Rappelling in France

And then there was that one time in France when David's friends called me and asked me if I would break into their kitchen window to unlock the door. Hmmm, never a dull moment.

I'm minding my own business one morning and I get a call from Loris and Bene. "Jenn, this is Loris. Um, so are you busy? We are locked out of our kitchen and we can't get in but there are two windows and they're both open. You climb right? And do you have a rope? Could you come over and see if you could rig something with the ropes to get into the kitchen?"

Apparently in France conventional solutions don't fly, it's all about the creativity.

Loris and Bene live in an apartment building with a stereotypical European courtyard. Their apartment is built around one corner of the courtyard, so there are two windows that are adjacent to eachother. They could get into their apartment, but the door to the kitchen broke and they couldn't get it open from the side they had access to. The windows are so close it looks as if you could step out of one and into the other...but looking down three stories I was not even close to wanting to find out if that was a feasible solution. I looked around to see what we could do and I figured the only thing would be to rappel down into the window from above. It would involve neighbors and therefore I firgured this solution would be dismissed and I'd be off the hook. No, they thought it was a great idea and off we went knocking on doors. Erin, a small Rhode-Islander teaching english in Lyon, opened the door to 4 people she didn't know asking if they could rappel out of her living room window. She looked completely caught off guard and didn't completely understand what the heck was going on but opened the door and let us take over.

We wrapped the rope around the inner part the apartment so that one end of the rope was out one window and the other end out the other window. (see picture below) And out I went. It was a little wierd stepping out of a window. In fact, I was pretty freakin scared. Stepping off a cliff is one thing, that's the whole point of climbing, but out of a window?! It just feels wrong.

I felt kind of like some burgler or something. Good practice if I decide I need to make a career out of breaking into to people's houses.

Anyway, since then, Erin has hung out with us a few times and I'm more than a little excited to have met someone who is from the US. I'm sure there will be more to come about her. Her boyfriend is coming soon and he climbs...so you can imagine where that will go :)


Loris watching closely...making sure I make it into their open window two floors down