Finale Ligure

After a painful night on the hard beds and cement pillows of The Hotel Maria Nella (Three stars, but deserves of none of them), we all agreed to take our chances and try to find a hotel in Final Borgo rather than spend another day driving too and from Bardineto. We had gotten up early in anticipation of a full day of climbing, but were greeted with hard rain and soggy surroundings. Since staying at the hotel for any longer period of time wasnt an attractive option, we drove to Finalborgo. After going to Rock Store again to ogle shiny things (I bought some new approach shoes), we went out in search of a hotel room, and the first place we went to -- "vecchie mura" -- was full, but had two private rooms availble within the walls of Finalborgo for only 55 euro which we happily accepted. Our room is the second shuttered window from the left (second floor)

I think I forgot to mention that this was easter Sunday, so things were quite busy. We waited out the rain at the Bar Centrale playing hearts, eating Paciugo Gelato and drinking hot chocolates, and occasionally wandered around the town


Then, around 2 pm or so we ventured out to the Rocca di Corno crag. It was muddy and still a bit wet, but we were able to test out Amy and Marks new rope and warmed up on a hard to belay 4c at the very end of the Western sector. One of the reasons I had chosen Rocca di Corno was because of a beautiful climb called "Rombo di Vento" which I had seen in a french climbing magazine and also in the guide book. It is a visually stunning overhanging line between cave systems on positive holds. A group of three Paduan climbers were on it, and let me give it a shot, and I managed to flash it with some beta from them. Chloe took a burn on it on toprope and looked solid, but couldn't quite do the crux.

Portofino and Finale

After some creatively decorated cappucinos (pictures when the PHOX photo people do their weekly E6 run), we got on the road to Rapallo. The road out of Venazza was shrouded in fog again, which made for interesting driving.

We had decided to go to Rapallo to check out the the massive and foreboding Castle mentioned in Frommers.

Although somewhat underwhelmed by the castle and Rapallo itself, the pizzas, calzones and tiramisus we had for lunch were pretty good. I convinced everyone to have a quick look at Portofino, since it was just up the road and I had wanted to see if for a long time. The housed and coast are indeed beautiful, and I can only imagine what itwas like before it became such a tourist hub. Now, however, it is absolutely packed with tourists and multi million dollar yachts, and I think any sense of authenticity is gone. It is simply a theme park. apparently my parents had taken me there years ago, but I have no memory of it. From Portofino, we continued on the autoroute paste Genova to Finale Ligure, and after a few wrong turns finally ended up in Finalborgo, a beautuful walled town with cobbled streets, cafes and two rock climbing supply stores. Amy and Mark bought new shoes and a rope, and we had dinner at the only place we could find that wasnt fully booked (it was the night before Easter). The food was acceptable, but not as good as what we had been eating on thursday and friday night. Chloe had a special pasta called "Trofie" in a nice pesto sauce, and I had fish kebabs. We then drove up to our accomodation for the night in Bardineto. It was quite a long way (about an hour) through winding mountain passes, and by the time we got there we were all exchausted and ready for bed.

Cinqueterre

I spent the morning taking pictures in the overcast and subdued light









We moved our packs to a nice private apartment that is also run by Gianni Franzi. After cappucino and yogurt at the breakfast place at the end of the covered walkway on the east side of the harbor, we set out on the Sentiero Azzuro to Corniglia (map of all the towns here). This was by far my favorite path, and even though we were frequently enveloped in clouds and mist, there is something great about traversing the century old terraced olive groves and hearing the ocean far below you. I'm not sure if it was the hour of the day or the fact that this path was the most strenous of the day, but there were barely any people on it. We arrived in Corniglia around lunchtime and had some greasy foccacia and pizza, followed by espressos in a small cafe. The Fabulous Shirtless Canadians were also there, running around yelling and trying hard to build up some good foreign associations with the maple leaf flag. From Corniglia, which was rather unremarkable but worth seeing, we dropped down the hillside past the train station and through a horrible and depressing shantytown along the water. It looked like it might have been a colony of vacation bungalows at one point, but had been quickly evactuated because of a TB scare or something. Regardless, it was filled with abandoned toys, suspiciously stained matresses and boarded up windows. I'm afraid I cant really recommend this part of the Cinqueterre. Things brightened up a bit when we found stairs leading down to the ocean and hopped around on the rocks and watched the schools of fish dart around under the rocks.

