I ride dirt bikes, no big deal

05/29/06
Holy poop. That was an adventure. So the American school of Milan was out of there as quickly as they came. Really nice kids, and VERY funny. They call everyone "Mista, Mista!" And they don't remember anyone's name. Some of my kids were still asking my name the day before they left and we'd spent the better part of 5 days together. The first shot is of some of the things you might see if you went caving here. . .We headed into town to rent our scooters, and lo and behold, when the owner got back from his siesta at 2:00 he told us he'd gotten rid of one, so only 2 scooters were left for six of us. Stupid me leaked somewhere along the way that I had once driven a mini bike (for about 1 hour, about 5 years ago). So the 125 cc Kawasaki Dirt bike they had left over went to me. Yes I learned, trial by fire, to shift and steer a dirt bike at 120 km/hr with Ann on the back on the way to the Mediterranean. What an adventure it was. The first night we pulled off a rural road into the woods and slept next to a diverted river behind some country properties. We drank wine, ate cheese, and contemplated life under the stars. It was a fantastic day. I was in high spirits as I'd survived the first 100 k or so incident free. Earlier in the afternoon between the high rolling hills and vast panoramas we pulled in to a small french village and got some groceries at a convenience store. The stores here carry fresh cheese, meats, produce, and bottles of wine for E1.75, very cheap. An old man who our friend Ward talked to was so elated that we were from Canada (where his daughter now lives) that he was moved to going inside the store and walking back out with a b ottle of Muscat for us. Muscat is a sweet, potent wine brewed from large green grapes. Tastes very different and very good. Even though by the time we consumed it it was hot. The wine and the weather that is. The next day we motored on, road after road, village after village, roudabout after roundabout. We went south, south south. Grasslands and vineyards turned to scrublands of rosemary, rocks, and the occasional olive grove. A sawtoowth range of hills erupted from the horizon and we roared up the turns, the smell of the pine-like evergreens filling our nostrils (along with the smell of motorbike exhaust). We hit a 10k or so straightaway, at which point I began to enjoy the power the motorbike had as Ann and I let the scooters pass us just so we could rip past them again and again, laughing all the way. We cruised down a huge hill and our first glimpse of the turquoise mediterranean greeted us. White rocks with castle ruins and small villages nestled in them surrounded us. We toured some beaches until we found one we liked, and there we wnjoyed the beach for the day. The water was unexpectdedly cold, progably 15 degrees, and crystal clear. The air was oppressively hot, and rediculous winds generated by the temperature differenence tore across the beach and in a matter of hours almost completely buried our stuff, and our crew, which was passed out from just one bottle of wine on the beach, sunburnt and sand COVERED. LAter that night, after Ann and I sped around a turn in tow of the scooters, we realised we had no idea which way everyone else went. We headed down the freeway we managed to get onto for 15 minutes before we could turn around, when we finally did we retraced our path through the town and went up over the massive skyway bridging one side of the rhone to the other, fighting dangerous crosswinds threatening to blow the bike off the road all the way. After touring the city looking for our friends for awhile we decided it wasn't worth it to drive till dark looking for them, as they were probably heading north anyway. They had planned to go home the next day. Ann and I checked into a hotel just for the hell of it. We enjoyed a sleep in and a cheap breakfast and it was off to Marseille for the morning. After enjoying a couple of pints of guiness at a cafe we walked around the Old POrt area for awhile berfore heading off to the beautiful town of Aix-En-Provence. We spent the afternoon there after a rediculously good lunch. We left the town of moss covered fountains and old cobblestone roads and buildings and headed north bound for Orange. We enjoyed the towns in between, driving sometimes on freeways, sometimes on smaller roads. We decided we could make it all the way back to camp in one night, so it was a push for home. Destination fever overtook us as we hit our first traffic jam in the town of Orange. Following the lead of the biker in front of us we swerved into the oncoming lane and ripped along the center line past the parked traffic, trying not to hit any side mirrors, no matter which way their owners were driving. We past about 5 k of stopped traffic, which took probably 45 minutes. We stopped after driving over a huge old narrow bridge in Pont St. Espirit, had a pizza and salad dinner at a small restaurant, and sped off for home. We followed the signs to the Gorges De L'Ardeche and the perfect ending to our trip ensued. We sped around the winding turns of the gorge road, up high to the streets overlooking the canyon, following the river. We had the whole road to ourselves, and after watching the sun go down we rumbled down into the valley, following the turns, asses hurting, driving by the highbeams. We zipped through the neighbouring towns of Salavas and Vallon Pont D'Arc and followed our memories back to camp. We pulled in around 10:00 last night, exhausted and exhilarated from a fantastic adventure. That's going to be hard to top on another day off. I do have this bike till 2:00 today though, so time to go into town for one last ride on the green demon, and to post this blog entry.
Hope everyone reading is doing well. Brit, I got a letter from you today, I'm going to go read it.
I'm off to enjoy the rest of the day off!

