Doing the Hard Yards

Adventures in Skyrim - spoilers ahead! You can follow the rest of the story here!

Decided to continue training using some of the challenges found on the Skyrim Blog. For obvious reasons, some of these had to be reloaded either because I died, killed someone I didn't want to, or temporarily paid my bounty to run the challenge.

Challenge: Salmon Catching (success I think)
Go to where the river has rapids near Whiterun. You have two minutes to catch as many salmon as possible.
On my best attempt (3rd try) I got 12. First one was 4. :P

Challenge: Wheel Riding (success)
Ride a paddlewheel up from the water and get off on the landing above.
Went to Riverwood for this one, and it was not as easy as I had thought. Still managed to get up there on my 4th attempt though.

Challenge: Chicken Cart (success)
Your goal is to kill a chicken using only a wooden cart.
Took a moment before I realized I had to jump at the cart rather than walking into it. Dead chicken indeed. :)

Challenge: Giant Boxing (death! Lots of it! :P)
Go to Talking Stone Camp and find a lone giant. With no armor or weapons your goal is to punch it as many times as you can. You are not allowed to leave the camp's perimitter.
Best run I punched the guy 4 times. He kept sending me flying though!

Challenge: Torch Run (success)
With no armor and only carrying a torch - run on foot from the gates of whiterun to the Jarl's house in Morthal in under 5 minutes.
After death by sabrecat and death by bandit arrow, I managed to reach the dang place with a time of 4:53.4.

Challenge: Dovah-Sprint (fail)
Run from the gates of Whiterun to the chest outside High Hrothgar in under 7 minutes.
Massive fail for me here - only reached it at 9:42.8.

I lose stamina just looking at the picture. :(

Challenge: Dovah-Descent (success)
Get from High Hrothgar to Riverwood in 2 minutes or less without using Become Ethereal or dying.
After one horrific fall, I managed to get down there in one piece (more or less) in 1:51.9.

Challenge: Cliffside Retreat Archery Test (success)
Put a bucket on the hunter's head. Shoot from 3 marked positions.
Again, archery is my forte. Won on arrow 4.

Challenge: Waterfalling (timed)
Get a corpse from Nilheim Tower down to the shore of Darkwater Crossing as fast as possible.
Using a bandit who "volunteered" this turned out to be really difficult for me, requiring many retries to get her to the bottom lake. Only made it to shore at 6:46.3.

Challenge: Dragon Catching (timed)
Catch as many dartwings as you can, as fast as you can.
Starting near where the hunters are bathing near Darkwater Crossing, I got 10 (and almost killed by a bear) in 5:02.2.

Challenge: Logging Wine (timed)
Drag (not pick up) as many bottles of wine from one end of a fallen log to the other in 2 minutes. The fallen log is West of Knifepoint Lookout.
After running into a hagraven fighting a spriggan (pretty even) and clearing a pair of bandits I tried this and only managed to get 4 across (dropped 1 too). :/

Challenge: Mistwatch Catapult (fail)
Setup some containers at the tower door and use the drawbridge to catapult stuff into them.
Used two small baskets and one large one and for ammo had 12 mugs, 2 slices of cheese, 14 pieces of salmon and some wine. Score - ZERO. Good thing I've never needed to man a catapult! :P

7000 steps? It was over 9000!

Adventures in Skyrim - spoilers ahead! You can follow the whole story here!

Met two Redguards who asked for help hunting a fugitive in Whiterun today. After locating her I was still unsure whose side I would help as everyone involved was being vague. Decided to find those Redguards again and ask for more information but was side tracked by a bandit cave. My new housecarl Lydia proved her sword prowess as we cleared them out easily. To our surprise we encountered a small Redguard group hiding out at the very back and their leader knowing instantly he was in deep poo when I walked in called for a truce. Apparently the fugitive is a traitor and reading between the lines, cost more than a few lives. I've had experiences with traitorous scum before, and when we got back to the city I was more than happy to help them arrest that manipulative bitch.

At this point I found I was carrying too much stuff that people didn't have gold to buy, and that I didn't particularly want to just discard so I bought a cozy little house in Whiterun for around 8000 gold for storage. Given my healthy distrust of the Whiterun guards (not to mention a bunch of werewolves living there) I left Lydia to keep an eye on things while I hired Jenassa the bandit turned adventurer to accompany me to see the old dudes who summoned me to the top of a mountain. Her talents were tested right away when we came across another dragon attacking one of the outlying farms, and she proved her worth when she landed the killing strike.

The journey was long though, and one bandit camp (whose leader was smashed away by a giant) and a troll later we reached the entrance to a tomb where a cowardly warrior named Golldir asked for assistance dealing with a necromancer who was doing all sorts of things with his dead relatives. We accepted ofcourse and the undead had no chance between the three of us, however the necromancer managed to slay Jenassa in the final chamber firing an ice bolt through her chest, and with Golldir staying to fix up the mess I caused I was left to continue the pilgrimage up to High Hrothgar on my own.

The hike up the mountain was ardous, and one knife duel with a bandit on a log later I reached Ivarstead in pouring and oppresive rain. This was the "start" of the 7000 step pilgrimage up the mountain, but there were people in town needing aid so after sorting out their problems I continued the hike up, encountering a hilarous suicidal wolf before finally reaching the monastery near the snowy peak. Once inside, the old dudes began my training which, while really cool, only lasted around 10 minutes and pretty much consisted of yelling. Ironic that most of them have a vow of silence.

I asked what the best shout for a dragon was.