Fighting the Tide, a Few Restaurants Tilt to Tap Water - New York Times

I thought I was the only one who hates small plastic bottles!
It seems to be changing.

Fighting the Tide, a Few Restaurants Tilt to Tap Water - New York Times

Let me send this article to Caesar and see if he wants to be a trendsetter in his own restaurant!

It could have been worse

TAKE - The story of a boy who fell 110 feet
Why am I still reading things like this?

And like that? --> Go there only if you like blood... You've been warned...
http://www.podiatryonline.com/main.cfm?pg=how_to&fn=fractureblisters

Hitchsters.com - Share a taxi to/from the airport in NYC

Hitchsters.com - Share a taxi to/from the airport in NYC

Something I should probably try...
Maybe it's the ultimate solution to the JFK problem for me (Should I take...):
- Subway + LIRR train + Airtrain (currently my favorite because it avoids traffic and has a reasonable cost)
- Supershuttle (convenient but sooo long and usually rude drivers)
- Taxi or car service (soooo expensive but can be damn fast depending on the time of the day)
- Subway + Airtrain (the cheapest but so long I don't think I'll ever try it again)
- Bus from Penn Station or Port Authority (never tried)

Me and my urbanite problems ;-)

Not in great shape...

Ah, everything was so fine in Puerto Rico before life started to go astray... Here are a few pictures I found on http://escape.topuertorico.com. I'm pretty sure somewhere in my stolen memory card I have some kind of similar pictures. We'll never find out..



Paseo de la Princesa, Old San Juan



Old San Juan



Old San Juan



Flamenco beach, Culebra

Tomorrow I'll go for a Catscan at St Luke's hospital. If the results are good, it might cheer me up. At the moment, not much is going right. On Saturday, after trying unsuccessfully to contact 4 different hospitals for 3 days to get a Catscan appointment, I finally resolved to take a cab and go see for myself at the hospital. Of course, I had no appointment (because they refused to give one to me on the phone) so I had to register and go trough ER. St Luke's was a nice hospital (much nicer than my somewhat grimy experience at St Vincent's) and the doctor was prompt to see me and send me to Catscan. Unfortunately, the machine was broken, and nobody would come to repair it until tuesday because it's a holiday week end! I had the option to go to another hospital and try the same thing, but I decided to go home and wait for tuesday. I already had to spend my $100 copay for absolutely nothing and did not want to register at another hospital yet again (I do not want to go to St Vincent's again)... So, I saw the long week end passing without being able to get out my apartment much.... I can't wait for this thing to be over.
And today, even with the constant heat (and no A/C, I don't really like it), I managed to catch a cold...
At least, I have good friends that come visit me! Tom, Richard and Neri visited on thursday, Jenny bought groceries on Saturday; and Anne and Dan (a friend from INSA who just moved from London to NYC) came to see me for the first time in Harlem. They were a bit impressed and scared by Harlem!



On a related note, Violaine has a detailed and colorful story of her stay in NYC (including the second gunks trip): here. It's worth giving it a look!

Central Park Bouldering

While I am slowly starting to recovery from injury and wondering what kind of activity I'll be able to do this summer (if any activity at all), MPHC has organized a bouldering session in Central Park.

They came out with really nice pictures!

Be sure to check the whole 3 pages: the sighting of crash pads in the subway makes good shots.

A new climbing adventure...

Geoffroy and Violaine are here, and as they are very sporty, I was happy to go running to Central Park and climbing at the Gunks with them.

Everything went well for a week, everyone was in great shape and running 10k (racing with Geoffroy of course) was kind of a piece of cake. I was climbing well at the gym too, and, being motivated by my climbs of the previous week, I felt strong enough to lead most of the routes with Geoffroy and Violaine following.

This time the climbing session did not finish with a happy ending. I broke my talus bone and need to immobilize my ankle for quite a while. The podiatrist tells me I'm very lucky, it could have been much worse. The talus bone (astragalus) is a very important bone in the ankle, but the fracture is small. Still, I am going to need a cast for 4-6 weeks and then another month of physiotherapy. Well, climbing season is probably over, but the good news is that the fracture is not even painful...

Injury at the gunks

So, here is how it happened (click the image above for the full album): we decided to climb moonlight, 5.6, which is within my abilities. I led the first pitch and felt good, using my brand new #3 cam as my first placement. I belayed Geof and Violaine to the GT ledge and we surveyed the face to find the line for pitch 2. We found the line and I climbed easy terrain, well protected and not very vertical. Higher up was an overhang, with an old piton and what was described as the "crux" section in the guidebook. So I placed a #1.5 friend and climbed the overhang. Pfff, pretty hard for 5.6! Only later did I realize that I was offroute, probably in the 5.10 route called "Erect Direction". The problem happened on top of the overhang: there was a second one and only a minuscule crack to place protection. I placed a #00 metolius cam and could see that it hardly fitted in the thin crack. I hesitated for some time, thought about climbing up, or down, and finally got pumped and decided to rest on the cam. This was a big mistake. Geoffroy belayed well, there was no slack, but as soon as I put my weight on the 00 cam, it popped off and I was flying in the air. I got stopped by the #1.5 cam and my ankle hit a small ledge but I did not feel much pain. Violaine says it was a 10m fall. I have no idea, everything happened so quickly!

The #00 cam:


From http://www.billandcori.com/gunks/climb.htm
Two pictures of moonlight. The first one is a close up:

Geoffroy lowered me to the GT ledge, where I discovered my ankle was badly swollen. He was kind and confident enough to climb and retrieve the gear on the easy part of the pitch;and then we rappelled down to the ground, myself on my knees and on the left foot. Once on the ground I realized that I could not put my foot on the ground at all...

Several hours later in the ER of St Vincent's midtown's hospital the emergency doctor rold me I had a small fracture....

I amnow discovering the joy of using crutches and spending days with my leg elevated... I will probably have more time to write on this blog if anything interesting happens while I'm healing...