Paris, Day 2: Butter! Plus Gargoyles

Amy and I woke up late, the jet lag pretty much gone from our bodies. It's pretty clear that Paris is on a different schedule. No more waking up at 5:30 AM. The day was to be shifted about two hours - breakfast at 10, lunch at 2, dinner at 8 or 9. OK.  We expected some adjustments in that area.

But then something happened that screwed up our food schedule entirely.  Pastry.

In the morning we traced Amy's found baguettes back to their source - La Moulin De Vierge, a pattisserie and bakery next door. We stood at the window and drooled (down their window - it was tres gauche) at the raspberry-topped custard tarts, the flaky triangle millefeuille (thousand layer pastry) with custard filling and fruit, the pastel-colored macaroons with raspberries shoved in the middle. The inside of the shop was covered in ancient painted mirrors and ornate trim.  It was the opposite of an antiseptic American bakery.

We went in for breakfast and got a crash course in croissants. A real croissant should have a very crisp brown edge. It should collapse when you bite into it. The actual pastry should be moist and should stretch when you pull on it with your teeth.  It should taste like butter at every stage and French butter taste more like very, very subtle cheese than a chemical. I had that and an Escargot Raisin (named because it looks like the curly shell of a snail, more like a cinnamon roll). Amy had a an apple-filled pastry. We closed our eyes on every bite, realizing we would never walk into a Dunkin Donuts again.

Here's the thing about buttery pastry - it can sustain you fairly well, as long as you keep well-hydrated, for long hikes. You don't a large lunch, or a lunch at all, really.   This maximizes your site-seeing time, and this being the center of Paris, we had lots of site seeing to do.  And it was pretty clear what Amy wanted to do first.

Notre Dame

Churches should be fun, right? Notre Dame is an 850 year old bottle of laughing gas. The flying buttresses alone are a scream - if you're going to build reinforcements to your wall, you might as well make them ornate and interesting.  And well-placed gargoyles keep your blues (and demons, I suppose) away. 

Amy and I took one spin around the ground floor of the enormous church. Mass was being said, and the hundreds of people that toured around the mass, while being fairly quiet, must be an awful bother to the priest and the congregants. They're used to it, I'm sure. The inside of the church was like most Catholic churches - the smell of incense and candle wax - but on steroids.

We waited outside the church to get the tour, and it started raining. And that's when we saw the humor in the downspouts, which looked like weasel heads sticking 3 feet from the wall. As water poured into them, they came out of their mouths and spit down upon us. Riot!

Then we climbed the towers. It must've been a thousand or so steps up the spiral stone staircase, and you learned to look at the walls and not your feet, lest you get dizzy.

The view from on top was breathtaking - a panoramic view of the city with all its old and new architecture all squashed together. And the gargoyles were Amy's favorite. They all had their own little personality. The people who carved them really had fun, and put in a little human touch that is so lacking in church architecture these days.

Paris: An Overview

We hopped on a double-decker Rouge Bus to take us around the inner city. It was pretty incredible, but it also gave us a very good idea of where not to go. The north part of the Seine, Rive Droite, was fashiony, trendy, expensive, and full of cinemas and American stores. The Champs Elysees (the main drag) was nice, as was the Arc De Triomphe and the Paris Opera House. But not our cup of tea. The south part, where our hotel lived, was home to the Eiffel tower, the Hotel Des Invalides (the enormous hospital where soldiers were treated) and the St. Germain de Pres district. It was very artsy, older, and more varied. I liked it better.

We got off the bus and strolled through the Louvre. Not the museum itself, just the outside. As was becoming a theme in our Paris journey, lemme tell you something. The Louvre is GIGANTIC! It goes on for at least five city blocks long, and two city blocks wide. I mean, what buildings do you know that last for more than a block? It's a horseshoe shaped design with a large courtyard (that's where the infamous IM Pei pyramid is … and yes, it sticks out like a sore thumb.) A street traverses the middle and goes right through the building, since you can't cut off five city blocks without some major traffic damage.

The park next door was about 5 blocks long as well, and it's everything a city park should be. It's not Central Park - it doesn't try to cut off the city around it. But there are fountains and gardens and sculptures everywhere. Benches line the edges of squares, and about a billion moveable green metal chairs dot its surface. Literally thousands of people were camped in these chairs, many using two - one to sit and one to prop their feet with. They read, talked, watched people. They were all different races and nationalities, though I counted more Italians than your typical American park. Amy was enthralled and we vowed to come back here when we needed a break.

