Courmayeur, Italy.

The Italian Alps -- just like the Swiss Alps, or the French, or Austrian or Slovenian -- are pretty much amazing.

I took a little walk in them last Saturday, in the Aosta Valley. Today is Tuesday. My quads still hurt.

My new Barcelonan friend Javier, a distant cousin of Bibi's who has been staying at Chez Knapp all month while completing an internship Breck landed him at Heritage Bank's Geneva branch, is a great example of why it's important to surround yourself with the right kinds of people. Alone, I exercise as much as Howard Taft. When forced to get off my ass by active people, I am as mobile as a cell phone.

Sleeping in Javier's car, we awoke to quite a buena vista.


Through the sun roof, there was the Mont Blanc (or Monte Bianco, since we were viewing it from Italian territory), the highest peak in Europe at 4,808 m (15,774 ft.). On good days, you can get a more distant view of La Dame Blanche from Breck's back patio.

On good days.

But since the forecast throughout the country of Switzerland last weekend was rain, rain and more rain -- and Javier was itching like he had a colony of fire ants in his pants to get into "the mountains" -- he found the one spot in which sunshine was expected and bought a map to get ready: Western Italy was where we were headed as soon as the workweek was finished.

As soon as we got back from an afternoon chilling in Geneva, and despite the fact that I once again forgot to bring my passport when entering a foreign country (I swear, my mom must have dropped me on my head repeatedly as a child), we made it through without getting checked.


Which was a stroke of luck, indeed. Because this is what I'm talking about, baby. The Alps.
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Javier is a mountain man. There's no better description for him. The fact that he's doing a bank internship, and that he studies economics at his university in Barcelona, is more of a distraction to discovering the real Javier than it is a guide. ¿Economía? Try las montañas. That is Javier's real future -- if he wants to be happy with his life, at least.


Toots -- Breck and Bibi's 14-year-old daughter -- may make fun of him by constantly serenading him with a song she wrote especially for their Catalonian guest: "The mountains, the mountains, the mountains" (over and over and over). But I doubt the kid cares. Sometimes I think he secretly wishes he could find a wedding ring big enough to fit around one of those hunks of rock formed by the collision of the earth's plates. He is from the biggest party city in Spain, Barcelona, yet he flees to the Pyrenees every single weekend to seek refuge in the soft embrace of a hard rock -- Javier is the most avid rock climber I have ever met.

He even tried to take me to a little spot in Yverdon -- 25 minutes from Morges and Chez Knapp -- the day after we trekked all through the Aosta Valley. If my legs still hurt today (Tuesday), just take a guess at how they felt on Sunday. I had spent the day of rest resting. Javier had spent it beating Breck at his own game: His time in the Lausanne triatholon was four minutes faster than his boss at Heritage, who attends triatholons almost as often as Bibi attends Mass. Javier? Oh, it was his first time to try one.


So my surrogate hermano is smarter than me about money, better than me with languages, more athletic than I could ever dream of being ... AND he's a better photographer. I tried four times in a row to get a good shot of myself in front of this snow-capped mountain, and this was the best I could do.

But I totally know more about baseball.