Wonderful trip

I'm on the last day of a great trip to the states. First, a week in Texas with Mom, Cathy, Tamara, Denver, Randy, Christina, Steven, Trevor, Macray. The whole clan! Vicki and Jimmy, Uncle Mickey and Aunt Anna came too. Also, many of my parents friends from Huntsville. Everyone was there for only one day, for an incredible memorial service for Tom. It was such an honor to hear the stories people had to share. A few tears were shed, but mostly we had a party, like one of Dad's "closing show" parties years ago.

We also did a tremendous amount of yardwork. For a few days it was just Mom and I. It didn't take long for me to discover the joy of jumping into the pool after a session clearing brush with clippers or a chainsaw. Even though it had some algae in it. Thursday, Randy and Mac came, then I picked up Christina that evening. Randy cleaned the pool, and we all jumped in for a cold but refreshing swim. The weather turned nice and "cool" (for Texas) Friday. Mom and I had some great talks over dinners, then as everyone else arrived we had a great time all teasing each other about various things. Christina left the yardwork to the rest of us, but she did a great job watching Trevor and Mac. Randy's Wii gaming device kept us very entertained. I eventually beat Trevor at tennis which made me proud :-).

We also worked hard to retire Mom's PC and move her to the Mac Mini that Randy bought for Dad a few years ago. It's an older box, so we couldn't find a wireless card, despite all kinds of attempts (including a drive to the Woodlands Mall after the salesman (or "mac genius?") told me they had what I needed in stock, even though, yes, it's a PowerPC Mac rather than an Intel...but I got there and the story was "we'd never have that. Look on E-Bay...").

Then I spent a week in Montreal. I'm writing now from a little cafe downtown after an excellent time. Sadly, it is raining today which aborted my plan to hike up a mountain near Lake Placid (maybe Wallface or Gothics for northeastern mountaineers). So I wandered around the old part of the city. I bought a nice print by the artist "Chloe", displayed on the left.

The reason for the Montreal trip was to hook up with partners at Softimage so we can build new features together. It was very productive, though a bit suspenseful because it took several days to get our JBOSS server working in Eclipse, such that the developers here can go forward with new code. We finally sorted out all the kinks, and can expect rapid progress.

Everyone was really nice too. We went to a Mexican food restaurant Thursday night. Some of the party were getting a night out from "kid duties", so they were happy to stay and drink for a while! I discovered how good aged Tequila is, something my sister Tamara has told me about before.

I also went into the Notre-Dame Basilica which was a beautiful church. Here is some of the interior:




I did a lot of walking around the city, my legs are kind of sore! It's a beautiful town, with a lot of attention paid to design. I hope to come back next year!

Okay more later, gotta head to the airport for the long flight to Amsterdam.

Great dinner with Mom

Tonight I cooked chicken, salad with walnuts, apples, peppers and other things. Mom and I had a great long conversation and a bottle of wine. We took a picture to remember the occasion (also with Raggs):

Chinese culture vs. German culture.

I couldn't pass this one up. Forwarded by my good friend Robert M...

On the left side of the drawing is how the author sees life in Germany, and on the right is what it's like in China. There are about 25 drawings. This one is called "Anger/Displeasure":



More here...

Fasul Valley Deathmarch

Josef and I wanted to go climbing, and supposedly had a decent forecast. I was eager to explore the Verwall Range, south of St. Anton, which is a famous ski resort in Austria. I had naively picked out the Kuchen Spitze which has a Grade VI 20 pitch north face climb. Sounds awesome! In reality, there are only a couple of grade VI pitches, mostly it's easier.

But Josef pointed out how incredibly cold and snowy it would be. Still trying to be ambitious, I proposed the mountain next door, Patteriol, via it's Grade IV northeast ridge. Okay, 25 pitches, but about half of them really shouldn't be called "pitches" at all (just grade II scrambling). All of this wrangling was rendered moot though when we drove into heavy rain falling in St. Anton!

So we decided to go on a hike instead. I have a 50,000 scale map of the area, and I picked out a nice looking loop hike. It looked long and exciting. We pulled all the climbing gear out of our packs. Then I forgot to bring the sandwich I bought at a gas station.

