It’s called Table Mountain. It thrones over Cape Town like a king over his kingdom, or a queen over her lovers - high above, beautiful, strong, untouchable, feared and adored at the same time, killing remorselessly now and then, an icon.

The city of Cape Town has sprawled all around the mountain and nowhere in town can one ignore the presence of the imposing plateau. Many more pictures of it will follow, but today was trail running day and the Viljoen family happens to live right at the foot of the mountain in Constantia. So here are a few pictures of the run/hike, taken with Marie’s great little Canon that I carried in a pouch.

After getting up at 6:00 am and making coffee in the fantastic little Bialetti that has now become a must in my mornings, I dragged a very bravely willing Marie out of bed and into the car. She was dropping me off a little further down the mountain at the Constantia Neck (elev. 200 m.) so that I could follow the easy Hoerikwaggo hiking trail all the way up to Maclear’s Beacon, 1087 m.

The weather was, as usual, stunning. Not a single cloud in the sky as far as the eye could see, except for some low fog-like banks somewhere near the ocean. The forecast was for a max. temperature of 34 deg. C and I was glad to get an early start. Two bottles of water, two power bars, the camera, a photocopy of the map and a cell phone to call for a ride on my way back.

I started up the trail at 7:05 am after having taken my first energy boost. No, not a bar, a kiss. From Constantia Neck, the trail went up steeply for a while, until, having gained around 400 meters in elevation, I was finally able to break into a slow run. The initial part was mostly paved, the Jeep Road.

Then the first reservoir appeared on the left and right across from it, the only official water source of the trail. But I still had plenty and kept going. Expecting to follow the paved surface a little longer, I missed the turn towards the beacon and headed left to the next reservoirs, and had to backtrack when I realized the map could not have been that wrong. Having found the hiking path I wanted, I pushed on towards the north, crossing a succession of ravines.

Eventually, I had to venture a little off to the right and to the edge of the plateau to go take pictures of the house which I could clearly see way down below, next to the green belt where I normally run on. On the way back to the path, I took a shortcut which lead me into thick bushes and cost me another 10 minutes.

Back on the trail, more ravines. I was systematically avoiding running up the steeper parts, unsure of how long I had to go and saving my energy. Finally, I could feel the landscape was changing and turning into one long upward slope. I knew I was nearing the beacon. A good thing. My legs were heavy and my heart pounding. I had to walk most of that last stretch, and then the wind picked up.

I emerged in the most extraordinary scenery; the beacon stood to my left, an enormous cairn built with stones. All around, fantastic views. Ocean, mountains, the sky, all competing for my attention. A little further, I could see the cable-car station on the Western Table, but I had decided to keep this first attempt reasonable.

I looked at my watch. 2 hours flat from Constantia Neck. Exactly what I had hoped for. I’d be back way before my 5 hour deadline. I snapped a few pictures, almost chocked on a thick power bar I just couldn’t find the saliva to swallow, ate the other one, rested my legs horizontal for a few minutes, laced my shoes tighter for the descent, and after 15 minutes on the summit, threw myself into the trail and headed down in a slow, careful run. My ankles were doing well, so were the knees, but they were tired and I had to pay close attention to where I stepped.

I was back at the Neck in an hour and fifteen minutes; total trail time: 3:30 hours. I gave my chauffeur a call as I was descending the final steps to the parking lot, continuously splashing myself with the water I had picked up at the water source, extremelly relieved that the run was over because the heat was really kicking in.

Great run, great hike. The pictures barely pay it justice, they were taken quite fast and through rather heavy breathing. Oh well. Running is no time for HDR.

Then I had another energy boost.

After sitting on the tarmac for almost an hour and a half, waiting for a difficult refueling operation to complete and then waiting some more in line for departure on the only available runway at Paris CDG, we finally took off and headed south on our 10 hour journey to Johannesburg.

It’s now early afternoon. Air France flight 994, a mighty Boeing 777, is over-flying a most extraordinary landscape. 29,000 feet below us, stretched to infinity like the rippled and sunburned skin of a sleeping giant, is the Sahara Desert.

Sure, seen from a plane the Florida Keys and nearby Bahamas are stunning, the Alps are incredibly majestic and the Four Corners, amazingly textured. But today, the simplicity of a desert beats everything I’ve ever seen from the air.

