Adventures in Sunny Fontainebleau

Thursday, April 9, 2009

I didn't sleep that well this night because Nick was getting over a cold and kept snotting, plus there were some really loud birds making lots of sounds in the morning (Nick said they were crows). Plus I was probably still kind of jetlagged.

In the morning, Nick and I needed to go to the Carrefour, a big "hypermarché," to get food and a deck of cards, since we hadn't remembered to bring one. That ended up taking quite a while. We also picked up camping chairs. At the Carrefour checkout, Nick told me to explain to the cashier that we had an old Carrrefour "bag for life" (a heavy-duty plastic bag that costs like ten cents originally and that you can exchange for a new one for free when it gets worn out) that we wanted to trade for a new one. So the cashier looked like he understood what we were trying to do with the bags until I started talking. Then he looked confused. But he eventually got it after I kept blabbering for a while. That sort of thing happens to me in English, too, so I wasn't too concerned.

We finally ate breakfast (at lunchtime) and headed off to the boulders. We climbed at the 91.1 area, mostly trying red circuit problems. I tried out my new Red Chili shoes, which were okay, but not fantastic or anything. They turned my feet yellow. But they will tide me over until the Speedsters come out in America. I did a few 5Cs at 91.1 (including some high ones), but no 6As. Nick did manage one high 6A, which was good. Nick also found a lot of lizards, which made him happy.













































We both tried Flipper, a well-known 6A that Nick has done before, but neither of us sent. It had huge tickmarks today.





The weather was warm and sunny all afternoon, which was nice. I even borrowed Nick's sunglasses for a problem because I claimed I couldn't do it because I couldn't see anything because the sun was blinding me (but I still couldn't do it with the sunglasses).



By late afternoon, we were pretty tired and headed back to the campsite. I took a shower to de-yellowify my feet while Nick started dinner, and although it was only about 6pm, the shower was cold again. It was fairly hot outside by this point, and the building the showers were in was warm, so it wasn't too bad, but I wasn't thrilled. Meanwhile, though, while Nick and I were eating dinner, the English guy camping next to us (who had the same tent as Nick -- only newer) came over to talk to us, and he told us that the showers in the lower block were still hot. I hadn't tried these lower showers because they're not as nice, the water pressure is lower, and they're not open during the off season (so I thought they might be closed), but Nick decided to try those out later. It turned out that he had a warm (but low-pressure) shower, so I decided that I would go for those the next night.

By the way, during dinner, Nick and I found a really weird strawberry (well, I thought it was really weird, anyways). I guess it's to be expected now that the EU has deregulated fruit shape (although it appears that the ugly-fruit-shape-ban isn't going to be lifted until July 1 -- so does this mean that this strawberry is being counted as non-ugly?).





We played cards for a little while before going to bed. The cards were "Format Français," which turned out to mean that Kings were Rs (Rois), Queens were Ds (Dames), Jacks were Vs (not sure what that one stood for), and Aces were 1s. Which was fun.

So that turned out to be the best weather day of the first Fontainebleau segment of our trip, and I felt like I climbed well, even though I didn't really climb hard.