Which was not going to happen anytime soon. We were amped!

French Food: Turns Out It's Pretty Good

Amy and I vowed not to visit any restaurant that was either trendy with Americans or had primarily non-French cuisine. We got some good recommendations, and ended up at Les Olividades on the Rive Gauche. It was a little tough to find on foot, but once we made it … OMG!

I started with Kir and we had a tray of olives (which you'd expect at a Les Olividades) Our waitress was very rusty on English, but very charming and we bumbled our way through most of it. Amy had chicken with a little tunnel of fettucine in butter and wine sauce. It was crispy on the outside and fell apart to the touch on the inside. I had squid melted into a rice patty with herbs and sauce. It was probably the best thing I have ever eaten. If you ever had rubbery tough calamari, you'd be amazed at how thoroughly tender and succulent well-prepared squid is.

Amy finished with crème brulee, which crackled at the touch of the fork and felt cold and inviting on the inside. I had a Tartes Aux Pommes , an apple tart with a dollop of vanilla ice cream that had some spice in it that still haunts me. I mistakenly called it a Pomme De Terre (= potato) to the waitress, who laughed at my awful french.

In general I heven't found Parisiennes rude.  If you make a valiant attempt at French, they respond with patience and humor.  They may rush you, they may sound exasperated sometimes, but I think that's more of a big city "let's keep this show going" attitude than a "you stupid americans" thing. 

Here are the three things you learn quickly about Parisians:

• They love to smoke
• They love to wear skirts above the knee (at least the women do)
• They love to bike

Bikes are everywhere in Paris, and we dodged around them to get back to the Eiffel Tower to light up again. All around Paris are Velolib stations where there are unadorned grey bikes locked up to electronic stations. If you have a Velolib card, you can walk up to any of them, swipe your card and grab a bike, ride it to some other station, then lock it right back up. You see them everywhere, and Paris' bike lanes are plentiful and convenient. Cars know how to drive alongside them.

I saw a woman dressed in a power suit, skirt above the knee and pumps, leaning on the handlebars of her Velolib smoking a cigarette. And I thought - this is about as Paris-y as you get, doesn't it?   She could be the symbol for a tub of French Butter, a la the Land O' Lakes Native American maiden.

And again, we close the day seeing the Eiffel Tower erupt in light and sparkles.  What a day!  I can't wait to see what happens next...

Paris , Day 1: Make That Rare

We're on the first leg of our journey, heading toward Toronto on a small plane.  Amy points to my seat number, "2B".  She says, "You have the Shakespeare seat!" 

Hmmmm.  After a minutes thought, I realize ... she's the perfect traveling companion.

After puddle-jumping to Toronto, we shift into a 777 on our way to Paris.  We have neck pillows, two ipods with splitters, trail mix and water.  We are so ready!  And I think about how we got here.  It was on the way to Bob Dylan concert when Amy asks me, "So what do you want to do for Labor Day?"  And I reply, "Oh I don't know, we could climb another peak."  "We could go to Montreal," she countered.  "Or Paris." I said.  And we looked at each other and said, "Is there any reason why we can't?"  Nope.

And so after a leisurely dinner (Air Canada is really good at this, by the way), we fall asleep.  Kind of.  Then an hour and a half later, the captain wakes us up.  "Time for breakfast!  We'll be in Paris an hour early because of the head wind."  We land in Paris at 7:30 their time, the sun is coming up over the city of lights.   The day has just begun and we have an hour and a half of really bad sleep.  How could we possibly do this?

The Eiffel Tower: It's Big

We deposit our bags in the Hotel St. Dominique around ten and start walking toward the city.  I have my map, and I figure if we walk West we gotta hit the Eiffel Tower sooner or later.  But the buildings were so close together (though low) it was impossible  to tell where it is. 

Then as we turn a corner, like Godzilla, it appears in the horizon.  I gasped.  "OHMIGOD!"  I poke Amy.  She laughs and starts clapping her hands.  We dodge around buildings and streets until it appears in full view.

And lemme tell you.   This thing is HUGE!  Like most everyone, I walked around with a vision of the Eiffel Tower in my head as sort of a symbol.  A couple of curved lines and some straight lines across it.  But it is ornate.  Extremely detailed.  It's not like a skyscraper where the lines are clean and manufactured.  It's not a statue.  It's a real work of architecture.   The names of 72 French scientists are plastered around the outside. 

