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.
