David, an old climbing buddy of ours, had recently been stationed in Bamberg with his Army unit, and there is fantastic climbing to be had in that area of Bavaria. Ignoring our tardiness, David and his wife were really warm and welcoming. He had to work the next day, but he supplied us with his local guide books (one of which we had to replace because the person in charge of it ~ yours truly ~ left it at the crag and it got soaked before a guy David knew found it and returned the guide. Note: Don’t let me borrow your guidebook) and some first hand knowledge of the local crags of the Frankenjura. It was such a shame that we didn’t get to climb with David as he had been the “Rope Gun” on more than one road trip and his loss was felt as we walked up to a few hard routes that neither of us wanted to lead. Normally, we would have told him it was some easy local test piece and belay him as he struggled up the face of the rock, letting him set the anchor for us. What are friends for if you can’t abuse them from time to time? After a couple of nights imposing on their hostility, we hit the road again, this time for France. My posting online had been replied to by a couple of guys that had spent some serious time all over the continent and their advice was to head for the Gorge du Verdun in the Provence region of France. This was a little further than we had planned to go, but worth it to find some dry rock. As a bonus, David had a set of digital guides for the area and was gracious enough to let us use his printer to make a couple of free guide books.

The only other time Flood had been outside of the US was a lunch time excursion just across the Canadian border once when we were climbing in New Hampshire. He arrived in Deutschland with a bright and shinny new passport and the one German Visa stamp in it was mocking him. He was on a mission to get more stamps! Our road trip took us south in the pouring rain into Austria and to the border of Switzerland. At the border crossing, I had to get out and tell the border guards in my preschool German that my friend was from the USA, had a new passport, and would like to have a stamp from their beautiful country in it. The guards on the Austrian side showed some displeasure, but stamped it in a Teutonic fashion: stamp centered in the provided box on the second page – very Germanic and very orderly. The guards on the Swiss side were all smiles after my rough explanation and stamped away as well. Flood was as happy as a puppy with two peckers - smiling ear to ear over his new stamps when we left the border.

There was a time when my French was really good. I could make my way around Boudreaux, Alsace, Québec, and even Paris without much difficulty. I had a firm grasp of the language structure and my vocabulary was fairly extensive. I had some trouble with slang and profanity, but even that was coming along. Once, while riding on a train near Rouen (Normandy), I had a discussion with an older lady about her family history and Occupied France in WWII. At some point during our talk she asked where in Belgium I was from. I laughed and said that I was an American and she told me very matter-of-factly that I was definitely Belgian as Americans don’t speak French and mine had a Flemish or Dutch accent. I had to pull out my passport to finally prove my provenance to her. Those days are now long ago and far away. My French has been irrecoverably harmed from four years of California livin’ and attempting to learn German was the coffin nail for that ability. I can still read museum placards and mostly understand what people are saying, but when I open my mouth an odd mixture of German and French comes pouring forth. I warned Mark of this as I had noticed the deficit on a short work trip to Toulouse very early in the year and I figured it would take me two or three days to have the gears in my head realign and work correctly. I was completely unprepared for the damage that the ensuing months of German had wrought. Even saying my numbers in French led me to utter ‘drei’ or ‘acht’ as I counted change for a pastry. It was VERY frustrating and embarrassing. I am sure that I now have French ancestors rolling in their graves over this loss. To make this right I am going to have to spend some serious time “in-country” to re-establish those skills, but when the Hell am I going to be able to fit that in?!

After finding our bearings and getting camp properly set up, we drove to our proposed climbing area for the next day to make sure that we weren’t signing up for a twenty mile uphill hike or getting on routes that would be crazy-hard. That was the plan anyway… We talked to a Danish group in camp about our plans before we left and they were very nonchalant about getting to the area, saying it would be very clear and the parking area easy to find… Apparently, the Danish definition for the English word E-A-S-Y means ‘obscure and unsigned single-lane goat path.’ Even in the best of times I become easily lost and while I am 100% sure Flood could drive from his house to any point in the lower forty-eight states with no map, with little more than his wining smile and a supply of tuna fish and pop tarts, the European landmass seemed to contain some sort of Kryptonite-like substance that turned him into a ball of slobbering goo when handed a map with German or French place names. He was of no help, but served as entertainment on the long drive and search. You just can’t listen to him pronounce place names in French without wearing a big smile. After two hours of searching and laughing at him, I thought that we “might” have found the turn off – maybe, but it was dark and too late to investigate properly.

Camp that night was filled with a vast array of languages, wine, and food. There were Americans, the aforementioned Danes, Italians, Austrians, Germans, a couple of Brits, a French group, some Spaniards, and a Swedish girl and her Swiss boyfriend - all gathered in small groups in the common area. French and Italian wine bottles cluttered all the tables, the smell of farmer’s cheese, roasted meat, hot cocoa, warm bread, and Mediterranean spices filled the air.

The next morning, we got up and headed for the parking area whose whereabouts had so defeated us the previous evening. We found the turnoff after some further searching, parked the car, and started our hike somewhat early that morning. After fifty minutes of hiking we figured out that we had somehow missed the trail to our climb. Mark and I shouldn’t really be allowed outside without proper adult supervision. It seems that when we do escape into the wilds together, we inevitably take a “shortcut” off to some trail that adds twelve hours and 10,000 feet of elevation gain to our hike. After a brief conversation, we took what I feared would be another one of these shortcuts. Thankfully, we traipsed right into where we were supposed to be after a leisurely ten minute walk. You can’t imagine how happy I was that we didn’t end up walking to Spain or that our bodies weren’t found frozen, cuddling in a muddy cave days later – with the two of us either could have easily happened.

