On December 26th, I was ready to head back. The driving had already been pretty brutal, I was a wreck, and I knew that there were even bigger hills waiting for us near Mammoth. I also knew that I would be the one driving. However, the Frenchies convinced me otherwise, and in hindsight I'm glad they did. The first thing we did that day was buy another set of chains (thats set #3 for the less astute readers). Right out of town, the chains went on again, and we inched our way south on frozen roads. Despite the stress and difficult driving, it was a glorious day. 395 goes through the kind of stark and mournful high desert scenery that I love and dearly miss sometimes. The chains were put on and off several more times before noon by my chain crew (who were without a doubt the most proficient french chain installers in CA by now).
chains being put on by Tam south of Topaz Lake
We passed Topaz Lake, and came into some rolling hills, where the road became quite narrow, and was, as usual, upwards sloping and absolutely frozen solid. There was also a river with ice coating its banks to the right of the road. As we turned a bend in the road, we came upon a car upside down in the river, with people clambering up the banks. A few other cars had already stopped to help the people out, so we did as well. We asked if everything was okay, which it miraculously was, and ambulances and cops were supposedly en route. At this point we did NOT have our chains on, so we decided to put them on immediately. Unfortunately, a CHP dickhead started yelling at us to "Get the fuck off the road", so we cautiously edged up the hill to a bigger turnout to put the chains on.
This went on for many hours. If you've driven on 395, I think you might understand what its like never being able to go faster than 25 mph... and on ice: misery. For those that don't, it's around 140 miles (160 to bishop, but the last 20 descend into the valley and were snowless...). There were several almost-spinouts into oncoming traffic, but we eventually made it to Bishop unharmed, but tired. We got in around 3 or 4 pm, grabbed some crappy food, and headed up to the Happy blocs. On the way, a cop pulled us over (don't know why!), and had his hand on his gun as he walked up to the car. I freaked out a little and berated the frenchies for not wearing their seatbelts. My answer to the cop's question about whether I had anything in my truck "that I shouldnt have", was a sad "no.". The remaining 2 miles to the happies were uneventful.
I wanted to show Tam problems that I knew were good, which I had done before like Rio's (below), but we did a few things that I hadn't gotten to do last time, like serengeti and savannah... We didn't end up being able to get on Rio's because a group (surprise!) of Japanese guys were monopolizing it. As it got dark, we decided to get to the Pit and set our stuff up. When the sun went behind the sierra
it got really, really bone chillingly cold and windy. I think it ended up getting to ~5-10° F without the wind chill that night. I know I'm not exactly a mountain man, but Tam has a lot of mountaineering experience, and even he thought it was painfully cold.
Tam and Luc had brought food and camp stoves. Therefore, in our frozen state, a hot meal was eagerly looked forward to by all. As a result, the malfuntioning of the propane stove was met with extreme displeasure and disappointment. Despite the wind, we had managed to light the small packet of wood that we had bought in town, so we attempted to heat the soup in the fire. After thoroughly blackening Tams cookware, the soup was still tepid, so we gave up and ate it, and quickly got set up to sleep. I gave Tam and Luc my tent, and slept in the shell of the truck -- I think its a toss up which was colder, since there are big holes around the tail gate of the truck.
It was probably the coldest night I've ever experienced, and I would periodically wake up to pain in whatever parts of my face were exposed. The condensation in my breath would sometimes freeze into delicate little ice crystals, and float gently back down onto my face. Needless to say, I didn't sleep very much. In the morning, we were all a bit haggard, and I frankly told my french friends that I could not wait an hour in the cold while we tried in vain to heat up more tepid soup, and that we NEEDED to go into town for breakfast. it turned out that they were both d'accord (enthusiastic, even!) having spent an equally unpleasant night in the tent. As I pulled out of the campsite, I ran over Tams cookware, which had for some reason been put under the car for safekeeping. After a nice warm breakfast at Jacks in Bishop, we went back to the happies. We got on some fun stuff like my heart grew wings under the desert sky (pretty sure I have this name wrong), heavenly path (above) and Rio's (below), where we found a nest of discarded tape and butts from the japanese guys.
It was frantic but fun. People always complain about the gym or gumby vibe at the happy's, but even I can't be that cynical. Its a great place in beautiful surroundings.
