Monthly Archives: June 2005

It’s 32 ?C and very humid. While Montréal attracts thousands of Formula 1 fans, we’re leaving the city to go to Ottawa for a pool party. Too bad I’ve a cast and can’t swim. I can’t drive either, so we’ll take the bus.

Home at 1 in the morning. They’ve put my arm in a cast because I can’t move my wrist. I’m afraid I can’t climb, cycle or drive for a while.

I feel like shit. Typing with one hand goes slow.

The boy on his bike came from behind a large tree. Suddenly he cycled off the sidewalk onto the bicycle path, just 2 meters in front of me. I braked with all force I had in me. My bicycle stopped, I didn’t. I landed head first, flat on my face, with my hands still holding my handle bar. A bit like diving into a pool without water. Fortunately I was wearing a helmet, that took part of the impact.

´Monsieur, vous Ítes correct ?ª
´Non…ª

Passing doctor on bike examins me.

Ambulance, but no siren.

Emergency room, long wait. 20 X-rays, multiple times because the processing machine ate first batch of films. Nothing broken, only bruises and chafed skin on face and fore arms. Nose swollen and glasses scratched and deformed. And I don’t have the name or phone number of that kid to make him (or his parents) pay for my expenses.

Left the ER after more than 7 hours.

But it could have been far worse.

The maple tree in our garden covered our (Ikea) garden table with hundreds of pods. It feels a bit like fall but it is definitely summer.

Our landlord wants to cut the tree down. I’ll seriously miss it.

Apple announces new startup sound.

Poupoune likes water and swimming but this ramp is just too high for her. Plus she knows that if she jumps in she can’t get onto it anymore. She’s so smart.

It’s Saturday night and we want to go to the movies. We had a flat car battery this morning so we didn’t go for a hike like we’d planned. I charged the battery but it still didn’t work so I went on my bike to a shop near the highway that was still open on Saturday evening to buy a new battery. It fitted just in my bike basket. I put it in and the car came to life again. So now, with our regained mobility, we decide to go to a drive-in cinema. I wanted to go for a long time but the movies they show there are usually dubbed-in-French Hollywood productions. And I don’t like that. But now there was a Quebecois movie playing: C.R.A.Z.Y., about the coming of age of a boy (Zac) amid his 4 brothers (Christian, Raymond, Antoine, Yvan) and the reviews were quite positive.

So we drove, a bit late because a friend called when we were ready to leave, to the South Shore (the other side of the St Lawrence River) to Boucherville. We weren’t the only ones so we waited half-an-hour in a traffic jam, just in the middle of nowhere, in a grassy field.

After we paid for our tickets from our car window, we found a free place not too far in front of the screen and waited for the movie to start. That took a while because we certainly weren’t the last people that showed up. The sound was aired over a FM frequency so we tuned our car stereo and waited while looking around.

This was my first ever drive-in cinema experience and Alison’s second (she was 6 when she went the first time). The crowd was quite mixed, from young, testosterone emitting boys (and their girlfriends, to people that were probably already retired. A lot of dope was smoked, and people were probably drinking too. Hopefully they weren’t the drivers…

Finally the movie started. It was quite entertaining although, as usual seeing Quebecois movies, I missed a lot of the text. Quebecois is such a strong accent and they use so many slang words I’ve absolutely no idea what they mean…

The movie was a bit long, and had too many dark scenes that didn’t fare well with the limited darkness outside and the limited brightness of the projection lamp, but it was a nice experience after all. We didn’t stay for the double bill though, the French language version of ‘The Interpreter’ with Nicole Kidman and Sean Penn speaking French.

We made our way outside without any accidents, so people weren’t that drunk or stoned yet. Or we where just lucky.

No picture, because I forgot my camera. I had put it in an obvious location so I wouldn’t forget it, but we had a power failure and when I left, the house was very dark, and that location was suddenly much less obvious.

