(And running too, of course:)
I can’t even begin to explain how awesome it has been here in Chamonix this last week.
Biking
Remember how I rented a bike on a whim when I first got here? Well, I used it last week to go for a long ride down the valley and then up (and omg I do mean up) to a pretty lake called Lac Vert. It’s vert (green) because of algae, said all the signs I read before I got there, which made me think that it was going to be kind of gross cuz when I think of algae I think of the toxic algae blooms in the Willamette River in Portland, but it was actually really lovely!
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(Lac Vert and Mont Blanc:)
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Biking here is great. I think I said when I was in Reims with Benoit and Françoise that I was glad to have a biking buddy since I don’t really know the rules of the road and where you’re supposed to be and when/if you’re supposed to yield and all that. Well, I’ve been carefully watching how other people ride as I’ve been exploring around Chamonix, and I’ve decided that bikes go kind of wherever, doing whatever, and it’s all chill. Ha. So with this Lac Vert expedition I decided that I would take a long ride and just try to be French, and see how it went.
It was so good! I forgot I’m in Tour De France territory here (many signs, however, reminded me), so biking and people on bikes is definitely a thing. I saw many, many other people cycling — mostly men with fancy road bikes. (I spent a long time trying to think of whether I knew a word in French that would be the equivalent of “bro,” heh. I didn’t think of any but I’m sure there is one;) But I don’t mean to say that folks were rude or bro-y or anything; I was just thinking of that because it was so many men with fancy things. There were definitely folks on e-bikes and mountain bikes and less fancy things too, though, and everyone was friendly, or neutral at worst.
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(I discovered a rad suspension bridge on a bike path!:)
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Routefinding here is such a funny thing though. Nothing (to me) is straightforward, like the roads are all winding and narrow and twist back and forth, and then there are all these paths that intersect the roads that you mostly can’t drive on (but sometimes apparently you can, and I’m not actually sure how you know if you’re allowed to drive on them or not), but you CAN bike on all of them, at least as far as I can tell. And sometimes the paths are better for getting to where you want to go than the roads are, but it’s sort of hard to tell from a map beforehand what’s what and how you do, and since some of the paths are so, so, so steep I kind of don’t want to ride up them anyway but I don’t really know that till I’m there… Point being, routefinding has not been straightforward for me, but sort of in the best of ways because it all feels like a grand adventure, which is what I’m going for. If I were trying to get somewhere efficiently, I would probably (maybe?) stay on the roads, which have thus far all been excellent biking too.
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(my rental bikey on another sweet path that I hadn’t been planning to take but am glad I did:)
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Hiking
I have been adopted by a sweet family. heh. At least, that’s kind of how it feels. Françoise from Reims put me in touch with a niece of hers who lives near Chamonix, and she and her husband kindly offered to put me up, or just hang out on the weekends, whatever I wanted. So this past weekend I stayed with them and two of their three kids for two nights. Jeanne took me hiking on Saturday, to a mountain that they can see from their house, and it was so lovely. Seriously, I’m starting to understand that basically wherever I go here is going to be lovely.
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(I thought this was hilarious from our hike: it was pretty hot, and all the sheep wanted to be in the shade too;)
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I was telling Jeanne (in French, mind you;) that I was wondering what I would think about the Alps after being in the Canadian mountains, where it is much more wild. Here, there are sheep grazing about the mountains with their requisite shepherds (or hiding in the shade made by a chair lift;), high-altitude refuges where you can buy coffee and a snack, cable cars that will take you up to a peak without having to even hike at all, houses scattered about — it is not wild the way it can be in Canada, where you are frequently so, so, so far away from anything built. I wondered how I would feel about that, since I love the feeling of disappearing into the woods, the sense of not having seen a single person for a whole day, the feeling that (even if it’s not actually true) I’m super deeply far away from “civilization.”
Here it is very civilized. But I’m actually kind of loving it.
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(Very scenic and civilized sheep from Jeanne and my hike up Mont Joly:)
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Jeanne and her husband Cyril also lent me a bike for as long as I want it (yessssss I legit have a bike now, which I have already used to great effect:), plus a bunch of maps of the mountains, and bike lights, lock, etc and even offered any and all of their backpacking gear if I want to go stay in the mountains somewhere. Seriously, even though they’re only about 6 years older than me it feels like they adopted me and it is so sweet of them <3 I’m excited to hang out with them more.
Paragliding
So, Cyril is a paraglider! He’s been doing it for over 20 years and offered to take me tandem. HELL YEAH.
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(Wheeeee us taking off (picture from one of Cyril’s buddies). I had nothing to do with the flying of this thing — although Cyril the day before DID start to teach me to “faire le gonflage” i.e. get the sail up and under control, which was harder than it seemed;)
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So that was a pretty exciting thing that I didn’t exactly plan for but was amazing:) I have inadvertently learned a lot about paragliding culture here from hanging out with a bunch of paragliders the morning we flew.
Again, such a sweet adoptive family:)
And always running:)
I guess I won’t say more about that, but here are some gratuitous trail running pictures;)
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(Lac du Brévant. I wasn’t actually sure there was for realz gonna be a lake, even though I’d seen it on the map, since the landscape really didn’t seem like it could hide one, especially one this big and lovely, but them BAM there it was!:)
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(this is seriously trail running heaven:) The only thing is that it’s actually hard to run sometimes cuz I just want to gawk, but gawking while running usually leads to me tripping on something, ha;)
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(dude, for realz!! This is where I live this month!!!! <3 I didn’t even have to take the train to get here or anything, I just biked for like 10 minutes and then started running:) (and, granted, went up for a pretty long time;)
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So that was a perhaps very long-winded way of saying, it is fricken amazing here and I am loving life and speaking French and learning things and I love the way both my brain and body are on fire always <3
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(last thing: I bought myself a field guide after my first trail run here both so I could learn about the plants and animals that are totally unfamiliar to me, AND so I could learn the french names for things I do know. Speaking of brain being on fire;) I have been very excited to have this field guide:)