We were there really early, and mistakenly passed by Atari, which was occupied the rest of the time we were there. At lunchtime, we headed up to the Buttermilks, which were covered in snow:
and got shut down on everything, but I got a little further on Saigon (not me in these pics):
We had to shoo away a teenage sprayer named Harry who kept suggesting that we try out the Mandala -- "Its so cool!". Little pisher.
At ironman (again, you are a cynic and a bastard if you yawn at or insult this problem) one of the guys gathered around it looked familiar, and it turned out to be Chris Sharma. It also turned out that hes not modest at all, but kept on saying "YOU SUCK, LOOK HOW GOOD I AM!" as he did iron fly with just his index finger. I hate that guy.
This was our parting view of the Sierra:
As we were getting in our car, we noticed a black honda accord spinning out (see pictures of the road above) and in trouble, so the french F1 chain crew put on their chains. We all agreed that we couldnt possibly endure another night of cold, so we decided to drive back to Berkeley that night. We also decided that the southern route, despite its length, was preferable, since it was snowless. The final excitement was when we skipped gas stations for a while, thinking that there would be many, and almost ran out of gas (meter on top of the E) before bakersfield.
OK, so its still dark, still freezing cold, and still snowing, and we have just crested a dangerous hill south of carson valley. At this point, we saw another, much larger hill looming in front of us. It was time to put chains on again. This time we tried the chains from my other car, which were of a more modern variety (cables) rather than the old school chains that were probably purchased in the mid 70s. These cable-chains had the disadvantage of being "a little" too big for the Toyota wheels. No matter. We layed them out, and I went back to the cab to start the truck back up. I'm sure you can see whats coming, so I won't go into it. We were on a lonely stretch of 395, in the snow, with no cars around, no jumper cables and a dead truck waiting to be rolled backwards onto chains that were too big for its wheels. I think we were too shocked to even curse our stupidity/luck at this point, but quickly began trying to jump start the car by pushing it. Picture trying to push a truck down a skating rink with sneakers, and you'll have a rough idea of what this was like. We tried to flag people down, but no one stopped. No one, that is, except a very nice family in a giant dualy. They got our car started up, and we had a few tense moments as I pulled a U turn on the icy snow to flee with our tails between our legs back to carson valley. Since it was still Xmas day, everything except the casino and a few hotels were closed. We had dinner in one of those generic Irish Bar-Sports Bar-Keno-Lounge places in the Carson Valley Inn, then found a hotel down the road. The last thing we did that day was take our cable-chains off, since the road was dry in that part of town. Day one was over.
In the summer of 2003, C-money and I were in Berkeley for a couple of weeks. One day, we were doing some bouldering near my parents house at mortar rock. We met a French guy named Tam there, who turned out to have just started a postdoc @berkeley, and was working the famous Nat's traverse. Anyway, we exchanged emails, and since I would be coming back for X-mas, we made tentative plans to do some bouldering or routes that winter.
Winter rolled around, and I escaped the cold (not quite western MA cold, but pretty damn cold nonetheless) to come back to berkeley. Things were a little hectic, and the only days we could find to climb were the 25th-27/28th. Since Tam had never been to Bishop before, it was an easy choice. Another recent French arrival friend of his named Luc would also be coming. This trip would become my most difficult and dangerous driving experience ever. This is saying quite a lot, considering the roads I have taken my own cars and rental cars on. I dont think its an exaggeration to say that we were on the verge of crashing into things for the better part of 100 miles.
Anyway, since the passes through Yosemite and the mid Sierra were all closed (this being december), we had to take a northern route, along 80, then splitting off onto US50, through placerville and on to the east side near Carson. Things got off to a rocky start when we realized that since it was christmas day, nothing was open. Undaunted, and with great confidence that the large cache of food in the back of my parents 1993 Toyota 2WD truck would last us, we pressed on. At least the gas pumps were open! Just out of placerville, the traffic came to a stop; a "people running to the side of the road to piss" type of standstill. Oh, and it started snowing. And it was getting cold. And dark. We were still optimistic though: we were all young and alert -- it would be no big deal to get into the pit (the campsite) at 10 at night. We were tough.
Three hours later, we finally came upon the thing that had caused a massive traffic jam down through placerville: A fucking caltrans chain control. It came as a great surprise that there happened to be 20 or thirty jumpered up "Chain Installers" on the side of the road, who would put your chains on for a mere $20. $20. To put chains on your car. After trying to sneak our truck through the checkpoint without chains and being turned back (I guess they arent fooled by the whole "Truck" thing), we pulled over, and with a lot of difficulty we got the chains on.