From the vertical of our position to a hazy horizon, sand reigns, eternal and yet ever-changing, a static ocean of pure heat constantly reshaped by the winds. It’s now late enough that shadows are serious and each dune is revealed as if an all powerful hand had applied eyeliner to the face of the Earth.

Mesmerizing shapes and patterns become apparent from the sky and while the poor soul stranded down below could hardly see beyond the next sand dune and would easily get lost forever, an aerial view explains the highly complex yet logical organization of the desert.

A fact emerges in my mind: this desert, just like oceans, is alive. It breathes, it moves, it crawls around.

Camera in hand, I spend close to an hour glued to the rear exit door windows, shooting over and over again, hoping that the shots will be focused and crisp enough. Eventually, a layer of clouds appears and blankets the ground, as we leave the desert behind and move over the lush forests of Central Africa. The sun soon sets. 5 hours to go. Then a night at the airport. 2 more hours to Cape Town and the magic begins.

[This was posted many days later from Constantia, South Africa. Not having the right software - nor the time - to process my pictures adequately, I will only post once in a while and add a few teaser shots. Then when I get back, I will repost better. Stay tuned, and do pay Marie a visit over at 66 Square Feet, she’s been much busier and reliable than I have...]

Late at night somewhere over the Hudson Bay aboard Air France flight 045, an Airbus A-330 à destination de Paris. We’re cruising at flight level 370 on our northeastern course. The outside air temperature is a chilly -60°C. To the south, the cold stars of Orion are perfectly framed into my starboard window. We will overfly the southern tip of Greenland in a few hours, on a great circle route between the two continents.

I’ve stretched my legs comfortably and reclined my seat, selfishly blissful about that exit row seat I snatched at the last second. The French cabin crew is very nice and dinner was opened with no less than Champagne. With 12 video channels, French music, travel magazines, a paragliding book and my iPod, I’ve got all I need to survive the flight and I’ve settled in for the long haul, 9 hours from Vancouver to Paris.

French accents all around me have left me nostalgic and dreaming. Even if only for a brief touch and go, there is no doubt about it, I’m going home. My old home first, and then a new one, one not defined by  physical boundaries but rather by feelings. I am, litterally, on a date with destiny.

Un hommage aux p’tits cousins du Québec, the inflight radio plays « Le monde est stone » de Fabienne Thibault. The time machine kicks in automatically and I am pulled back all the way to the 70’s. Tough  ones, these years, qu’est-ce que j’en ai arraché. But today, in the middle of the sky and riding the maelstrom, l think I understand. It would seem that bleeding first is often necessary in order to shine later. And most of all it takes time to actually realise that, just as right now, 20 cm from my face, pure frozen hell is flying by just below the speed of sound at such a low pressure that it would render me unconscious in under a minute, the difference between chaos and bliss is often as thin as the glass keeping me safe inside the cabin. And always, unavoidebly, that difference hides within our head.

[Posted at 3:00 am from the Johannesburg terminal, South Africa, having slept a total of 7 hours in the last 55.]

Tuesday 5:00 am. Je pars. ETA at destination, Thursday 9:00 am. Is the world really still such a big place? The short night was agitated and restless. I spent most of it in and out of a dream where a grinning, toothless taxi driver came to pick me up at home and drove me a quarter of a block away to the beach where an old cable-driven river ferry would take me across the ocean. I kept making it as far as the sand with my huge 7 bags and there, an unsympathetic flight attendant refused to place my camera in the overhead bin and wanted to float it next to the boat with the rest of the luggage. I would ask for an upgrade and be told it was 4000 kopeks, which I didn’t have, so I’d wake up and try again... I’m going to have a great trip. See you all in a month.

You had to be there. It was a long time ago. Long before AIM, and Gmail chat, and MSN Messenger, and Skype, and ICQ, and Trillian and the like, the ancestor of online chatting was – and still is – called IRC. It stands for Internet Chat Relay. I spent hours on it, in chat rooms called channels, using the ever-popular mIRC and ViRC programs, writing scripts, customizing my messages, implementing colors, offering roses, seeking privileges, learning the syntax and the codes, wasting precious time, getting addicted. Then I got Jouche addicted too. Mea culpa. And then I bailed.

Nowadays, modern chat clients are so much more powerful and user friendly, but they cater mostly to individual conversations and the idea of public channels never really took off until Facebook appeared.

