getting ready for a trip to a foreign country isn't something i do routinely. I don't really enjoy flying in planes so i don't hesitate to make my last night in town one my liver regrets. This trip was no different except my last night in town was cinco de mayo in my old stomping grounds. The sequence of events leading up to my departure should mostly be kept secret but there was some boozing with a few of the usual suspects. I have a habit of putting my wallet and cell phone on my lap while i'm sitting at a resaurant to keep them off the table and outta my pockets. Whatever time that was when the authority figures of Casey MOores decided they wanted to clean up and go home and started hearding us out into the streets I got up and the wallet mustve fallen to the floor.
The morning of May 6th. Hung over, wearing carhart like dickies and no shirt on a leather couch in tempe... ie FUCKING sweaty and miserable... i run through my basics list.. keys, check.. cell phone, check... wallet? where the fuck is my wallet? in the cushions, under the couch, in the kitchen, bathroom.. did i drop it on my way home? my plane leaves in 1.5hrs SHIT! to shorten a long story we walked through the kitchen of caseys at 0855 and the cook grab it off the register and I was on my way with a 50 minute window...before the plane takes off...
Seattle was seattle... blue mohawks and rich people with lots of REI gear they prolly used that one other time... Iceland was so sweet to fly over and may be a cool place to check out one day. The women all look the same... and that's OK... Then it was off to London.
London was pretty cool for the short period of time I was there. I cruised around on the Underground a bit... did my best to mind the gap. I was sitting in a Pub getting my grub on when some jokers in costumes start rolling in. BTW, it's 2pm and some of the gents in the establishment were getting twisted drunk. But the guys in the costumes... Hulk Hogan, Superman, OOmpalOOmpAs, a gang dressed up like a game of monopoly, American Football Players, the ultraviolence gang from clockwork orange, prisoners... standard costume hijinx all start coming into the pub drink a few beers.. really fast.. and bounce, theyre gone for good. I was like what the fuck!? this trip is going to be insane if this is how it's starting.. later i hear from someone much more worldly than me that this action isn't uncommon. a group of guys sitting at the bar sang a few drinking songs in the midst of all this and i felt like i got the whole enchilada in London time for the Channel Tunnel Eurorail...
The channel tunnel is the most boring wonder of this world. All i have to say about it is with all that engineering how about some damn windows or a few light fixtures so the people of the world can admire your incredible work. This is where i realized i've listened to this song, Pearl Jam more than all the others in the ipod so far this trip. Traveling goes like that.
Paris by night. As my train was pulling into paris it was clear to me that paris isn't my kind of city. luckily the intinerary kept me running. I arrived in one train station and spent about 30minutes looking for my next train. Finally, i decided to show someone behind a window my 'ticket' he had a look of disbelief on his face. I don't speak a single word of french but i figured out he was telling i needed to be at the train station on the other side of the city and i needed to take the 'orange' metro to get there.... let the games begin. I had an hour and a half to make it across paris on the Orange number 5. Easy. I even took a nap on a super comfy bench. Luckily, i was woken up but some annoying, fat kid that bumped into my foot while his parents were trying to figure out up from down. Then it was time for the night train to Nice. As i'm walking to Seat 28 on Coach 28 i notice bunkbeds through the windows of all the coaches.. on the inside i'm thinking nice i'll get to sleep for real since that has happened for at least 2 days now... i was also worried i'd snore a lot and make everyone mad but decided that was really not my problem. coach 26... 27 wtf? regular seats. coach 28 regular seats bummer.. get on there is an old lady sitting in my seat. I'm the only non french speaking person around so i sit accross from her. ultimately this was the right move because i now know seating assignments are really loose on these night trains. I got my own pair of seats. Sounds nice enough and i got to see one of the more impressive sunrises of my life so i won't complain about how day 3 without sleep is about to start.
