dinameet

We went to the fabulous and impressive Grande Grotta today

where there are some new routes to the right of the cave, as well as a lot of extensions to existing lines. I did "Elefantenhimmel" on sight, which I was very happy about. Its a fun climb up huge tufas with a fun and potentially heartbreaking last move. We headed back down to the apartment and scootered (We rented mildly overpowered 80 cc Piaggio NRG scooters from Lakis for 8 euro/day) towards Pothia. About 1 km out of the port we began to hear low booms. These weren't the higher pitched reports of fancy chinese fireworks; this was mining ordinance exploding. We continued in to town and parked. Pothia is flanked by cliffs from which the throwers had gathered.

the little specks on the hills are people. A huge crowd had gathered in the port

and the light in the harbor was beautiful

I took a little video of people throwing dinameet off of the other cliff band. It is 1.4 MB and you will need some .mp4 capable plugin to view it here
We fled the harbor after getting headaches and ate dinner at a restaurant in Myrties which turned out to be our favorite. We had the fresh fish in their "special sauce".

allez!

We left yesterday morning at 9:30, and after returning to grenoble to pick up amy and Marks forgotten plane tickets and passports we made it to the geneva airport, parked in p51 (there is a special deal if you live in certain areas of france), were shuttled between desks, sampling the famous swiss hospitality and helpfulness, finally got our new tickets (Olympic Airlines had inexplicable cancelled one leg of our flight which required new tickets to be issued), got some delicious airport food and got on the plane. There were some nice views of the Ecrins from the plane, and I think I saw Pelvoux. Using Genoa as a reference, I saw portofino, and the cinqueterre from the air as well.

We had originally been scheduled to fly to Athens and then on to Kos on the same day, but as I mentioned, Olympic cancelled our flight to kos, and rescheduled us on the next flight (5:00 AM the next morning). I guess they aren't as good about insulating the consumer from theirfinancial incompetance like the US air carriers are! In any event, it gave us the chance to take the impressive new rail system into Athens for a few hours of sightseeing and eating. On our last trip, the bus from Syntagma was still the best way in and out of the city, and the metro/suburban rail extension to the airport really is a giant step forward. We walked up to the flanks of the Acropolis
,
wandered around the Plaka, where preparations were being made for easter celebrations, with many candle sellers, bodygaurds in black audis and a throng of cops. After chicken souvlaki and some incredibly foul wine, we took the train back to the airport to try to get a little sleep before our flight the next morning. This turned out to be much easier said than done. The lights are bright, and most benches have a thin and unforgiving layer of foam with non retractable armrests. However, we managed to find a corner of the airport where there were no armrests, but the climate control had been set several degrees C lower than the other zones. I put my jacket over my face, put our toiletry kit under my head as a pillow and drifted in and out of sleep for an hour or so. During this time I would awaken to crushed skin on my waist from the metal chairs, light coming in through folds in my jacket, or the once-every-five-minute reminders at rock concert volume that you are not allowed to park permanently in the loading zone or to take trollies onto escalators. This latter announcement was particulalry irksome: are there really so many people that are trying to do this? There are guard columns in front of every escalator, so not only would you have to be deaf and blind to miss the warnings, but you would then have to lift the trolly over the barrier, and stuff it onto the escalator.
Needless to say, I wasn't able to sleep very much, so I went exploring with Amy and we discovered that McDonalds has big cushy yellow bench seats! And if you buy something, they dont really care if you go to sleep on them. We woke Chloe and Mark up, decamped for McDs and bought tea and rolls. Shortly thereafter, I stuffed my Etymotic headphones into my ears, and went to sleep. I woke up drooling on my jacket at 4 in the morning which coincidentally was when they started serving breakfast.
The rest of the trip was a bit of a blur, but we got into Kos very early, took the Olympic bus to Mastixari, and waited for the ferry to arrive. It being Greek Orthodox Easter, the ferrymen thought it would be very entertaining to throw firecrackers every few minutes. At one point they threw several into the ticket booth, which was a prefab plastic box about the size of a closet containing their unfortunate friend in front of the ticketing computer. The muffled sound of the explosions brought back memories of thunderbombs, china reds and M80s thrown into confined spaces during my teen years.. sigh! We took the first ferry into Pothia, were met by Nick Trikilis (he runs the place we have stayed at for three years now) at the port and took a taxi to the Studios. Along the way, the cabbie informed us that the real fireworks would happen tomorrow around 5 pm. Basically, it involves throwing sticks and balls of dynamite (he pronounced it dinameet!) off of high places. He went on to say that Kalymnians are a little crazy with the dinameet, and that if someone dies young, they throw his/her age in dynamite sticks. Marriages are also an occasion for dinameet, "and mayeb, if donkey has babies? sometimes dinameet". After getting settled in the studio, we went to the Glaros snack bar to say hi to Steve and Sue and hear more about this strange dinameet throwing tradition. It turned out that this year they had 3000 sticks of dinammet, of both commercial and "home made" varieties! Old grandmothers apparently make it out of ammonium nitrat and some carrier. You can see and hear the difference because the commercial dinameet is much louder and leaves a white smoke cloud. The grandma dinemeet leaves a brown or black cloud. People occasionally get killed and dismembered during the throwing festivites. This was sounding better and better.
steve gave us an update to the guide for all the new routes that had been put up since last year, we bought water, yogurt and Kalymnian thyme honey, went to the studio for pasta etc and went to sleep.