It turned out to be a GREAT day! We climbed twelve routes – every single one on that particular wall, got some great pictures, had some laughs, talked about life, found out that we loved the quality of rock in the Gorge, and that the routes were very well protected. It started clouding up as we finished the last route and Mark made some mention of maybe checking out another area before dusk, but that was nixed when the first rain drop hit the top of my balding head. We threw our gear on our backs and ran most of the way to the car. About twenty seconds after we shut the doors the sky opened up and unleashed a cold nasty rain. It was like we were being stalked by a crazy ex-girlfriend that could call forth rain from the heavens to piss on my happiness. By the time we made it back to camp, it was raining even harder and had started snowing at higher elevations. Normally we would have been tweaked about being run off a crag with daylight left, but as this turn in the weather was somewhat expected, we accepted it as our fate and didn’t get too upset. The Danes in camp were having none of it and when the snow started, they decided to pack up camp and drive home. Like there is no snow in Denmark…

After making a nuisance of ourselves for the “upper crust”, we started our hike to a wall that we had decided to climb on for the day. We met some climbers on the trail who very politely informed us that we were on the wrong side of the small sheltered harbor. It was nice to know that my internal compass was still as effective as ever. The information we had for the route suggested it was just up a short trail from the beach – an easy access climb. Easy access = flip-flops: In my humble opinion, flip-flops are the finest type of foot gear than man has ever placed on his feet. If I could get away with it or blackmail my boss into it, I would even work in flip-flops or at least wear them to the office before kicking them off under the desk. Anyway, I thought I would be fine for the easy walk to the crag. Wrong. The trail in was a steep narrow path that rose, dipped, and wove its way up one side of the inlet. Right away, we got on the correct trail and walked to exactly where we needed to be. Since I was the one with the inborn sense spatial and geographic awareness I made the call that we were definitely at the wrong spot and we continued on. Luckily, I was not destined by fate to be the navigator for Capt. James Cook. – Hawaii would have been claimed by the French and I would have known FOR SURE that the mouth of the Amazon was a shortcut to the Pacific. Cook, I and the rest of his crew would have ended up as shrunken heads swinging above a Yanomamö hammock, but I digress… On the way to look for the “real” area, I slipped on some loose rock and sliced the end my right big toe so deeply that it took three weeks to heal. I should have gotten stitches, but that would have ruined the trip. Instead, I taped my toe up with white athletic tape and limped on and up. To Mark’s credit, he never uttered one complaint about me slowing him down or how stupid it was to hike in flip-flops. I was really worried that I was going to ruin a day of climbing for him, but he was really great about it. He was even cool about not doing the ‘I told you so’ dance when we finally came back to the spot that I had us abandon at first. It was big of him not to point out that he had been right – I don’t know if I would have been able to control myself and do the same for him. I am three years old sometimes and I REALLY like the ‘I told you so’ dance! (I also like to do the dance of victory when I win at board games – it is one of those “endearing” personality quirks that I have…)

So, Flood the sandbagger cleaned the route in approach shoes, looking solid and 100% at ease while doing it. There were clouds building offshore and we could see rain coming down a few miles out on the water – it had followed us. Flood asked if I would mind if he went back to the car to get his shoes after he could barely get the big toe of his Sasquatch foot into my narrow girly pair of 5.10 X-Rays. I figured what the Hell, we were there to have a good time and if he didn’t feel comfy without his shoes then he had every right to go get them. It took us thirty minutes to get from the car to the descent the first time, before I led us astray. So, I figured I had an hour to nap, nurse my throbbing big toe, snack, and take a few picture of the sea and rocks.

Flood took off for the car and I put some slide film in my 35mm camera, sat down on an outcrop, and had a Clif Bar. The wall we were climbing on faced southwest and hung directly over the cobalt-blue water. There was a long rocky island out to the west about a half a mile away and both sail and power boats slipped past in the channel between. The clouds were a boiling mass with rays of sunlight blasting through here and there and in the distance on the right I could still see an unmarked patch of blue sky. All the elements were there for at least one good picture so I snapped away a roll hoping that just one might be worthy enough to hang on the wall in my office. I also grabbed a couple of shots of the rock that we were climbing on because there were fissures in the face that looked to be stained a reddish brown, but on close inspection the stains were veins of crystals that formed in that band of limestone eons ago while it was still covered by earth and sea. The crystals were uniformly about 1/8 of an inch long and swirled with the contours of the cracks in the stone. It was beautiful.

Even though we drove a lot farther than we planned to (2,800 miles) and we constantly fought the rain, it was a good trip. We both got on new rock, climbed well, saw parts of the world that were new to us both, Flood learned a couple of German and French words (like how to ask a waitress to drop her pants - sorry about that Flood), we got to see old friends, make some new ones, and enjoy each others company and laughter. The only thing that I would really change about our trip, other than produce thirteen days of warm sun, would be to have spent more time with David. We should have got him out on the rock and poured some more beer into him. I am so thankful that Flood came over and that we each had the time, funds and opportunity to climb together. There is talk about maybe Verdun again next year, but with less driving and better weather. I hope that happens and I hope that Mark and I get to climb together and drink fine French wine and wheaty German beer until we are both hunched, bald, wrinkled, dirty old men.