Nice, France is one of the most beautiful cities I've ever seen. I was so fortunate to walk all over the city before everyone else woke up. Backnote, my buddy told me a ferry would take me from Nice to Finale so a while back I google mapped it and looked easy enough. I thought thatd be a sweet thing to do. For the record, I leave a lot to chance in my travels. So i walked probably 5 miles from the train station to the Port. The girls selling Ferry tickets had never heard of Finale Ligure and thought I was insane. So I bust out my netbook and google map and show them the route. I show them the route and the girls tell me i need to buy a ticket from the company that's in the same building but in the room behind theirs. The other company doesn't open for 2 more hrs. So I'm sitting outside looking at the beautiful yachts and surfing the web on the free wifi and i notice it's gonna take 11hrs to ride a ferry from Nice to Finale Ligure. FUCK! I can't do that I'll die from exhaustion, literally and figuratively... between the illness and possible acute renal failure from dehydration.
Train tickets, i need a train ticket. On the googles, www, intertubes there is no help getting on a train from Nice to Finale Ligure... it seemed like Finale didn't have a train station and that is what the SNCF website kept telling me. Luckily, Angela got on the FB for a second and I got her to give me the insider scoop. I needed to got to some place called vermilla.. which the french call vermiglia, or vice versa, get off the train, buy another ticket headed toward some damn Italian city and it passes through Finale Ligure. So i got to walk 5 miles back to train station and this all goes down like that.
That train ride followed the coast and went through San Remo and Monte Carlo. Ugly......
1600 I'm in Finale Ligure, Angela met me at the train station then bought me gelato on the walk back to the apartment, stylin. Except i got a sore throat that started in Seattle and has done nothing but gone from annoying to excruciating and I haven't slept for three days which is a long time to go without sleep even by my standards...
Next day no climbing unfortunately, I had to just lay on the beach and get some sun. I met Angela's Italian friends who were mostly working in Finalborgo.. Marco running the climbing shop, guy at the butcher store, Alessandro climber guy who seems to reupholster, the coffee shop girl and the pizza guys... had a prosciutto i funghi pizza, chianti and tiramisu. They all think the name 'Jeff' is funny, they smile, chuckle and repeat my name with disbelief when they learn it as if there is some inside joke i totally missed out on. Appearantly, 'Jeff' is just a reallllly unitalian name... i'm looking into this.
The next day got epic in hurry. I got on a bike and road it to Finalborgo Angela was on the scooter. On my way back to the apartment i got lost... really lost... for a long time. And i dunno, on a bike that's way too small a few signs that say 15% grade and being lost to the point that you find yourself riding in circles in a foreign country, DOMS from the 10mile walk around Nice, the sorethroat... i was WORKED and was thinking about calling off the climbing,UGH. Needed a birra, got one and then it was climetime. I illegally drove a scooter (with no helmet) to Il Pilastro. Il Pilastro is where you will find a nice selection of Euro Death Slabs. I climbed several of the 6a+ variety and even at that grade i feel lucky to still have all my limbs intact. Exquisitely technical climbing which i find fitting for my climbing style. I just wish they were about at least 5-10 degrees steeper without the ledges. I must admit being the first cliff i climbed on here I was mildly worried there was no steep climbing here. The rock was absolutely bulletproof and the approach was just the right length for my lazy ass. The sorethroat was still raging, but i'm here to climb dammit so climb is what i will do.
11-5-11. the sun came up again and i don't feel worse. not to say thr sore throat was any better in the morning but it wasn't worse for once. First thing was to get me a helmet for cruisin on the scooter so i don't have to go to jail in Italy. That was a long walk which involved two macchiatos. But i got a pretty rad motorcycle helmet. Then we rode the scooter to a zone caled Fallesia Dell' Orso. Which was bolted up in 2006. The routes were short but the moves were wonderful. Long pulls on small pockets and incut crimps. Climbed quite a few routes. One was brutally sharp. The rest were sharper than you might expect on limestone but not too bad compared to some of the stones in this world. When the climbing was done I laid on the beach. That's about it for now. Still have 5 weeks of climbing and kickin it on the beach. Francesca the girl who owns the apartment comes back from Venice tomorrow. Saturday going to get on some steeper, harder routes with a guy named Pierre. Garn and joni are doin 4 days in Finale in about 2 weeks... sure there will be at least a few more stories to tell...... and the throat is back to scratchy... hoping tomorrow i'm 100% again.