caro de lyon

first things first: The fennel and fig chocolates from Hybord were just fantastic.

Yesterday Chloe and I had reservations to go to lyon for her birthday dinner at le Caro de Lyon. It was already raining when we woke up, so we decided to take the more expensive but much lower stress method of getting to Lyon: the TER train from grenoble to Lyon part dieu. We took the 2:18 express train, and were suprised to see snow on the ground in Voiron

And as we moved east past le Tour du Pin we were suprised to see even more snow on the ground, and it continued almost until Lyon. At Part Dieu, freezing rain was coming down, so we hopped on the tram and took it to the Liberte exit to make our customary walk through of au-vieux-campeur. After gazing wistfully at the Millet 80 meter ropes, we took the metro to vieux lyon, and took a peek in the cathedral. The highlight was probably the astrological clock

which, it turns out is not Y2.02K compatible:

We continued down the street, ogled a beautiful 17th century map of the Savoie (550 euro!!), grabbed a Gaufre at a nice stand that makes their own special confiture

and went to a cafe that we had scoped out last time. It was still pretty early, and despite having just inhaled a cassis-reglisse gaufre, I was still hungry, so I ordered a wonderful chocolate almond crepe. We spent quite a long time in the cafe, watching in awe as some college students sucked down enough cigarettes to kill a donkey. About 45 minutes before our reservation, we started walking back towards the opera and le caro de lyon. I didnt capture it very well, but along the way we saw a jet black mini copper dusted with cherry blossums

Finally, we made it to the restaurant, which is big, but full of books and little sub-rooms, so it was very cozy.




We both ordered the menu de printemps, and there isnt much to say except that it was fantastic and is our new favorite restaurant in Lyon.

Soupe d'olives vertes, salade de pain et tomates au basilic, langoustines roties
Green olive soup, bread and tomatoes salad with roasted crayfish


Noix de Saint Jacques a la rhubarbe, Saute de brocolis amers et raisins aux cacahuetes, Beurre au vin doux de Tariquet
Scallops a la rhubarb, sauteed broccoli and grapes with peanuts, some crazy ass butter thang. The peanuts were a perfect complement to the scallops... I think I'll try this the next time we find good scallops. Incidentally, this is one of the few cases where the french words sounds much less appetizing than the english. cf. "Saint Jack's nuts" with "scallops". The tiny broccoli were cooked perfectly.


Carre d'agneau roti aux mangues, fenouil braise et mijote de tomates, Salade de jeunes pousses d'epinard
Rack of lamb with mangos braised fennels and mijote (??) of tomatoes, young spinach shoot salad


we had a bottle of M Chapoutier Crozes-Hermitage 2002 with the meal. It was hard to pick one that would go with everything!

Dessert did not dissapoint.

I had the Tortellini de chocolat et noix de coco, Coulis de mangue fraiche aux fruits de la passion
Chocolate and coconut tortellini, fresh mango sauce with passion fruits


and chloe had a white chocolate fondant with coconut ice cream


we missed our train because it took them 20 minutes to figure out that their credit card machine wasnt plugged in, but we forgave this pecadillo after such a perfect meal. I know, we're so gracious. It snowed like crazy on the train ride back to grenoble. Just as we pulled up, the roof of our car sprung a leak and started dripping freezing water on chloe.

today, I give you glorious springtime in grenoble:

chloebirthday!!

