafting help.  We paddled hard and somehow made up a little time, to come in ahead of the other girls and to crawl up the hill to the clay bird shooting.  Sia went first having practiced on the Friday, and then I had a go and managed to hit a clay first shot…was delighted with myself!  I think seeing where the clay was coming from with Sia going first really helped.
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Then onto the bikes. It was incredibly wet and muddy from the start and the transition a little frantic….how many clothes to put on!!?  On up the Criffle hill with Floortje and Hamish and Simon and Misha, always fun to be around your friends, although I was told off for chatting at one point!  It seemed like a lot of climbing, but ok, then it benched out only to climb again into the southerly storm, so it was bitterly cold and even biking uphill didn’t warm you up. On with a jacket for me and then further along again Sia needed more clothes as well, so even more layers- leggings and waterproof pants, no point in getting hyperthermia!  A real risk I would have to say.  We helped each other helmet buckles etc as cold hands meant they weren’t working as they should. We had quite a few teams including Collet girls team catch up us at this point. But it was worth the change, I think it was important to keep some warmth, especially with a technical descent ahead.  It was muddy and slippy, and then there was the tall grass with big rocks to cause havoc.  So we took it carefully and made it down in one piece although Sia did have a wee head plant of the edge of the track, but soldiered on. The Cardrona River was in good flow so crossing with bikes for us was tricky, but other boys sports team came to our rescue and helped carry Sia’s bike and help her across.  I was very grateful for this.  We charged through to transition, which was slow I would say due to cold fingers and hands. It was so good to have so much support from the locals at the transitions.  The last leg was altered to an 18km run up towards Alpha and then cutting down avoiding the ridge top travel where the snow was quite thick and the southerly was raging at ridge top.  It still had the main climb up which always seems to be hard going.  Again on stopping to delayer the girls were right on our tails, so we had to keep moving.  It is great to have some close racing to keep us on our toes, quite literally I’d have to say.  On up to the first saddle to a ridge and then on up to get the main ridge to see the Volunteers on the top, wow they were amazing as it was really very cold up there- thanks so much! Steve Hannon in particular on a very exposed cold spot!   Then it was turn right down the ridge line and fence line to the track which leads us down to Waterfall creek.  It was an enjoyable run down with Lake Wanaka looking stunning with snow on the hills and a flat calm lake. I guess you could see the finish line at this point, you could certainly hear it.  But we were still a wee way off.  It was a fun run down hill, down waterfall creek to the lake to follow it around for a further 4 km to the finish line.  
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We knew we were getting chased down and thought Julia and Kristy would be fast along the lake front, so we tried to keep the legs turning over at some speed to get us home!  We made it and were delighted to take home the women’s title again this year.  Thanks to Red Bull Defiance for another great event and to all the Volunteers and the locals support, it really helps to get us to the finish line.  Thanks to Sia for pushing so hard and for being a fabulous team mate.  Thanks to Outside Sports for the ongoing support and for keeping my trusty Specialized stead on track and in good health.  Thanks also to PAK'nSAVE, always very supportive.  It was a very tough race made harder by conditions, the cold and the snow just made it even more of an adventure out there.
#WhereAdventuresBegin
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emmaroseburton · 5 years ago
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Picasso, Minotaurs and Matadors @ The Gagosian, August 2017
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Minotaurs and Matadors is a study in miniature of Picasso’s image of the bull and its competitor; the gaudy, dancing matador. It is curated by Sir John Richardson, a longtime friend of Picasso’s, who has written three volumes (so far) on Picasso’s life. It is on show at the Gagosian Gallery, Grosvenor Hill, April 28 – August 25th, 2017. reveiw up by Emma Rose Burton, in Brussels, 14/08/17.
The feeling of being alone in a room with 50 Picasso’s is breathtaking.  There is complete stillness and complete silence, and it is so utterly gut-wrenching in its unexpectedness that I stop in my tracks and do a 360 like a child would.  Prints, drawings, paintings, sculptures, and curiosities stare back at me, and, in the face of such a provocative collection of objects, I blink first.
The building I’m in is an office block reclaimed by TateHindle, the London architecture firm, who reclad the 90’s exterior in handmade brick carted in from Italy. Its interior is Caruso St John, specialists in museum and gallery interiors. The walls are lined in heavy, canvas drapes whose colours mirror the building’s cool grey exterior: it is modern but not minimal, and, in the hubbub of London, it is very, very quiet.
The exhibition itself is beautifully crafted. Sir John Richardson, Picasso’s friend and biographer curates a beginning with large canvases and a hanging, tapestry-like piece that dominates a whole wall. A home video of Picasso in his studio in winter shows him drawing on glass with white paint that drips and smears.
But it is the second room that is the star of the show. It is here that I am left, for a minute, alone with the Picassos, the room full and heavy with their presence.  One wall is lined with the set of lithographs – Bulls 1-11 – in which the bull wanes from solidly tactile to thin and linear.