We continued on towards Manarola
, got some Gelatofuel, and walked up to the high point of the town (upper right in the photo). A boat with a loud pump was spuuporting some kind of underwater work just outside the bay, but we didn't mind: we had gelati.

We continued along the ridge until we came to a patio which looked south, and went to have a look. There were sweeping views, but something moving on the left side of my vision caught my eye:

The dogs would start barking like crazy as soon as you took one step down the stairs, so I went about testing exactly where it was that set them off. Shortly afterwards, an Italian lady caught me poking my head out from behind a wall and starting yelling things in some strange jibber-jabber language.
There were some nice views from the top



From Manarola, we continued through the moldy and humid tunnel that brings you to the train station and to the gaudy "Via dell' Amore". As we were rounding one of the last bends before Riomaggiore, we heard a low boom, like something falling into the water. Further along the bend we saw a group of tourists looking on with a mixture of amusement and fear at one of the Fabulous Shirtless Canadians who was swimming back to shore after having apparently jumped off the 30-40 foot high cliff into the ocean. Several more of them quickly followed, and I have to say that I was scared that one of them would get part of their ample brains removed on the way down by one of the two rocky outcroppings on their left and right.

Riomaggiore is at first pretty depressing looking, but the area you see from the path and the train station is not at all representative of what the town (arond the corner) really looks like



It is actually a lovely town, and my second favorite among the four that we visited.



After a miscommunication which caused chloe and I to watch sadly as our train back to Vernazza pulled away without us, then to walk back to Riomaggiore to look for Mark and Amy, then to walk back again and wait for another train, we made it back to Vernazza. The Vernazzans had set up colorful lamps all the way down to the church in the harbor for some crazy catholic celebration (?) called stations of the cross.

This involves dressing up in um... hoods,

carrying giant crosses


and scaring the crap out of little children
.
It was kind of haunting and beautiful though.

But before we watched this, we had dinner at Trattoria del Capitano, where I had the Tagliolini sul pesce as per Rick Steves recommendation (his name was in the air in this restaurant too!) followed by the grigliata mixti

and the house specialty of frozen whipped cream with pine nuts. Mark had bought a good bottle of Grappa, which I had been interested in trying ever since reading a New York Times article called "A Dynamo and Her Daughters Turn Leftovers to Gold" by Frank Bruni about the success a woman run Itlaian business had had in elevating the reputation of Grappa. In the article it mentions that the matron has turned Grappa from a "Cinderella to a queen". I suppose I could agree with this statement, but i'd modify it ever so slightly to include the word "drag". The bottle that Mark had bought was an expensive and supposedly good one, but it left a lot to be desired even compared to cheap tequila. This is from someone who was ready and willing to love Grappa. Anyway, we finished off the day on the patio again, sipping Grappa, looking out over the sea... yadda yadda yadda

Liguria (thursday)

We left the haze of grenoble today and drove (map here)through the fantastically over-priced Frejus tunnel into Italy. We continued past the signs for Sestriere (site of next years winter Olympics), down past Torino, over the aerial highways surrounding Genova, and finally down the winding road that leads to the Vernazza parking lot. Along the waym I was chomping on a bread chip and broke a chunk out of one of my teeth, so I get to go back to the dentist AGAIN. Our hotel (Gianni Franzi) was at the top of picturesque widing staircases

and had a private patio hewn into the rock with lemon trees and a shady trellis which overlooked the water.


We explored the town a little, and after watching a pack of Shirtless Canadianswho were jumping into the harbor, found a restaurant. Chloe shared a seafood risotto with Amy, and I shared an amazing grigliata mixti (sp?!) with Mark.

The meal was accompanied by a locally produced light white wine. Because we ate early (7 pm or so), the restaurant was filled with americans and I heard Rick Steves' name mentioned about twenty times.