After pulling a U turn, we proudly and confidently drove through the checkpoint, at which point one set of chains shot off our wheel. The Caltrans guys either didnt notice, didnt care, or took pity on us, because they didnt say anything. Even when Tam ran out and sheepishly picked up the bits of chain that had been ejected from the wheel, they seemed to be looking in another direction. We figured that one chain would be enough to get up the hill, and we were right. I drove slowly and carefully, and after another hour or so, ended up in south lake tahoe, where the grinding crunch of the chains on pavement tempted us to remove our one remaining chain. A brief encounter with a snowdrift convinced us otherwise. By now it was snowing really really hard, and there werent very many 2WD vehicles on the road. When we finally got to the flat section before the big hill on the eastern edge of Tahoe, we opted to put our ejected chain back on the wheel. This was an even more miserable experience than before, because it was now very cold and dark. And did I mention the snow? All I remember was a big steep hill, which was not easy to get up -- I think we were still on 50. As we descended onto the east side, we were all relieved to see less and less snow, and by the time we got to the 395 intersection, everything looked great. We decided to try to take our chains off, which was a 30 minute ordeal in which we would each take a turn trying to unhook them for 2 minutes before we lost feeling in our hands. We also noticed that we had lost most of the tensioners! No matter though, the road was dry, and we could still theoretically make it to bishop that night, albeit at 4 in the morning.
It had already been a pretty long day, but it wasn't quite over!
Some pictures of a late summer storm last night, from our apartment. Can anyone tell my why my Canon G2 takes longer to process the pictures than to expose them?! Click for a larger version.
One reason for Soviet jitters at the time was that the West had unleashed a series
of psychological warfare exercises aimed at Moscow, including naval maneuvers
into forward areas near Soviet strategic bastions, such as the submarine bases in
the Barents Sea.
The 1983 alarm also came just weeks after Soviet pilots had shot down Korean
Air Lines Flight 007 and just before the start of a NATO military exercise, known
as Able Archer, that involved raising alert levels of U.S. nuclear forces in Europe
to simulate preparations for an attack. Pry has described this exercise as "probably
the single most dangerous incident of the early 1980s."
but wait, who was president in 1983? I thought he single handedly ended the cold war? He must have been working on other(okay one year later) things at the time?
This morning I awoke to the sound of 4 whacking noises. In my torpor, I thought: "hmm four... and its sounds like a .... staple gun... someone putting up notices... zzzzzzzz". Then I heard it again, so I resisted the urge to stay in bed, and slid (literally, I'm not proud to say) out of bed. In the midst of this graceful ballet style dismount of our bed, I heard the unmistakeable sound of glass being broken, so I started moving faster. What I saw when I got to the window would be surprising at any hour of the day, let alone 3AM: A woman was systematically breaking the front window of the chinese restaurant right under us:
with a hammer. I dont think I actually rubbed my eyes, but I think it took me a few seconds to realize what was going on. In the mean time, the lady (now yelling something) had broken someones car window with her hammer. Seconds later she had focused her attentions on the parking meter:
Now this last one told me something was REALLY wrong. Who could hate a parking meter?! Then she started walking down the street bashing in more car windows. At this point I did something a little foolish, which I will attempt to explain in a minute. I started yelling "wheres my pants!?", and grabbed the closest weapon I could find, which happened to be a nut attached to a quickdraw:
You see, she was heading for OUR car. And anyone who knows me will tell you how attached I am to our 1994 red Renault Clio. The Clio has really been an exercise in humility and patience for me, since every element of it seems to have been engineered for frustration: doors that magically swing closed and hit you in the back, overzealous seatbelts that prevent you from picking anything up off the floor, an engine that sounds like its going to explode at 120 kph, instruments (like a clock ) which are mysteriously unilluminated and unreadable at night, a heating system that becomes irreparably damaged if you use the wrong coolant and on and on. but I digress. It would, after all be a huge hassle in our pidgin French, to get a windshield replaced, regardless of the shittiness of the car. So I decided to put a stop to it, found my pants, armed myself with my lethal climbing equipment (see above), and wife (c-money insisted on coming with me, armed with the fearsome Broom of Death):
and heading downstairs. By the time we got downstairs, she was no where to be seen, but no matter. We knew where she
