My last surfing day in Portugal was a bit tainted. I was surfing with a girl from Ireland named Lisa. After being in the water for about half an hour a freak set came in that was really BIG. Lisa got snatched by a wave and went for a tumble. When she came out of it her face was covered in blood. She had taken a board to the forehead and that had opened a 2 inch gash just above her eyebrow. At the hospital they stitched her up real nice. She was more worried about the scar on her beautiful face than anything else.
I arrived back in Aix at 3 in the morning after a long day of buses, metros and planes. I had one day to get organized before jumping in the car to meet Philippe, owner or Escalade Magazine, in Avignon (2 hours from Aix) to do an assignment on a sport climbing area named Russan. To access the base of the crag you need to rappel through a large hole in the rock that is wild. After four days of shooting I got back to Aix late Saturday night with enough time to pack before catching a train the following morning to Switzerland.
The first three hours on the train were great: I had a booth all to myself so I caught up on some sleep. In Lyon an older women walked into the booth looking down at me from above her small reading glasses and I just knew this was going to be trouble. It turned out I was sitting in her chair so I moved. The entire booth filled up quickly and the last person to sit down was a young girl. As soon as the girl sat down she jumped up and yelled out, “this chair is wet!”. The old women then pointed at me and said that I had done it! “What!”, I said, and before I could think of anything else to say I said, “it wasn’t me.” The truth is that it wasn’t me and the only reason (my guess) why the older women thought I had done it was she had noticed that I had a water-bottle and because I was the first person in the booth. It was preposterous that the old women would accuse me, but of course I looked like an ass because I didn’t offer the girl my chair. I ended up giving the girl a plastic bag to sit on but the women was still convinced that I had done something terribly wrong.
PHOTOGRAPHY
- For the Russan Assignment everything was lined up: the models, accommodation, locations, food etc. Lining up models can be the hardest part and it that isn’t organized well it is a disaster. Very nice shoot and the guys at Escalade are top notch.
CLIMBING
- Russan has a great assortment of climbs in all levels. The climbs are short but classic. Access is about a 20 minute walk.
TRAVEL
- As it turns out Avignon is super central to a bunch of really good cliffs. Although I didn’t visit it Seynes is really close which is known for its tufas. We stayed in a gite which is a home that is rented out. Gites are really common in France and very affordable if you have a group. A good site is: www.gites-de-france.fr