We had no evidence that cheap Italian white wines were different from any other place in the world, but we risked it anyway and bought a 3 euro bottle to enjoy on the patio. After a few failed attempts to chill the bottle in the ocean which left mark with a wet sleeve and almost wineless, we walked up the stairs to the patio. The wine proved to have a remarkable hangover inducing quality, but at the time, looking out over the Med, lounging on chairs on a patio in the cliffside, life was good.

We had originally planned just one night in Vernazza, but quickly decided to book another room to have time to hike around the next day and relax.

late night collecting data

The field I'm in often requires some fairly late night stays at the synchrotron. Yesterday, however, we were doing a non standard measurement, and had to install a lot of new equipment. As a normal user, your nightmare is that you will make a mistake, cause any one of the moving parts on the experimental table to collide with another part, destroy a million dollar detector, and never be invited back. Well, we ended up colliding three parts of the setup due to their restricted spatial organization early in the day. Luckily, nothing was damaged, but it took us another few hours to re-align everything, and it was 5 PM before we could start data collection! We ended up collecting eighteen excellent datasets in a whirlwind of collection and processing. After we had disassembled everything and cleaned up, I biked home in a groggy half awake state. It turns out that there is no one on the road in Grenoble at that hour. The streets were completeley empty, and even the massive and always congested Place Dubedout was deserted, except for the birds, who were already awake and singing.

Show!

Yesterday I talked to the gallery manager at the Gaia store, and we confirmed that my photo show is on! IT will open on the 27th of May and run until the 23rd of June. I need to have several prints made, as well as invitations etc, so I have a lot of work to do (especially since I'll be on vacation for two weeks in May!).

You can find some of the work that will be shown here


In other news, since we have four days off for easter next week, Chloe and I are planning a trip with Mark and Amy (who are also coming with us to Kalymnos) to Liguria in northern italy. Our present plans are to stay in Vernazza for one night, walk around to the cinqueterre, then drive to Finale Ligure for climbing and more sight seeing.

Lab Ski Day

Today was lab ski day where I work, and more than fifty people were apparently signed up to go. The pack quickly got dispersed though. It was a beautiful day:




and I got in 8700 meters. I took one bad spill of an aborted jump attempt from which my whole body is still aching. Dave had a similar experience. I was waiting with another guy from work, and Dave was taking a lot longer than usual. We began to wonder if maybe he was waiting for someone else, but he eventually boarded up to us. His face was flushed, and his eyes looked like they werent quite focusing correctly, and he explained that a jump had tourned sour, and he had been dumped on his head and back! At least it solidified his resolve to buy a helmet for next season! Amy was another casuality from earlier in the day, when she had hurt (sprained?) her thumb. Chloe got off with only one major head dumping, but had to do a long and arduous traverse after taking an ill-advised turn onto a flat beginners piste.