It was Chloes birthday today, but unfortunately she is still sick with some kind of sore throat/flu like symptoms from one of bastard co-workers. Hint: when you can't talk and have a hacking cough, STAY HOME. Anyway, we were supposed to go to a gite in the drome this weekend to climb and relax, but its going to rain the whole weekend, and now chloe is sick! Instead, we're hoping that she'll get better so we can use our reservations at Le Caro de Lyon. We really should be taking more advantage of how close we are to Lyon! Today I re-discovered a wonderful chocolatier called Hybord just down the street from us on rue Thiers. They have the standard fare of truffles and florentines (the florentines are excellent by the way), but they also have some wonderful and creative chocolates filled with unusual flavors. For example, I bought chocolates filled with fig, some with fennel and others with jasmine. I bought some roses for chloe in the florist just down the street and had an entertaining experience: A middle aged guy was in front of me, acting a bit uncomfortable, and being really indecisive about shoosing which kinds of flowers he wanted. After a few minutes he finished choosing the bouquet, and the florist started preparing them for him. Just at that moment another woman came into the shop and it became clear that they knew eachother, since they started talking. Actually, they were so familiar that I thought that they might be married. The funny thing was that he became visibly uncomfortable as soon as he saw her, and told the florist that she could prepare the flowers at her leisure and that he would come back to pick them up. And then he sped out the door. As soon as he left, the lady looked over at Chloe's roses, which the florist was stripping leaves off of and starting oohing and saying "Oooh, are those HIS?!". She then explained that the man was her boss, and that he was getting divorced, so she was shocked to see that he had bought roses (he hadn't). In the next five minutes I learned a surprising amount of detail about the poor guys life: he has two wonderful children, who thankfully ("heureusement"! she shrieked) take after his wonderful wife, and that he is always morose and boring etc. etc. Honestly, I was titilated and would enthusiastically nod my head whenever the woman turned to me to tell me or the florist more about how much of a loser the man was. The whole time, I was trying to figure out if it was the kind of conversation and experience that I would normally have enjoyed in the US, or if it was just the rare experience of fully understanding and being a part of (sort of) an intimate french conversation, that kept me so entertained. I suppose it doesn't really matter. At one point the lady said "but didn't you know any of this? He is a regular customer!", to which the florist drew herself up and responded "In my metier, discretion is important, and I don't ask questions". And then she leaned forward and said "but between women is a different story of course...!!".

more E commerce

I was talking to my friend Jose, a recent arrival to Madrid from San Francisco, about what a small role e-commerce plays in peoples everyday lives in Europe. We were thinking that it might have something to do with weak fraud protection on euro credit cards, but I have the feeling that theres something else at play. I think its simply because (apart from Amazon.fr etc) euro E-commerce sites still have extremeley non "E" back ends which makes them only marginally more convenient, if at allor than bricks and mortar. A great example of this was when I tried to pay my tax d'habitation online, and ended up getting emailed a PDF to print out and mail in with a check. This week I experienced another example. Our employer has a contract with a french photo finishing bureau which entitles us to certain discounts on prints, film, processing etc. It has a seamless and well designed ofoto/shutterfly esque web site. The only difference is that it inexplicably deletes photos (even ones you have ordered prints of) within a certain amount of time. But this is a minor point. The big shocker comes when you realize what is happening on the back end. They have a standard 2 hour photo system: the ubiquitous Fuji Frontier. I imagine there are turnkey options to hook your webserver up seamlessly to the frontier itself. Now my expectation was that they would crank through the prints and well, mail them to me. Thats why I was suprised that there were no fields for a shipping address. It turns out that they print out a giant batch, and every Monday a rep from the company drives from Tours to Grenoble and sits behind a desk for one hour handing out the photos and accepting payment. I ordered 40 prints more than two weeks ago and still havent received them. The first time the woman unapologetically informed me that they simply weren't there, and re-focused her attention on reading a book. Yesterday there was a handwritten sign informing me that there would be no photo pick up today. No rescheduling or explanations were provided. Compare that with the service bureau I am working with for my fine art prints on a ZBE Chromira. I didnt hear from them for a bit, so I emailed them today and they told me that not only were my proofs finished, but they had been mailed last wednesday. Its not a 100% fair comparison, because west coast digital is one of the best imaging places in California (which is saying a lot!), and the work photo place is like a mini shutterfly... but I feel like that should be an even better reason for the smaller machine print company to be hands off: order prints->frontier prints them->mail them to customer. It should be fast, automatic and way faster than makinf fully color managed, individually processed prints. I would say that in the US you would need to be kicking WCIs ass in terms of speed and volume in order to stay in business. Its perplexing.

