Jnster: the story of an outdoors enthusiast in NYC and wherever he wanders...

Sunday, July 31, 2005

One optimized week of vacation in France :-)

I'm just back from one week in France. I had time to do lots of thigs, much more than what I have time to tell now...

By the way, I just walked home past Petco and saw a woman with a big iguana on her shoulder: yes it is a crazy city here!

But let's go back to the point: my vacation in France.

The highlights were:
- Katia and Arnaud's wedding day in Alsace.
I was so happy for them, they looked like the happiest couple on earth:I don't have any worry about they long-term marriage...
It was the first wedding of friends I am attending, quite a big emotion.
And I had the chance to meet most of my friends from INSA there, it was really a great gathering! As it seemed to me, there's an ever growing part of them who's migrating from France to Switzerland. Sign of changing times for engineers?

- Visit to my parents and my grandparents that I hadn't seen for quite a while...
I was very happy to meet all of them, especially my grand parents that I see even less often. I was as usual trated like a king, having fantastic chinese meals, and my mum in vacation, all dedicated to her son-visiting-from-the-US.

- Visit to MurMur, my former regular climbing gym in Lyon
The goal was to know if I had bettered my level while training in NYC. I know the style of climbing would be quite different. MurMur is a huge gym, with most routes at least 10m high and big overhangs. So my testpieces were routes in NYC-gym style: short, but very technical. The result is that I oversighted a 6b+ and 6c (a thing I could never do in the past, i.e 2004 ;-)), and climbed big overhangs: overall my level has improved, I'm really happy.

- Meeting my sporty lyonnais friends
Geoffroy hosted me at his place, and I met most people I really wanted to see. Sorry Eric S and Anne-Lise, among others, we couldn't arrange any meeting... Next time, or CU here :-). I found everyone in good shape, very much into sport and travel, as usual... It felt good to meet these friends, with which you feel to have a lot in common

- 4 days in the Alps, trying to climb mountains as planned months in advance...
Our original plan was to climb Barre des Ecrins and Domes de Miage, and finally I didn't climb any of those... We actually changed our plans (with Geoffroy) at the last minute, because of dangerous conditions in the couloir we had chosen for Barre des Ecrins. We headed to Chamonix instead, and summited the Aiguille du tour, via a semi-original route (Day 1 +1400m non technical, Day 2 +800m technical, -2100m). It was harder than what I had expected but we did pretty well.
After meeting friends in Les Contamines, we started the next day for les domes de Miage with reinforcements consisting of Violaine and Nicolas. We had to stop around 9am before the Col des Domes, because of low visibility, snow storm, a painful ankle... Better luck next time. Nicolas was particularly disapointed as it would have been hos first mountaineering summit.
(Day 1 +1500m, Day 2 +600m, -2100m).
4 big days overall. I thought I would sleep like a baby in the plane, but I didn't... And I didn't feel much jet lag. Let's wait a few more flights to say I'm the master of jet lag :-)


Conclusion: after a total of 10 days (New York to New York): I have a feeling that I almost have two homes, one on each side of the Atlantic. I mean everything still feels very familiar in France, and so does New York after coming back. I had been expecting a big cultural shock when going to France, and no such thing happened. So I'm still very much French :-) And I have more friends over there...
I know I won't be living in New York for too long, definitely not for all my life, but I feel good here... Summertime, and the living is easy, maybe anywhere in the world... If only it could be the same for Elise...

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