The way of Iron

05/21/06
The first week here with campers was good. It gave greenhorns like me a chance to see how
things run around here. I was a floater, teaching canoe sessions and climbing. Our Grande
Descente down the river went very smoothly and was most entertaining. The school we had was ISS, the International School of Stuttgart. The kids were almost all fluent in German, but
most of them spoke ennglish as a first language, and many of them others such as Danish or
east Indian dialects. The kids were entertaining and hailed from all over the world, many
originally from the states. They fit into a category known as Third Culture Kids, as they
have no real home country. Their citizenship belongs to one country, their residence
another, and their orwn culture straddles the two. That is what they have in common, and so
a third culture, the culture of the global nomad, arises from this. It makes for an
interesting and mostly tolerant group of young kids. After the week ended, Neil, our
director, took six of us toa town an hour and a half away. We drove through small vollages
and around roundabouts. Our trip took us up into the hills where the rock changed
drastically from Limestone to granite and other volcanic rock. We stopped in a small town,
rented soem gear, and set off to concor the Via Ferrata, the Way of Iron. Via Ferratas are
common in France, Switzerland and Italy. They are riggings of metal grips, banisters, cables
tension traverses and zip lines that take you around and up cliff faces and over chasms and
gorges. The afternoon was a spectacular one of climbinb and ziplining and enjoying the
scenery. One side of the gorge we were over was made of rock that looked like lava frozen in
it's tracks (which it was) and the other of solid granite. We made our way through the gorge
and up the opposing cliff faces all the while clipping and unclipping our carabiners to keep
us on the face should we fall, and getting in precarious situations for the sake of taking
pictures. On the way home Dan, my tent mate, told us stories of the summer he was running
rickshaws in Ottawa. He told absurd tales of drunkards paying 60 dollars to get a ride
around the block and being so bushed at the end of a 9 hour day that stretching one muscle
made another cramp up. All the while I sat in the back of the car with a length of wild
boar sausage in one hand, knife in the other, hoping neil wouldn't smash into an insolent
french driver on a tight turn. We enjoyed a local blue cheese and the sausage as the castle
ruins, red tile roofs, vineyards, sculptures and hills rolled by outside. The night ended
with us returning to camp and then retiring to the Quetzal for an evening of laughs and
elaborate pizzas. Everyone is tired now, and we are expecting the kids from the International
School of Milan tonight. The kids promise loads of laughs with their accents and
personalities. Next weekedn is our three day stint off. Ann and I are trying to figure out
which city on the coast we want to visit, and we hope it can be coordinated in short time, as
we will have to hop on a bus as soon as we are
off! This last picture is of the Pont D'Diable. The Devil's bridge. I think it's called that because there are only theories on who built it and when it was built. There are a few in this area, very mysterious.

Gorging ourselves (terrible pun)

Okay post two. hour two in this little stone and clay brightly painted hole in the wall we discovered: The internet Cafe, in the backstreets of Salavas, the town just over the bridge from Vallon. French/spanish/folk/punjabi influenced sounds drift up the stairs to our little sony loft, carried on the back of the scent of French cuisine. . . I mean FRENCH cuisine. The smell of something frying in a spiced oil probably a pastry of some sort included, and definitely some garlic in there. The church bells ring, and I try to figure out how to get these pictures up and connect them with a string of words. Behind, in front, and all around the young manager, probably a climber in his spare time with his 3/4 length pants, tan, clean shave and pony tail hustles and bustles trying to keep everything going without looking unrelaxed. One of the activities this camp runs is gorging. There's a gorge that is a completely dried up riverbed of bright white limestone. It takes all day to make your way through and has incredible formations to scramble up, rappel down, swim across and just gawk at. When the sun hits it right it's an absolute reflector oven, and the only sign of civilization is the low altitute training runs that the French Mirage jets fly over our heads ever 10 minutes or so. Incredibly fast, so that by the time you hear them, they're usually out of sight, and always in formation. There are no real hazards other than rocks and gravity to worry about. Not on a Canadian scale anyway. The vipers and adders are resonably non-poinsonous, and there are no bears. The wild boars are docile unless cornernered, thought they enter the bivouac sites by almost the hundreds at night. There is the occasional scorpion though - the climate being what it is. The Gorge has one really cool feature known as the birthing hole. It is said that after your first time passing through it, you gain another name. Don't know what mine is though. The birthing hole is a bore right through a section of limestone that looks too small for a human to pass through, but isn't. Even I fit through it. The shot is of Pete, my small Aussie Tent mate being born. I had to say I was pretty nervous about getting stuck. It's not the kid of thing the jaws of life can get you out of. It is said that there are over 2000 caves in the Ardeche. The canyon walls that surround the river are permeated with holes, and most of them seem to lead much further into the cliff than one first imagines, and many pop out somewhere else, after hours of crawling and subterranean climbing. Pete, John, and Ward, 3 guys from the camp here went with me into a cave just up the road here and the end of it was 15 feet over the street. Luckily a German couple here had strung a rope just in front of the opening so we could lower ourselves down, as the climb was hairy at best. We also did a cave as a staff which had waist deep pools of freezing water below a one foot ceiling. Not for the claustrophobic. Caving is a rush, and the bautiful cave formations add to the scenery. No pictures of caving yet.

