Coupe Icare

Oh France. Oh Coupe Icare. Oh me not speaking much French. Here’s how the day went trying to get to the Coupe Icare. Someone told me the first bus didn’t leave ‘til 2:15 so I slept in… Unfortunately they lied and I could have gone early in the morning, but whatever. The people at the bus office are totally incompetent and sold me a wrong ticket, after discussing among themselves for like 10 minutes what they should sell me at all… but anyway… Ok… so I ride this (wrong, but I didn’t know it then) bus to the middle of nowhere and it just stops. NOT at the Coupe Icare… *insert first scream here*. But the bus driver was trying to be nice and pointed out another rider who was going to the Coupe Icare. So I run to catch up to this random man and manage to ask in French if he’s going to the Coupe Icare. And he says “Oui”. So we’re walking along the side of this road and we get to talking. He was actually “un pilote” and had just gone on a long trip, he left from the festival and made it like 60km or something like that and was hiking/busing it back. So I thought “Oh good, he’s going to the jump site again.” WRONG!!! *insert second scream here* We get to a little pub and he’s like “Continuez tout droit, et c’est juste la. Je veux un biere ici.” (Just keep going forward and you’ll get there, or take the Funicular. I’m gonna stop and get “un biere”). So I keep going forward which takes me to the landing zone. Which was kinda cool and a nice view and all, but I wanted to be on the top of the cliff where they jump cuz I wanted to see these crazies run off a cliff. So I start asking random people where the bus is to the top of the thing, since I bought this bus pass because the ad in the paper and my on-site coordinator back at the office said the bus went all the way up. But everyone just looked at me like I was a few screws loose and said I had to take the Funicular. So I walk the like half mile back to that and buy a round trip ticket for this thing because I assumed I’d have to take it down too. The Funicular. Ummm… what can I say about this? It’s essentially a little wooden car that goes up the side of a mountain almost vertically, but not vertically enough to be like an elevator and not scary, of course not. It was like 85 degrees and scratching metal sound and then something started beeping like an alarm system and then it went thru a tunnel and then we were pretty much tipping backwards because the pilots’ (oh yeah, I’m in this tiny car, holding on for dear life staring at the floor praying to God that I survive because there’s so many things I haven’t said or done and I don’t really want to die on the side of a mountian in France alone, with two French and one German paraglider who are all speaking in German cuz the two French guys just “happen” to know it which is making me feel like a completely uncultured idiot) gear all starts to fall back on us… so 20 minutes of this terrifying-ness and we’re at the top. There’s a whole ‘nother little village up there and I was on the verge of tears because I didn’t see any paragliders or anything like that and then there’s this little voice that says “Dana” from the bus stop at the top of the hill (oh YEAH… there’s a bus stop there. FOR A DIFFERENT BUS LINE THAN THE ONE THE IDIOTS SOLD ME!!!! *insert third scream here*) and the voice is Phil, who was SUPPOSED to have met me at 1:30 but apparently just decided to come out himself. Whatever. So I find out that the last bus for the night leaves in an hour which means I only have one hour to look around. So I run for the edge of the cliff just in time to hear the guy say that the paragliders are taking a dinner break, it’s gonna be some “entertainment” for an hour. I swear the entire world was working against me today. So two people jumped out of a plane and paraglided down in like tandem acrobatics which was pretty neat, and then came the “stunt plane”. This was really lame but the announcer was really trying to make it exciting by narrating the whole thing VERY energetically, but everyone standing there was drunk, high, or drunk and high (which I didn’t think was a really great idea since we’re all standing on the edge of a cliff…) so they were all just laughing at him. I did too, cuz it was really funny to listen to this guy. Trust me, even if you didn’t speak french it was funny… I’ll have to do an impression for you sometime on the phone. So then I run back to catch the bus back to Grenoble and I get on and show the guy the pass that I had already bought because it was the same company so I assumed it would work, and he was about to tell me “non”, but I think I looked like I’d either start bawling or beat the living snot out of him if he did that so he pauses and then goes “C’est bon.” And I almost said “You better be, c’est bon!”, but I didn’t. I just went to a seat on the bus to endure the second most terrifying ride of the day. I don’t know if this bus driver was trying to get to the birth of his first child on time or if he just had a murderous death wish but he was litterally flying down this mountain. I honestly think the entire BUS (and we’re talking large tour bus here) went airborne once or twice. And then he just barrells into a tunnel and lays on the horn, because the tunnel, of course, is only one lane and we take up the entire thing, being a bus. The way he went around curves made me glad I was sitting near the front because I guarantee I would have been whiplashed from side to side had I been sitting near the back. It was scary. But I got back to Grenoble in one piece. I got some good pictures and the mountains were really pretty. I can’t wait to go paragliding myself soon, but the entire day was pretty exhausting. Hope you all enjoy the pictures. (Ok I'll try pictures some other time, apparently the internet is hating on me right now.)