Anyway, a trip report. I cycled to the climbing gym, Allez-Up, which is located at the other end of town, about 10 kilometres from our house. Because it was beautiful weather, 29 degrees and a clear blue sky, there were lots of people on the streets, on the terraces, and cycling, so I thought the climbing gym would be virtually empty. But it wasn’t, there was still a fair amount of people who preferred to sweat in an enclosed space instead of enjoying the fresh air outside.

Before I could climb I had to take a accreditation test to see if I could belay and climb securely. And for that I needed a partner. So I waited 15 minutes for my climbing partner but she didn’t show up. Then someone else also had to take the test and we used each-other as guinea pigs. I was quite nervous and even made a little mistake when I tied the rope to my harnass. They are very strict and I’m not against that, because it prevents accidents. It’s totally different than Dutch climbing gyms were I’ve seen people do rather unsafe things, and got a big mouth when I pointed those out to them.
First I had to climb an easy route and take a couple of surprise falls while my partner should hold them. He was a bit lighter than me, so I gave him a hard time, because he was almost catapulted into the air. But I wasn’t worried since the guy from the climbing hall was holding the rope as well. After that it was my turn to belay him and all went well. I hadn’t done any practising but the moves of belaying are imprinted in my body so it just went by itself. So I passed the test! My partner also passed the test but got some extra instructions to improve his technique a bit.

After that I waited for my climbing partner again. I hadn’t met her because we only communicated by email. She is a fellow member of the McGill Outdoors Club and posted on the mailing list that she needed a climbing partner for tonight. That’s how I got here. But if she didn’t show up, I had a problem, ’cause you can’t climb by yourself. And I don’t like bouldering very much (apart on real rock like Fontainebleau near Paris.)
Then somebody else that I knew from the MOC showed up and I asked him (David) with who he was climbing. With Natasha, he responded, and that was also the name of my climbing partner. Anyway, I located her, she was already climbing, and I found out where this confusion had originated from. She had several people calling her and had pooled us together. But then one person bailed out and Natasha apparently hadn’t read that email.

Ah well, we decided to climb with the three of us, David, Natasha and me, so that was not much of a problem. And since they had already climbed a route, it was my turn.

They advised me to climb a 5.7 in the corner. I had no idea what grade I could climb for several reasons. One was that I have never climbed in North-America, and only know the European (French) grading system. (Mmm, that’s not true, I have climbed once in a climbing hall in Portland, Oregon, but I recall that was a big disaster. Very hard routes and very small holds.) The other was that I hadn’t climbed in nearly 3 years or so, the last time was with Anne before she moved to Australia.

According to conversion scales I found online I probably should be able to climb a 5.7 though. So I stepped into the route and almost made it to the top. But then there was a step where I had to block onto a small finger hold with my left hand and that was just a bit too much for a first route. I tried twice but then had myself lowered down. I didn’t want to waste myself just yet, and my left wrist is a weak point anyway.

I’m not going to describe every route I climbed, this is already the longest post to date, but in general it went quite well. I need to develop a bit more finger strength, but I still have the technique. I climbed some 5.6s, some 5.7s, and even two 5.8s. Which was not bad considering the state of my slightly overweight body. The woodworking trained my muscles in the past year, I guess.

Okay, so I’m going to do this more often, and I also am going to climb outside, because I don’t like climbing on plastic very much, even though I built two climbing gyms in the past. (Here you can find some pictures of one of them, although it has been closed after bankruptcy three years ago.)

Another reason I don’t like to climb in climbing gyms is that people use Magnesium Carbonate to chalk their hands so they aren’t so sweaty. I use it myself as well, but this stuff gets into you nose and really dries out your membranes and causes a stuffed nose. I had a really bad night because of that.

And now my arms are still sour, but not as bad as I feared. I mean, I’m still able to type…

They are shooting a movie (well, actually a TV series; “Cover Girl” about drag queens) across the street. I see the crew waiting and waiting and waiting, and think about the times when I used to be in that line of work.