April 2005 Archives

(more pix from the London Marathon)

I'm pretty sure I could never run the London marathon. It takes place on a Sunday morning. The staggering implication of which, is that, in order to compete, you have to get out of bed early on a Sunday. Absolute madness! It was hard enough for me to grope for the remote control at 9am this morning to watch the start.

I mentioned the Sunday morningness of the event to excuse my not having any pictures of the elite runners. I intended to go down to the race to watch them but it was not to be. First, there was the Sunday morning aspect. Then, there were house guests to make grilled cheese sandwiches for. And then of course, there were various Germans my spouse needed to talk to on the phone.

It was probably for the best anyway. I felt humbled enough seeing mere mortals run the thing at a five hour pace. To watch Paula Radcliffe whiz by with a winning time of 2:17:41 would have perhaps been too much of a shock to my machismo. That works out to an average of 11.42 miles per hour. By a freakish coincidence, this is exactly my average speed cycling to work and back: 11.42 miles per hour. The woman runs a marathon at the same speed I ride my bike.

Admittedly, I have to stop for lights and have traffic to deal with. But, I only do nine miles at a stretch and then I get to have a leisurely 8 hours of rest at my desk before I do another nine back home. She does 26.2 miles in just over two hours all at once. That's just bizarre.

Three of my co-workers ran in the marathon today for the first time. I looked for them but somehow missed them amongst the 35,000 other runners.

Anita Busby ran to support Help the Hospices. So far she raised £2518.82. If you would like to support Anita, her donation page is still up at http://www.justgiving.com/anitabusby. Anita finished the race in six hours, 24 minutes.

Catherine Wingate ran to support the Parkinson's Disease Society. So far she has raised £2000.27. If you would like to support Catherine, her donation page is at http://www.justgiving.com/wingate. She finished in 6 hours, 4 minutes. She's posted some pics at http://www.flickr.com/photos/wingateca/.

Chris Mitchell ran to support the Royal National Institute for the Blind. He raised more than £1000 and finished the race with a fantastic time of 4 hours 2 minutes 41 seconds, which put him in 10,057th place.

Congratulations to all of them. Nice work.

Now, as I said, the marathon is not an option for me and my duvet. Cycling, however, is a sitting down sport. I am far more willing to get out of bed for a bike ride. And so, partially inspired by the efforts of my three colleagues, I've entered the London to Brighton charity cycle ride. It is just over twice as far as any wimpy old marathon.

So, please, if you have any money left after sponsoring folks for the marathon, go to http://www.bhf.org.uk/sponsor/yanda/ and help me support the British Heart Foundation. Heart disease is the UK's biggest killer, and I don't know about you, but the idea of dying from anything irritates me. Donate 10 quid and maybe we can all live forever.

(more pix from the TGV)

We took the train to and from Grasse. It's a great way to travel. For one thing it is far less environmentally damaging than flying. For another, you can get up and walk to the bar car which is an excellent way to prevent deep vein thrombosis. And while joining the mile-high club has a certain cachet, the metre-high club is almost as cool and, if you rent a sleeper, far more comfortable.

(more of the Rally in Grasse)

The last couple of days we were there, Grasse hosted a rally. We didn't make it out to any of the competitive stages, but I snapped some pics as the cars were leaving and returning from the staging area. From my limited knowledge of the area it was difficult to imagine a safe area for them to race. Perhaps the sport was simply in making it through traffic in a set amount of time. I have a picture in my head of an outraged Frenchman who every year ends up with at least three rally cars in his swimming pool. This is simply a daydream. As I said, we didn't see any of the actual racing.

Still, it's a lovely picture: shoulders raised, arms outstretched, enormous moustache quivering like an epilectic mink; brightly coloured Peugeot slowly sinking in beautiful blue swimming pool. Ah, the glamour of motor-racing...

(more pics of St. Cézaire et Pont des Tuves)

On Thursday we took the bus to St. Cézaire and went for a hike down into the gorge to Pont des Tuves. Pont des Tuves is a beautiful ancient bridge spanning a river as clear, green, and refreshing as a bottle of Heineken. If it was a hot summer day, it would be the perfect spot in the world to go for a swim. Unfortunately, it poured rain on us most of the day.

The rain didn't really bother us that much. We don't get out of the city that often and it was nice to be somewhere green. It brought back memories of my old treeplanting life in a kind of bitter-sweet way. In particular, I remembered one very cold and wet day on a similarly steep mountainside somewhere in B.C.

It was snowing that day rather than raining and I had a desperate need to pee. I was wearing fairly heavy rain gear -- the type with bib overalls -- and I knew that in order to pee, I'd have to take it all off and expose myself to the freezing wind and snow. My hands, in particular were absolutely frozen. I was finding it difficult to stick the trees in the ground because they were so numb. But I knew that the only way to stay warm was to keep working and generating warmth. The only problem with this plan was that working hard meant planting trees which meant bending over which meant putting pressure on my bladder.

Finally, I could take it no longer and I dropped my bags, undid my bib overalls and let the front flop down in front of me. I unzipped my jeans and forced my barely functioning hands to manipulate my block and tackle into a suitable direction. Despite the blizzard swirling around my plumbing, it felt fantastic. It wasn't just the reduced pressure on my bladder that felt so good. For the first time in hours, my hands began to unthaw.

I stood there looking out over an absolutely stunningly beautiful mountain valley, and kept my hands where they were for far longer than absolutely necessary. I was mesmerized by the thought that for the first time in my life I was fondling my genitals because it made my hands feel good.

This thought entertained me so much that it completely changed my mood and I soon found myself belting out the Christmas carol "Chestnuts Roasting on an Open Fire…"

Fortunately, it wasn't nearly that cold at Pont des Tuves and we knew that once we climbed back out of the gorge we could warm up with coffee in a lovely little bar. No singing was required.

(more pics of Cannes and Monaco)

The day we arrived in Grasse was the first day they'd had a rail link with anywhere for 20 years. Accordingly, the train was packed with shrieking teenagers when we took it from Cannes to Grasse that day. We also used the train for a couple of day trips to Cannes and to Monaco. The day we took it to Monaco, the train was a bit delayed leaving the station and when it finally did leave (about fifteen minutes behind schedule), several people cheered.

I preferred Monaco to Cannes. As bizarre as it may sound, Monaco feels more like somewhere I could imagine myself living. Cannes just feels like a tourist trap suburban shopping mall, filled with shops where I couldn't afford to buy anything. Vicki described it to her parents as a cheap seaside resort for rich people.

Of course, maybe I just like Monaco because within my chest beats the heart of a poodle-clutching multi-millionaire. Plus, it has hills. I like hills. Monaco goes a bit overboard on as far as hilliness goes, but at least the roads are wide enough that your chauffeur wouldn't have any trouble getting the Bentley down them.

Grasse is equally hilly but the town planners thought they were anticipating future needs by making sure the roads could fit a pregnant donkey instead of just your standard chaste beast of burden. I'm glad we didn't rent a car while we were there. We managed to get lost enough just walking around the place. The map we bought in London turned out to be largely a work of fiction. It did have one minor benefit over the map from the tourist bureau in that it showed the location of the train station.

Of course, if the hills in Monaco are too much for you, you could take the approach of one local resident and live on a yacht big enough to have its own helicopter, but then parking might be a problem. Even in Monte Carlo, life isn't perfect.