Mom's Opening

Mom had her gallery opening at the Sakata Garo gallery in Sacramento today. I have to admit that I've never had a very high opinion of Sacto, but that changed completely during this trip. The gallery is in a section of town lines but numerous and beautiful huge trees. It's super bike friendly, and there was even a huge street party this evening -- very cool.

Before the opening, we took Zoe to the pool in her new swimsuit, which was pretty adorable:







The opening went very well, and Paul and Nikki brought Emmett and Joshua up from their new home base in Davis. Zoe looked very cute in her new French dress:







I think I could easily live in Sacramento if I could do commute by bike. It has a nice vibe, and a small town feel to it, and as an added bonus, its closer to the mountains!

Chloe

four months pregnant

grafts

Most of my grafts (guerilla and otherwise) have worked, and it is amazing to see how fast they can grow. Here are some photos of the plum tree in my back yard:



And one to our pear tree

Zoe vs. Ladybug

LNL HUTZ

While we were walking to Boulevard on Saturday, I saw (and parked behind) this car:

Which was heartwarming, because I never imagined that there was an intersection between the Simpsons aficionado set and the people-who-appreciate-and-can-afford-Maserati-Cambiocorsas set.

I googled the plate of course, and it turns out that the original license plate support device for that plate was a Toyota MR2! Quite a jump, I'd say.

woot!

Chloe's birthday dinner @boulevard

Layovers

had a layover in Munich airport. Not much to see or do, and only pay wifi via T-mobile (probably the worst mobile carrier in the developed world). There were APCs waiting outside the terminal!

FONDUE!

This morning I woke up ridiculously early as usual (jet lag is KILLING me this time) and hung out in the jardin de ville, working on my iphone app. I also had a video chat with my friend Paul in Davis, which was fun. After getting my fill of free wifi, I headed to Enrique and Leslie's place, but managed to end up in the wrong building. Lolo had given me the building access code the previous evening, which I punched into the keypad. I heard the buzz of the door lock clicking open and walked into a dark corridor. I wasn't sure if I had copied the number down correctly last night, so I was relieved to be spared the embarrassment of yelling up at the window to try to get Enrique's attention. As I walked through the hall, I noticed that the building was in a pretty appalling state. Huge curls of paint were peeling off of the walls, and -- horror of horrors -- the nameplates on doors were written on paper! Shocking! Anyway, I didn't see the name that lolo had given me on any of the doors, and I was beginning to think that something was very wrong indeed. As I left the building, I noticed a plaque commemorating the fact that Stendhal had lived there. I'm sure he would be disappointed. Anyway, it turned out that Enrique +family were in the next building over which curiously had an identical door code. Their building and apartment were a lot nicer. After a tour of the apartment, I showed them the local amenities: market at places aux herbes (special care taken to point out the pouletmobile), Arthaud, K-store, Dalbe, Talemelerie (sp? I never get that one right), and finally, Les Alpages. In my absence, the cheese man has apparently won some kind of major fromagier honor, and so has his lieutenant (take a look at their website and video). They also have a sous vide machine, so I ordered almost a kilogram of comte de montagne and some tomme crayeuse as well. The Lt even recognized me, which was heartwarming. I love that place.

We made one last stop at the children's clothing store, where I couldn't resist buying another outfit for ZZN and then had lunch along the tramway.

After lunch, we headed back to Enrique and Leslie's place and had some cheese and wine, and then it was time for me to head over to the EMBL. I did make a stop at Etam to get Chloe a few things and then I hopped on the 34 bus.

After a little kerfuffle at the guard gate because I had lost my badge (edit: it turned up in my back pocket a week later), I hung out in the newly refurbished EMBL library. A view of the Chartreuse is a pretty sweet environment to be working on an iphone app! A bit later I met up with Franck, headed to St. Egreve to pick up his son Artur, and then on to his house at the foot of the Neron. I've mentioned it before, but Franck is extremely fortunate to live in a beautiful stone house which shares a large grass field with several other people. It's an amazing piece of wilderness ten minutes from the synchrotron. This time he showed me a few of the trails that lead up to a spring and I got to try out his VX125.