Often, critics peg Picasso’s bull as a symbol of virility, strength, and solidity, a symbol of Spanish defiance.  Indeed, on days 1 -5 the animals’ shoulders and beefy necks are muscular and heavy. There is a feast and famine contrast then, with days 6-11, when the bulls wane and are made up of elongated lines that morph into other, organic shapes.
Disarmingly, at least initially, Picasso produced the series over Christmas. But this was 1945: World War II was over only by a matter of months, and communist demonstrations in Greece preceded an imminent civil war. War was at the forefront of Europe’s, and Picasso’s Mediterranean’s, conscious.
A second dichotomy exists in this series, for me at least, that is linked to this backdrop of a continent reeling from war. The bull, in its “strength” on days 1-5, is over-bred and heavy, fashioned to oppose a hidden Matador who stands outside the frame. The bull is bred to have the Matador’s barbed sticks thrust into its shoulders, its highest point, the symbol of its strength, and to die slowly in front of a baying audience. The bull’s solidity and strength are what makes it the perfect, doomed opponent, destroyed by sly trickery and cunning – the Matador’s goading red muleta.
And this is just one of the internal contemplations that Minotaurs and Matadors provokes. If you set this consideration of physical strength as a fatal hamartia against a backdrop of war, only just healed and ready to break open in Europe again, the implications are sobering.
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Picasso wearing a bull’s head intended for bullfighter’s training, La Californie, Cannes, 1959 Photo by Edward Quinn © edwardquinn.com. 
Minotaurs and Matadors is a gem of an exhibition. It is a hidden cave of wonders, teeming with examples of Picasso’s capability and genius.
It is curated elegantly with reserve and prudence, full but not crowded, simple, but not predictable.  The sleek, modern lines of the building belie the warmth of the blue grey Italian stone and the interior drapes. This synchronisation between the space and what fills is rare in an exhibition, it is worth seeing for the quality of the curation alone.
But it is the chance to be quietly alone with Picasso’s art that is the rare gift of the Gagosian’s exhibition.
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popolitiko · 8 years ago
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For 15 years, I’ve spoken out against executive overreach. But in the Trump era, even theoretical criticism puts a target on your back.
By Rosa Brooks | February 8, 2017
Here’s how lynch mobs form, in the age of the alt-right and “alternative facts.”
First, you inadvertently wave a red flag at an arena full of bulls. Then you sit back and wait for the internet to do its dark magic.
In my case, the red flag was a few paragraphs at the end of a recent column, speculating on what would happen if Donald Trump truly and dangerously lost his marbles. I wondered about one “possibility … that until recently I would have said was unthinkable in the United States of America: a military coup, or at least a refusal by military leaders to obey certain orders”:
The principle of civilian control of the military has been deeply internalized by the US military, which prides itself on its nonpartisan professionalism.… But Trump … [is] thin-skinned, erratic, and unconstrained — and his unexpected, self-indulgent pronouncements are reportedly sending shivers through even his closest aides.
What would top US military leaders do if given an order that struck them as not merely ill-advised, but dangerously unhinged? An order that wasn’t along the lines of “Prepare a plan to invade Iraq if Congress authorizes it based on questionable intelligence,” but “Prepare to invade Mexico tomorrow!” or “Start rounding up Muslim Americans and sending them to Guantanamo!” or “I’m going to teach China a lesson — with nukes!”
It’s impossible to say, of course. The prospect of American military leaders responding to a presidential order with open defiance is frightening — but so, too, is the prospect of military obedience to an insane order. After all, military officers swear to protect and defend the Constitution of the United States, not the president. For the first time in my life, I can imagine plausible scenarios in which senior military officials might simply tell the president: “No, sir. We’re not doing that,” to thunderous applause from the New York Times editorial board.
Needless to say, when I wrote this, it didn’t occur to me that anyone could construe it as a call for a military coup. Perhaps this should have occurred to me, given the current state of American political discourse, but it didn’t. I received a couple of polite email messages from readers who argued that I shouldn’t have even raised this as a hypothetical possibility, but most initial comments came from readers who took what I wrote in the spirit in which it was intended: What might happen if the US president gave an order that was truly, frighteningly unhinged, and all normal checks and balances had failed? Could we imagine a military refusal to obey the commander in chief? Should we imagine it?
Those are serious questions, and they deserve serious discussion. After all, America was founded by men who came, slowly but surely, to believe that they could no longer obey their government. From the perspective of American political mythology, they were heroes; from the British point of view, they were traitors. (Remember Patrick Henry? “If this be treason, make the most of it.”) With our history, it’s surely important to ask ourselves whether something like that could ever take place again. Political theorists continue to debate the propriety and role of disobedience and resistance to authority. Shouldn’t we debate those questions, too?
Regardless, a few days passed quietly by after the column’s publication. Then, on Thursday morning, Breitbart — the “news” site previously run by Steve Bannon, now Donald Trump’s top political adviser — ran a story about my column, headlined “Ex-Obama Official Suggests ‘Military Coup’ Against Trump.”
READ MORE
http://billmoyers.com/story/breitbart-lynch-mob-came/
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