This was Briancon, a small Italian town in the wrong direction but loved the town.
I started my journey back to Bordeaux to visit my son but after 2 months of no hiking and losing so much weight I was a bit weaker and my bag was a bit heavier due to Antonella giving me a few extra T-shirts and food as well as Timothy and Mary Claude giving me extra food as well. Because of this I felt like the first day of my pilgrimage, my feet were blistered, my shoulders and back were bruised and sore and the pack and I were wobbling as I put it on and walked around. I did gain back most of the weight I lost from the hospital so I went from 78 kg or 172 lbs (near my weight in high school) to 82 kg or 181 lbs, so my strength is improving. Trekking around, I don’t know if I will lose weight again but I do still feel very skinny. I’ve also had a few people tell me I am too skinny and they never saw me before so I know it would be better for me to gain weight but my diet of peanuts, carrots, a little meat and some kind of sweet bread, may not cater to weight gain.
The night before leaving we spent with Dominiquo, Mariangela and their family at dinner with the missionaries. Their mother made an excellent Italian dinner and I enjoyed the conversation very much. They have a beautiful house and they are very pleasant to talk with. I had to tell Dominiquo that he was not Italian because he was the most soft-spoken Italian I had ever met. They are such a great family, I wish I could stay there to get to know them even more. I sat next to Ralph (their dad) and we tried to communicate but it was difficult. He would speak to me in broken English and I would reply in broken Italian but we still enjoyed the conversation.
I’ve only been gone three days but I already miss Antonella. She was so much fun and such a great person I wish I could have her in my life for good (she would say I could if I would stay in Turin J). I don’t know if I could keep up with her though, she is always on the go. I’ve never seen a person with so much energy over 50.
I started my journey back to Bordeaux to visit my son but after 2 months of no hiking and losing so much weight I was a bit weaker and my bag was a bit heavier due to Antonella giving me a few extra T-shirts and food as well as Timothy and Mary Claude giving me extra food as well. Because of this I felt like the first day of my pilgrimage, my feet were blistered, my shoulders and back were bruised and sore and the pack and I were wobbling as I put it on and walked around. I did gain back most of the weight I lost from the hospital so I went from 78 kg or 172 lbs (near my weight in high school) to 82 kg or 181 lbs, so my strength is improving. Trekking around, I don’t know if I will lose weight again but I do still feel very skinny. I’ve also had a few people tell me I am too skinny and they never saw me before so I know it would be better for me to gain weight but my diet of peanuts, carrots, a little meat and some kind of sweet bread, may not cater to weight gain.
The night before leaving we spent with Dominiquo, Mariangela and their family at dinner with the missionaries. Their mother made an excellent Italian dinner and I enjoyed the conversation very much. They have a beautiful house and they are very pleasant to talk with. I had to tell Dominiquo that he was not Italian because he was the most soft-spoken Italian I had ever met. They are such a great family, I wish I could stay there to get to know them even more. I sat next to Ralph (their dad) and we tried to communicate but it was difficult. He would speak to me in broken English and I would reply in broken Italian but we still enjoyed the conversation.
I’ve only been gone three days but I already miss Antonella. She was so much fun and such a great person I wish I could have her in my life for good (she would say I could if I would stay in Turin J). I don’t know if I could keep up with her though, she is always on the go. I’ve never seen a person with so much energy over 50.
So to begin my trip I got my first lift (ride) from a guy heading out of Turin but after a couple of miles down the road I saw a sign for a city heading south. I asked the guy again where he was going and he was heading for Milan so I told him to stop because he was heading the opposite direction that I needed to go. He dropped me off at a service exit where I tried to auto stop (hitchhike) but nobody would give me a lift so I started hiking back. I left around 9 or 10:00 in the morning and at 5:30 pm I found myself back in the middle of Turin with blisters on my feet. Not a good start. I did end the day in Bardonecchia Italy where the 2006 Winter Olympics were held and the city is near the tree line so the mountains were very high but not very beautiful because there were few trees. The tree colours were starting to change but they were too scattered to make a good picture. It was cold there so it was the first time I was able to test drive my new slippers at night and they worked. It was the coldest air I had slept it but my feet never froze and I never woke up from the pain of cold feet. I did wake up from a pine cone in the ribs but not cold feet.
On the way, an old man gave me a lift to the town of Plampinet that was very small (about 20 buildings total) and I had to take a picture of this very old little church. The man told me he was a hunter and showed me where the best hunting was on the mountain. I asked him how he gets up there and he said by hiking. I asked him if he was part billy goat because the area he was pointing to was almost nothing but cliffs and only a few sparse areas where even trees were able to grow. He just laughed and said, yes he hike there.
These trailer cabins were cool. Maybe my next house. They were in a little trailer park near the boarder of Italy and France.
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