Geneva Gibber

Pre apology – I think I’ve started writing Gibber more like a journal, than a blog. Sorry if I put in too many details:

We went back to the chalet in the Alps this weekend! I love it there. Sadly, we all forgot our cameras, so no pictures from this trip (the pictures you see are from our first trip). Spending the full weekend there was much better than leaving Sunday morning, as I got to sleep off my hangover on Sunday morning, and I got a whole extra day of hiking.

We headed up to the chalet on Friday night, and watched the thermometer on the car drop steadily as we drove further into the mountains. Leaving behind 93-degree weather for high 70s is a glorious thing. I even wore my sweatshirt at night because the temperature fell so much – who knew wearing a sweatshirt could be so thrilling?

Saturday morning around 8:30, on cue, a stressed out Chandler woke us all up. For some unknown reason after Chandler drinks, he wakes up early the next morning anxiety ridden, and then shares his concerns with everyone near him (or accessible by phone). Luckily, I find his early morning fretting quite amusing, especially because after he has flipped out for a little while, he will usually let you go back to sleep.

Once we all eventually crawled out of bed, we begrudgingly headed to the grocery store to buy food for the weekend. Sitting on the porch enjoying the morning in the mountains seemed like a much more desirable way to pass the AM hours, but being in Switzerland, if we didn’t make it to the grocery store by five that evening we would be foodless for the remainder of the weekend. After the grocery store and tasty brunch of eggs and bacon we headed out for a hike. The hike never really happened though. The ski lift we were planning to take up the mountain had been shut down for the summer. We drove about looking for a functioning lift, but we never found one. Instead we cruised around for a long time until we dead-ended at a meadow. We walked around in the meadow for a while, and then sat and enjoyed the scenery and ate sandwiches. It wasn’t the afternoon we had planned, but you can’t really complain about a scenic drive, wildflower picking, good company, and lunch high up in the Swiss Alps.

After our frolicking in the meadow we stopped in Gstaad, a near by town known for it’s ridiculously wealthy inhabitants. The goal of our stopover was to find a tourist office to tell us which lifts were open, so we could hike on Sunday, but we also took a little time to do some window-shopping in the ridiculously expensive jewelry and watch shops. Monica and I were horrified to find that an overwhelming amount of the diamond jewelry was in heart shapes – why, why, would you do that to a diamond. To my readers, if, on the off chance I do eventually find a serious boy friend, and he happens to ask you if I might like any kind of jewelry involving a heart, please tell him absolutely not. Hearts are fine for some people, but I am not a heart kind of girl. Phew, glad I cleared that up with all of you.

After Gstaad we headed out for a boys vs. girls bowling outing. Sadly, the girls’ team lost, but we did both individually beat Joey, so at least we’ve got that going for us, which is nice. The girls also lost at pool (two games to one), for which I entirely blame myself. I have become an abysmal pool player; I was never great at pool, but I have definitely deteriorated to a player that can only be described as terrible. I’m going home for ten days this August, and the padres have a pool table - I’m going to have to put in some serious training time while I’m home.

Sunday morning we slept in a little later and left the house around eleven. We found a functioning chair lift and had an outstanding hike. It was a bit steep at times, but luckily we had mountain man Chandler leading the way with his walking stick. Apparently, no mountain man worth his salt would even consider a hike without a giant stick to aid his progress - I have a lot to learn about being a mountain man. Sadly, I have no pictures to share, but it was very beautiful. After the hike, we headed out to a lake in the mountain valley and grilled hamburgers and played badminton. It was very close to an ideal day, the only disappointing part being that it was Sunday and we had to leave the next morning. Monday came all too fast, and now I’m at work, roasting in my office, wishing I were back in the mountains. Maybe some day I’ll make millions in a public policy career, and I’ll buy a chalet there too… or more realistically, maybe I can get Chandler’s family to adopt me – they already have five kids, what’s one more.

# posted by Hoptrop : 3:23 PM