wine tasting

we went to l'Echanson for their new series of wine tastings with the producers. This one was with Arnaud Freychet from Domaine Massereau in Sommieres. He had an impressive line of wines and was a really nice guy. I'm always a little nervous that despite my best intentions, I will end up saying or doing something that will offend the vintner. This is his passion, after all! Anyway, we tried his rosees, which I liked, but really loved the COTEAUX DU LANGUEDOC ROUGE 2001 (90% syrah and 10% grenache) and the oak cask aged "LES CISTES" COTEAUX DU LANGUEDOC ROUGE 2002 (same proportions). It mentions that the nose is dominated by fruits rouge confit and finishes with garrigues and anise for both wines. The 2002 is a big, impressive taste, full of winelikeness. I can't wait to try them with desert cheeses and steak. I also bought a very expensive bottle of single malt scotch : the Ardbeg 17 year old to celebrate signing my contract.

Contract Signed

Just signed my contract for my new job!

Life Aquatic

we saw it yesterday in Versione Originale. It was playing at our neighborhood original language theatre ("La Nef") on what would have been a really impressive home theatre, but was a rather disappointing movie screen. The show was at 6:00 pm, so the only people there were other americans and crazy people. Anyway, I was expecting something a bit different, but I really loved it. Steve Zisou turned out to be less Carl Spackler than I expected and more Bill Harris. There were plenty of great lines: "Everyone gets a Glock!", and I also liked the Blue Velvetesque difficulty in establishing the time frame (Flat screens and Glocks vs. Owen Wilson's 50's pilot character). I also loved the Seu Jorge Bowie covers.

Dad's Haiku

My dad sent me a great watercolor and accompanying Haiku



its about a Cherry tree that I planted in their front yard. Years ago we had an absolutely stunning and huge japanese mapel which succumbed to some kind of root disease. It was really sad to lose that tree, and I think my dad and I didn't really want to let it go, so we got out the acrylic paint and painted the withered and creaky stumps of the dead tree vivid blues, yellows and polka dots. Eventually it had to be pulled out, so I put in another tree (not a maple) which promptly died. Most recently, I planted a cherry tree which we thought had also died, but put up flowers this spring much to our delight.

Kayakers in the Saone

I took this picture a few weeks ago and just got it developed. It will look great at 16x20 or larger.

also, I updated and added new medum format pictures to the ligurian entries below

Poisson D'Avril

I spent half of the day with a fluorescent green paper fish taped to my back thanks to Dave, Chloe and Amy. Revenge will be mine.

japanese food

My next mission: Next time I go home to california, my mission is to learn and write down as many of my dads japanese dishes (except Natto) as possible. I promise to put them all here.

lucky us

Well we are all exhausted today, and as I was writing some of the enties from our Ligurian adventure, I suddenly realized how lucky we are; we live 5 hours from the cinqueterre and we get almost a month of vacation every year! Now we just need a better car to make the driving less painful.

Finale pt. II

Today was our last day in Finale, and we made the most of it. After going to the rock store again to get a rope bag to keep the mud off of Amy and Mark's new rope, we headed up to Rocca di Corno again. By the time we got there, a huge crowd of Germans had gathered and were preparing to march up to the crag and occupy it. I got a little stressed out about this and walked up the trail as fast as I could, found a nice 5c on the South face and sat down underneath it. The belay was uncomfortable again, but the climbing itself was engaging, if a bit runout. Chloe and I continued further to the south and got on a horrible 6b with drilled pockets that had been re-filled with sika, and fled as soon as we were both down. We met up with Mark and Amy and walked to the west sector, and chloe tried to lead Rombo di Vento, but had problems right after the crux. Some nearby Germans saved me from having to climb it again, thankfully! Next, I managed to blow an onsight of "Peace"
photo by mark
at the last move because I was too much of a chicken to just throw for the last hold. ARGH. Chloe led "Mug",
photo by mark
a fantastic and unique overhanging 6a on the right side of the cave which Mark and

Amy then toproped. By this time it was already quite late, and we ended up getting on the road at 7 pm. After a few traffic jams and switching drivers several times we got back to Grenoble at 1 AM.

