PlanetADnD.com

For those of you who may be wondering what the Real Life Quest is that kept me offline last week: I've just started writing a blog in English about it, the address is:

http://www.assisifamily.blogspot.com

Comments are welcome.

Kind of reminds me of the Von Trapp family from the "Sound of Music", but you're not running from Nazis. Since I'm on blogspot.com too, I put you on my list of blogs I follow. Looking forward to reading about your adventures.

Well, I'm very happy we don't have to run from anyone, especially not a brutal power!

Even in these peaceful times, we need people's goodwill and help from time to time, and it's good to know that we don't need their silence to survive. The worst that could happen to us from people's ill will would be losing money. OK, this year, an inattentive motorist could have killed us, because we had to walk by the side of a busy road, there were no interlinked footpaths...

Where I am, it's not unusual to see people hiking down the main roads. Sometimes we'll give someone a ride, considering that the towns are anywhere from 60 to 100+ miles between each other. We once gave a school teacher from France a ride from Cortez Colorado to Moab Utah - he was hitchhiking across America. He was a really nice fellow, and we learned about each other's countries.

And yes, you have to watch out for inconsiderate...ok, lets be more honest....stupid drivers. Since tourist season started here, there have been many accidents already; and we have had to become more cautious and defensive in our own driving.

Been hiking and climbing in the Alps... fabulous weather, just one day of rain. Had a little accident, though (see picture). Guess how it happened...

Mountain lion? I'll go with mountain lion.

OUCH!

Whatever it was, I bet it hurt!

Actually, it didn't hurt that much. It was only after I saw that my pants were blood-soaked that I realized it was quite a serious scratch.
But now, a week and a half later, the crust is already starting to come off...

To my surprise, there are scars left now, two month later. I really didn't think it was deep enough for that.

And no, it was no animal, even if it looks like claws. It was a cave mouth I passed too closely during an abseiling mistake, and it apparently had fangs.

That day, we scared our mountain guide, he thought that a snake (an adder) had sneaked into our rucksack, but it was only a long, thin sausage we had brought from home that was poking out. Apart from these, there are no animals in the alps a human has to be afraid of. The few bears (grizzlies) are very shy - or get shot.

No huge spiders then?

The biggest ones I've ever seen in the wild are about an inch and a half across... (and one of them lives in my staircase, apparently)

Ok, sort of back, will post later.

The largest spider i've seen in the wild was proably the one who scuttled across the floor in my old flat, he was so large you could hear it move, had to be 2-3" in diameter! I killed it with a whole ream of A4 paper!!!!

Second was the huge red spider we caught at school, everyone else got insects and bugs, we caught a red 2inch diameter spider from the carribean (it had apparently caught a ride on a Boat, we lived near a port). And it had loads of babies too..

On a related note, it appear that a rare breed of spider, lives in one of my bridges BRIDGE SPIDER how cool is that!

I’ve seen snakes too...
Mostly grass snakes, but one Adder..

Ever hear of camel spiders? There's something to haunt your nightmares.

Ewwwwww! *Sudders*

they look like desert lobsters...