photo dump…

It’s hard work keeping up with this blog thing while still moving around so much. I don’t have a lot to say about this post except it’s a bit of a photo dump to get a few new pics on here for the family etc.

This section of our drive was quite long. After freezing our proverbials off in Normandy we just wanted to get South and into some warmer weather so we legged it through the French interior down to Bordeaux, sampled some (read “a lot of”) French wines, camped at the base of to Dune du Pyla – Europe’s largest sand dune, found a couple of random little cities that blew us away (Pau in Southern France for one), saw where King Henry IV was born, drove through the French Pyrenees along part of the Tour de France route (so cool… literally a lot of the time) and just generally saw heaps of nice stuff and had a ball in the process.

This was the last bit of France for us… next up Spain.

BT

 

 

Normandy and the D-Day beaches – inspiring stuff

It’s a humbling experience being separated from inconceivable bravery by nothing more than mortality.

It’s hard to imagine the colossal nature of what went on at the D-Day beaches in Normandy only 60 odd years ago during World War II. A bunch of blokes, well a big bunch, arguably put an end to the greatest war in history on the sheer cliffs of this place in an operation that can only be described as a bold and bloody gutsy act that no doubt took more gumption that most of us could hope to accumulate over a lifetime.

That’s not to say that there was only one fight here, this area of France was under Nazi occupation for a long time and was a hot spot for the war a lot longer. Heaps of stuff went down here but one story really stuck in my head after we visited Pointe du Hoc. It’s probably the most renowned story of this area during the war, and for good reason – it was bloody momentous. It’s the story of the US Rangers during Operation Overlord.

You can google it if you want a better explanation but essentially Pointe du Hoc sits between Utah Beach and Omaha Beach and sits atop sheer 30-40m cliffs that, once you read about the Rangers, you really struggle to fathom how that did what they did. Seriously, those cliffs are treacherous and it’s a brutal section of ocean. The place is littered with bomb craters the size of a house and still contains a lot of the original armament.

The story goes that the Germans had pinched a bunch of French cannons and lined them up at Pointe du Hoc to protect the coastline from Allied landings. So as part of the D-Day operation a group of Rangers were tasked to climb the cliffs using rocket propelled ropes, ladders and grapples, storm the strongpoint and take the guns out, allowing the main landings to occur.

They got there, albeit a bit late due to some navigational errors and hence losing the element of surprise, carried out their assault and found the guns they were to destroy… well sort of. The sneaky Germans had moved the guns about a mile away and replaced the ones on Pointe du Hoc with fakies.

Knowing that the guns were still operational somewhere a small group set off to find them and did so successfully, destroying 5 of the 6 guns. Meanwhile, the rest of the rangers held off numerous attacks from the Germans until the remainder of the Allied Forces decided to join the fight.

Pretty impressive stuff by anybody’s standard. Obviously I’m no expert on the matter but that’s the general gist of the day as I remember it, it’d certainly be worth a read if you can find some good literature on that day.

All inaccuracies aside the whole area is totally inspiring. We drove from Tournieres West to Le Mont St Michel and then all they way up to the North Coast again while checking out the historical sites along the way. It’s littered with little war museums, tanks, guns, boats and monuments but for us the US War Cemetery took the cake.

It’d be fair to say that the USA doesn’t generally do things by halves, particularly when blowing smoke up their own proverbial but the cemetery was one of the most respectful, humble and moving places I’ve ever been. The whole place focused on the brave men and women who fought and perished throughout Normandy rather than how important the United States’ impact on the war was.

I walked away from there very solemn but with a real sense of how lucky we are that those people shaped the world in which we now live. We certainly wouldn’t be driving a camper van through France if good old Hitler had succeeded in turning the world on its head.

So that’s Normandy, it was bloody cold but a perfect way to kick off our road trip and gave us plenty to think about along the way. We started the couple of days at Le Mont Saint Michel and worked our way back to the North coast and all the way along the beaches. It was a fair drive but a lot of fun.

BT

Jean Claude VAN Damn

…sometimes more damn than van.

Hello and welcome aboard the road trip of a lifetime. And it all begins at potentially the dodgiest looking establishment in Paris where the most ripped, steroid inducing, child, no,  adult devouring nugget of a Pit Bull resides. Let’s call him The Big Bad Butcher from Bendigo (A.K.A Triple BFB) as all serial killers need a proper title of the like and because there’s a guy from my old work who was coined with the same title who incidentally had arms short enough to rival a Parisian Pit Bull.

