quest for armoires part III

Well theres apparently something about selling armoires that drives you a little crazy, because we had another experience with an eccentric old lady and furniture today. This shop was in the same area as the consignment place, but was HUGE! Not huge as in a warehouse, but like a rabbit warren; there were rooms upon rooms filled with junk: half finished model boats with pillowcase sails, giant industrial sanding machines, stacks of chairs, knick knacks crammed into every corner, a second level with a room full of clocks, bedframes, copper pots, and on and on. There was one room with planks in one corner with so much dust on them that it looked like snow (but not quite the right color!). The old lady who ran the store was "a bit" less distinguished than the last place, and spoke very quickly, in a stream of consciousness style: yesthisone isbeautifulthreepanelsonthesidebutyoumuststepbacktotrulyappreciateit (breath as she steps back) itsRUSTICnotrefinedbut verybeautifulyoucanseeinsideohwaititslockedletmegogetthekey (walking away) sometimespeoplestealthekeysanditsveryannoying. I should back up and say that the nicer stuff was in the front of the store, so as we walked in, we were suitably impressed by the tall armoires with beautiful patinas. We were therefore a little confused when she said "Oh, but I dont have any more armoires!". The confusion came from the fact that we were standing in the middle of a room FULL of tall cupboards that looked suspiciously like armoires. I looked at Chlo to see if I should start laughing, but no, she was apparently serious. It turned out that the tall cupboards are called Bonnetieres, and are still way too expensive for us. But we learned something new today: what a Bonnatiere is (narrower than an armoire, and with only one door)! as well as the word for Beech: Hetre. Tomorrow we leave for St. Leger du Ventoux for some steep climbing, sightseeing and armoire hunting near Isle-sur-la-sorgue.

The search for furniture, part II

Part I was the flea market, of course. After checking out store that sells furniture on consignment and having a beautiful chest of drawers bought from under our noses, we went into town to look at more Armoires (I promise this will be more interesting than it sounds). We wandered into a small store, which was crammed to capacity with furniture and paintings. And when I say "capacity", I mean a room about 15 feet x 20 feet with a small path (~2 feet wide) in between the tables, chairs, armoires etc. Off to the left of the entrance, sitting on one of the chairs was an old woman; a guru of furniture. She looked about 90 years old, with a shrub of white hair and thick glasses out of which peered eyes which seemed to focus 2 feet behind you. She was also a little hard of hearing, so her greeting caught both of us by surprise. HELLO! ARE YOU LOOKING FOR SOMETHING IN PARTICULAR? (I've taken the liberty of translating all of the dialogue) When we expressed some interest in an armoire, we were firmly corrected that ITS NOT AN ARMOIRE! ITS AN HOMME DEBOUT! and then she went on in some detail about why it was called an "homme debout", and then told us that it had already been sold. But it turned out that she wasn't saying "vendu" at all, but something that sounded like "Vendu" which was the region in which it was made (somewhere South of Bretagne I think?). Chloe and I looked at it with covetousness as the lady shouted "ITS MADE OF CHERRY!" from about 2 feet behind us. We moved on to a truly stunning armoire (this time a real armoire), at which point the real owner (the older lady's daughter), an elegant lady of about 60, reappeared. Things got a little confusing with both of them talking to us; the older lady in rock concert volume, and her daughter at normal volume (at the same time of course). The younger one explained how this armoire (late 1700s) was from the transition period "ON THE HORSE BETWEEN TWO STYLES!" Louis XV and Louis XVI "NEITHER LOUIS XV nor XVI!". We could see this in the straight flutings "LOOK AT THE CANNELURES!" on the sides as well "LOUIS QUINZE STYLE CURVES AT THE BASE" as the curves at the base. One of the really distinguishing things about this armoire compared to others we have seen were the beautiful emblems on the top face, in the middle and sides. "ITS MADE ENTIRELY OF WALNUT!", they both went on, in unison. It was a gorgeous armoire, but sadly, at $2500 euro (almost $3000) it was pretty far out of our budget. On the other hand, something like that is beautiful to look at every day, will last forever , and only increase in value. Even so, its a lot of money!

Climbing

Today I had a conversation with one of my office mates, and he was suprised by my description of what the attraction and motivation is for climbing. It was a little strange, because it reminded me of how wrong my understanding of climbing was before I actually started doing it; so here are some misconceptions and clarifications about the sport (is it a sport?):

1)"Rock climbing" is not "Mountaineering"
Mountaineering sometimes involves rock climbing, but they are not the same thing.

