Secret garden

We climbed with Carl at the Secret Garden, and he showed me some of the classics. Even with running beta, I basically fell off of everything, which was a bit annoying.

Afterwards, we hung out with Aris, Katie, Carl and a friend of theirs from Athens in Palionisos. I ate some goat
,
Drank some beers, went for a quick swim in the icy cold water ("The coldest on the island!", Aris declared with his trademark grin"), and had some of the special goat that they were cooking


Palionisos has changed quite a bit since our first visit there in 2005. At the time, there was only a dirt road connecting Skalia to the town, and basically nothing there except the harbor. Now there are multiple tavernae and tons of people. I think I like it more in the "old" days. Still wonderful, though!

A new crag

We hadn't yet been to any of the crags between Vathi and Arginonta, and thought we would give ET a try. It ended up being a little difficult finding our way, but the routes were nice. We did the nice slabs to the left, like Iris, Orchid and Ibisicus, then went over to do the fabulous but slightly terrifying "Rose". Finally, my hardest onsight of the trip -- "Poppy", which I really enjoyed

Secret Garden

We climbed with my friend Antony's climbing buddies from Zurich today at Secret Garden.  No hard sends really, but a crap load of people:


Then back




and more food

the Beach

We went to the Beach crag today.  Chossy, but beautiful.



And then we got to have our first dinner of the trip at Harry's!  Harry's serves food that really is a step up from anyplace else on the island.
lentil fritters:

Fried zucchini:

Roasted lamb:

Telendos

No rest for the wicked:  I had gotten back into contact with a friend from high school+his wife who would be on the isalnd for a couple of days while we were also there, so we made plans to take a boat out to Telendos together.  It was a lovely day of staying out of the sun at the Lambda and Irox crags.  I had a little excitement when a raptor of some kind flew out of a hole on a climb I was on.  I rapidly retreated!

Also, a goat tried repeatedly to get our food, and managed to run off with someone else's lunch!



 We all went to Aegean afterwards

KALYMNOS

Today, we started our trip to Kalymnos, thanks to Stephanie taking care of the kids!  We left plenty of time to get to Milan Bergamo, stopping along the way for coffee, or course

Telendos, from the air

Of course, we missed the earlier boat, so had four or five hours to wait on Kos.  We filled the time by stuffing ourselves with dolmades, grilled calamari, etc.

 And staring out to sea

 We rented a moto at the port (overpaid as usual -- they quotes a price for an 80cc, but gave us 50cc.  Oh well)  and then putt-putted out to Emporios.

Pont de Barret

I went climbing with Denis today, at Pont-de-Barret.  everything was going great until I pulled off a big block on a 6c.  Denis was on point and jumped out of the way, thus avoiding getting killed by the death block, and I took a big ride




There was a small crater near where he was belaying. Definiteley the closest call ever.

Hiking to the Obiou

I went on a really cool hike with Rachel, who has been working with me for the past year.  We got a late start and headed south to the Obiou, in a stunningly beautiful area in the Trieves (just South of Grenoble) .  I had happened to find a guide book for the area while milling about Vieux Campeur, and decided that a hike was in order.  The peak was shrouded in clouds for most of our hike, but we made it to our objective: a cave with a huge pillar of ice:












 

New rope!

tdf start with mom+kids!

Tour de France!

Regardless of what you think of the state of cycling, the tour de france is a spectacle worth seeing.  So when they announced that the route would come right by our house and ride up some of my lunchtime ride territory, I knew I had to go watch it.  I started planning a long time ago and formulated a way that I could watch them twice!  The first would be on the climb out of Quiax, and then on the descent from Sarcenas.  After dropping Gail and the kids off in la Monta so that they could watch the caravan go by, I cycled up via Narbonne and chose a grassy berm from which we could watch them.  A few minutes later, none other than Jeannie Longo and her doper husband showed up and parked just in front of us!

Soon enough, de Marchi flew by, followed by Kadri and some other dude, then the peloton and the grupetto

We watched everyone, and then hopped on our bikes and zoomed up to the col de Vence and watched them go by again.  So cool.