CURRENT MISSION

Hoping to make a difference for people who backpack to survive.

Why I’m on Couchsurfing

COUCHSURFING EXPERIENCE

I have met couchsurfers and was hosted about a dozen times in France, Scotland, Greece, Romania, Hungary and New Orleans.

I have hosted 6 couchsurfers in Québec city and now hope to help more of them in Geneva.

Interests

-Nature & Culture
-History & Politics
-Arts & Literature
-Music (from Celtic to Techno, with a special thing for Pink Floyd)
-Outstanding, odd, unforgettable people

• animals
• arts
• culture
• writing
• literature
• dancing
• tango
• meditation
• politics
• music
• cycling
• backpacking
• mountaineering
• fencing
• history
• journalism
• medicine
• mountains

Music, Movies, and Books

- Alexandre Dumas, Albert Camus, Jean-Paul Sartre, J.R.R. Tolkien, R.A. Salvatore (nostalgically), Friedrich Nietzsche, Niccolò Machiavelli, Victor Hugo, Honoré de Balzac, Ernest Hemingway, George Orwell, Philip K. Dick, Umberto Ecco, Isaac Asimov, William Shakespeare, H. P. Lovelock, Sigmund Freud, R. L. Stevenson, François Cheng, Homer, Ovide, Plutarche

- Pink Floyd, Genesis (Peter Gabriel era + Trick of the Tail), Yes, EL&P, King Crimson, Gentle Giant, Premiata Forneria Marconi, Mike Oldfield, Jethro Tull, Cradle of Filth, Bob Marley & The Wailers, Debussy, Big Bad Voodoo Daddy, The Beatles, Zappa, Harmonium & Jean Leloup & Misteur Valaire, Iron Maiden, dear Janis, Jeff Buckley, Muse, Hendrix, Led Zep, Danny Elfman, Nightwish, Andrew Lloyd Webber, Porcupine Tree, Queen, Radiohead, Rage Against the Machine, Soundgarden, RHCP, Shawn Phillips, Van Morrison, The Chieftains, The Bothy Band, Lunasa, Tangerine Dream, Tchaikovski, Beethoven, Mozart, Rachmaninov, Chopin, Saint-Saens, Palestrina, Bach, Ravel, Handel, Mahler, Wagner, Gershwin...

- Lawrence of Arabia, Dr Zhivago, Tim Burton's, Kubrick's, Allen's, Orson Welles', Coppola's, Scarface, Lord of the Rings, Life is Beautiful, The Wall, some HBO series, dodgy B movies (Manson Family, Heavy Metal), Schindler's List, Fritz Lang's Metropolis & M, The Cabinet of Dr. Caligari, Battleship Potemkin, Gone with the Wind, The Good the Bad and the Ugly, Bladerunner, Le Violon Rouge, Into the Wild...

One Amazing Thing I’ve Done

(That story dates from 2007. Like the profile pictures, it's getting a bit old.)

***

I woke up one morning in my dusty and overpopulated basement appartment in Banff, Alberta, with a desperate craving for fresh air. So I impulsively decided to go climb a mountain near Canmore, the next village via the Transcanadian Highway. The only way to get there was to use a dodgy bike I had found near some garbage container. I first repaired the flat on the front tire, packed up some provisions and went on my way, for what I thought would be a short 1-2 hour ride. Halfway between Banff and Canmore, that wretched and wrecked bike once again failed me : the BACK tire went flat. I walked a mile or so in the same direction before reaching a rest area, where I asked a hispanic family to help me out; we did not understand each others so very well, and so I went to somebody else.

That somebody else was Max, an old Brittish gramp which I am never to forget. The man was asleep in his car: I had the rudeness to wake him up to assail him with my troubles. I explained the situation and asked for "a pump or something..." (actually I didn't honestly believe anybody in that place would be able to help me out). He tried many kinds of gears and tools and gadget he could put his hand on, but nothing worked. In the end he just told me to get my bike in his car and that we be on our way. At my polite refusal (I didn't want to be too much of a pain in his already painful neck), he snorted and told me (that was a lie) that he "was going there anyway...". We got on the road again, and as our conversation went on I learned that he was from England, "westward agriculturally speaking" (quoth Peter Gabriel). This gave him a very thick accent that was pretty hard on my french-speaking brain: I must have asked him to repeat all of his sentences twice or thrice, and he did so with an absolute patience. Here's a resume of his story; you could do worse than meditate a bit on this one:

The man was announced a few months ago by his doctor that he was infected by an incurable disease that was was supposed to kill him in the next weeks, or the next months, nobody knew for sure. Upon learning this, Max decided to achieve something he had been dreaming on for a long time : he wanted to see the glaciers of Alaska. At about 80 years old, the man bade his final farewell to his extended family, flew from UK to Calgary, rented an Avis car and drove all the way up to Fairbanks (the last town accessible by paved roads, I believe) and Beyond (that's where he put heavy chains on his tires to be able to drive on roads made of ice). He knew he could die well before getting there, but was determined to hang tight to his old carcass until he saw his first glacier. "The car rental company surely wouldn't have been glad to pick up their car and a dead old man on the top of an iceberg... but why would I care if I'm dead?"

Considering how frail his body looked, I was surprised that he had made it back from Alaska. So was he, I believe. We got to Canmore about an hour later (how daring they might be, old persons don't drive so fast), where he made sure all my troubles were neatly patched with glue and rubber. He insisted that he would drive me pretty much anywhere I needed, since he hadn't "any rigid plan for his life anymore". He would "simply" continue to explore the Rockies and keep on living the rest of his life as one mad adventure, until time got the best of him.

I parted with Max soon after, and he himself must have parted with life now. However he hasn't stopped wandering in the back of my mind ever since.

Teach, Learn, Share

To share: How to climb mountains (without technical skills); how to trap and process animals; I could share some writing experience (literature, journalism, academia).

To learn: Mountaineering, Catalan, Italian, dancing (swing or tango), fencing.

Knowledge, unlike most things, grows when shared.

Countries I’ve Visited

Austria, Costa Rica, France, Germany, Greece, Hungary, Italy, Romania, Slovenia, United Kingdom, United States

Countries I’ve Lived In

Canada, France, Italy

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