Finale Ligure

After a painful night on the hard beds and cement pillows of The Hotel Maria Nella (Three stars, but deserves of none of them), we all agreed to take our chances and try to find a hotel in Final Borgo rather than spend another day driving too and from Bardineto. We had gotten up early in anticipation of a full day of climbing, but were greeted with hard rain and soggy surroundings. Since staying at the hotel for any longer period of time wasnt an attractive option, we drove to Finalborgo. After going to Rock Store again to ogle shiny things (I bought some new approach shoes), we went out in search of a hotel room, and the first place we went to -- "vecchie mura" -- was full, but had two private rooms availble within the walls of Finalborgo for only 55 euro which we happily accepted. Our room is the second shuttered window from the left (second floor)

I think I forgot to mention that this was easter Sunday, so things were quite busy. We waited out the rain at the Bar Centrale playing hearts, eating Paciugo Gelato and drinking hot chocolates, and occasionally wandered around the town


Then, around 2 pm or so we ventured out to the Rocca di Corno crag. It was muddy and still a bit wet, but we were able to test out Amy and Marks new rope and warmed up on a hard to belay 4c at the very end of the Western sector. One of the reasons I had chosen Rocca di Corno was because of a beautiful climb called "Rombo di Vento" which I had seen in a french climbing magazine and also in the guide book. It is a visually stunning overhanging line between cave systems on positive holds. A group of three Paduan climbers were on it, and let me give it a shot, and I managed to flash it with some beta from them. Chloe took a burn on it on toprope and looked solid, but couldn't quite do the crux.

Portofino and Finale

After some creatively decorated cappucinos (pictures when the PHOX photo people do their weekly E6 run), we got on the road to Rapallo. The road out of Venazza was shrouded in fog again, which made for interesting driving.

We had decided to go to Rapallo to check out the the massive and foreboding Castle mentioned in Frommers.

Although somewhat underwhelmed by the castle and Rapallo itself, the pizzas, calzones and tiramisus we had for lunch were pretty good. I convinced everyone to have a quick look at Portofino, since it was just up the road and I had wanted to see if for a long time. The housed and coast are indeed beautiful, and I can only imagine what itwas like before it became such a tourist hub. Now, however, it is absolutely packed with tourists and multi million dollar yachts, and I think any sense of authenticity is gone. It is simply a theme park. apparently my parents had taken me there years ago, but I have no memory of it. From Portofino, we continued on the autoroute paste Genova to Finale Ligure, and after a few wrong turns finally ended up in Finalborgo, a beautuful walled town with cobbled streets, cafes and two rock climbing supply stores. Amy and Mark bought new shoes and a rope, and we had dinner at the only place we could find that wasnt fully booked (it was the night before Easter). The food was acceptable, but not as good as what we had been eating on thursday and friday night. Chloe had a special pasta called "Trofie" in a nice pesto sauce, and I had fish kebabs. We then drove up to our accomodation for the night in Bardineto. It was quite a long way (about an hour) through winding mountain passes, and by the time we got there we were all exchausted and ready for bed.

Cinqueterre

I spent the morning taking pictures in the overcast and subdued light









We moved our packs to a nice private apartment that is also run by Gianni Franzi. After cappucino and yogurt at the breakfast place at the end of the covered walkway on the east side of the harbor, we set out on the Sentiero Azzuro to Corniglia (map of all the towns here). This was by far my favorite path, and even though we were frequently enveloped in clouds and mist, there is something great about traversing the century old terraced olive groves and hearing the ocean far below you. I'm not sure if it was the hour of the day or the fact that this path was the most strenous of the day, but there were barely any people on it. We arrived in Corniglia around lunchtime and had some greasy foccacia and pizza, followed by espressos in a small cafe. The Fabulous Shirtless Canadians were also there, running around yelling and trying hard to build up some good foreign associations with the maple leaf flag. From Corniglia, which was rather unremarkable but worth seeing, we dropped down the hillside past the train station and through a horrible and depressing shantytown along the water. It looked like it might have been a colony of vacation bungalows at one point, but had been quickly evactuated because of a TB scare or something. Regardless, it was filled with abandoned toys, suspiciously stained matresses and boarded up windows. I'm afraid I cant really recommend this part of the Cinqueterre. Things brightened up a bit when we found stairs leading down to the ocean and hopped around on the rocks and watched the schools of fish dart around under the rocks.

We continued on towards Manarola
, got some Gelatofuel, and walked up to the high point of the town (upper right in the photo). A boat with a loud pump was spuuporting some kind of underwater work just outside the bay, but we didn't mind: we had gelati.