The difference with IRC is that it was geeky and took quite a while to master. But entire online communities built themselves around those channels. Some of them still exist I’m sure, but I’ve lost touch. I’ve forgotten the language. I’ve moved on. Yet I keep a copy of mIRC on my laptop. One never knows. IRC remains a valuable resource when it comes to finding live, up-to-date info about the weirdest, most remote things, fast.

Here are a few quotes from actual IRC conversations. They were found here. They are much funnier if you’re a geek and if you were there.

(+ware) I rear-ended a car this morning. So there we are alongside the road and
(+ware) slowly the driver gets out of the car . . . and you know how you just get sooo
(+ware) stressed and life seems to get funny?
(+ware) Well, I could NOT believe it . . he was a DWARF! He storms over to my car,
(+ware) looks up at me and says, « I AM NOT HAPPY! »
(+ware) So, I look down at him and say, « Well, which one are you then? »... and
(+ware) THAT’S when the fight started . .

...

<frank> can you help me install GTA3?
<knightmare> first, shut down all programs you aren’t using
* frank has quit IRC. (Quit) **
<knightmare> ...

...

<pronstar``afk> my kazaa preformed an illegal opperation
<cCCPehlet`> isn’t that what kazaa is designed to do?

...

<fabz> I think we need to work on our communication.. one guy is talking crap, one just goes « lol » and the other one doesn’t understand what’s going on
<atsleek> lol
<Nefemus> what?

...

<idsif> you’re smarter than the average american
<ascian> of course. i’m canadian.

...

<Beeth> Girls are like internet domain names, the ones I like are already taken.
<honx> well, you can stil get one from a strange country : -P

** That’s a system message that appears when a user closes his IRC program. Duh. (Vince)

It’s a pretty big bag, I said to myself. It’s a heck of a big bag. I sat comfortably in my leather chair, coffee at hand, mentally gaging the size of my luggage and imagining logging it all halfway across the globe. A suitcase, conventionally sized, and a B.A.G., as in Bloody Awfully Gargantuan.

That, mind you, was no ordinary bag. It contained, neatly folded and already asleep for way too long, my wings. And there as always lies the rub. Wings are not small. They grant you freedom but never let you forget that freedom tires biceps and abuses luggage allowance charts.

I tried to reason with my muscles. It’s quite a miracle that in such a modestly huge bag fits all I need to autonomously get myself airborne and remain so for hours. My right bicep twitched. 30 square metres of fabric, a 12 metre wing span, and only 6.5 kilos. A bargain. My back muscles pretended to spasm: what about the harness, eh? And the reserve, and the helmet? Sure, the harness was responsible for most of the weight and volume. But this was no mountain gear. My Firebird harness is quite comfortable and come to think of it, I’d be sitting in it pretty much the same way I was lying in my leather chair.

I instinctively crossed my legs to minimize aerodynamic drag, patted the right side underneath the armrest where the reserve parachute would be packed, then raised my hands in mid-air and grabbed a hold of the brakes, pulling gently on them until I could feel the glider intimately and achieve finesse-max. I was gliding smoothly through the still air of my living room at 30 or 35 km/h, scanning the space around me, my inner eye looking hungrily for paraglider food, a bubble of warm air rising through the champagne of my flight…

There was never really before a doubt about bringing the paraglider with me anywhere. It’s just become a ritual; I go through the motions, hesitate for the form, and then close the bag, tag it, and go. I’ve never regretted it, even when a weather system turned nightmare prevented flying for an entire trip.

Flying has always been for me a solo affair. I used to plan my days around it, and my nights around my days. It was all about flying, the rest being secondary and barely tolerated. I walked around looking at the sky and thinking like a bird. I never had a second thought about it.

This time, however, will be different. Flying will have lost its priority and been transcended by something even more powerful. It will have to be kept checked, controlled and temporary. It will have to wait. I wonder if I will feel different, airborne, knowing that among the eyes trained on the blue and white speck of my wing far up in the South African sky, a pair of green diamonds is actually waiting for me to circle down and come back to the land of legged creatures, and that of our common dreams.

There is only one way to find out. The bag is closed. Tagged. Ready. Just so bloody big.

One is a fool who refuses to see the world through the eyes of someone else, for they each only have seen one color of the rainbow.

On January 16th, 2008 around 8:30 am, I will be landing at Paris Charles de Gaulles. It will have been five years since my feet last treaded on French soil.