We drove up a road from St. Anton about 4 kilometers, then rode our bikes from the Verwall See to the Konstanzer Hut (1688 m). Man, biking up steep hills is HARD! At least it quit raining right when we started pedaling.

We walked south along the Fasul River for several long miles, continually hoping the clouds would open up. Sometimes we'd get a local view of golden heather slopes which were just beautiful. I griped about all my problems at work and Josef was a good sport for my ranting! None of this helped our motivation to put one foot in front of the other, but when we reached the Schafbichljoch (2635 m) near the head of the valley we were happy we kept going. We'd gained about 1100 meters of elevation at this point, and were happy that now we could start heading back north on the other side of the mountains that make up the eastern half of the Fasul Valley.



We followed a side trail past a pretty tarn below the Grauer Kopf. We'd only seen a few patches of snow to this elevation, but north and east sides proved to be much snowier. I was starting to feel like it would be a monster day by the time we got back to the bikes, so I declined Josef's idea of continuing on the crest to the Karkopf, climbing at least three peaks on the way. So we split up with detailed plans for meeting again. I bombed down through 2 feet of fresh snow to eventually reach trail again. I was not really dressed for this! No gaitors, and old tennis shoes, which were in fact visibly falling apart! Oh well, my socks are warm. I got mysterious cloudy views from the Matnaljoch (2656 m), with big snowy peaks to the south.

Down in a huge rocky basin I heard a hoot. Josef was standing on the crest far above!



I took a picture and wished him well. Then I bent to my tiring task of climbing about 300 meters up to a pass. As I neared the top, Josef called from below. He gave up on the crest ascent, because of sketchy, snowy, icy terrain, and an endless series of peaks to climb. At the pass by the Karkopf, we faced the sobering fact that we still had a long was to go to reach the Darmstaedter Hut, and then from there we'd still have to climb 400 meters and descend 1000 to reach the bikes. It was already almost 3 pm, after more than 6 hours of non-stop travel, and darkness would come by 7. We were also scheduled to cross two glaciers according to the map. I didn't take them all that seriously though...yet!







Down into the broad valley below the Kuechel Spitze, first on deep and wet snow. Later, we lost the trail and spent an annoying hour climbing up and down without the trail to get back on track. Finally we saw it below us further south, and could downclimb a steep gully to reach it. It's hard to believe you can lose a trail in Austria...they are so well marked! (usually).

Another 250 meter ascent to the Rautejoechle, this one taken very slow to conserve energy. Now we were in thick fog, after a long, cold day with only occasional sunbreaks. We started down on rocks, then snow, then (gulp) real glacier. We were stomping along when we saw an open crevasse on the right. Then on the left there was a kind of bergschrund below us...we'd have to guess where a snowbridge was thick enough to let us cross! Oddly enough, on the last bit of rock above the glacier, a spray-painted arrow ordered us to go left, right into the bergschrund (or above it). But it looked dangerous. So we went almost straight down, where the ice seemed nearest to rock.

Now, in the fog, we had to guess which way to get to the Hut. Remembering the arrow, we trended left. Suddenly, we noticed a long depression in the snow just below us, going about 100 feet in both directions. We were on the glacier at one of the worst possible times: when fresh snow covers the crevasses. In winter and spring, they would be so thick there are no worries. In summer and early fall they are completely open and easy to avoid. We moved around it, then very carefully crossed. Josef's foot went too deep in one place, and I didn't like the hint of darkness I saw beneath. We continued finding these depressions and crabbing carefully across several more times, aiming for an area of the glacier covered by rocks, and breathing a big sigh of relief when we got there!

This really impacted our thoughts for crossing the second glacier going up to the Kuchenjoch pass. Darkness, fog, deceptively covered crevasses...what a horrible combination for tired hikers with no equipment other than their wits! We started to think about staying overnight at the Darmstaedter Hut if there was an open winter room.



After a longish, tiring descent we reached the hut at 2384 meters. The fog had lifted a bit and we had some local mountain views. Josef found that the winter room was open, with plenty of blankets, pillows. Also a propane stove!