Amy and I walk around the entire thing, through the middle, looking it over from all sides, and we were in awe.   We saw elevators going up on two pillars, and one set of steps with people walking up.  "Do you want to climb it?" I ask.  Yeah right   With an hour and a half of sleep.  We defer it for later.

We have our first French meal at a small café.  I have a Parisian salad, which is your garden variety bed of greens but with boiled potatoes and green beans.  Amy has sausage, pork and lentils, which have this country-ish flavor that I find totally charming.  That a couple of bottles of Perrier, and I'm settling in.  We people-watched for a long time.  Amy notices every third person was carrying a baguette, and most had a bite taken out of the top end.  Hmmmm.  This could be useful information later.

Getting Our Bearings

We decide to fight our jet leg with an extra hour of sleep in the hotel.  Bright eyed and bushy tailed, we head out of our small hotel room ready for action.  Amy and I mapped out all the things we wanted to see beforehand, and see what the walking distance was like for everything.  So we walk along the Seine.  About every block or so, our mouths drop open.

• The Alexander III bridge is crowned with four gold plated  statues, one on each corner, made of gold
• The Grand Palace has four horses and a charioteer leaping out of the building above, practically suspended in the sky above.
• The Louvre, which seems to go on forever.  
• Book Sellers along the Seine 
• And then there was Notre Dame.  We looked around the outside to get a view of it.  There's about 10 million details in the architecture.  It's gonna take at least a day to figure it out, but Amy and I are both tremendously impressed.   This is no ordinary cathedral here.  

 

Our brains were fried.  Which of course reminded us of food, and off we went to the first of our restaurant recommendations, La Bistrot De Paris (pretty boastful in a city full of Bistros.)   There I discover Kir, a beautiful pre-dinner drink of white wine mixed with cassis liqueur.  It's a little sweet, but not terribly so, and I vow to have it before every dinner in Paris.  Amy ordered duck, but when it came it looked suspiciously like rare beef.   We kept takeing turns tasting it, trying to figure out whether it was a steak, but its finishing taste was so much like duck, so we kind of believed it.    It was served on basmati rice with a very subtle un-basmati flavors in it.  Me - I had albacore tuna, extremely rare (this is France, after all).  So delicious, it melted in my mouth.  It was about 10,000 miles away from the tuna salad sandwiches that fueled my childhood years.  And we washed it down with white burgundy that was so dry and crisp and clean … we were reminded this was France. 

Tired but full, at 10:00 we made our way back to the Eiffel Tower to watch it light up.  The lights make it larger, and then a bunch of sparking lights turn all the blocks around it into a giant dance floor.  (No one was actually dancing).  Amy and I were amazed and exhausted.   We dragged ourselves back to the hotel for a good night sleep. 

Algonquin: Rock Like a Hurricane!

Cheating death. It's all part of the game.

Two weeks ago a professor died of a heart attack climbing Algonquin, the second highest peak in the Adirondacks (and all of New york State). Amy and I didn't know this until after we had chosen this as our next adventure. As it turned out, there was a lot to rattle us besides that, but first ...

Room Upgrade! Score!

Amy and I arrived at base camp Friday - All Tucked Inn in Westport, same as our last adventure. We liked it so much - the breakfast, the interesting hodge podge of art - it's on our short list now. So we get there and on the board it says "Amy and Craig: Room Upgrade." Turns out we were the only ones at the Inn that weekend. Which makes sense, being the week before Labor Day, moving in day for lots of students ... plus Hurricane Irene, which we remained pretty ignorant about.

Anyway, the upgrade was about half the size of my house! And it had a fireplace! Plus a bed that was so big, we briefly considered subletting a portion of it. It was so high off the ground, that climbing into it was a good trial run for Algonquin. Anyway, it was very luxurious. We had actually asked for a smaller room so we could get used to European-sized hotel rooms (practice for our Paris trip next week). But you don't get everything you ask for in life. Thank god.

The next morning, packed with French Toast and Bacon (Amy skipped the bacon - more on this later!), we drove to the trail head of Algonquin.

Yeah, It's Big

Wright and Algonquin share about 70% of the trail, and since we had done Wright a few months ago, this was like visiting an old friend. With lots of rocks, that is. The Sawteeth trail was so luxuriously packed with soft, spongy growth, that the Wright/Algonquin trail was a rude awakening. But the waterfalls were still there, and they were pretty. And the vertical ascent wasn't too bad.

