Mouseguard At Last

A long time ago in a town far away ...

It was a hot summer. I was home-sitting for my supervisor. Carly came for her second visit to Victoria.

During the visit, Carly managed to find the rulebook for an role playing game, Mouseguard, a friendly game where you pretend to me part of a civilization of mice.

In pursuit of work after the PhD Carly find herself in Switzerland. And she is still the custodian of those rulebooks, so we gathered fellow nerds for a game this weekend ...

...

enough

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The first four words made we want to try writing in some sort of suggested syntax. I am terrible at both prose and writing, so back to normal sentences. Those are challenging enough for me.

Carly and Michael came to visit me in Geneva. Their original plan was to stay with Steve, a common friend in Lausanne. Unfortunately Steve's apartment has been invaded by the lake, so they crashed at my place. I was very glad to play host, actually making use of my luxurious domicile. They arrived late on Friday, and after a short welcome and friendly chat we decided to call it an early night.

After a comfortable breakfast on Saturday morning we went about acquiring provisions for the game that afternoon. We prepared some tomato soup and let it sit in the slow cooker for the afternoon. We purchased much snacks and drinks, as one these are essential for a good RPG session. Around 2pm folks started arriving at my place: Steve, Jon, and Ant joined as fellow players, Vincent as our kind dungeon master.

Our mice were an interesting collection of characters: Mike played a paranoid guard veteran, Carly an idealistic gullible scout, Steve the bee-keping pacifist, Jon was our healer with a keen sense for herbs, and I a mouse supremacist carpenter (inspired by the game making me thing of the Maus comics and some encounters of my past). I am ashamed to admit that I don't recall Ant's character concept, please post a response below if you do!

This rag-tag group of mice was tasked with delivering some bees to a city about a weeks journey away. Once there we should secure honey and wax production as well as establish order in the city. After gathering supplies we set out for our journey, braving early spring weather. The first few days were pleasant travel and we made good progress, then the weather turned on us and we were caught in a late snow storm. We did what we could to protect the bees and weather the storm. It became obvious however that we needed to push on such that our precious bees would not freeze in the cold. The game provides very nice rock-paper-scissors style mechanics for role-playing through challenges: be these combat, environment, or social. There is also a emphasis on role-playing the actions your mice take in these confrontations. It was pretty fun braving the road beset by slush and ice, dealing with a caved in bridge, and a wild ferret on the other side. The ferret only ate half our bees. The rest the group managed to sneak past a gang of outlaws, while my mouse foolishly confronted them. Finally we delivered our cargo.

At the new city we organized a militia, which we lead to take those outlaws prisoner. Having captured the outlaws we did a good-mouse bad-mouse routine to get them to give up the hide-out of a local gang of rebels. With this new intelligence we plotted various ways to attack the rebels. A group of us was disguised as a group of merchants, transporting a load of ale. We had of course poisoned the ale hoping the rebels would attack us, take our stuff, and then get drunk. The sneakier group of mice shadowed us and followed the rebels as they made off with the ale. Sure enough, soon the rebels were merrily getting sloshed. We returned to town and raised the militia. When we arrived the rebels were weakened by the poison, and we managed to overpower them with some cunning military maneuvering.

Back in town we caroused with locals celebrating the victory and bringing peace and prosperity to the far ranges of the mouse kingdom. From here on our reputation can only grow! What a great day of fun and gaming. Thank you for DMing Vincent, and thanks to everyone who came out to play!