Already we sorely missed my sandwich left in the car. Josef had to start splitting his food with me. At the hut we talked a few minutes about pressing on, but it was far enough after 6 pm, that we thought we'd be up on the glacier in darkness. No need to pile a 4th danger onto the ones we'd already signed up for, so we gathered water from a creek and set to enjoying our stove. We called Daniel, Kris and Angie. Daniel because he and I were hoping to do a hike or climb the next day. Darn, no chance now! He told us we should have great weather the next day.

The alpine club asks for a 9 euro donation per person to stay in the hut. It was pretty wonderful. It got very cold outside once the sun went down, but we were quite cozy. My socks were soaking wet, and I made a major campaign of getting them dried by morning, with a combination of hanging over the stove, wrapping them around a hot water bottle at night, and finally putting them on my feet when still damp to get some drying action from my body heat.



Josef gave me a 2-square-inch 1/2 sandwich for dinner. I organized the evening activities. Tea at 7, photo viewings at 7:30, dinner at 8:00, more tea, then bed at 9:00. And when I say "tea" I mean hot water with a little bit of salt in it. I was kind of amazed at how good we felt despite running on very little food all day. As long as we didn't think about a big dinner, we were okay!

After studying the map some more, and talking of other things, we went to bed. Josef had to stay up until 10 to call Angie, but I was already asleep then. All the hot water hydrated me pretty well, so I had to get up twice to take a leak. The promised good weather finally arrived in the night, with clear black skies, twinkling with stars. I shivered so violently when I went out that the stars were shaking!

Morning came, and after some hot water, salt, two tiny squares of chocolate and a 1/2 apple we were on our way. Josef additionally ate his two cherry tomatoes, but I saved mine for our high point, 400 meters above.

We enjoyed the great views, especially of the snowy glacier we came down, and the imposing north face of the Kuchen Spitze...home of the long Grade VI climb I had raved about. It did look snowy and cold!



Eventually we realized that if there was once a glacier on part of this trail, it was gone now. Josef saw evidence of a trail re-route further up the slope, though it was hardly necessary. "We could have come up this in the dark," he said. Yep it's true, but we didn't know that then. At least now we got to enjoy the scenery. After a short "via ferrata" section on a cliff, we reached the pass to be blown away by an "in your face" view of the northeast ridge of Patteriol. It looked wonderful. Indeed, if we had started fresh today we could have done it, because there was very little snow for some reason (contrast with the Kuchen Spitze). A long, 25 pitch rock climb, it reminded me a bit of Mount Goode in Washington. The peak dominates all others in a wide radius.



We can't wait to climb it next summer then!

A long and beautiful hike down alpine slopes followed. I tried to prolong the enjoyable feeling by stopping a few minutes by a babbling brook and scanning the countryside for more hikes. The Alps are so huge! And the vast slopes above timberline just invite wandering. In a little more than an hour we'd made the 1000 meter descent to the bikes. Here we were shocked to see people for the first time! A gentleman farmer sweeping his barn, and two kids who rode their bikes up to the Hut.

We sped down the road, reaching the car after 20 minutes. A good lunch in St. Anton, and we headed home. Thanks to Josef for being game for such an "underspecified" adventure, and for sharing half his food!

I think we should name this hike the "Fasul Deathmarch". The elevation gain and loss, is over 2500 meters. Kilometers? Who knows...many!

If we'd had more daylight, or known that the glacier below the Kuchenjoch is non-existent, then we could have finished it in a day. But it worked out great and we saw some amazing new country.

More pictures here:

Fasul Valley Deathmarch

German Reunification Day

Today was German Reunification Day...a holiday!

Kris was feeling kind of sick, so in the morning I played with the boys then took them to the Jogoli playland. We had a good time there. While they napped, I re-read parts of the compelling book Ship of Gold in the Deep Blue See. Such a neat story. Apparently Tommy Thompson is missing now, and the investors were never paid? Jeez...

In the afternoon Kris watched the boys for a while, and then I let her go back to bed. I tossed the boys in the stroller, got on the bike and we rode to the Olympic Park. We had a great time running up the hill. A man was collecting apples from a tree, and he retrieved 3 for us. We climbed higher and sat to eat our small, tart apples.