2)The goal in rock climbing is very rarely to get to the top; it is the way in which you get to the top which is interesting. For many people, the beauty and difficulty of the movements are the focus. Which is to say, given a choice, we do not always (rarely, actually) take the easiest route to the top.

3)Climbing can be very competitive. When I used to see climbers with their "go climb a rock" t-shirts in Berkeley, they always looked like dirtbags. This, in combination with the fact that the ones that didnt look like dirtbags looked like hippies made me think that it was more about getting out into nature than anything else. However, the fact that the difficulty of the routes are rated numerically naturally leads to competitiveness with yourself and others.

4)Climbing is generally quite safe. Most accidents in rock climbing are caused by user error rather than by equipment failure. Mountaineering is much less safe because of the "objective dangers", which are things like storms rolling in, rocks falling, avalanches, lightening etc:
things that are out of your control.

thats all i can think of for now

some recent ecrins pics

The Parc National des Ecrins is a stunning and wild national park which is an hour or so away from Grenoble. To get there, you drive southeast, breathing the heady and strangely sweet fumes of the chemical plants in Vizille, and up to Bourg d'Oisans. Heres a random picture from St. Christophe en Oisans.



The end of the road that goes through St. Christophe is La Berarde: a starting point for many hikers and climbers in the summer. I love la berarde. It's everything Chamonix isn't: corrugated steel roofs, small roads, no telecabines, and no patagonia outlets next to six other gear stores for fat tourists. Its unpretentious and unspoiled (for the moment).

I'll leave you with another photo of la dibona...

pinhole cameras

I was showing a friend at work some of my old pinhole camera shots, like this one:



of the Salk Institute,

and he was amazed with the quality that you can get from such a simple camera. Actually, its been such a long time since I played with that stuff that I had also forgotten. My uncle was the one who originally recommended the technique to me, and I quickly became obsessed with it, to the point where I made a special seven shot pinhole camera (plans to this are somewhere on the web) so that I could travel with it. It really is kind of amazing that you can get such beautiful shots from a box with a hole in it. You can even buy precisely drilled laser drilled pinholes now! Theres a lot of geometric distortion (can this be solved by a curved film plane? I don't know) and vignetting, but I think that's part of the charm. Heres another of my favorites:



my dad (an artist) has a maddening but unfortunately true platitude that he likes to roll out whenever I buy a new camera; its something about good artists not needing fancy brushes. Somehow I dont remember the exact wording, but I think the pinhole camera lends credence to this idea. That wont stop me from buying a new lens for my Hassy, or him from buying a new sable brush, though.

Les Lames

Also, we went to "Les Lames" today. The last time I was there, 5 meters above tha last bolt, and scared shitless, I vowed never to go back. Oh well. Chloe kicked ass on a climb called "Cadavres Exquis", which she can probably do on lead, but she doesnt seem interested in working it.

Brocante

After my mom gave me a hard time about chairs (yes, chairs), and our lack of them, Chloe and I went to a flea market in Sassenage, with a single mission: chairs. Unfortunately, most of the chairs that were being sold were on the verge of collapse. Some had no cushions much less cushion supports, and others would creak dangerously when you touched them. These were definitely on their last legs (couldn't resist). Since we were there, we looked around, and quickly realised that this brocante did not have any specific focus (i.e. chairs), but rather was a true flea market. What I mean by this is that people were getting rid of EVERYTHING! I guess the premise is the same as for Ebay; no matter how dirty, broken down, useless or ugly something is, there is always someone who wants it. This is a valid premise, of course, but not when your buying audience is limited to a few hundred people on a sunday morning, rather than the millions who browse Ebay. And even so, some of the items for sale would test even the Ebay pool. Poking fun at items for sale at garage sales is like shooting fish in a barrel, but here are some gems that not even I can resist recounting:

6 cans of pringle potato chips

A Mattel Intellivision, circa 1980 ( if it wasnt PAL, I would consider buying this)

An airbrushed Johhny Halliday Album (tried to find this on google images but no dice)

Those clocks that banks give away

Boxes full of porno paperbacks

Military telephones

If only I had remembered my camera. Also, we almost ended up buying a 19th century walnut blanket chest, but chickened out since we are totally ignorant of the going prices for these things. We did managed to bargain him down to 500 euros though.

MORE Goulandiere!

yes, climbing again @goulandiere, this time with Laurent and Chloé. The PGHM were there "in training"; I wonder how I can get a job like that.

