Certain people, by which I mean 'Patrick', have been telling me I should update this thing. Since I have exciting pictures to update it with, and also since he's probably the only person who reads it so I should do what he says... it's UPDATE TIME.
The subject of this update: The awesome 4 days near and in paris of two weekends ago.
Will there be pictures of awesome rock, stories of awesome beer and snails, and general merriment the likes of which makes you wish you had been there rather than doing whatever the hell you were actually doing? Oh, Count on it.
Right, so anyway, we met in Paris. I am pleased to say I never once referred to it as "Pah-reeee", except to take the piss out of people who do so sincerely (with the exception of the french, who are allowed to, but who you can take the piss out of for other reasons).
Speaking of taking the piss out of the french, we'll start with a joke from Richard:
Why do the French like the Tour de France so much?
Because it's better than watching German tanks drive down the Champs Elysees
Nice going Rich, you culturally insensitive bastard. To be fair, it's gotta have something to do with it though. I mean otherwise you'd just watch the WRC, right? Moving on.
(note: Richard is not actually a culturally insensitive bastard at all. He is a legend, and he went to Gallipoli last year on Anzac day with an NZ flag, so don't get the wrong idea).
Anyhooooo.
I arrived in Paris on the TGV. I travelled first class, because I am a FUCKING ROCK STAR! And also because they had run out of second class tickets.
This is what it looks like out the window of a train travelling around 1/3rd the speed of sound:
Hardcore eh? It would have been better if I have taken the shot when we were going along next to the highway and blowing past crazy frenchmen in their Peugots (who already drive like Schumacker on PCP) like they were standing still. Better yet is the fact that you don't need to get screened, don't need to check in, don't need to do nada. I arrived at the terminal where I boarded roughly 5 minutes before the train left on a connecting train from Baden. When it stopped 3 and a half hours later I was in the centre of Paris. Passport control consisted of 5 TOTALLY disinterested people wandering down the train, who didn't even ask me for my passport (which was a bit rough, considering I'd kept waking up the night before from some bad dream that I didn't have the right permit to get into France). To be fair, they were slightly pickier on the way back to Switzerland (in the sense that they wanted to make sure that I actually had a passport, there was still no stamping or anything). Once I got off the train, getting through baggage collection, customs, etc took me roughly 2 seconds. I just wandered down the platform and met Jaron and Ben, said "Yo, wassup homeys", and proceeded to make our way to the car. It is truly the way to travel.
From there we gapped it out to the airport to pick up Richard, once again cause for joyous reunion highfives, and then laid a patch for Fontainbleu.
Fontainbleu is an awesome castle type place surrounded by the bouldering mecca of the world. Look it up or something... and bear in mind that I've probably misspelt it. I don't care. It must be time for some pictures of sweet, sweet rock.
This is Richard on the first day. Or his hands anyway. Stunner. The place is incredible, all this beautiful forest with nice open sand floor and green leaves, with boulders EVERYWHERE. It rules, and I am totally going back there (although I am also totally going to check out "Magic woods" in Switzerland, which is reported to be almost equally awesome).The next three days went like this.
Climb Beer Snails Steak Wine Sleep Delicious Pastries French Bread Climb Shelter From Brief Drizzle Climb Drink Red Wine And Eat Cheese For Lunch Chill And Look At The Forest Climb Some More Beer...
This is a good point for an interlude. I don't know if one of the others has a photo - I suspect not - but after the second day of climbing we went for dinner at this awesome restaurant by the road in the middle of the forest area. It was all log cabiny, and had a fire, and generally ruled. It also had several french bar girls, one of whom was on the "really pretty hot" side of pretty. So, when the time to go and order more beers came, I decided to do it in french. Why? Because I am classy. Oui. Unfortunately, I don't speak french, so Richard had to teach it to me. At around this time we decided that it would be even MORE awesome if we manipulated my pretended lack of understanding of French to comic effect (and remotely possible hot french girl kisses - which failed to eventuate alas).
I learned to say:
"Bonjour. Je voudre twa beer a une coke si vous plat" or at least something that has roughly the same phonetic pronounciation as that. It means "Hello, I will take three beers and one coke please".
I also learnt to say, as a follow up:
"Vous avec tres beau jour"
Which Richard assured me meant "You have very beautiful eyes" (hey, she did ok?).
It was agreed by all present that saying the first would make me a slick french dude, and pulling off the second while successfully pretending I was simply continuing ordering drinks would make me the freaking master.
Now, I already KNOW I'm the master, but the world is full of skeptics. Plus, possible french smooches. I delivered it like a pro.
Result:-
Girl: Pardon?
Me: um... vous avec tres beau jour
Girl:
Me: ummm
Girl:
Me: Aren't I just ordering beers and a coke?
Ahhhhh, it was great. I didn't get french kisses, but we did get plenty of smiles, and hey, you only live once. I was just pleased I said it all right under pressure.
Almost anyway, right Rich? You see, as we found out the next night when I (after several cocktails) said the same thing to the barman just because, we discovered that "jour" actually means "cheeks". "AZure" means eyes. So no wonder the poor girl was confused. To be fair, that probably worked in our favour. I mean "you have beautiful eyes" is the weak pickup line of a muppet, whereas "you have beautiful cheeks" is the obvious fumbling of a charmingly inept foreigner. Hugh Grant, I'm coming for you.
Day 3 - The best climbing thus far I think, and then more beer, and then cocktails and playing poker until late and then going and finding an indian restaurant and then dying in bed. It was tres good. We were all pretty much dead after three days on the rock though, and both Ben and I had to shoot through the next day so...
We did ate some parisian food, drank some parisian coffee, took photos of lots of parisian architecture of varying merit, including plenty of shots of the outside of a certain pyramid... oh yeah...
This is Richard being just super freaking AMPED that the louvre is closed. I dunno what it was closed for, but it's probably safe to assume it wasn't cleaning. Word was they were on strike or something.
Anyway, then we walked down the street and saw the arc de triomfe and looked at a arms bazarr like weapons industry moguls (including chatting up the helicopter sales girl trying to find out what the fuel consumption on a battlefield scout chopper was like - she only wanted to sell us training flights sadly) and then I had to catch the train home where I met super gorgeous french girl.
But I'm bored now, so I'm off until next time... which I'll try to make soon. Though I may not make on blogger, because it's handling of embedded images is making me want to stab it.
Adios compadres!
