Wednesday, October 21, 2009

Poll results

Dr Brisby?


It's a win for Dr Brisby! with an astonishing number of votes (4) it surpassed all of its opponents which stalled at 1 point each.

Of course the poll left only 4 choices and maybe your true favorite (if any) wasn't in the list.
But it's cool that you guys like the Brisby song! I got some more coming for you in a more or less near future :)

Clemster.

Monday, October 12, 2009

Back in Montana ... oh wait...


A map of France's départements, La Lozère is in red.
Paris is the tiny one in the center of the northern half.


Last month I went with a bunch of friends in Lozère, the least populated area of France. We stayed at Julien's farm house. His parents bought a few abandoned farm houses about 30 years ago and spent most of their holidays in Lozère to rebuild the houses.

La Lozère is a rural and mountainous area which reminded me of my Montana days (big up for my Montana friends!). The mountains in the center of France called "massif central" are really old, they used to be volcanoes. Now these volcanoes are just some nicely curved (but tall) hills due to eons of erosion.

Julien's farm house is located at about 1 kilometer high. So even though it was the end of September, which is warm in the south of France, it was quite cool.



Julien's farm house and Ruben's poncho (find it!)


We took Julien's family wagon and drove straight to the south from Paris. It took about 6 hours to get to his place. Good to know that there are places saved from the chaos of modernity this close :)

The guys started to freak out when they realized they couldn't get any 3G Internet connection with their iPhones down there. Edge only! Sounds like technological Jurassic Park. That pleased me, I work all days long on the Internet, I sure as hell wanted a break from IT stuff.

When we arrived I was a bit sick because of the mountainous roads (left , right, left , right, left , right and oh left, right... x 2346346) So I grabbed a guitar (Julien's awesome Ovation acoustic godess) and played in the garden, breathed the fresh air... But Lydie started screaming at me because I wasn't helping. The others where bringing the food from the van to the kitchen.


Sancho Panza and Rick Hunter
keepers of the farm's law



Being far from any piece of civilization, I enjoyed some good old plain natural activities like drinking beer (belgium, thanks nico!), shooting cans (while sober of course) and barbecue (the sausages down there, oh my god, the sausages, oh my god!!).

We also did some sports, we went kayaking on the Tarn river (the gorges are gorgeous) twice totaling about 24Km, I went running in the morning before breakfast (ok it was only once!) and the others did a couple of hikes while I enjoyed sleeping because of a major sun burn on me face.




Paris Clem!




How sexy a Kayak can be?

Evil Cattle, don't you try you horns on meeeeee!!!