Lyon

After another tiring week, chloe and I decided to spend the day in Lyon. We got up late, drove in to the center and parked in the lot under Place Antonin Poncet (15 euro for the day). Neither chloe nor I had ever walked up to the Basilique Notre Dame, so we made our way through the Place Bellecour, alon the quai and across the footbridge and into Vieux Lyon. We had a big tapas lunch at Cafe Sol on Rue du Boeuf, and then walked up the stairs and gardens to the basilica. As we were looking out over Grenoble, Chloe and I simultaneously wondered aloud what the big hangar shaped building was. As we walked up to the map, two french girls came running up and said "Alors, CA, CA C'est l'opera!!" while pointing at the hangar shaped building on the map. So yes, it was the opera building. We walked down the long steps that end up at the Gare St. Paul, and wandered around looking for the much talked about "Traboules" (secret passages). We found the one that begins at the quai, and were pretty underwhelmed. I guess we were expecting a catacomb-esque passageway. The door to the one on rue du Boeuf was locked, but had a little plaque saying something about Traboules. We began walking back towards the rive Gauche and au-vieux-campeur (a wonderful outdoor shop: like REI but staffed with people who actually know what they are talking about), but were stopped by the sight of two shrieking college students. They were on the Pont Alphonse Juin, pointing north at the river, waiting, and periodically bursting into shrieks and giggles. We looked out onto the river, but there was nothing: not so much as a boat. In fact, the only thing on the river at all was a dirty and disheveled swan about a half kilometer up the river. Surely this was no cause for excitement. Then, all of a sudden, a diving duck of some kind popped to the surface with a small squirming fish harpooned on its beak! It shook its head a bit, then neatly tossed the fish into its mouth, swallowed it, then
disappeared again. This went on for several fish. It was very impressive, although sushi from the Saone strikes me as a bit unsanitary. Anyway, we went on to vieux-campeur and bought a helmet and some new shoes for our upcoming Kalymnos climbing trip. Along the way we stopped in at a store that was selling Apple Cinema Displays, and chloe had to drag me away from them. I think I left a little pool of drool on the floor on my way out. I forgot to mention that the main reason we were in Lyon was because we had reservations at "Le Sud", but we still had 4 hours to kill before dinner. After dropping off our booty at the car, we went back to Vieux Lyon and sat at a cafe in Place St. Jean for a long, long, looong time. A man was smoking a cigar nearby which cleared out the customers pretty quickly. After hours of sitting around, we still had two more hours before dinner, so we went to possibly the worst movie I have seen in recent history: Trouble. But hey, it was in french and I understood everything except the profound whisperings. Its key feature was that it was about an hour and a half long, so by the time we were finished being dragged through the immense bubbling pool of crap that was "Trouble", we were ready for our dinner. Le Sud wasn't as good as we had remembered, but I think its because we made the mistake of ordering the "Menu". It was a great day in Lyon, and we'll have to got back soon. I think I'd like to try a new restaurant next time, though.

new tooth

So all is well with my teeth: I had indeed broken a tooth, and the dentist re-drilled it out and replaced the inlay with a much bigger one.

Kick ass

I felt a large crack on the right side of my mouth while eating lunch. It was so loud, in fact that the guy across from me heard it and asked me WTF the noise was. I was hoping that maybe it was just a burr that had broken off, but no such luch. As I was drinking coffee, a small chunk of tooth came out, which I spit out and inspected. Ten minutes later, a slightly larger chunk came out, which was similarly inspected to determine its source and composition. When the last and largest chunk came out, I knew I was in trouble, because this one was big. I saved all of the chunks in a test tube and had Chloe call the dentist, who got me an appointment today at 5. I've never broken a tooth in my life, and if that piece of crap thinks I'm going to pay him to repair his incomptence, he's deluded.

Anti Dentite

Today was the big day: filling removal day. Having cleared the epxenditure with the insurance company, I was fully committed to the replacement of all of my amalgam fillings. I ate my "meal of the condemned": a ham and emmental sandwich with gusto. I climbed each route at our lunchtime climbing session like it was my last. I kissed chloe goodbye and took the tram back into town and picked up the film from my new camera. The images looked sharp and saturated, if generally poorly composed. Would they be my last images? Actually, I was busily scanning them in until the last possible moment and then ran to the dentists office. He drilled out all nine teeth efficiently and without causing any pain. After manging to spit on my pants and shirt because my bottom lip was so heavily novacained (I appreciated the discretion of the nurse to turn away as I grabbed at the long strands of mucous leading from my mouth to the spittoon), the dentist told me to come back in an hour while his CEREC machine printed out my new teeth. But perhaps I should explain how CEREC works. The doctor uses a technique originally conceived right here in Grenoble for making tooth inlays. The process is impressive: drill out the old filling, powder the tooth with infrared reflective powder, take a picture with an IR camera, make a 3D computer model of the hole, design an inlay to fit the hole exactly, "print" an inlay out of a ceramic like VITABLOC with a diamond milling machine, then glue it in. The machine takes around 15 minutes to make one inlay, and I had nine, so I went back to the apartment and scanned in more slides while I waited. It's a pretty bizarre experience to be able to feel the giant gaps left by the drill with your tongue. I began to get a little nervous about what would happen if I passed out or something; it can't be such a good thing to be waiting around for too long with your teeth like that! The four ampoules of novacaine were still in full effect and who knows what that can do to your brain. When I got back, the dentist glued in the inlays (3 on the upper left, 2 on the lower left, two each on the right: #s 17, 16, 25, 26, 27, 37, 36, 46 and 47), drilled off the burrs and little tooth dingleberries still remaining, and sent me on my way. Did I mention that I was also providing support for an ESRF beamline, which had broken twice during the day?