Later we ran around some more and climbed to the highest point. We could see the mountains in the distance behind the city. It was a beautiful early evening. We went to a little kiosk where I got a Radler (1/2 beer, 1/2 lemonade), and the boys got apple juice. We also shared some ice cream.



I had to take a leak and Elijah said he did too. Wow, that is a first? Well I helped him unhook his diaper and he gave it a try, but he didn't have to go after all. I keep hoping though!

More pictures below:

Day at park

Man Bag

So we spent the afternoon at the Oktoberfest Wies'n with Bob and Mardi today. "Wies'n" means meadow, but it's actually a good old fairground or carnival. A really big one! We went to the Paulaner tent around 10:30 am, and ordered beer and sausages. Well, Kris ordered a Coke, but she promised to drink with us in the wine tent. I drank a full liter "Mass", and Bob and Mardi shared one (wimps!). Our tablemates were a nice couple from Edmonton, Canada.


Kris and Michael...not drunk yet.


Mardi and Bob...cheating a little bit - they were sharing one!


Bob acting French. Lots of scowling and Merde!

Back outside we admired the good food at the Kaefer tent, but there was nowhere to sit, so we went to the wine tent. Upstairs there were plenty of seats so we grabbed a table. Bob, Mardi and I each had a 1/2 liter Weissbier, and Kris had a Merlot, but dang it wasn't very good. Kind of vinegery? We ordered Dampfnudeln, which is like a piece of hot cake in vanilla sauce, and also homemade chocolate ice cream.

Now Kris, Bob and Mardi rode the famous Tobaggan ride, where drunk people are hefted up a conveyer belt to hilarious effect. Everyone tries to stand up in a dignified way, but watching people roll, bob, weave, dance and experience pratfalls has become a spectater sport. The actual slide to ride down from the tower is just an aftereffect. Mardi started to fall and got some help from one of the burly men supervising the belt. Bob turned in a marvelous athletic performance, and when I say marvelous I mean boring! Kris refused all offers of help from the burly attendants and immediately slipped and fell, laughing (or crying?) as the belt carted her up on her back! She did get the loudest crowd reaction though and that's what it's all about I think!

Next we rode a water roller coaster, where I alone got pretty soaked. The drops were really fun, and we laughed a lot. Before we could lose our buzz we had to repair back into a tent. First a stop off to the Kaefer tent for Kris to have a big shot of vodka, then into the Loewenbraeu tent, a really rowdy place. We found a seat next to some guys from Birmingham, England. Another Mass of beer for me, which Kris tried to drink from. Bob and Mardi shared another one. Bob bought some cigars, so pretty soon he and I were quaffing beer from our enormous glasses, smoking up the place with our cigars. And caught up in the excitement of it all, the English guys even got me and Mardi to try snuff tobacco. Seems like a good thing if you have a cold and your sinuses are blocked up.



I don't know everything that happened from there, but there was lots of shouting and laughing. I remember the guy next to me was Welsh and he spilled beer all over my leg. I said at least now I can piss my own pants without fear of embarrassment. For some reason that was really funny (to me). At some point Mardi quietly revealed that I have a sort of "man purse" to carry my jacket, wallet and other things. Word got out quickly, and soon the whole table was chanting "MAN BAG!" and pointing at me. "He has a MAN BAG!" I tried unsuccessfully to stem the tide by pointing out that my satchel was, properly termed, a "European Carryall (TM)". Hoo boy, that just made it worse. Finally I decided it's better to go down with the ship, so I raised my man-purse high and proclaimed to one and all that yes! I have a Man-bag, and I'm proud! Also it's a very nice green.

Somewhere after all this, and after competing with Bob to blow smoke rings we started singing. Just whatever. But it has to be delivered in the loudest, hoarsest shout you can conjure up. I thought, "what do I know of Britain?" and started a chorus of "Our House" by Madness. It died out quickly because nobody knew the words beyond the first part. Finally Kris and I looked at our watches, realizing we'd turn into adults again in less than an hour when the babysitter had to go home, and took our leave with a mixture of reluctance and relief!

Kris took the train but Mardi, Bob and I walked to clear our heads. It was useful! But on the walk home we couldn't help but get a big sandwich and another beer. What a Sunday!