Palmer - Over a month in Europe

Howdy all -

It's been a little while, so I thought I'd throw some updates down. We're still in Ceuse, and the climbing has been awesome. We've each gotten some projects done - most of which will be in Scottie's movie when he finishes - and have a huge list of other things we want to do, but we're peacing out for Spain in about a week so a lot of them will have to wait until next year. Except for me and Scottie, who are coming back here for another month after a month in Spain. Word.

Yesterday, we got to hang out with Arnaud Petit, Sylvain Millet (second ascent of Realization), Jon Cardwell, Issac Caldiero, Sean McColl, and Dave Graham. Watching them climb has been awesome - it's ridiculous to see people who so thoroughly dominate the sport as they do. Watching them is like watching a video about what climbing is supposed to look like. They make 5.14c look like a stroll. And then Jon's about one move away from sending Realization, so that's been awesome to watch, and Dave's been toproping it because he fucked up his ankle at the World Cup in Vail a couple of months ago and can't take lead falls. He was joking that he's the first person in the history of the world to toprope Realization, which might be true.

It's been really fun being at Ceuse. I had no idea just how world-renowned this place is until coming here. Humor me for a second and check out this list of home countries of the people we've met:

USA
Canada
France
Germany
Spain
Italy
Poland
Sweden
Czech Republic
Japan
Singapore
Argentina
Brazil
New Zealand
Australia
Estonia
Finland
Austria
South Africa

Pretty freaking cool.

Right now we're at the only place in Gap, France with free internet. I'll give you a clue where it is: here, you'll be able to find fries, milkshakes, big macs, and the only overweight people in the country. Yup, McDonald's. We've been calling it the McEmbassy.

Unfortunately, not as many people here speak English as they do in Germany, and I only know enough French to get myself into trouble: I can start conversations, but beyond that I'm pretty much screwed. A few weeks ago, in celebration of one-month-in-Europe-without-going-broke-and-starving, we went to a pizza place in a nearby town where I attempted to order a pizza with a few minor alterations. I ended up with a Calzone. And when asking for the bill, we somehow ended up with raspberry creme brulee. Yeah, it's been awkward.

Anyway, on Sunday we're heading down to Rodellar for three weeks or so, dumping Steve and Kiff off at the airport :-( and heading back to Ceuse. After about two weeks here, wee-little-feintzeig is showing up, and after he leaves I guess we're off to Fontainbleau (which we decided about 2 hours ago). And at some point we're gonna somehow sell our car to somebody - any of you guys want it?

Hope you're all well! Sounds like we're gonna have a pretty awesome story telling around the kegerator when we all get back, which I'm really excited about.

Palmer