Canyoning the Furon

Laurent took us on the first half of the FuronCanyon in the Vercors. I borrowed a wet suit from Laurent, and barely crammed myself into it, while Lolo and Chloe fit into theirs easily

The water is shallow and very very cold, even in the sweltering heat we've been having.

The first difficult part was a jump into a narrow canyon. Its possible to rappell it, but Lolo had been there last week and had scoped out the pool at the bottom, which was quite deep. Here, he describes how to get down in one piece


and a look down into the gorge

Lolo after a successful jump

A little hesitation by chloe

... and a JUMP!!

And thirty three feet later

Lolo getting set up for another jump

and a few seconds to take a picture and let our hearts calm down a bit

Slogging out of the first constriction


and then to another jump




etc etc




It was really fun, and perfect for a hot day. From parking to parking it took us 2 hours, so its not a very long canyon. We didnt do the second part because we didn't have a rope to do the large rappel further down the river.

yay!

My Fujis were finally received by Fuji Repair in NJ, and the estimate is less than half the french price for ONE camera. Another victory for the global marketplace!

Fete de la Musique

Tonight was fete de la musique: a France wide music celebration in which the streets are filled with bands of widely varying skills. Chloe was still tired from a long conference in Heidelberg, so I went out with some friends. I get a little claustrophobic when I'm packed in shoulder to shoulder with throngs of people, but it was still fun. We sat outside at a bar and watched a band with one of our colleagues play marilyn manson (sp?) covers. I ran into a lot of people who I hadn't seen for a while, including our climbing friend Jerome, and my ex-collaborator Maxim. He was there with his wife and a friend, and they all were pulling deeply from matching 40oz bottles of cheap beer. As I looked nervously at his his 40, he asked me
"YOU LAIKE MARILEEN MANSEN TOO?" in his cool Dracula voice. I'm actually not a huge fan, but they were psyched and doing a good job. The only problem was that the electronic drum set sounded tinny and not very drum like at all.

We headed back towards Gambetta in search of ice cream, but the chocolatier which sells ice cream looked like it had closed up shop at 11:00 or so. Along the way, we passed an up-with-people type of band, which was strangely enough greeted with a lot of enthusiasm by the crowd.

Nice moon

Took this shot of the moonrise over the Belledonne yesterday (looking south from Grenoble). Apparently the full moon is at its lowest in eighteen years

comboire

I went to "Comboire", a climbing area near Claix today and almost melted. The rock cooked our hands and feet, and we were forced to retreat after a few hours.

expat moment

As I was emailing my service bureau with my new address, I suddenly realized how many of my "things" are on planes and warehouses throughout the world right now. I have a set of prints that people have ordered which are being loaded onto a van bound for the airport as I write this. The do it yourself speaker kit which I ordered is en route (probably on a truck) from germany. My amplifier control vacuum tubes will be shipped tomorrow from Hong Kong. My workhorse Fuji medium format cameras are still being delivered by the idiots at chronopost, and are in a warehouse somewhere in JFK. And the reasons?

There aren't any service bureaus in france with the kind of printer I need (and even if there was I couldn't afford it). So I do business with a company I trust in California.

Speakers and anything else electronic (like 1920s era vacuum tubes) cost about 2 times more than the already overinflated stereo prices charged in the US, so I buy from Germany and Hong Kong.

Fuji france wants the price of the camera to repair my 8 year old GA645i, so I have to ship my cameras to the Fuji repair center in Edison NJ. This makes sense in a way because I bought them in the states, but still!

The punchline is that the French are taxing themselves out of many markets. As an example, many professional French photographers end up saving money by flying to Hong Kong and New York for their gear purchases, compared to buying in France. And yes, that includes the plane fare.

Lyon Food Posters

Chloe and I went to Lyon today to spend a lot of money at Au Vieux Campeur, look for ECC81 tubes for my new amplifier and most importanty: go to Caro de Lyon in celebration of my first photo show and selling my first print. After buying a new rope and shoes, we started walking towards the presqu'isle. Along the way, we saw that the Prefecture (local governmental installation) seemed to be wreathed in pictures of delicious things!

Upon closer examination, we discovered that there was a large "installation" celebrating Lyons status as the culinary capital of France. Chloe and I wandered around, mesmerized by the beautiful color photos. Not surprisingly, since it was so close to dinner time, we noticed many other people stumbling along in dream like stupors, hypnotized by the deliciousness. I'm pretty sure we looked at every single one, and I took pictures of most of them. Here they are (all images are clickable to see the larger version with more legible text)




















We rested our feet in a small park near the prefecture, surveyed our au-Vieux-Campeur booty, including chloes
"P-mates"(for when we are on multi pitch alpine routes, I HOPE)
,
then set off towards Le Caro de Lyon. Along the way we saw a boat which had been converted into a garden


and then we commenced with the eating. We both got the Menu de degustation (is it any wonder after looking at the prefecture photos?!). Although we both ordered the menu (76 euro), they gave us different plates for everything except the olive soup and the dessert (you can choose the dessert).