Climbing Into the Wild

Kacper, Kasia, Gianluca, Julia, a friend of Gianluca's, and myself went climbing. We drove to a small parking lot near the Hotel du Buet between Argentiere and Vallocine. There is a campground near the parking lot as well, and the hotel looks inviting with a rustic charm. After biking about the Jura all day yesterday my legs were pretty tired, so I almost felt like skipping the climbing and sitting down for a beer fist thing in the morning. Kacper was much in the same predicament having cycled around lake Geneva the day before. So we lamented our foolishness, formed a weak legged climbing team, and packed our gear for the trail. After some discussion with Kacper and Gianluca I decided to leave most of the lunch I braught with me with the cars, except for a few snacks. I should have known better :-)

From the parking lot it is a short walk though rugged country roads through some small buildings. Just follow the markers towards Mount Buet. The road continues to a cafe situated on the side of a cliff with a terrace over a mountain stream at the Cascarde de Berard. The train starts by the cafe following a beautiful valley stream. It takes about 75 minutes of hiking to get to a small cairn marking a trail to Mount Oreb on the right hand side of the path. It is a steep scramble up to the base of the two climbs on Mount Oreb: L'Ete Indien and Into the Wild. While scrambling up the slope to the climb we were greeted by a group of mountain goats. There were already a couple of climbers at the bottom of the climbs, so we queued up. While waiting we snacked on some Nuss Stängli, some stick-like hazelnut cookies I had spied on my previous visit to Klosters and promptly located at the local Coop. They were delicious.

After a short wait we got to start on the climb. Since Kacper is the better climber I started the first pitch since it would lead me to naturally climb the easier pitches. None of the climbs were very hard, though it was still early in the year for the sections where we walked through soil were muddy. Some of the dock was still we also, making it slippery. While the climb itself was clear, there was still a fair bit of snow around the same altitude we were climbing, though it will probably be gone soon. Once we got to the 6th or so pitch we were rewarded with a beautiful view of a glacier across the valley. The beautiful scenery of the mountain valley below giving us some idea of how high we had climbed.

By the time we made to the top we had precious little daylight left to rappel down and hike out. Since Gainluca and his friend were right in front of us we decided to rappel as a group of four: One team setting up the current rappel with one set of ropes, the other one taking the old one down. Second person heading down the next section took the ropes from the previous rappel, so the setup for the next one could get started as quickly as possible. We could have made record time on the way down except that one of our rope sets got stuck, so we had to climb up and retrieve it. After rappelling down we hicked out at a fairly brisk pace, with just enough light left to see by as we got back to the parking lot. We met the Julia and Kasia at the Hotel bar, where they had already established themselves as veteran climbers enjoying beers and the local company. We enjoyed a beer and some snacks before heading back to Geneva. That you to everyone who came out for yet another fantastic day in the mountains!

Trying Mountainbiking

A few months after I started at CERN I was invited to a welcome session for new staff and fellows. One of the coworkers I met there, Nathalie, turns out to be an avid mountain biker. Ever since I wanted to join her in one of her tours around the Swiss and French countryside. I really enjoyed biking about the backwoods in Nova Scotia. When moving to Vancouver though I was too chicken to deal with the very real mountains. Over the past years it seems I have grown more confident in my abilities. A couple of years ago I joined my climbing buddy Chris in cycling around the Heartland trails by Mount Work. Ever since I have been toying with the idea of getting back into mountain biking, so I am happy to have somebodies coat tails to hang onto.

After trying to pick up used bikes, a hard task for somebody my size, I finally gave in and just rented a mountain bike in Geneva ($18 for the day at Geneva Roule). From there I cycled out to meet Nathalie in St Genis. She knows the area well and does this a lot so I depended on her to set a route. We headed up to the Le Tiocande. From there we took a beautiful, flat dirt-road over to Crozet. At Crozet we climbed up to the ridge of the Jura. At this point I started having trouble keeping up with my avid guide. After some lunch with a beautiful view of Geneva and the Alps we continued along the ridge line to the Col de la Fussile. A beautiful ride with the French countryside to the left and a view of Geneva, the lake and the Alps to the right. We cycled down the road from the pass and through the countryside from Gex to Previssin. There we stopped for a coffee and some pastries.