Then the trail split, and we were tackling the last mile. Algonquin is pretty popular with hikers, so we met (and passed) a lot of them on the way up. There were some difficult spots to be sure, but mostly it was just a longer version of the last half mile of Wright. We got to a point where the trees cleared, and we could see the Wright summit and where we had stood just months before. The people over there looked like ants. We were once those ants.

And then the summit! It was huge, spread out, and full of hikers - this being prime time for a day hike (about 12:30 on a Saturday). It was also a bit hazy, but it was definitely the most surreal of all the views we had seen. It looked more like a painting than something real - most of the peaks being far into the distance, and the lakes just splashes of blue across the canvas. Wright and Iroquois, the two closest neighbors, looked like dwarves as well. Marcy, which you see to the right here, covered up the other peaks of the great range.

Amy said, "I have a confession," as she ate her peanut butter sandwich. The professor+heart attack incident had so rattled her, that she had been eating a low fat diet all week. She didn't want to be carried off Algonquin in a body bag. Well she didn't, and I was of course pretty glad of that. And all the way down, I kept checking back at her a bit more than usual.

I really started to feel my right knee on the way back down. Put it in the right place, on the rock rock at the right angle, and pain shot up through my body. When we got to the restaurant that night, I needed three Tylenol Extra Strength to quiet it down. A fellow hiker had told us at the top of Algonquin that he was hurting too and that, "You get the body you're given." He was in his twenties. Ay carumba.


Vamonos!

OK, so yeah ... we didn't know much about Hurricane Irene. We were busy climbing mountains, after all. So the next morning we were listening to the radio as we waited for our breakfast. Uhhhh, so they shut down all the mass transit in New York City. Hmmm, that sounds kinda serious. And then I got a phone call from a friend of mine that said Albany, who was two hours due South of us, was getting hit and losing power. Amy's friend said they were expected to get pounded in Ithaca pretty soon.

So basically, we bolted down out breakfast and jumped in the car just as the rain and wind started getting bad. According to my calculations, we skirted around the North and West edges of Irene. The further inland we got, the lighter it became. But there was still debris in the road. It was ... well, unsettling.

Syracuse and Ithaca didn't do too bad, but the places we had just left didn't fare as well. Keene, where I had downed three Tylenol the previous night, got plowed by the Ausable River which rose 19 feet above its banks. Westport wasn't bad, but just across Lake Champlain in Vermont, they got majorly socked with flooding. It was pretty sobering to see this.

It's all part of the mixed bag of nature. There are beautiful vistas that awake your senses and beckon you. And there are storms that pelt you and blow your belongings all over the place. Perhaps one makes you appreciate the other more.

Equipment We Used: I gotta say, I'm loving my Marmot jacket. Light, waterproof, and yet breathable, it sits quitely and unobtrusively in my day pack until I need it. Like at the top of a summit, where it's chilly. Then out it comes! I'm taking it to Paris with me.

Food: Need I say it? The Great Range. Amy had pheasant - unlike my old standby of pheasant sausage, this was the whole kind. Very different than the tough, stringy pheasants we got in South Dakota! Me, I had pork ribs with Monkey Gland sauce. I was a little disappointed to find no monkeys or glands were used. It was invented by a South African chef who called it that simply for shock value. I say "shock yeah!" Shockingly good that is. After Algonquin, we did Tippacanoe in Keene again - eating as much fried food as humanly possible to break Amy's fat free diet. Fried fish, Pinot Gris and Tylenol. Does life get any better than that?

Oh yeah! There's Paris! Stay tuned. There are gonna be some stories!

Sawteeth: Clif Bars, Scenic Views,

At the top of Sawteeth, a Blueberry Crisp Clif Bar has an aftertaste like fine tobacco. I mean like Marlboro's not Lucky Strikes. I suddenly had a thirst for a bourbon and a snort of coke. "There's some psychadelic mushrooms on the trail," Amy pointed out. I quickly regained my composure.

We don't need drugs to exercise bad judgment. We were about to make a haughty decision that would leave us thirsty and sore ... all on our own!

Luxury. *Sigh*

This was going to be our longest hike yet, so we started around 9 AM. There's a three and a half mile hike down the Ausable Club road just to get to Sawteeth's trail. Biff and Skippy pass you with their tennis rackets and their designer water bottles. I don't really feel jealous. But I just wished my walking stick ... sorry, my TRACTION POLE (just in case you hoity-toity people from Eastern Mountain Sports are reading this) ... would stay straight. It kept collapsing on me. About an hour of fiddling with it along the trail, and I finally figure it out. I twist it to the just the right length and lock it in place. Triumph! I felt a sense of accomplishment already.

The road ended and the trail began ... and Amy and I fell instantly in love with it. It was cushy, like carpet, full of ground cover and hardly any rocks. My traction pole sunk a little in the dirt, giving my arm a little push for some needed torque. The vertical climb was perfect. It'd be steep and just when you ran out of breath, it would level out. This was very unlike the trails at Giant and Wright, which were endlessly rocky and uneven in comparison. We saw the Rainbow Falls early in our hike. And yes, there's a rainbow in it. It was all so Brigadoon-y. Except for the sign that says, "Stay back, don't be a dropout!"

The hike felt unnaturally short, and we reached the last ascent way ahead of schedule. It was 500 feet over 0.9 miles, and it mostly nice and easy except for one challenging pretty-near-mountain-climbing part. After that mess, we started along the trail and heard ... sleigh bells? "Santa Claus?" Amy asked. Nope, just a regular ol' hiker. As I looked over his equipment to see what was jangling (I didn't find it), he gave us the greatest gift of all - he said, "You're just about up top."

It was unlike the other peaks we've been on, in that the nearby peaks are quite close and higher than you are. You feel like you're in an audience. The Gothics beckon to the right, Saddleback and Basin in front of you, Haystack to the left, and in the background looms Mt. Marcy. They overlap each other a little, like the president's heads on Mt. Rushmore.

Feeling Too Good

After the best damn peanut butter sandwich we ever et' we were feeling pretty plucky. There are two trails up to Sawteeth, the Weld trail which we were just on at 2.4 files to the road, or the Scenic Trail which is 2.9 miles. Amy and I were feeling really good. Let's do the Scenic Trail! It's only half a mile longer!

Here's the thing. At the entrance to the Ausable club, we asked the ranger about the best way to hike Sawteeth. He said, "Nobody takes the Scenic Trail. It's just too hard." But Amy and I decided to ignore his advice.

You figure that at 0.5 miles longer, the descent should be more gradual than the Weld, since you end up in the same place. Easier on the knees, right? But once we started along the Scenic Trail it became apparent quickly ... we were going up AND down. And none of it was gradual. In fact, there were some spots that needed ladders, which were helpfully provided. Amy and I both got our legs scraped up a bit by the huge boulders. It was not luxurious like the Weld trail.

That said, the Scenic Trail is well named. It offered views of the opposite range, with Indian Head and Mt. Colvin. They were more like theater curtains, their big wide ranges blotting out the sky. And the Ausable Lakes below were very beautiful. The overlooks were nice, but scary in a way, and Amy and I found ourselves backing away from the edge gradually as we looked out over the distance.

But man! That trail seemed to go on forever. We ran out of water, my knees were crabbing at me. and Amy stomped down the trail as if she were angry at it. Finally we got close enough to the lake that we dunked our tootsies in the water and felt instantly better.

At the registration book at Ausable Club, someone (God?) left an unopened bottle of Poland Spring, which Amy snatched up like gold. We downed the whole thing in a few swigs. An 11 mile hike, the longest one so far ... and here's the weird thing. I looked back at Sawteeth, how high it was against the sky, and I still don't know how we did it. You'd think that with experience, I'd be getting more used to how much we can actually do in a day. But the mountains look bigger to me.

Equipment That Worked: You gotta love Smartwool! These thick socks look like they'd be wearing cement on a warm summer day. But they are cool and dry and so completely comfortable. I'm tempted to get their hiking shirts as well, but I find bicycle jerseys act pretty well in that capacity. Since I'm not doing as much biking this summer, it's good to keep the clothes workin'.

Food: The Great Range in Keene Valley continues to be our go-to restaurant for good eatin'. We had a summer tart appetizer, with some interesting goat cheese and vegetable filling. Amy had quail. I had pheasant sausage with mashed potatoes and a rosemary sauce over the whole thing. The menu is a bit different every time we go, so we keep being surprised. On Saturday we went to the Westport Marina and tucked away salad grilled chicken and grouper and Toasted Head Chardonnay. Amy now swears by the following rule - always end a hike with a really, really good salad and wine. It lubricates the joints, and makes one feel instantly fresh and reconnected.

Next up? Seems to be a tossup between Algonquin and The Gothics. Both are close to peaks we've already climbed, so the trails are a little familiar. But the ending vertical ascents of both are very difficult. Then again ... when the payoff is this cool, what's difficult?

Mount Wright: Attack of the Summit Stewards

So ... I'm climbing mountains.

My partner, Amy (more on her in a minute), and I climbed the last 500 feet or so, pictured on the right. It didn't require ropes - it wasn't your traditional mountain climbing - but the vertical ascent was pretty steep. Amy had a headache from what turned out to be a virus. My knees were crying in pain.

At the very top ... there is a perky, 18-year-old Summit Stewards named Gloria.

Gloria: "Welcome to Mt. Wright? Did you come from Algoquin?"

Amy: *muggah muggah* (translation: "Are you kidding? We barely made it up THIS mountain!")

Gloria: "There are some endangered species up here, and we ask that you step only on the rocks and not any plants or soil."

Craig: *muggah muggah* ("I can't walk, so no problem there.")

Gloria: "Would you like me to take your picture? I can get Mt. Marcy in the background."

Amy: *muggah muggah* ("I'm not getting up. The hard rocks will be our background.")

Craig: *muggah muggah* ("Don't bother, Gloria. After we push you off Mt Wright, they'll be taking our mug shots for free anyway.")

How Did I Get Up Here?

Fair question. It starts with Amy.

Amy and I started hanging around together about a month ago. She's a hiker, camper, canoer, kayaker, and just all-around outdoorsy type. Me ... well, I gave up that life a long time ago when I left Boy Scouts. I'd been to the Adirondack Mountains in New York a total of four times ... one of which I camped and hiked, three of which I partied in the Syracuse University retreat cabin, which pretty much doesn't count as outdoorsmanship. (They don't have a Bartending Merit Badge yet, do they?)

Like Green Acres when Oliver pulls Lisa across the split screen ... Amy pulled me into the outdoors. Here's the weird thing: I like it there. A lot!!

I climbed my first Adirondack High Peak with Amy two weeks ago. It was Giant, and it had a short path with a huge vertical ascent. How I made it it up is anyone's guess ... I'll tell the story in a future blog post. But from the top of that first peak, I felt the molecules in my body shift. It was my first drink of scotch, my first snort of cocaine. The view from an Adirondack peak approaches something of a psychadelic experience. You don't really believe what you're seeing. There is no sound except wind. The trees are like toothpicks beneath you. "It's like you're on the moon" is how Amy describes it.

Mt. Wright

So there are 46 peaks over 4,000 feet in the Adirondacks, affectionately called The 46. Wright is the third I've climbed, after Giant and Cascade. (Amy was there for all of them, and has done an additional one herself). All the peaks have a certain character.

The Wright trail is short, about 3.5 miles, and it's pretty gradual for most of that distance. A couple of waterfalls make nice stopping places. There's not much of a view the whole way - you're enveloped in a canopy of trees, so you better have a good conversationalist handy. (Amy definitely fits the bill for me.)

The last 0.4 miles, where the trail splits off to Algonquin, is a killer. The vertical ascent is pretty steep, and the Alpine Zone prevents you from stepping onto soil or plants. And it's friggin' cold! At the beginning of July, the temperature was in the 50's. If you didn't pack your jacket and you are more than 20 years old (yeah, there were a few), you couldn't spend more than a few minutes there.

Wright isn't very popular because Algonquin sits right next to it, and it's bigger. It's like hanging out with somebody's little brother. But here's the thing. The little brother has a better view of the west, which is the best side of the range. Because from Algonquin ... that damn little brother is in the way. And you can't make it move. It's a mountain. Duh!

After a lunch of peanut butter sandwiches - and there's nothing on Earth better tasting than peanut butter sandwiches at the top of a mountain - Amy and I headed back down. Her headache gone, we made pretty good time on the way. 3 hours later, we were back at the lake, dunked our tootsies in the water and made the lake steam up.

Equipment that worked: Walking sticks, or as the Eastern Mountain hoity-toity people call them, traction poles. We got Leki's, and they work like a charm. Keeps your balance, and gives you a boost up the rocks when you need it. Both Amy and I use just one, although most serious hikers do two. (We like to be just a little off-center).

Food: It's very important to get good sustenance before and after a hike, and Amy and I take this very seriously. Before the hike we did The Tip-A-Canoe Restuarant in Keene, and I had mussels from the shell for the first time evah. Nice! Afterwards, we did The Great Range in Keene Valley, which is now as close to a tradition as we have. An appetizer of Scallops with ground pea and arugla sauce was heavenly. She had Duck Comfit, and I had the Lavender and Thyme Chicken. It was pretty nice - not as good as the pheasant sausage I had there two weeks ago - but nice.

Next Up: We're thinking Algonquin next. Hopefully no viruses will invade this trip!

Last Day: Avant Garde means Never Having to Say Your Sorry

"Avant Garde" is a French word meaning "doing what you're not supposed to do." Let's discuss this in Mothers Day terms. There was stuff your mom told you specifically not to do: don't yank the cat's tail, don't stick your finger in the outlet, etc. Then there was stuff your mom never dreamed you would do: like stick your cat's tail in the outlet. That's avant garde!

I'm going to get back to that, but first let's discuss food. As in - where did it go? Good weird food is an integral part of my vacations, but for this one there wasn't time. My diet was basically (1) raisin bran (2) film festival fare: cheese and crackers and wine (3) ceasar salads bought in the George Eastman House cafe and scarfed in the theatre. (Ceasar salads were my popcorn and jujubes).

I was going to get a garbage plate yesterday. Then I thought, "Oh crap, it's Mother's Day. Everyone's at the restaurant on Mother's Day." Then I thought yeah, well ... a garbage plate is not a Mother's Day brunch affair. (Maybe your mother would like that. I make no judgments.) Anyway, I thought yay! So I pinged www.garbageplate.com for Nick Tahoe's, the pre-eminent garbage plate restaurant ... and found they're closed on Sunday. Crap! So I ate raisin bran.

That's OK. I basically ate film for five days, and Sunday was Dessert Day. Stuff to cleanse the palette. The first film, "No Orchids for Miss Blandish" was extremely cool. It was a 1940's British Film Noir with British actors, British sets ... but set in New York with fake New York buildings and accents.

You can imagine how weird that'd be. House's Hugh Laurie is British (in case you didn't know), but his American accent works because his dialogue is very character-specific. (Plus he's really good at it.) Now take the language of Film Noir:

• "Shut up ya mugs!"
• "I need some dough!"
• "Listen, you!"

And stick that in a British actor's mouth. Friggin' hilarious!

But underneath, the story was captive and the characters were evil to the point of divinity. The movie was pretty roundly criticized for its amorality - there's a lot of barely disguised sex and violence here for 1948. It was a grand old time!

The second film, "Avant Gaming" is a product of its time just as much as No Orchids and needs some explanation. It's a series of short subjects culled from ... get this ... video games. Yep. And more to the point, they are video game mistakes. Have you ever played one and were walking around the virtual landscape when something weird happens: you walk through a wall, you end up on the other side of the street, a moving object like a bird gets stuck in the air, or whatever? To get there, you basically did things the programmers did not plan for. And as video games gets more visually sophisticated, these things happen more often.

String these occurrences together and you have avant garde cinema! The computer has created a surreal world with possibilities that are difficult to imagine by yourself. You can run these things together in a narrative, or use them for directly emotional transfer. One of the films, for example, was written by a filmmaker for his lover, who had committed suicide. He strung together images to form an afterlife - one where rain falls sideways and ethereal humans walk through grave sites and each other. It's hypnotic and lovely.

The last film of the festival, "Still Bill", is the exact opposite of avant garde. A documentary on the musician Bill Withers, "Still Bill" captures a very deliberately-lived life. This was a guy who worked menial jobs, learned to play guitar at age 28, recorded, became a huge international star, then gave it up ... not because he went crazy, but because "I just wanted to do something else."

Why not do a written bio? I think I figured it out. On film, you often see different sides of a person in any particular moment. There's a kind of parallelism that brings out hidden sides of a character. So in one scene, Bill is talking to a group of children with stuttering issues. A stutterer himself, Bill projects authority and strength to the kids ... at the same time a huge tear starts rolling down his cheek. See, as I explain it, it's impossible to meld those two images together. Words work serially - one after the other. Film does it effortlessly.

Some say film is for the lazy. It makes the sound and visual landscape for you, so you don't contribute anything in your mind. Of course, that's crap. You bring a lot of personal history to a movie - in essence, you always have a movie date! (Don't start making out with your personal history in the back row. That's just gross.) A good film will hook itself into that personal space, rearrange it a bit, dust off some corners. But you have to give it the layout of your mind. You have to show it around. You have to unlock the doors. You have to feed it lunch and promise to carry it around on your shoulders.

I compare notes with my new friend, Caroline. At a few points we saw the same movie at different times and got very different reactions. A few movies we vehemently disagreed on. But there's a language that film buffs seem to speak. It feels more silent, more terse, almost instinctual. We say, "you remember that scene where..." and don't even bother finishing the sentence. We just know.

I shake her hand and tell her I'll see her again next year. She says, "I hope so." Well, maybe the plot will unfold differently, but I think she can count on it.

Day 4: Mellodrama, Monogamy, The Screen Gems Logo

Admit it. This is the weirdest movie poster you've ever seen.

It's also hanging in one of the film theatres here - the Little 1 - and whenever I'm waiting for the movie to start, my attention wanders over there every 30 seconds. "Stop it!" I think. "Don't look!" But it's just so friggin' weird, and I can't help but love it.

In the morning, I took a quick sprint up to Syracuse to see Kathy. By mid-afternoon I was back in the movie theatre.

The first movie I saw was "Monogamy," and my guess is if you'll see any of the movies I'm describing here, this will be it. And you won't be disappointed. The movie centers around a newly-engaged couple. The guy, a wedding photographer, gets an off-hours job to shoot voyeuristic photos of a woman. He gets a little bit crazy in the process (there's obsession again! It's all over this festival), and we watch his relationship start to disintegrate. It's all handled with great humor, style, and a killer original soundtrack. And it feels a bit claustrophobic, which makes for a great relationship movie.

And while I'm here, I'm going to give my personal Best Actress award to Rashida Jones. (wow, what an honor). You probably know her from The Office and Parks and Recreation on TV. She's extremely good in "Monogamy." She works in the screwball comedy tradition, I suppose, but there's a kind of gravity to her performances. When she takes the world on her shoulders, you really feel it. I think she's going to have a great career, if not a big one. You heard it here first.

And now we come to "I Am Love." What does the word "melodrama" mean to you? Snidely Whiplash tying Nell to the railroad track? Me too. Actually I always thought the formulaic story made it a melodrama ... but in fact, it's the music that defines it. It's that barelhouse piano you hear when Snidely is tying her up.

"I Am Love" is real melodrama with a classical music score. And you know me - I hate classical. But the soundtrack here might change my mind. The music is by the modern American composer John Adams. What's cool is the minimalism in it. He wouldn't admit it, I'm sure, but he's got a James Brown vibe - find the groove, establish it, repeat it until your neighbor stares at 'cha. If you have the right groove, it becomes a living, breathing entity.

Granted, the plot isn't very compelling - a rich wife has an affair with a poor-but-talented chef - but they don't make too much of it. What they do make a lot of is ... food! Oh man, glorious stuff! Prawns on a bed of grilled ratatouille practically give the wife an orgasm. (A lesser blogger would say "I'll have what she's having." Good thing I'm above that). But the food shots are part of a larger plan to maul your senses. There are shots of insects on flowers that make you shiver. And all of it in the midst of this grand but slightly off-kilter music.

And the ending. WOW! If you've ever sat through the closing movie credits thinking, "I can't move. My mind is blown." you know what a cool feeling that is.

The last movie of the day, "The S From Hell," was really a bunch of short films commenting on popular culture. It was a mixed bag, but one of the segments on Screen Gems was very satisfying to me personally.

So you know the Screen Gems logo which appears at the end of Bewitched and the Flintstones, right? And that music that appears in the background? (If you don't know offhand, here's an example: http://www.milanofamily.org/scrngems/ScreenGemsColor.avi). Well that logo and music gave me nightmares as a kid. It was so creepy, it was worse than werewolves or the bogeyman or any of that crap. I still find it totally unsettling.

I thought I was the only one who felt that way. But no! It gave lots of kids the creeps! And in this segment, he talks to some of them (all grown up now, like me) and they describe their Screen Gems-induced nightmares in lurid detail. Then the film-maker actually stages and films some of those nightmares.

The next time you rattle off some half-arsed piece of work, think of this. The writer of that jingle (it's done on a Moog synthesizer, by the way) and designer of that logo rattled this off too. They probably finished it before a three-martini lunch. But look at the psychological damage it caused! Be careful, people! The mind is a weird thing.

Finding my psychological burden lighter, I walked up the street at midnight in the snow. (In May? Man. What a screwed up part of the country this is.) It was midnight, and I caught the last set of the Michael Stuart dance. Wicked salsa! My friend Kerri was instrumental in putting in together, and she milled around the place in a stylish black dress, the belle of the ball. (Those who know Kerri know how rare it is for her to wear dresses. And how wonderful it might look. And yup, it was all that!) About 2 AM the band packed up and I headed back to the hotel.

"Sunday," I say to myself, "I'm gonna take it easy." But that probably won't happen.