We continued along the ridge until we came to a patio which looked south, and went to have a look. There were sweeping views, but something moving on the left side of my vision caught my eye:

The dogs would start barking like crazy as soon as you took one step down the stairs, so I went about testing exactly where it was that set them off. Shortly afterwards, an Italian lady caught me poking my head out from behind a wall and starting yelling things in some strange jibber-jabber language.
There were some nice views from the top



From Manarola, we continued through the moldy and humid tunnel that brings you to the train station and to the gaudy "Via dell' Amore". As we were rounding one of the last bends before Riomaggiore, we heard a low boom, like something falling into the water. Further along the bend we saw a group of tourists looking on with a mixture of amusement and fear at one of the Fabulous Shirtless Canadians who was swimming back to shore after having apparently jumped off the 30-40 foot high cliff into the ocean. Several more of them quickly followed, and I have to say that I was scared that one of them would get part of their ample brains removed on the way down by one of the two rocky outcroppings on their left and right.

Riomaggiore is at first pretty depressing looking, but the area you see from the path and the train station is not at all representative of what the town (arond the corner) really looks like



It is actually a lovely town, and my second favorite among the four that we visited.



After a miscommunication which caused chloe and I to watch sadly as our train back to Vernazza pulled away without us, then to walk back to Riomaggiore to look for Mark and Amy, then to walk back again and wait for another train, we made it back to Vernazza. The Vernazzans had set up colorful lamps all the way down to the church in the harbor for some crazy catholic celebration (?) called stations of the cross.

This involves dressing up in um... hoods,

carrying giant crosses


and scaring the crap out of little children
.
It was kind of haunting and beautiful though.

But before we watched this, we had dinner at Trattoria del Capitano, where I had the Tagliolini sul pesce as per Rick Steves recommendation (his name was in the air in this restaurant too!) followed by the grigliata mixti

and the house specialty of frozen whipped cream with pine nuts. Mark had bought a good bottle of Grappa, which I had been interested in trying ever since reading a New York Times article called "A Dynamo and Her Daughters Turn Leftovers to Gold" by Frank Bruni about the success a woman run Itlaian business had had in elevating the reputation of Grappa. In the article it mentions that the matron has turned Grappa from a "Cinderella to a queen". I suppose I could agree with this statement, but i'd modify it ever so slightly to include the word "drag". The bottle that Mark had bought was an expensive and supposedly good one, but it left a lot to be desired even compared to cheap tequila. This is from someone who was ready and willing to love Grappa. Anyway, we finished off the day on the patio again, sipping Grappa, looking out over the sea... yadda yadda yadda

Liguria (thursday)

We left the haze of grenoble today and drove (map here)through the fantastically over-priced Frejus tunnel into Italy. We continued past the signs for Sestriere (site of next years winter Olympics), down past Torino, over the aerial highways surrounding Genova, and finally down the winding road that leads to the Vernazza parking lot. Along the waym I was chomping on a bread chip and broke a chunk out of one of my teeth, so I get to go back to the dentist AGAIN. Our hotel (Gianni Franzi) was at the top of picturesque widing staircases

and had a private patio hewn into the rock with lemon trees and a shady trellis which overlooked the water.


We explored the town a little, and after watching a pack of Shirtless Canadianswho were jumping into the harbor, found a restaurant. Chloe shared a seafood risotto with Amy, and I shared an amazing grigliata mixti (sp?!) with Mark.

The meal was accompanied by a locally produced light white wine. Because we ate early (7 pm or so), the restaurant was filled with americans and I heard Rick Steves' name mentioned about twenty times.

We had no evidence that cheap Italian white wines were different from any other place in the world, but we risked it anyway and bought a 3 euro bottle to enjoy on the patio. After a few failed attempts to chill the bottle in the ocean which left mark with a wet sleeve and almost wineless, we walked up the stairs to the patio. The wine proved to have a remarkable hangover inducing quality, but at the time, looking out over the Med, lounging on chairs on a patio in the cliffside, life was good.