Soupe d'olives vertes, salade de pain et tomates au basilic, langoustines roties.
Fantastic. We had this at our last meal. The cool olive soup goes perfectly with the grilled crayfish.


Terrine de pigeon roti aux figues et amandes torrefiees, feuilles demaches aux poires et celeri
Roasted squab with figs and grilled almonds, pears and celery mache salad. Very nice, but pigeon?


Croustillant de fois gras au pain d'epices, calisson d'aubergines, saveurs pistache et melon
Crispy foie gras with 5 spices bread and eggplant caviar calisson from Aix en Provence flavoured pistachio and melon.
This was fantastic. The top was a delicate creme brulee


Tartare de thon rouge en croustillant de tofu, framboisine de tomate en effeuillee de salade japonaise
Tuna tartar, crispy to-fu, tomatoes rasberries coulis with japanese herbs salad
Excellent again... but not what I would call a Japanese flavor at all.


I'm not sure what this was exactly, but it was the only dish that really fell flat on its face: It tasted like a bad imitation of "asian" cooking.


Sandre du Rhone, chutney de betterave et coeur de sucrine, fricassee d'escargots aux noisettes, creme de laitue
Pan pike perch and snails fricassee, chutney of beet and lettuce cream.
I'm not sure that this description is of the dish below, but it was almost perfect. The fish was just a tiny tiny bit too oily, but was still wonderful


Turbot en filet, mariniere d'asperges blanches au parfum du Bearn, emulsion a l'ail des ours
Filet of turbot, white asperagus, cold Bearnaise and honey garlic emulsion.
Perfect.


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 tomatoes, baby spinach salad
This was another welcome re-run from the Springtime menu that we had last time.


Lobe de foie gras poele, figue farcie et pomme ecrasee au gingembre, sirop de fruits a la cardamone
Pan foie gras, stuffed figs and crushed potatoes with ginger, sirop of red fruits flavoured with cardamon.
If I hadn't had the other foie gras plate I think I would have enjoyed this more. But it was still very tasty. The stuffed fig was pretty interesting and complemented the foie grassyness well.


next, St. Marcellin and Fromage Blanc (no need to take pictures of these!)

And finally,
Fondant de chocolat "Ivoire", marmelade d'agrumes et son sorbet
Melting white chocolate cake with citrus fruits marmelade and sorbet
no words for this one.. too good.

more E-commerce frustration

I've been trying to track down my several thousand dollars worth of cameras which I sent to Fuji USA for repair, but they appear to be held up in customs. I learned a valuable lesson, however, which is never to send anything by "Chronopost"(The french version of FedEx). Their web site is useless, as are their service reps. And it costs money to even call the service reps! I just assumed that after spending more than $140 on shipping that a) I could get some support and b)it would get there in less than three days... but as usual I aimed too high. I also found out yesterday that Amazon.fr offers about half of the products available at Amazon.de, Amazon.co.uk and Amazon.com! I'm trying to figure out why.

Francks

Franck (who very generously has helped me a lot with my photo show) had Carlos, Chloe and I over to dinner and to listen to his Cabasse Jersey speakers. I played some Lali Puna, Guv'ner, Adam Green, Dealership, etc etc. The speakers are very cool, and I'd really like to hear them on my soon to arrive Joplin 2A3 tube amp. Frank lives right under the Neron in a lovely stone house, with access to a large private garden which goes right up against the treeline of the Neron. It's on the road to Provisyeux (sp?) and is really a fantastic place. Dinner was very good, and Franck used his culinary school skills to make us meringues crepes and other nice things for dessert. Carlos brought a bottle of excellent Spanish wine called Pata Negra.

NMR

Last week my boss told me about something pretty surprising, even for the Japanese. In structural biology, there are two dominant methods for determining the structures of proteins: X-ray crystallography and NMR. NMR uses large, expensive instruments which most universities and research institutes will have only three or four of. The higher field instruments ("magnets") are able to provide more data, but also cost a lot more. A typical setup would be a few smaller field magnets like 500 and 600 mhzs and one super expensive high field instrument like an 800 or 900 mhz. Anyway, it turns out that theres a structural biology instutute in Yokohama where they've made a FARM of NMR magnets:

The central buildings each hold 5 mid field magnets, and the outer pods each house one of these bizarre looking high field magnets:

which means 10 mid field and 10 high field= a lot of money! Then there's the other building

which holds another 24 magnets. The budget (spread out over 7 institutes) is ~ 778 millions dollars.