she was going: to assault our beloved Clio. So we started walking down the street. Midway down, a police car pulled up, and the cops were out remarkably fast (for French cops). I think he said "Bonjour Pepe!" out of his rolled down window. A little more description is needed to fully appreciate the situation. The cop was at the corner, C-money and I were about 30 feet away from cop on Rue Jay. The crazy lady with the hammer was out of sight to us, on Rue Marechal Dode
I was dressed in some pants, no shirt and a Marmot windbreaker. C-money was in the somewhat ratty t-shirt she sleeps in, some jeans, and the Broom of Death. And theres a crazy woman with a hammer around the corner, in case you forgot. All of a sudden the cop (now out of his car) looks frightened. So frightened, in fact, that he jumped back and pulled his gun out, in a kind of ridiculous french cop way: all loose wristed and silly. Now I should mention here that you rarely see unholstered guns in france, so it was more than a little shocking, and moreso given our proximity to the hammers and guns. All of a sudden our Broom of Death didnt seem quite so death-inducing, and the gravity of the situation sunk in: that we were two Americans with brooms and climbing gear trying to prevent a crazy woman from breaking our windows. The decision to beat a hasty retreat was made quickly and wordlessly upon the guns being drawn (there was another cop, by the way). As we sucrried away, looking back over our shoulders, we saw the cops unleash their dog on the woman and start screaming "Allez!" like in the tour de France. An hour later, there were cops everywhere, surveying the damage and taking statements etc. I couldnt fall asleep for hours, and felt a little ill.
I'll discuss the reasons for my rash actions this in a later post. For now, suffice it to say that I felt like there was no way the cops would get there in time to save our car, and that there was little chance she was armed with anything besides a hammer (this isnt the US after all).
As for why the lady went after the restaurant, but not the other ones nearby? I really have no idea. The guy who runs it is super nice, and I cant imagine him offending anyone at all.
C-money and I went to a new-ish crag in the vercors called "La Goulandiere". Unfortunately, we didnt know where the road had been closed between Lans and Pont en Royans, so we took a gamble on PoR, and ended up hiking around in the brutal sun at the foot or Presles for an hour and a half on the GR9. Not content to write the day off without finding this mystery crag, we drove to La Balme de Rencurel, taking the detour through the beautiful but car sickness inducing Grandes Goulets, parked near the barriere, and found the crag. As for the crag itself, I would have to agree that its one of the best within one hour of grenoble: 35 meter routes on absolutely vertical rock with interesting movements and great views into the valley. It even has a little spring which we were too chicken to drink out of.
Today ch loe lured me away from MOSFLM to go to the market at Place de la Tribunal. We used to only go to Place aux Herbes for produce, until we found Tribunal, where you can get fresher and better quality produce (direct from the growers)... also, Tribunal is a much prettier venue than its more utilitarian cousin. Anyway, while chl oe was buying some rasberries and peaches, I wandered off and foundanother stand where they sold big live snails. They were in a 5 gallon plastic bucket under the rest of the produce, and the farmer was too engrossed in weighing and selling to notice that his snails were escaping. It would have been a really beautiful picture, but of course I didnt have a camera with me. I was very proud that I remembered the word for escape (echappe) and informed the farmer that his snails were getting away from him.
I felt a little bad because the escape artists snails were really hauling some escargot ass, and it was a little sad to see them
plucked from the limestone flagstones and chucked unceremoniously back in with the others. Of course, they would have just gotten stepped on, but still... you could tell they were going at 105% snail velocity.
This is one of those experiences that I look back on with awe. Not awe at my cleverness or skill, but at the fact that I didnt kill or injure myself. In this case, the potential (pun intended) hazard was high voltage. Not content to watch the HO train go around in oblong orbits around my room, I had recently begun experimenting with circuits that were probably not manufacturer recommended. These experiments would typically consist of me disassembling a broken radio (yes, they were all broken when I started with them!), pulling out the various mysterious and colorful nuggets, then shorting them between the railroad tracks. It was in this manner that I got shot in the chin by an exploding LED. But this is all just to give you a sense of my technical "sophistication", and doesnt have much to do with the prank itself.
I constructed a spring loaded switch out of legos (a little tray that would slide on the smooth topped legos) and well, aluminum foil. It was normally off, but when you pulled a string, it would open the circuit to a tape recorder. The string was routed via paperclips taped to the moulding out of my parents room and into the hallway. The switch and tape recorder were in my dads closet. The tape was of dogs howling and scratching at a door. I should add, at this point, that my dad comes from Japan, is quite superstitious, and not only believes in ghosts, but claims to have seen one when his friend died.