C-money back!

after several days at a conference in heidelberg.. and she bought me this great map!:





by Gerard Mercator (yes, THE mercator) in 1651. Its a beautiful hand colored map of the Savoie.

more goulandiere

some pics from goulandiere today with martin:






martin, on belay












view across the valley









impressive face with only hard stuff








crazy road back down to the valley







I felt pretty solid, except for the fact that I would get pumped halfway up every climb. I think i'll be ready for ceuse again soon.


On the N?? road back to grenoble, we saw cardboard cutouts at all the places where aggressive french drivers had managed to kill themselves and others in car accidents: something like 5/year.

Ecrins

We spent the weekend in the Ecrins hiking with past and present Grenoble outstation people (and some others). After longer delays than usual, even for a large group, we did the fairly flat hike in to the refuge Lavey (~177m down, 416m up,) run by the CAF Grenoble.



Since Chlo and I were planning on leaving the next day, we wanted to get extra hiking in, so we ditched our packs at the refuge and walked up to lac des Bèches (2417m, 600m up):




Despite our appalling state of fitness, we did this in 1:05, which is not too bad...

The food was much better than what they serve at Soreiller. The accomomdations, however, were an entirely different story...

The refuge had been overbooked, so all 19 of us were in a very very very small room. There were 2 banks of 10 one meter wide bunk beds with 1 cm gaps (= no gap!) in between them. After everyone had packed themselves into the room, it quickly became a sweat lodge. "Sweat lodge" is a little misleading, however, because the similarity stopped at the "sweat" part. What it lacked in sprituality and smokiness, it more than made up for in dampness, heat, the smell of sweat and farts, and the rumbles, buzzes and whines of snores. If you've never experienced it, the sensation of waking up to some strangers warm breath blowing over your face at 3 AM is delightful. Neither Chloe nor I slept very much that night.



The next day we went to le lac des Rouies (2720m, 920m up). The trail climbs steadily up as you walk south along the valley towards the olan. Waterfalls come down from glaciers on the right, and after crossing another picturesque stone bridge, we began to trend southeast, until we started climbing the fairly steep final 600m to the lake. We had left the refuge a bit earlier than the rest of the group, and we got up to the lake in around 2:15, after which we found a nice bench-like rock to eat on. Our lunch, while lacking the bottles of german beer and french wine that the others enjoyed, had the important property of being 5 times lighter than theirs. And after all, bread, comte de montagne, chocolate chip cookies and apples is not too bad of a lunch. We took in the sun for a bit while we waited for the others:




who arrived and began cracking open the beers:


(no I did not photoshop myself in from the previous pic).


In order to get down with enought time to boulder, we left earlier again. Some of the others went on to get up to the Col, I think. On the way down, we rounded a bend and were surprised by a pack of murderous attack sheep:




when you look at their stupid eyes, I think its hard not to feel a little guilty about the cruel pragmatism of our species. Here is an animal that has been bred for the taste and volume of its flesh, its ability to make us clothes with its hair, and its ineffective brain... all for our benefit.

we saw three or four fat little marmots fleeing into their burrows as we continued, and I was reminded of an entertaining story I had read a while ago.


looking back towards the olan



we got back to the hut, borrowed a topo and pad, and did a few problems:




which were ok, but not wonderful, especially given all the sheep shit everywhere.

We got our stuff together, and started walking out, when we discovered this gem:






which had many cool looking lines, but the most aesthetic is on the southeast corner,
just to the left of the arete. I moved some of the ankle breaking rocks at the base (replacing them with ankle trapping holes), and got to work. It was a much trickier problem than first appearances gave, but after an hour of tries, I finally did the leg shaking topout. Each move required some special trickiness, and the final sequence was: get the middle of the starting jug with the right hand, step right foot up to mini ledge on the right of the arete, left foot onto micro nubbin on left of arete, long reach out left to crappy pocket:




sack up, bump left up to jug, match, right up to sloper, left foot up past the
pocket, up to the jug, rock over, stop legs from shaking, stand up, dont fall off, walk away shaking.

not a "hard" problem, but mental without a pad and all the rocks!


we then stumbled down the rest of the trail and up the painful hill on the other side of the river, and drove home in a haze.

Day Two and Three of the Road trip

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.

Road trip part2

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.

A Road Trip

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!

lightning over grenoble

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.

more pictures of the Hammer lady's handiwork