new camera

I received my new used GA645Zi this week. I was pleasantly surprised that the shot counter had only 400 shots on it and the previous owner was the first! Cosmetically the camera looks great, but the lens sensor and bar code reader might not work. To test everything else, I went on a small photo safari with Mark around the Bastille and then neat the col de Clemenciere and pont de Vence. I shot two rolls, and ended up knee deep in snow trying to setup some semi interesting compositions. Normally I wouldnt shoot two rolls of film in a day, but I wanted to test everything. Amazingly, Phox photo now takes three days to process a roll of E6 film (This should take 2 hours in non third world countries.)

snow in grenoble

again! Bucket loads of snow are coming down

Serre Che

We went to Serre Che with Amy and her sister, but took the worst possible route there (my fault, in combination with a road being closed) through the Frejus tunnel and past Briancon. Apparently they havent had new snow since the end of January. In spite of their web site which states that they have a meter of snow, most runs were bare and the runs that were open were covered in patches of ice and rocks! We went back through the col de Lautarec (sp?) and by the legendary La Grave/La Meije:

dentures

I heard back from our insurance provider and happily they will be able to cover 80% of the cost of my fillings being ripped out and replaced with ceramic ones. The bad news is that they apparently consider these "dentures", which hopefully means something else in french. But hey, for 1400 euros they can call them what ever the hell they want to.

boarding

I had a great day boarding with dave at 7 laux. Waist high powder and endless off piste.
on the lift:

first tracks from the ridge

hiking the ridge

halfway down


from the base

teeth

the dentists appointment turned out to just be a consulatation. He explained that all of my amalgam fillings have cracked my teeth, causing cavities. They need to be replaced (nine of them!) which i'm so completeley psyched about that its hard to articulate. Before I do it, I need to make sure my insurance company agrees to it, because it will cost 1800 euro!!! Somehow I never realized that fillings have a limited lifetime.

boarding

Went out for my second and chloes first day of boarding of the year. There wasnt any powder at all; not even the heavy stuff that we usually get around here, which made for sore knees at the end of the day. Here's chloe looking very cold:


Theyve built an impressive park on the other side of the mountain:

They look well built, but are the most intimidating jumps I have ever seen, and I have been to a lot of board parks before. It might have something to do with the abruptness at which you will be chucked into the air. Usually with a jump like the one on the left, you see a group of kids uphill from it, trying not to look scared and steeling themselves for the inevitable painful crash. Every once and a while one of them will start boarding down to it, make some last minute turns to slow down, hit the jump with no speed, and land flat on their backs. I know this because I was frequently one of those kids. Then you have the fearless mini-kids with helmets, who pull up to the group, cast a scornful sideways look at the group, then bear down at full speed and huck themselves off for a perfect landing.

Pinhole

Last week I finally got back into pinhole photography. I started off with a 24 cm x 18 cm paper negative camera with a fairly large field of view, and by the saturday afternoon I had built three cameras of varying focal length. A guy at work had kindly drilled the .5 mm pinhole for me, and I subsequently made the .4 and .3 myself out of a swatch of aluminum can. Hypodermic needles and an emery board gave me a decent pinhole under a stereo microscope, and the images are decent. The Electron Microscope guy gave me a lot of 24 cm x 18 cm Ilfospeed paper, which I have been using as negeatives. Our darkroom has some stocks of Kodak X-ray film developer, which is not ideal but works well enough! Here are some of the images:

wheels

reason #2 (reason #1) not to park on the street:

(thankfully not our car!)