After that fantastic (albeit exhausting) day of biking I really want to get a mountain bike. For a guy my size (196cm, or 6'5")  it is really hard to find a used bike. I am monitoring the local used stuff slites: anibis, leboncoin, glocals, and the CERN market. There is also the biking forum pinkbike. And Nathalie and my coworker Tim suggested the following three sites for a new bike: bike-alm, bikesportworld, and chainreactioncycles. Nathalie pointed out that currently the 2014 models are being cleared for the 2015 ones, so not may be a good time to grab a bike ... let's see how it goes. I think a mountain bike set up for touring would be a fantastic way to explore Switzerland, for example there is a trail between Geneva and Davos, here.

Klosters And Caumasee

Carly and Michael invited me to come visit them in Klosters this weekend. Michael and I wanted to go for a dive on Saturday. The rest of the time we could enjoy a hike or some board games. Since it is a five hour train journey I decided to take Friday afternoon off for the trip. I left Geneva at 13:45 heading to Zurich with the train. Michael and Carly met me in Sargans, because I missed my connection in Zurich. Together we headed to Restaurant Balans in Malans for dinner. I had a great plate of Cordon-blue with some Rösti and a solid local lager. We picked up some needed groceries on the way to Klosters. Here I learned about a Nußbrot that Coop sells which is delicious. Turns out the Coop across the street from my apartment sells the same bread. We spent the evening chatting about Mouseguard, a role-playing based in a fantasy settings where mice hide cities and civilization from the other stronger animals of the forest. We are planning a session with some friends in Lausanne in two weeks. Then we played few games of Dominion, Michael and Carly pwned me, clearly I don't game enough these days. I really enjoyed the nights sleep away from the city noise of Geneva.

Caumasee

Saturday morning Michael and I headed to Chur to drop by the dive shop there to pick up some rental gear and see about getting a permit to drive to the lake. Unfortunately the shop had forgotten about the gear Michael requested, but after an hours of sorting through things I ended up with two 7L steel cylinders and 8kg of lead for my side-mount rig. The tall thin 7L cylinders felt very nice for the dive, much better than the 10 and 12L cylinders I've tried thus far. Though I am a bit of an air hog, so if I do buy some cylinders I'll probably settle for the 8L cylinders.

The dive water in the lake w
as beautiful glacial blue. We saw a few juvenile fish during our dive. Every rock and the entire ground was covered in an algae layer which supported a dusting of sand. There were some neat rock piles along the shore of the lake with lots of nooks and crannies to scout for signs of resident life.

After the dive we enjoyed a pick-nick by the lake taking in some warm sunshine. There were plenty of friendly hikers and bikers about that were curious about our dives, so we got to chit chat a bit as well. While the dive was not hugely exciting, it was a neat experience to see an environment similar in topology, yet completely alien to the diving in BC. Afterwards we dropped off the rentals at the dive shop (SCUBALINO). A very nice shop if you find yourself in the area looking to go diving.

Once we returned to Klosters we rinsed our gear. After we had a cold drink and some ice cream on the terrace at Michael and Carly's place. It was a gorgeous day outside so we enjoyed the view down the valley, warm sunshine, and good conversation. Later it started raining a little, so we moved inside and spend the evening creating mice characters for mouseguard: Carly made a naive country mouse, Michael a paranoid guard veteran, and my mouse a boisterous mouse-supremacist. Events the following week make me feel my cynical character parody was in bad taste [link].

Cavadürli

After a lazy morning breakfast we decided to use the beautiful weather to hike up to a place called Cavadürli from Carly and Micheal's place. From their house we took a neat path across some hay-fields to the river on the other side of the valley. The river was still brimming with water melting off the mountains. After crossing the river the trail started climbing up the side of the mountain. The wild fields were full of beautiful mountain flowers and we met some goats grazing by the path. After crossing underneath some train tacks - yes Swiss trains really go everywhere - we lost the path. An evil-eyed stare from a couple of local farmers had us turn about and search for the path elsewhere. Turns out we missed a turn just after the train tacks. Here the path leveled off taking us through some beautiful forest and past some nice mountain huts. A few mountain bikers were enjoying the downhill trails crossing our path as we started our descent back into the valley. We sat down for lunch before reaching the town and heading back to the house. I learned that in general berries growing close to the ground should not be eaten here: foxes tend to pee on them and their urine carries a very unpleasant bacteria (Leptospyrosis?). They do look nice though.