2 Paddlers from Britain came down and for the last 6 days showed us the ropes on paddling the ardeche. People were from various levels of experience, some with none, and by the end everyone was a whitewater soloist. Quite an intensive training session. The ardeche is surrounded by canyon walls, hundreds of feet high which are always present, looming, and imposing, right to the end of the trip. The river turns brighter and brighter green as it progresses and the limestone chalks it up.

We had a blast trying moves, surfing waves, and giving and taking advice the whole way through. The Descent only takes 2 days, so we did it twice, once witha view to paddling technique and practice, the second time with a view to river safety and placing of staff along a rapid. It was hard to take my eyes off the sky. At night we bivouacked at a site where everyone stays. The Ardeche runs through anational park so to regulate pollution and flood dangers there are 2 places you can camp. We left our food boxes at ground level the first night, and the rumours of the wild pigs proved true as we witnessed our breakfast spread through the dirt. The boars had made short work of our yogourt. There were some highlights of our trip. Like this moment of (almost) solitude that I managed to grab (2-6000 people can descend the ardeche in one day during peak season,. ouch, I know).

Another highlight os the raft of canoes we made. Apparently a tradition on this section of the river. So that's it, tomorrow the kids come and ruin our fun. Hopefully our team is ready for them. The river is a beautiful place and we are filled with memories of playing in the rapids and battling warm and cold alternating weather and shifty headwinds (through the hallways of the gorge). Now we are taking it easy on our day off in preparation. I better go back to eating this flute before my internet time runs out. Leave a comment, send a sign of existence. We're in a bubble down here!





Here we are, from left to right hailing from Lindsay, California, Germany, Guelph, Edmonton. Yeah it's a Canada party. There are more of us. Some are from australia, Sweden, Britain. Some have been away from home over a year, passing through Romania, Germany, Tahoe, etc. It's an eclectic mix and some people's english is tinted with hints of everything from american to british, mixed with foreign expressions and foreign prosody and intonation. That's what happens when you're travelling I guess. . .

Attention, J'Arrive!

Oh God where to begin. Perhaps 2 posts will suffice. I am safe and in France. Our train went south, south, south. Ann and I drifted in and out of sleep in our seats between transfers at various stations. I tried to keep awake with my face glued to the window, watching spring unfold into the later stages of summer before my eyes as we crossed lines of latitute. Budding leaves turned to sun drenched vineyards and sloping hillsides, covered with scrubby thyme and rosemary, and the occasional palm. Behind it all I caght the occasional glimpse of the formidable alps, still covered in snow. Mont Blanc itself was visible for the first portion our trip. We stepped off the train in Montelimar, much hotter than cold Geneva, and caught the bus to Vallon Pont D'Arc where Neil, our camp director picked us up. Neil is an Englishman who has been living here in the south of France for a couple of years now. We took us through the narrow streets of the village and along the steep cliffs that overlook the camp. Our Setting is a humble abode. We live in 3 person tents on a grass lot, and eat outside under an awning every day. It is freezing cold at night here, and can get blazingly hot in the day if there is no wind. It's definitely a mediterannean climate. The cliff shot is the wall that overhangs our small encampment. Our staff training is 2 weeks in and will come to an end tomorrow when the kids arrive. I have had the priveleges of some great experiences already. Vallon Pont D'Arc (Vallon for short) is the quaint French village in walking distance over the hills from our camp. It probably hasn';t changed (aside from wireless internet access) in the last 400 years. Some of these shots were taken in a confused wander through the town as we sought the bar our friends inhabited one day off afternoon. The village from a distance is an assortment of different heights of stone walls and red tile roofs, punctuated by the occasional church spire and castle ruins. Very Europena, very French. This is Ann givin' er, or 'putting some Welly into it, as Neil likes to say" . This day off we took the long way through the town, taking in the culture. We eventually happened on the Quetzal: The local watering hole. I could hardly believe that any one in this corner of the world would have even heard of the rare national bird of Costa Rica, let alone name a bar after it, until I realised that Martinique is French soil, then it all came together. The bartender was from Barcelona, so the relapse to ordering all my drinks in Spanish came much easier than my awful French, and he appreciated the refreshing change I think. It was wierd to be in a bar with kids, dogs, and cigarettes. These things don't happen where I'm from. Upon my arrival at the Quetzal I ordered a pizza known only as "Les Delicieux De La Mer" The picture explains it all. Yes those are full sized clams, lemon slices, and prawns. There was also creme and brie in the pizza. The French also have a habit, for an extra Euro or so, of cracking a sunny side up egg onto your pizza in case it isn't rich enough for you. I'm telling you man, olives, aged smelly cheese and wild boar sausage from the market as hors d'oeuvres at camp makes you want to overstay your welcome.



Onto the Rest of our week, the outdoors part. After all this food all has to go to some good cause right?