We had originally planned just one night in Vernazza, but quickly decided to book another room to have time to hike around the next day and relax.

late night collecting data

The field I'm in often requires some fairly late night stays at the synchrotron. Yesterday, however, we were doing a non standard measurement, and had to install a lot of new equipment. As a normal user, your nightmare is that you will make a mistake, cause any one of the moving parts on the experimental table to collide with another part, destroy a million dollar detector, and never be invited back. Well, we ended up colliding three parts of the setup due to their restricted spatial organization early in the day. Luckily, nothing was damaged, but it took us another few hours to re-align everything, and it was 5 PM before we could start data collection! We ended up collecting eighteen excellent datasets in a whirlwind of collection and processing. After we had disassembled everything and cleaned up, I biked home in a groggy half awake state. It turns out that there is no one on the road in Grenoble at that hour. The streets were completeley empty, and even the massive and always congested Place Dubedout was deserted, except for the birds, who were already awake and singing.

Show!

Yesterday I talked to the gallery manager at the Gaia store, and we confirmed that my photo show is on! IT will open on the 27th of May and run until the 23rd of June. I need to have several prints made, as well as invitations etc, so I have a lot of work to do (especially since I'll be on vacation for two weeks in May!).

You can find some of the work that will be shown here


In other news, since we have four days off for easter next week, Chloe and I are planning a trip with Mark and Amy (who are also coming with us to Kalymnos) to Liguria in northern italy. Our present plans are to stay in Vernazza for one night, walk around to the cinqueterre, then drive to Finale Ligure for climbing and more sight seeing.

Lab Ski Day

Today was lab ski day where I work, and more than fifty people were apparently signed up to go. The pack quickly got dispersed though. It was a beautiful day:




and I got in 8700 meters. I took one bad spill of an aborted jump attempt from which my whole body is still aching. Dave had a similar experience. I was waiting with another guy from work, and Dave was taking a lot longer than usual. We began to wonder if maybe he was waiting for someone else, but he eventually boarded up to us. His face was flushed, and his eyes looked like they werent quite focusing correctly, and he explained that a jump had tourned sour, and he had been dumped on his head and back! At least it solidified his resolve to buy a helmet for next season! Amy was another casuality from earlier in the day, when she had hurt (sprained?) her thumb. Chloe got off with only one major head dumping, but had to do a long and arduous traverse after taking an ill-advised turn onto a flat beginners piste.

Lyon

After another tiring week, chloe and I decided to spend the day in Lyon. We got up late, drove in to the center and parked in the lot under Place Antonin Poncet (15 euro for the day). Neither chloe nor I had ever walked up to the Basilique Notre Dame, so we made our way through the Place Bellecour, alon the quai and across the footbridge and into Vieux Lyon. We had a big tapas lunch at Cafe Sol on Rue du Boeuf, and then walked up the stairs and gardens to the basilica. As we were looking out over Grenoble, Chloe and I simultaneously wondered aloud what the big hangar shaped building was. As we walked up to the map, two french girls came running up and said "Alors, CA, CA C'est l'opera!!" while pointing at the hangar shaped building on the map. So yes, it was the opera building. We walked down the long steps that end up at the Gare St. Paul, and wandered around looking for the much talked about "Traboules" (secret passages). We found the one that begins at the quai, and were pretty underwhelmed. I guess we were expecting a catacomb-esque passageway. The door to the one on rue du Boeuf was locked, but had a little plaque saying something about Traboules. We began walking back towards the rive Gauche and au-vieux-campeur (a wonderful outdoor shop: like REI but staffed with people who actually know what they are talking about), but were stopped by the sight of two shrieking college students. They were on the Pont Alphonse Juin, pointing north at the river, waiting, and periodically bursting into shrieks and giggles. We looked out onto the river, but there was nothing: not so much as a boat. In fact, the only thing on the river at all was a dirty and disheveled swan about a half kilometer up the river. Surely this was no cause for excitement. Then, all of a sudden, a diving duck of some kind popped to the surface with a small squirming fish harpooned on its beak! It shook its head a bit, then neatly tossed the fish into its mouth, swallowed it, then
disappeared again. This went on for several fish. It was very impressive, although sushi from the Saone strikes me as a bit unsanitary. Anyway, we went on to vieux-campeur and bought a helmet and some new shoes for our upcoming Kalymnos climbing trip. Along the way we stopped in at a store that was selling Apple Cinema Displays, and chloe had to drag me away from them. I think I left a little pool of drool on the floor on my way out. I forgot to mention that the main reason we were in Lyon was because we had reservations at "Le Sud", but we still had 4 hours to kill before dinner. After dropping off our booty at the car, we went back to Vieux Lyon and sat at a cafe in Place St. Jean for a long, long, looong time. A man was smoking a cigar nearby which cleared out the customers pretty quickly. After hours of sitting around, we still had two more hours before dinner, so we went to possibly the worst movie I have seen in recent history: Trouble. But hey, it was in french and I understood everything except the profound whisperings. Its key feature was that it was about an hour and a half long, so by the time we were finished being dragged through the immense bubbling pool of crap that was "Trouble", we were ready for our dinner. Le Sud wasn't as good as we had remembered, but I think its because we made the mistake of ordering the "Menu". It was a great day in Lyon, and we'll have to got back soon. I think I'd like to try a new restaurant next time, though.