Ok, back on track. I promised less ranting this post but bugger it I’ve got to tell you about our new mate. Anyway, at this particular establishment we picked up Jean Claude, the new wheels. I smelled a rat as soon as we got to the camper hire place, because Tiple BFB had killed all the cats within 200 km and there were none to kill the rats in this guy’s shed. The next rat stink came when the bloke showing us our van opened the side door up, presenting a pretty filthy state of affairs while saying something like, “Ok, so it is clean now, you must bring it back the same clean, ok?.” in broken English. Shouldn’t be hard, I thought. He pretty much skimmed over the rest of the van while adding comments like, “This is a very good one, very low kilometres!”, Errr, yeah. What he did do well was take our money and tell me emphatically that if there were any problems to give him a call any time of the day. I bet that phone number is fake, if not I’m going to sign him up to every telemarketer in India once we’re done.

Anywho, Jean Claude’s a VW T5 Transporter, but don’t let the preceding (and likely following) rant put a sour taste in your mouths about VW’s as I’m pretty sure that’s the only reason this things is still on the road, although hanging on for dear life but the tiniest of threads. Jean Claude is a sweet rig, I shit you not, but I swear Triple BFB (the one from Bendigo) did most of the fit out inside because a T-Rex could do a better job at making a bed than this guy has (picture in your mind’s vivid imagination a T-Rex putting a fitted sheet on a bed and you should get a taste of how hopeless he’d be) and no doubt a T-Rex wouldn’t use half inch plaster screws to hold together 2″ chip board furniture. I use the word furniture very loosely. He’s a bit of a Galvo, you might say. He’s not that old but he’s had a rough trot. Mount Isans alone will understand that reference sorry.

So the trip started at the good old Auchan, (pretty well the French equivalent to a Wall Mart except you can’t make an “Only at Wall Mart” style picture compilation from Auchan customers because the French dress too well) where we stocked up on everything we thought we’d need for the following two months of driving. Wrong, but a good start anyway. We did buy a mocha pot / stove top espresso maker though, best purchase ever.

We were 100% stoked, regardless of how dodgy Jean Claude was, he was our dodgy rig and he’s the bomb. And he is still the bomb, just with a few intricacies.

We set off North to the Normandy region of France and pulled up in a little camping ground (that’s the European equivalent of a caravan park, this is camping their style of camping – tents are for hippies and activists) in Tourniere, just outside Caên and just South of the D-Day beaches. Awesome little spot and a fantastically friendly British couple running the show.

North was a cold choice. I was sitting there thinking that since Spring had just kicked in I’d be swanning around in a pair of shorts and singlet each day. No, that’s not how it works over here. A European Spring is very different to Spring in outback Australia.

The first night was a comedy of errors. Firstly, we didn’t have an extension cord in our van so we had to borrow one. Useless Aussies. Secondly, mains power was pretty useless to us anyway as all it powered at this point (because these guys don’t even give you a light) was the fridge which was warmer inside than outdoors to the tune of around 40 degrees celsius. So we settle in for the night which is where a few more enlightening discoveries occurred.

To begin with, the bed that Triple BFB put together was rubbish. It’d just been painted and I suspect the interior had been pulled out and rebuilt once the paint was (apparently) 80% dry, with parts left over.  At one spot there were three pieces of inch chipboard over lapping, producing a lump in the bed that would be of no use in determining whether a woman was in fact a real princess as the fabled story goes, although I’m pretty sure that one had a pea. The power inverter burnt out pretty much the entire 12V circuit and took a handful of fuses along for the ride, nice. The switch inside the fancy little caravan style tap on the sink died in the process so we had no water either. There’s a multitude of other things, including a few centimetres of cigarette ash in the ash tray that we discovered along the way that forced a moment of reflection and later a working bee of the likes Jean Claude had never seen.

The following morning we awoke to snow, that’s fine but when you don’t close the sliding door on your camper van properly it makes things pretty damn cold. We were up all night swearing about the “drafty bastard” of a van we’d chosen to live in but it turned out that we were just stupid. A mistake that has not since been made.

We spent that day essentially rebuilding Jean Claude. I bastardised the bed for quite some time and managed to get it into a form fit for sleeping on, rewired the majority of the power (except that damn tap that was beyond repair) and Lauren cleaned every surface until it was able to be considered a home. We were pretty well sorted.

So that’s the introduction to Jean Claude Van Damn. Sounds like some sort of nightmare right? Nope. It’s perfect, we’re loving every minute of it. There’s something pretty fantastic about pulling into a random beach somewhere that you never planned on visiting and just stopping there for the night and having a sneaky beer or two by the ocean. Magic.

Next up will be Normandy and the D-Day beaches. Much more inspiring stuff than me moaning about a car but at least now you’ve got a feel for how we’re getting around.

Till next time.

BT

Paris, the city of… boulangeries, patisseries and criminal dazzlery

I’m writing this post from somewhere in Portugal. I don’t even know where – we just came across it and stopped. All I know is there’s a stunning beach with superbly iridescent blue waves, white sand, us and a tiny pub. All a win. Apart from the dude in fluoro orange Euro trunks. Fail.

So Paris was a bit of an interim stop for us I suppose, tying off the small gap between finishing up in Argentière and beginning our trip with the camper van (with one day prior to Argentière for good measure), only a week or so and that was enough for me to be honest.

It began with Ryan and I attempting to return our hire car that we’d just taken to the alps. I say attempting loosely as we did succeed in that regard, but not without embarking on a journey that would make Moses blush purely at the thought of it. Actually Moses is a convenient joke-butt there since it he was in a sense partly to blame for the mess we were about to involve ourselves in, him and his mate Jesus I suppose.

Note to self (write this down) DO NOT EVER, EVER, EVER, EVER, EVER try to drive through Paris in the middle of an anti-gay marriage rally. Never. I swore they were following us around the city but it turns out that Frenchies really don’t like the concept of two blokes tying the knot because there were literally millions of them marching around waving they’re anti-gay flags and banners to the beat of whatever the French equivalent of Kevin Bloody Wilson would be (I’m in now way suggesting the Kevin Bloody Wilson is a homophobe but that his music tends to become an anthem for the redneck inside all of us). Christianity (more specifically Catholicism) is rampant.

Ok, let me paint a picture for you, because there’s a number of contributing factors here. When we picked up the hire car the dude at Hertz told us to bring it back empty because they get a discounted rate for petrol (contributing factor number 1) and therefore it’d save us a swag of cash. So naturally we pushed the limits of fuel tank emptiness in the lead up to returning the car because we knew it was only just around the corner from Ryan’s apartment in Paris (thanks Rio Tinto by the way). This is where things started to fall apart. We round the corner to Trocadéro into the most pure form of carnage – Parisian gridlock. It took over half an hour to move three exits on the roundabout. If that woman inside the GPS told us once more to take the next exit off the traffic circle very bad things were going to happen. Not only were most of the exits blocked with police barricades but every second man, woman and dog had to get out of their cars to make sure that traffic cop knew how inconvenienced they were.

Being the savvy local bloke he is, Ryan attempted to negotiate Paris on his terms by doing a “quick lap” around the protesters and get across to the rental joint from the other side. Yeah, savvy alright. This super manoeuvre results in us being further pigeonholed in the fiery depths of Catholic love that it took us another half an hour to travel about 200m up a one way street. Saw a pretty sweet Ferrari though.

By this stage things are starting to get a little tense. The yellow fuel light is glaring at us like a temperamental child who didn’t get the two kilos of fairy floss he desperately required at the local show, the “range” indicator on the trip computer is trying to figure out how to put a negative sign in front of the “2″ it is displaying and Ryan’s veins were even veinier that normal.

Next plan of attack is to hit the Périphérique that circles the city as a way of keeping traffic out of the city centre. Well Paris, you didn’t need it this day because six billion protesters were doing that job for you. Every exit we needed was blocked by cops, barricades or both and the traffic was thicker than Paul Gallen. A decision needed to be made and neither of us liked the obvious solution. We had to park up before we ran out of juice and caused the storming of the Citroen – the storming of the Bastille would have been a drop in the ocean compared to the rage we’d have caused.

So that’s what we did, we stopped in the middle of an exit smack bang in front of a police barricade and settled in for the long haul. Until something very awesome happened. Somebody else appeared to be a similar conundrum and pulled up in front of us, got his Missus out with her bags and ran her up the hill (obviously needing to get to the airport) before returning some time later, angry, and drives off.

At this point we were clutching at straws and starting to hit delirium which resulted in the best move of the day. It didn’t take much of a conversation between the two of us but before we knew it I was out the door throwing barricades out the way and we were driving straight through them into the eye of the tiger. I think we were both hoping we’d start some sort of revolution and everyone around would just follow suit, making the idea of the cops arresting anyone fruitless but nobody followed, not one. So that made things a little uneasy.

Driving up the exit ramp we pop out in the guts of the Champs Élysêes to the tune of all six billion protesters. Nothing the old Citroen C8 couldn’t handle. From here it pretty must turned into a game of avoid the cops with the big guns. The dudes with the machine guns were heaps more intimidating than the lowly old traffic cops who probably aren’t even allowed to carry a ticket book so we concentrated our efforts on trying to strong-arm our way through the weaker species. Nope. Again, nothing the Citroen couldn’t handle. A quick kilometre or two the wrong way down a one way street at warp speed an where should we find ourselves but at the rental agency. Bingo.

Now that’s quite a rant, and it should be. That was one of the most shit hot moments of criminal dazzlery that this pleb has experienced. The moral of this rant that you must take away with you and tell your kids, cousins, pupils etc is this – “Crime does pay.”

/End rant.

Don’t let anyone tell you that Parisians are rude, that’s not entirely true. They’re just proud, ignorant snobs that don’t appear to have any time for those who aren’t from Paris. Well that’s not entirely true either. As a matter of fact most Parisians we came across were lovely, particularly the woman at the patisserie that I got to know quite well. “Bonjour. Je voudrais deux pain au chocolat, deux pain au raisen et deux croissants s’il vous plaît.”… every morning my friends. You should never start your day in France without pastry, end of story.

We pretty well did the tourist thing in Paris which was ok because I don’t think there’s too much else you could do there.

The Louvre is a pretty sensational joint but in some ways it’s just too big get a handle on the magnitude of significant works contained with in it in a solitary morning,  actually a week couldn’t do it justice. We spent half a day and saw A LOT, but I’d hazard a guess that we only covered 50% of it and only got a proper appreciation for 2%. One thing that sticks out like dog’s balls while there is how young Australia is as a country. The louvre is littered with works that outdate the birth of Oz at least twofold, there’s also probably twice the population of Australia in there so that further makes it difficult to get a handle of things. We did see the Mona Lisa though… from a distance. Lucky she’s not camera shy.

We did the other touristy stuff you’re supposed to do while in Paris – Notre Dame, le Tour Eiffel, the Arch de Triomphe, Champs Élysées, the Catacombs etc etc and it was pretty fun but we were both pretty happy to get out of the city and onto the road. In fact we picked up our camper van two days early as a result.

So, the next post will have less ranting about Catholics and more about the latest addition to the Taylor family – Jean Claude Van Damn. Yes, you heard that right. He’s here.

BT

Argentière, France

Yep I’ve been hugely slack and haven’t put anything here for quite some time. We’ve been having a ball, we’re now in Portugal but you’ll hear about that later, expect pictures of food and Segways.

Every now and then you get a pleasant surprise when heaps of good stuff falls into place and better stuff ensues. That was Argentière.

This spot hangs off the side of Chamonix Mont Blanc in the French Alps, (in fact it’s entirely a part of the Mont Blanc area), but it’s a little smaller and retains the typical alpy charm without being overpopulated with tourists. I was a little hesitant in that we were heading there in March (the back end of the snow season) and we’d just been spoilt with great conditions in Japan and Canada, so in the back of my mind was the fact that it could turn into a skiers paradise (ice) rapidly. But we were catching up with some good mates in Ryan and Hannah (as well as their new addition Harry) and making new ones in Huw and Kylie.

What happened was nothing short of rad to the power of sick as we copped the most snow thus far and rode some of the best mountains I’ve ever seen. The first run of the trip at Argentière was a sensational start, about 20cm of fresh powder and nobody on the slopes except Me, Ryan and Huw (and one other bloke from the US) until around lunch time which set a precedent for my expectations of the following couple of weeks, it didn’t disappoint.

France is up there now as one of my favourite places to board now for one glaringly obvious reason (when you’re there at least) that the vast majority of Frenchies just don’t ride off piste, particularly the skiers. It’s ridiculous. They just mogul up the groomers and leave  the soft stuff to those of us who value the integrity of cartilage. There’s still plenty of people hitting the powder but nowhere near as many as there should be, and skiers still get in the way at every turn.

It’s hilarious, the weather forecast predicted huge snow storms for the following week and when I asked to buy a six day lift pass I was met with an, “Are you sure? The weather is terrible for the next week.” 70cm of snow for the first two days and 10-40cm every day after that… I was sure.

Not only is there heaps of untouched snow, it’s stunning… everywhere.

We spent most of our time in another area of the valley called La Tour which undoubtedly provided the best powder conditions and spend a fair chunk of the couple of weeks over there up to our waist on steep but variable runs. Huge open powder bowls everywhere and really technical tree runs when you wanted it. It was perfect. So that’s snowboarding, it was spot on. Good chance it was the best session on the board of the season actually although it’s hard to know how good a time I’d have had in Japan if were boarding as well there as I am now after three months straight. I need to find a chance to edit the GoPro footage I took and put together a montage as there really aren’t that many photos of us on the snow since it’s a bit hard to get the camera out. Consider that a work in progress.

Other delightful activities included daily boullangerie visits providing pain au chocolates, pain au raisins and croissants in bulk which absolutely contributed to my current girth shape, that’s your fault Huw. I like to think that I’m currently sporting a rubenesque body shape centred around the mid section.

We took the gondola to the top of Arguille du Midi, one of the highest points in the Mont Blanc area and I’ve never been so cold in my life. Minus 30 degrees and blowing its ring off was less than comfortable no matter how much sunlight was around. It didn’t help that it was at over 3,800m above sea level so the altitude was doing its best to simultaneously keep our heads spinning. That’s the coldest I’ve ever been without a doubt, to the point where I actually thought I was getting frostbite on my right hand even while wearing two pairs of gloves. In saying that, amazing spot. A lot of skiers (not so many boarders) head up there and ski down the glacier which would have been sensational to do apart from the super sketchy hike to the starting point. Next time I’m there I’ll get a guide and do it though, looks pretty fun.

Loz and I also took a train up to look at Mer de Glace (sea of ice) glacier. It’s the largest glacier in France at about 7km long and up to 200m thick. It’s pretty damn impressive, particularly when you venture down about 5 million steps and walk through the ice cave at the bottom. There’s a sweet shot of Lauren below somewhere inside the cave to give you an idea of what it’s like. The ice is the purest, clear blue and looks like it’s been sitting there for centuries, because it has.

Apart from that we just generally had heaps of fun. We’re already missing the good company and the soothing sounds of Hannah pumping but each day is bringing us something we’ve never seen or experienced before which is 100% irreplaceable.

BT

105 pics of other stuff in New York

We did heaps in New York, including (but not limited to):

Breakfast at the Cosmic Diner, red velvet cake @ Magnolia Bakery, catch ups with Rosie at Shillers, Chelsea Markets, the High Line, The Accomplice Tour (for the love of god if you go to NYC do one of these, I have rarely been so entertained in my life, I will say no more), tea at Podunk, meeting a super interesting group of people over a vege feast at The Hommus Place, 911 Memorial and Ground Zero, Wall St, New York Stock Exchange, Museum of Modern Art (do it), Top of the Rock, rode pushies around Central Park, Coney Island, Brooklyn Bridge, Empire State Building, watched the sun set over Manhattan from

Brooklyn, Food on Foot, The Met, The Guggenheim, Jersey Boys on Broadway, John’s Pizza, Staten Island Ferry, McSorley’s, Central Station, Meat Packer’s district, Russian bath house with our new found orthodox Jewish friend Marty who is the king of aromatherapy, New York Knicks at Madison Square Garden etc etc etc etc etc.

So yeah, heaps. And I’m not going to write about them all. We did meet some sensational people and can’t wait to catch up with them again.

Is New York on the to-return-to list? I’m not sure, for Lauren definitely but I’m still on the fence.  There’s no doubt we had a ball while there though.

BT

 

Coney Island – ghost town…

One thing I wanted to do while we were in New York was to head out to Coney Island, I figured it’d provide some interesting subject matter considering the devastation caused by Hurricane Sandy less than six months ago. Well it was interesting alright, not because there was heaps going on but for quite the opposite. Coney Island was a ghost town. A desolate, washed out, mugger’s haven of a ghost town. Spooky.

The train ride takes ages from Manhattan and things get slightly more dodgy with each stop… especially once you reach the projects. Coney Island itself was still pretty much dead. Shops closed, expander foam still pasted under the doors to stop the flood waters, sand everywhere, empty roller coasters and a weird sense of isolation from the rest of bustling New York.

The theme park reopened last Sunday, which is amazing considering the state it was in while we were there only a few weeks ago. They’ve done some serious work to get it back on its feet which is a real credit to the city. I wouldn’t have been surprised if they just walked away from it after Sandy.

I’ve started using some new editing stuff too. A company called VSCO make a library of film emulating presets for Adobe Lightroom 4 and a bunch of other editing suites. It doesn’t work out for every shot but I’m loving the way it worked for this series of Coney and pretty much all of New York. They do some cool stuff over there at VSCO.

BT