After the hike we played through an encounter of Mouseguard and I got whipped one more time at Dominion. Afterwards Michael dropped me off at the Klosters Dorf train station and I headed back to Geneva. I shared a few friendly beers with a couple of punkers returning from a concert and two friends of theirs returning from military service on the weekend. They recommended a concert in Davos in September. I made it back to Geneva before midnight and collapsed exhausted but happy into bed.

Pic de Jallouvre

On Thursday Pawel mentioned that while he was heading to Poland for the weekend Dorota was looking for somebody to go climbing with. I got in touch with her, and we batted the ideas for a number of different multi-pitches to climb around. Since it would be the first time we would climb a multi-pitch together we decided to go for something more cautious and start with the Courte Paille on the Aix de Allyards (above image taken from the website). There are five other multi-pitches to climb in the area as well, so we had options in case we were looking to climb some more. We both had plans to go out with some friends on Friday night, so our climbing enthusiasm was thus far undetermined. There was a chance of a few other friends joining us as well.

Dorota seemed to have the longer night out, she messaged me when I had already turned in that we would be joined by the two Kasias who were spending the day at the cave overt and coming to join us for a BBQ in the evening. So, on Saturday morning I quickly gathered my camping gear and went off to meet Dorota at the CERN reception. From there we headed to the Col de la Columbiere in the pre-Alps. On the drive both of us noted that we had forgotten our cameras, so this time my pictures come from my phone. The parking lot for the climbing area was close-by. We arrived around 10:30 packed our climbing gear and headed for the wall. There we spend a little time walking about orienting ourselves and soon found our climb. I lead the first pitch, Dorota the second and so on. It was an extremely pleasant climb, especially once we got to a section that involved cannelures: limestone that had been scraped down by glacial movement and then worked by running water. Very nice! There was a nice photo opp half way through the climb :)

We finished the climb and found ourselves back at the car around 3pm for some late lunch. Thanks to Dorota for sharing her delicious cucumber+hummus sammich. We also had to convince the Kasias to join us at the Picde Jallouvre since they wanted to meet us in Charmonix: and this place just had the nicer climbing wall in this case. After some lunch and phone conversations we resolved to go for a second climb until our company would arrive for the BBQ. This time we climbed Alley-z Mme Mummury, another beautiful climb. I think Dorota and I are well matched in climbing skill so the challenge level was just right plus we moved at a good pace. While rappelling down we saw a group gather in the alpine valley below and start a campfire. There were too many to be the three that would join us but the campfire looked inviting.

The others arrived just before we made it back to the cars with provisions for the BBQ. We went ahead and started setting up our tents, at which point some of the campfire group came over and invited us to their fire: they were a group of teenagers from Annemasse. They were visiting the small village nearby with their parents and were enjoying the evening outside. We made friends over the fire them practicing the English and German they were learning in school, us working our French (I am by far the worst French speaker in the group). A great evening by the fire, and a good night bivouacking in the alpine.

The next day we woke up to a lazy breakfast, though we had run out of sufficient bread and yogurt, so I ran off to find a bakery and supermarket in the nearby town. Unfortunately both bakeries and the supermarket in the first village were closed so I moved two the next town. Though lacking breakfast it was a lovely drive visiting the picturesque French villages.

After breakfast we gathered our climbing gear and headed to the wall. This time we chose a climb Manque un Metre the tough points of which were very reachy, so we thought I stood a chance. Again a great climb, and I started getting comfortable sport leading 6a's (low 5.10's in North America) and top belaying two climbers. With the lazy morning and three of us climbing together it was late in the afternoon by the time we finished. We decided to head home after the one climb. On the way we stopped by a small restaurant called Le Peille in Saint-Jean-de-Sixt. It being off season we didn't need any reservations. Not really being hungry we all decided to have desert. It was delicious, the place would be a great restaurant for some traditional French cuisine to visit in the future.