new tooth

So all is well with my teeth: I had indeed broken a tooth, and the dentist re-drilled it out and replaced the inlay with a much bigger one.

Kick ass

I felt a large crack on the right side of my mouth while eating lunch. It was so loud, in fact that the guy across from me heard it and asked me WTF the noise was. I was hoping that maybe it was just a burr that had broken off, but no such luch. As I was drinking coffee, a small chunk of tooth came out, which I spit out and inspected. Ten minutes later, a slightly larger chunk came out, which was similarly inspected to determine its source and composition. When the last and largest chunk came out, I knew I was in trouble, because this one was big. I saved all of the chunks in a test tube and had Chloe call the dentist, who got me an appointment today at 5. I've never broken a tooth in my life, and if that piece of crap thinks I'm going to pay him to repair his incomptence, he's deluded.

Anti Dentite

Today was the big day: filling removal day. Having cleared the epxenditure with the insurance company, I was fully committed to the replacement of all of my amalgam fillings. I ate my "meal of the condemned": a ham and emmental sandwich with gusto. I climbed each route at our lunchtime climbing session like it was my last. I kissed chloe goodbye and took the tram back into town and picked up the film from my new camera. The images looked sharp and saturated, if generally poorly composed. Would they be my last images? Actually, I was busily scanning them in until the last possible moment and then ran to the dentists office. He drilled out all nine teeth efficiently and without causing any pain. After manging to spit on my pants and shirt because my bottom lip was so heavily novacained (I appreciated the discretion of the nurse to turn away as I grabbed at the long strands of mucous leading from my mouth to the spittoon), the dentist told me to come back in an hour while his CEREC machine printed out my new teeth. But perhaps I should explain how CEREC works. The doctor uses a technique originally conceived right here in Grenoble for making tooth inlays. The process is impressive: drill out the old filling, powder the tooth with infrared reflective powder, take a picture with an IR camera, make a 3D computer model of the hole, design an inlay to fit the hole exactly, "print" an inlay out of a ceramic like VITABLOC with a diamond milling machine, then glue it in. The machine takes around 15 minutes to make one inlay, and I had nine, so I went back to the apartment and scanned in more slides while I waited. It's a pretty bizarre experience to be able to feel the giant gaps left by the drill with your tongue. I began to get a little nervous about what would happen if I passed out or something; it can't be such a good thing to be waiting around for too long with your teeth like that! The four ampoules of novacaine were still in full effect and who knows what that can do to your brain. When I got back, the dentist glued in the inlays (3 on the upper left, 2 on the lower left, two each on the right: #s 17, 16, 25, 26, 27, 37, 36, 46 and 47), drilled off the burrs and little tooth dingleberries still remaining, and sent me on my way. Did I mention that I was also providing support for an ESRF beamline, which had broken twice during the day?

new camera

I received my new used GA645Zi this week. I was pleasantly surprised that the shot counter had only 400 shots on it and the previous owner was the first! Cosmetically the camera looks great, but the lens sensor and bar code reader might not work. To test everything else, I went on a small photo safari with Mark around the Bastille and then neat the col de Clemenciere and pont de Vence. I shot two rolls, and ended up knee deep in snow trying to setup some semi interesting compositions. Normally I wouldnt shoot two rolls of film in a day, but I wanted to test everything. Amazingly, Phox photo now takes three days to process a roll of E6 film (This should take 2 hours in non third world countries.)

snow in grenoble

again! Bucket loads of snow are coming down

Serre Che

We went to Serre Che with Amy and her sister, but took the worst possible route there (my fault, in combination with a road being closed) through the Frejus tunnel and past Briancon. Apparently they havent had new snow since the end of January. In spite of their web site which states that they have a meter of snow, most runs were bare and the runs that were open were covered in patches of ice and rocks! We went back through the col de Lautarec (sp?) and by the legendary La Grave/La Meije: