TMB Getting There–Thursday, September, 21

It’s all fun and games until you wake up to a vigilante force surrounding your hotel with pitchforks and torches. All the time we were walking through Barcelona and noticing the large police presence, we assumed it was in response to the recent terrorist attacks. That all changed when David Hasselhoff entered our hostel and started spitting on us–we knew this was “go time” for us.

In the end, the French security forces made a tactical blunder which allowed us our freedom–they started speaking in Spanish while in Barcelona. Everyone knows, Catalonia is the primary language. Catalonians actually prefer to speak English over Spanish. We had made good use of our time while in the city by dropping in all the local Catalonian hot spots and drinking the locally brewed beers while talking about independence for Catalonia. Once the Spanish started, the people of Barcelona rose to our defense.

We had to agree to a few simple conditions for the French Federation of Professional Hikers to agree to give us our freedom:
1) Do not criticize the use of time for trail distances no matter how fricking stupid this may seem to intelligent people throughout the world. It’s the assininely accepted norm in the mountains (even though the people of Catalonia agree with us and have started changing the signage from times to distances). We’ve agreed to quit making fun of this incredibly nonsensical way to measure distance.
2) We also must acknowledge that the French DO NOT use highly trained racing snails to determine the asinine trail times we have agreed to not criticize. Apparently, the snails are not highly trained and are more slug-like in appearance (the large quantity of black slugs we have noticed are actually the trail calibrators).
3) Make the following statement before the world press: “We wholly support the French Federation of Professional Hikers in their attempt to get hiking included in the summer Olympics. We recognize only the most physically fit should attempt to engage in such a demanding sport and that it is serious business (where enjoyment should be kept to a minimum) while perusing continual improvement by the athletes.”
4) We must also endorse the European ban of pack elephants on all trails in continental Europe (who knew they were actually allowed in Great Britain?).
5) Quit pulling Pam’s hiking pants up (which are actually too big for me). It seems that when I pull the pants all the way up, I am, kinda, showing my junk. Restaurant revenues are apparently lower wherever we eat. I agreed, but I don’t think plumber’s ass is going to be much of an improvement for revenue.

As long as we accept the above terms, we will once again be allowed to backpack in France provided we hike all trails above 1000m in elevation with a blindfold. However, I am from Illinois where I learned about loopholes in the law: at no time did they actually state we had to wear the blindfolds over our eyes just like the Illinois motorcycle laws do not state that cyclists must wear protective eye wear over their eyes (which explains the large number of motor cyclists with safety glasses on their knees).

All of this can be summed up in the following phrase–“Mont Blanc, here we come!)

We had a very enjoyable hiatus in Barcelona where we took a double-decker bus tour of the entire city, walked through the gothic district of town (which is over 2400 years old), partook of lots of locally brewed beers, visited the Gaudi cathederal which should be completed in 2026, and ate enough to put back on all the weight we lost hiking the GR10 (yet Pam’s pants are still too big for me–go figure).

In one local bar, we got yelled at for being “f%$ing tourists”–this from a man who is planning to go hike the Himalayas in a month. He couldn’t understand why we were laughing at him when we pointed out that he was going to “tour the Himalayas.” In the end, we all agreed (over the magical power of beer) that none of us are tourists, but we are adventurers. To be on the safe side, though, we went on a beer adventure to another bar.

With great reluctance, we checked out of “Yeah Hostel” this morning. I say great reluctance, not because we weren’t ready to leave Barcelona, but because we didn’t want to go through the ordeal of travel through the subway to the airport to a shuttle all in countries where we don’t speak any of the language. Barcelona is preparing for an “unofficial” public referendum on October 1 where the issue is independence from Spain for Catalonia. I am afraid that there might be some violence because this has become a very emotional issue for the people. I hope peace reigns during the election.

Chamonix will be having a welcoming ceremony for us later this evening (part of our GR10 “victory tour”). We will resupply and head out in the morning. The weather forecast looks good for the next 10 days so we are going to give the “Tour du Mont Blanc” (TMB) a go. The itinerary for the TMB is 11 days, so we are going to try to do it in less than 30 days. We have already contracted a “slug” guide to show us the way–I hope we can keep up.