Thank you to all who were out for an amazing weekend of climbing, camping, and just hanging out!

Dentelles de Montmirail

Trip to Provence

For the third long weekend in May (Pentecost) I joined Pawel, Dorotka, Katarzyna, and Gainluca in a climbing trip into the area of Avignon, Provence. We went to climb the Deltelles de Montmirail, specifically the Chaine de Gigondas.

We left Friday after work we took a break half way through the 4-hour drive to have some dinner. We shared the food we brought at a rest stop along the French highways. Some delicous salad was provided by Katarzyna, and Dorotka brought some delicious concoction where some zucchini pretended to be pasta.

After a bit more driving we made it to the Domain des Favards, a campground located in the middle of a vineyard. Since we had called ahead they left the gates open for us to enter even though it was midnight by the time we arrived. We set up our tents: Pawel and Dorotka braught their luxury accommodations and a beautiful light weight tent for Katarzyna. Gainluca and I shared his iglu.

Col du Cayron

We headed into the nearby town of Violes to find some food for breakfast and lunch. We found baguette and crossaints at a bakery, some good meats at a deli, and some nice cheese at a small store owned by an Italian from the same town as Gainluka.

Stocked up on foodstuffs we headed to the Roche de Ecole (?)
to get into the climbing mood. After a few climbs on that rockface we moved on to the Col du Cayron. The rocks here are a limestone, and sharp enough that it hurts. I tried one 6a here which started with some absolutely terrible footholds. I managed it in the end, with some patient belaying by Gainluka: and there you have it, I lead my first 6a outdoors (that translates to a 5.10 by North American standards [wiki]). The pride afterwards made the pain worth it!

After we finished our day of climbing we ventured off on a quest for food to throw on a barbecue. After asking some locals and driving about small French villages for about 30 minutes we found a store that was still open. There we purchased food for an evening feast as well as provisions for the next day. We finished the day with a fantastic BBQ at the campsite, enjoying gilled meats and veggies along with some delicious French wines.

Dentelles

These foothills to Mont Ventoux were formed in the Jurrasic period as a folded piece of limestone. Since then erosion has turned them into a sharp peak rising out of the lush countryside. There are climbing routes all around these rock formations, we visited the South face on Sunday and the North face on Monday.

The climbing on the Dentelles was much more pleasent than on the Col de Cayron, the rock not biting quite so hard. As a pleasant surprise the occasional handhold some thyme or lavender growing out of it producing a pleasant burst of fragrance to brighten up your climb. On our way back to Geneva we stopped to shop for some wine, and I bought my first box of wine. Ever. I don't regret the decision, I only hope that I can stop myself from consuming all of it before bringing a bottle or two with me to Canada as gifts.

Watchmen

Yesterday I found myself contemplating why when it is so easy for us to comprehend the horror and futility of war, why humans fight. A phrase snuck into my head: "Swords to plowshares". I was curious where this wording had come from, and those that know me from back in high school will immediately know: this was an old school magic car. Of course the name of the card was a biblical quote [Isaiah 2:3]. While reading a bit more about it I learned that it was for example used in Ronald Reagan's Address to the 42d Session of the United Nations General Assembly in New York, New York:

Cannot swords be turned to plowshares? Can we and all nations not live in peace? In our obsession with antagonisms of the moment, we often forget how much unites all the members of humanity. Perhaps we need some outside, universal threat to make us recognise this common bond. I occasionally think how quickly our differences world-wide would vanish if we were facing an alien threat from outside this world. And yet, I ask you, is not an alien force already among us? What could be more alien than war and the threat of war?

Is this then where the idea of the watchmen emerged? It seems to be the central plot point: Dr Manhattan is the representation of science being "shaped into something gaudy": a weapon. Then during the movie him and Ozymandias are working to make him that external threat, very reminiscent of the last question.

I hope sincerely that globalisation, and specifically the freedom of communication though the internet, will allow us to recognise our common bonds. This is why net neutrality is important to me.