On January 16th, 2008 around 10:00 am, I will be taking off from Charles de Gaulle. It will have been five years and two hours since I actually got out of the airport and into Paris. Sigh.

So near and yet so far. My steak tartare on a bank of the Seine river will have to wait... At least I’ll be leaving France behind for the best reason in the world and without even a look back. My attention will be focused forward, and a smile of anticipation will be painted on my face.

But to humor myself and make up for the huge culinary missed opportunity in Paris, I decided to go back to the source. France might be the kingdom of bread, charcuterie and cheese, but it’s also absolute pastry heaven.

And hence I give you le flan pâtissier. My favorite French pastry, period. I like it more than Calissons d’Aix, more than lemon pies, even more than croissants! A well done flan sticks together well enough to be bought at the local patisserie and walked away with, yet it will literally melt in your mouth...

Now I don’t pretend to be a specialist; worse, tonight was my first attempt ever. But I’m brave and daring, I don’t mind the hysterical laughter I’ll probably cause, and despite the wonderful Bistro Cooking book just received from Marie which still felt a little overwhelming, I found this simple recipe on the internet and translated it from the language of Molière, bien sûr. Then I took the red pill...

The dough

Called in French pate brisée, I have no idea what the translation would be... Broken dow?

- 250 g flour
- 125 g butter
- a pinch of salt
- a pinch of sugar
- a bit of water
- 30 cl of hope

Place the flour, salt, sugar and butter cut in cubes on the counter. Squash the butter flat with your fingers and remember when you were a kid. Make a crater in the center and slowly add water, mixing in from the outside. If humidity is sufficient, the dough will hold itself together. When the dough is ready, play with it no longer than 2 minutes and then become an adult again and make a nice loaf. Roll it flat and arrange on a buttered pie cooking pan. Cover the dough with aluminum foil and cook for 15 min. in the oven preheated at 180° C. Next time, buy it pre-made.

The mix

- 1 litre whole milk
- 180 g sugar
- 120 g maïzena (cornstarch)
- 2 eggs + a yoke
- 2 to 3 tsp pure vanilla extract (the original recipe called for real vanilla, which I couldn’t find)

Put aside a glass of the milk and boil the rest with the sugar. While this is heating up, mix into a bowl the glass of milk, cornstarch, vanilla and eggs. When the milk is up to a boil, poor it gently in the bowl, mixing with a whip while singing la Marseillaise. Put the new mixture back on a slow fire and cook for a while, mixing with a wooden spoon until it thickens. Boil for a few seconds. The flan should be very thick at this stage.

Poor it into the dough and even it out so that it’s really flat. Cross fingers. Cook 35 to 40 minutes. The top will turn a very dark brown. That’s it.

... Ok, that was the theory. In practice, I doubt that I waited long enough before taking my mixture off the fire, and so I’m not sure that it got thick enough. As a consequence I had to cook it way longer, probably too long and the crust was a bit tough. The top of my flan kept inflating like a balloon and I feared for my life a few times.

Earlier, I’d played with the flour like a kid, got covered in it and had a good laugh at myself. But then I completely forgot I was all white and went back out to the grocery store to get icing sugar. I got a few strange looks from customers and finally the cashier said: « Uh, you’ve been cooking, haven’t you? » and she brought her hand to her forehead, taping her temple with a finger. It could have meant « you have flour there » or « you’re nuts ». Not sure.

Any way, after over an hour in the oven, I took the flan out and let it cool down, then put it in the fridge. 45 minutes later, it had hardened to the consistency I wanted. It wasn’t bad at all for a first attempt. Tasted good, too. Nothing like the real thing yet, but there is hope. I cut and ate two slices of flan, same with my pride. And there is a lot left.

Crappy pictures.

...

Update: version two looked better but still didn’t taste perfect...

Timothy Farrar has finally released the newest version of his fantastic digital darkroom tool, FFDD6. Of course I’m way too busy these days to afford the time necessary to process HDR photos, but it’s exciting news and I can’t wait to test run the script on the upcoming South Africa shots!

Timothy and Kathryn are also planning to host an online FFDD HDR photo contest which promises to be totally cool, since I’ve so far only seen pictures rendered by the masters themselves and I will be quite curious to see what others are doing with the script...

So in the meantime visit their web site but also stay tuned for more HDR photography, made in South Africa, coming to a Coriolistic blog near you this spring.