Olivier

At the beach yesterday I met my new French boyfriend, Olivier*. By "met" I mean "spotted and proceeded to position myself with PL and KT so that we could hide my camera behind my bag but still take pictures of him". For some reason that still evades the three of us Ninja M thought this was highly inappropriate and a little stalker-ish.

In the evening we dined at the Pizzeria Chef Etienne, where Ninja M ordered us a feast and we continued to discuss my budding relationship. We decided the wedding would be in France, probably on the beach, and that Olivier might play soccer or volleyball before. We also agreed that any children born of the union would be sent to my mother the Judge for rearing and that they would be genetically modified to not cry. I thought it turned out to be a productive supper, but Ninja M kept calling us "disgusting", "immoral", and "pathetic". I reminded him that in fact we were all peripatetic, as we spent much of the day either walking to or from the beach. He remained unimpressed.

Much like an imaginary friend, Olivier accompanied the four of us to the Calanque for today's activity: hiking. Perhaps the description of today's activities will be more interesting if you know that before we left I was clean, with braided hair and smooth skin, tinged with red only ocularly; now, the palms of my hands, shins, and bottoms of my feet show intermittent markings of long scrapes and puncture holes and the tops of my thighs burn an angry carmine hue. By the way, the graceful French women manage to complete the same hike in expensive flip-flops while cooly smoking cigarettes, which they hold between their two first fingers beside their white linen skirt hems while they blow smoke out of their noses, snapping their arms up and back suddenly and laughing when I flinch or fall.

Team Handful**, the name PL decided on, lept down the mountains of the Calanque at an alarming speed. Perhaps I should explain the Calanque: it's basically a bunch of hugely rocky mountain formations that decline sharply into the sea. Or, in the universal language of Wikipedia: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Calanque. If you're trying to picture it and thinking, "Why doesn't she just post her pictures?", just imagine the Titanic frozen right before the ocean completely swallowed it. And I haven't posted my pictures for two reasons: 1. I fail at taking pictures and have grand plans to steal those taken by PL and KT and post them to my site, and 2. I forgot my camera cord in Atlanta.

When I got stuck on a particularly steep slope, as I frequently did, Ninja M reminded me to channel my inner mountain gazelle. I should note that I cannot imagine a mountain gazelle has hidden inside me for this long only to spring out now. I'm also pretty sure that mountain gazelles only live in the Arabian peninsula, which may or may not have bearing on my ability to channel one. I decided instead to channel a mountain rock hurtling down toward the sea, mostly because I recognized my shortcomings and would rather pretend to fall frequently as a result of successful channeling.

We reached the ocean without any major injuries and Ninja M proceeded to skip down a ledge thinner than the width of my foot. Since I have been courting coolness recently and determined to be more interesting and daring I started down after him, stepping slowly and cautiously and reminding myself that following the rest of Team Handful would make me intrinsically hardcore. Right as the ledge began to narrow, though - when I really stood only five feet from my new cool reputation and the sea - I remembered my fear and froze. French people piled up behind me, which was surprising since it only took me a few seconds to decide to retreat to a safer, higher post from which Team Handful could attempt to convince me to continue down. They swept past me with lilting phrases and disgusted snarls.

Ninja M eventually coached me down the rockface and I sat again on the coast of Marseille with my toes in the water. Team Handful lighted on the great idea to climb a rock sticking out of the ocean a few feet away, so we left our bags on the shore, waded through the frigid water, and climbed - with great difficulty - up to the top of our granite island. The ascent involved sliding across the mossy seafloor with only a second razor-sharp protruding rock for use as balance, then placing one tender unshod foot upon that same razor-sharp rock and pushing with the other foot against the slippery seafloor to propel oneself up so that as little time as possible would be spent with the entire weight of the body borne by that poor foot on the rock. The propelling foot ended up in a little crag on the side of the granite island, where it rested while each Team Handful member held onto the side of the island and pulled him or herself up onto the top (translation for my experience: flailed crazily before managing to scrape up against the island rock and scramble to put all my weight on my crag foot while holding my other, bleeding foot out over the ocean, using my arms only for balance since they are devoid of muscle, and wailing until PL pulled me up).

In retrospect, the ascent was the easy part.

Designated as incapable of re-ascent, I took pictures while the other three hesitantly jumped off our island for a swim. I wanted to video the jump, but preparation (read: psyching up) took so long that I after fifteen minutes I decided just to take pictures once they were in the right place emotionally. I feel these pictures probably mark the height of my photography career, since I was saved the need for skill by the beautiful scenery (okay, and people), but they will never be displayed since Team Handful forgot to pack swimsuits. This is likely the greatest tragedy of my hidden talents.

Ninja M managed to descend the granite island smoothly an hour later and tried to instruct the rest of us on the best strategies. KT managed relatively well, but when my turn came I eventually just slid down facing the rock, clinging to the top while Ninja M guided my feet to the ground. Scratches abounded.

We made it back to the top and recapped the experience while waiting for the bus. Despite injuries/weird sunburn attained, we all agreed the pain was worth the fun. Even Olivier.


*This may or may not be his name
**See the following post about Ninja M's favorite hobby