Mid Life Marketer’s Kick Start

Well Alan has given us all his wake up call about the standard of our rope management skills. Once again the old man of the hills and rocks gave up an evening of his time to refresh us all about the simplest skills needed to get ourselves out of some of the minor sticky situations we could encounter on the rocks. Despite all my years as a climber and an instructor in Outdoor Education, I still find that the skills needed for self rescue of my little team on a climb are always rusty. That’s a good thing really as it means the occasions when things go wrong are mercifully rare.

One of the basics is getting your mate up a pitch that he can’t follow you up because he/she has got too tired. In the photo above Greg is getting “assistance” from Alan, before going off to practise it himself.

Below is a new pair of hands! These hands can throw grown men in white suits all round the park, but there was some new learning going on as Mike found out the awkward way how to escape from his belay to go down to an injured mate.

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After the Tuesday night refresher, we took ourselves off to the delights of Dalt Quarry to climb on badly spaced bolts! Here’s Alan on one of the little horrors in there, belayed by Sue.

And there was more ; kids on Scout camp; instructing canoeing; taking a couple of groups up a rocky scramble. Great fun and it was a favour I owed one of my friends. Now it’s back to the daily routines of working at home.

how does the outdoor stuff help my marketing effort? It doesn’t really, but it’s what I live for; and it’s what the IM lifestyle is intended to provide more freedom to follow. Good luck in your efforts to attain your version of freedom.
Ray

I’m afraid the blog hasn’t received the attention it should have over the last couple of weeks. Apologies if you have looked for new information, but boy have I been busy!! I have been trying to give myself a crash course on websites, web hosts, landing pages, and; most time consuming of all; trying to learn the ropes with Easypano’s Studio 2007. This is a package for taking fully immersive 360 degree panoramic photos and converting them into full screen virtual tours of locations. It’s been quite a steep learning curve, simply getting to grips with a full on Digital SLR, in my case, a Nikon D80. I won’t go into the full details here as I will be starting up a couple of websites on these topics in due course. It’s been frustrating at times as all new software packages tend to be, but finally, I’m in a place where I can give my marketing work and my lists some attention.

I’ll put some of my try outs up for folk to see in a couple of days.

Have to dash now, because the climbing club has organised an evening of emergency rope work - a kind of “Now get out of that” scenario for all our guys and girls in case things get gnarly when we are out on the crags.
C U soon
Ray