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Published: January 11th 2013
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We woke up a bit earlier than yesterday and ate some special K for breakfast. Lise was tired of just driving around and not enjoying the places we were so we went exploring for the first time. The Mistral was not in effect so we walked around the Mediterranean Sea. There were not any tourists because it’s the winter so we got to enjoy the Mediterranean without a lot of extra noise and activity. I took a panorama for my dad of the coast and skipped some rocks on the Mediterranean because they had awesome rocks.
Here is where things get interesting. There were a number of rock formations that extended pretty far out onto the Mediterranean and I couldn’t help but go as far out on them as possible. Lise didn’t like walking on the rocks but I convinced her to walk out with me on the longest formation that we could see. We got to the end safely and took a seat to enjoy the uninterrupted view of the Mediterranean.
I began to move my arm around Lise as a romantic gesture when my camera started to fall. I made my best grab for it. I looked
around for it and realized that it had fell… between the cracks of the rocks. I looked into the gap that was most likely the culprit and it took my eyes a few seconds to adjust to the darkness. I didn’t see it at first but Lise looked and found that it was stuck just next to an area that was large enough for it to fall through and into the water. There were a number of convenient/inconvenient factors:
The camera was just out of my arm’s reach
The camera was just slightly in the reach of the tide if it was strong
The camera case lanyard was below the camera and in the water, and would move the camera slightly with the ebb and flow of the tide
The space was too narrow for my body and Lise’s body as well
So it was time to go into Macgyver mode. I took off my jacket and tried to make a loop of some kind that would pick up the camera but the angle was too awkward and it didn’t work. I realized that there were fisherman in the area and asked Lise
to go ask a fisherman for a hook and about 3 meters of fishing line while I made sure the camera didn’t fall into the water. She didn’t like crossing the rocks 2 more times at all but she acquiesced. She came back a few minutes later with a stick that was a little longer than a foot. She decided that it would probably work and was faster than asking the fisherman for a hook and line. I lowered the stick to my camera and it was just barely within reach of the lanyard. I tried a few times to hook the lanyard but failed. After watching the ebb and tide of the flow for a bit I waited for the tide to pull the lanyard away from me, inserted the stick where I expected the tide to push it back, and waited. It took me a few tries but I finally managed to “thread the needle” of the lanyard and got it caught on the stick. I only really had this one chance because if it fell it would likely meet a watery grave. I slowly brought the stick out and successfully rescued my camera from its seemingly imminent
doom. I have a few battle scars from trying to fit into the rocks and save the camera.
After all this excitement we walked a bit further until we decided that there was very little more to see and turned around. We came back to the apartment to find Charlotte and Juan Lu making guacamole and pasta. Lunch consisted of Belgian Beer, guacamole with tortilla chips, spaghetti with tomato sauce and ham, and some kind of tuna fish/corn/tomato salad that I didn’t really like.
After a late lunch we found two bags of Petanque balls. Petanque is a French game involving throwing a metal ball and trying to bring it as close as possible to the initial ball that was thrown. It was Lise and I vs. Juan Lu and Charlotte. I wasn’t quite used to the weight of the balls and the lay of the course so I did pretty bad to start off with. Juan Lu and Charlotte took an early lead of 5-0. After this I had a much better feel for the course and we started winning. 5-1,5-2,5-3,6-3,6-4,6-7,6-11,6-12 was the final score with Lise and I winning. The wager of the game was that
the loser had to cook dinner. I kinda wanted to cook dinner but I’m too competitive to just let the other team win. Juan Lu and Charlotte have just finished cooking as I’m writing this so off I go to eat the spoils of my victory.
Charlotte and Juan Lu cooked ground pork with mushrooms inside of a zucchini shell with rice and bread. Charlotte brought a whole lot of different beers so I tried a new beer called Grimbergen. I showed them some card tricks and learned a new card game called president.
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