I let the dogs out several times becfore my dad discovered the tape recorder hidden in his closet, followed the string out of his room, and saw my door gently creaking shut as I fcrept ninja like back to my room. At that young age, I probably thought it possible that if he didnt see me in action, he might not know who had rigged such a contraption.
N.B. My mom was an unwilling co-conspirator because she had discovered me in my dads closet with legos, a tape recorder, electrical tape, and exposed wires.
yes, I complain about it every time. yes, I swear never to believe mappy (like a Euro mapquest/blast for the north americans) again. No, I have no one to blame but myself. But still, I fucking hate mappy. Today I spent almost two hours in Geneva looking fot the french consulate because of a series of comical mishearings and mappy errors. Briefly: Avenue Henri Dunant &ne Avenue du Nant &ne Rue du Nant. By the time I made it to the visa issuing office I was a sweaty mess, but managed to get the forms in. I have to admit that I got a little panicked thinking that I might have driven an hour and a half for nothing.
Tuesday, August 17, 2004
we climbed the Dibona this weekend:
and stayed at the Refuge du Soreiller for two nights. The food was ok, but it was the typically uncomfortable "group living" arrangement: bunk beds, picnic tables, no lights etc etc. The climb itself was great, except for the rescue helicopter which was shuttling people back down to the refuge and presumeably to the hospital. Heres one of the rescue dudes getting a ride:
even though its tuesday, my calves are still acheing from the 1100 meter approach and descent
(not to mention the climb itself!)
Tuesday, August 10, 2004
I always thought people were exaggerating when they talked about golf ball size hail stones.... until ten minutes ago, when I saw 2 or 3 of them bounce off our double glazed windows. I hope we dont see weather like this on the dibona this weekend; it rolled in in less than 30 minutes, which is not really enough time to get safe.
I also learned yesterday that calling your wife a cracker is generally a bad idea. even done in jest. even if she doesnt treat rice with respect and makes "rice salad".
This is probably my earliest and most primitive joke, so it makes sense to put it first. I think I must have seen this in a Tintin book, but I got it into my head that I would put a bucket of water on top of the door, so when my dad came in to make sure I was asleep, it would (youre not going to BELIEVE this) fall on his head. Well, it turned out that the water thing was a little hard to engineer, so I instead opted for an empty tinker toy box. I remember the box falling and bouncing off of my dads head. I also remember thinking that he looked kind of monkeyesque as he hooted and jumped immediately after the box hit him.
as an aside, while I was google searching for the tinker toy box, I discovered that 1)It is hard not to get at least one porno image when you google image search-- not that i mind 2)"tinker toy" is an extremely unoriginal name for a pet
I moved to France two and a half years ago with my girlfriend. When I got here, I spoke no french at all, and when I asked my new lab if they had any program to learn French, they responded firmly in the negative. When I found a school and asked my lab for some financial support (it cost 500 euro) they again responded firmly in the negative. I wont say that this experience set the tone for my next two years in the french research system, but .. ok maybe I will.
Anyway, there were a lot of times that I thought a blog would be a nice place to vent/pontificate/bitch and moan, so I have finally just set one up. I guess I have some catching up to do.
One thing you realize when you move to France is how low American standards of food quality are. OK, you dont need to move to France to realize that, but nothing hammers it home like a trip to the market. Strawberries that dont taste like styrofoam, white peaches so ripe that they bruise to the touch, hundreds of cheeses, excellent wine for less than 10 euro, hormone free beef, etc etc.
"money crushing machine" is an epithet that my dad used to describe me. I'm not sure if it was a specific purchase (college?car?) or just general anguish over how expensive it is to raise a child. I was probably pretty offended by it at the time, but now I kind of like it, and in fact changed my email username in grad school to "money crushing machine". It goes without saying that I forgot that I had done it and emailed my professors with the modified username when trying to set a date for my defense.
Anyway, this blog will be about expat life in france (no, not paris), science, rock climbing, the little joys and indignities of everyday life etc etc. I am hopelessly self conscious, so every post will probably be edited twenty times and still be unreadable.
life in Grenoble, France as an expat postdoc life in Grenoble, France as an expat scientist life in San Francisco, CA as a biotech nerd
life in Grenoble, France as an expat scientist
empty tinker toy box. I remember the box falling and bouncing off of my dads head. I also remember thinking that he looked kind of monkeyesque as he hooted and jumped immediately after the box hit him.