Even before I arrived, Franck had promised me a fondue, but he didn't tell me that it was going to be a very special one made of amazing cheese from the Laiterie Bayard. I did my best, but was not able to help Franck finish the fondue. I think I did ok for a ricain, though. As usual, there was an incredible bottle of wine involved. I had previously not been a big fan of white wines, but this one has changed my mind forever. It was a burgundy (I think it was a "St. Aubin"), and not only was it delicious, but it was a perfect complement to the fondue. Dessert was an entire cake made of ice cream from the green arch ice cream place near the jardin de ville. All the flavors were good, but the cassis in particular was out of this world. Thanks, Franck!!

Grenoble ville, Dinner at lolos

I wandered around town during the day and took a few mediocre pictures (accidentally had the iso set high -- d'oh!)






In the evening, I had dinner at Lolo and Vero's. A former grad student (Enrique) from the adjacent lab at the Salk who is now at Yale had just arrived the night before and was staying at Lolo and Vero's place. He and his family are starting a five month sabbatical in Grenoble, so I made arrangements to show them around town a little bit tomorrow morning. The meal was great and it was a lot of fun to see lolo, vero, thomas and their newest addition -- Margot!

Awesome dinner at Ciao a Te

I spent most of the day walking around (I did Zoe outfit shopping yesterday) and had lunch at the cafeteria again... this time with my old friend Lolo. It was great seeing him again, and it sounds like he is kicking ass -- director of research with twenty people working for him! Pretty sweet.

I met Franck and Thibault for dinner at the Italian restaurant Ciao a Te. I had cepes ravioli with meatballs which were just unbelievably good. It might not sound like a very exciting dish, and their description had a little more poetry to it, but it was perfectly done. Even the ravioli pasta part was al dente, which is almost never the case for ravioli. Desert was a fantastic profiterole dish with a home made chocolate sauce. Without a doubt one of the best meals I've had in recent memory. Chloe and I had been there once before, and my only memories were the excellent food, and the super hard working waiter who had beads odf sweat running down his forehead by the end of the evening.

lunch with Francois

I had lunch with my climbing buddy Francois, and it was great tallking about past and future climbs. He is planning an ascent of Rackham le Rouget, and I am really envious.

I saw a few familiar faces in the cafeteria, including a secretary at the IBS with the thickest accent imaginable. In my interactions with her, she always seemed to be yelling. When I countered with my cunning blank look of incomprehension, she would yell louder and finally leave in a huff. Trying to understand her was like a non-american trying to understand Sgt. Maj Sixta from Generation Kill. Not easy, and a little frightening.

I climbed in the fricking GYM today. Mon dieu! At least I was able to keep up with the young'uns at A blok for a while.

more dinner at Francks!

We all but finished Francks super bottle of wine tonight, discussed camera stuff and came up with a cool design for the megal bike light Mk. III. I think the configuration of lights and driver board is quite logical. The bigger questions are how expensive the part will be to manufacture and whether it can adequately dissipate the heat from twelve (!) LEDs. I finally have settled on Cree MC-Es -- smaller footprint, more optics, no enforced parallel circuitry.

Dinner @ Francks

My friend Franck was kind enough to invite me to dinner on my first night in town, which was really a nice way to ease into my stay in grenoble! He opened a superb bottle of Gevrey-Chambertin to accompany a perfect hearty dinner of charcuterie, salad, potatoes and cheese. It seemed quite close to Raclette, but maybe it wasn't an Official Raclette?

Anyway, jetlag is hitting me hard this time. I also forgot about the fact that you loose a day coming in this direction.

Marketing anyone?

On my commute home, I take 101N on the causeway through Brisbane. They've been building new condos on the Southern face of the Bayview park (That hill that rises just west of Candlestick). In today's economy, I would imagine that they are having trouble selling these condos, which seems to be confirmed by the fact that there is now a big billboard saying something like "If you lived here, you would be home already", or something to that effect. I had to laugh while passing it yesterday though, as the reek from the garbage dump a few hundred feet upwind of the new condos permeated my car. The sad part is that the wind blows the same direction pretty much every day from the spring until the fall. That's why its a favorite windsurfing spot, in fact. If you factor in the eight lanes of freeway, and the carcasses of Seagulls (they flock to the dump and get hit by cars on 101), you have to wonder what they were thinking when they built houses there.

sumppumptastic!

We just had a sump pump installed next to our downstairs bedroom. We might be able to move our junk back in soon! I think we'll paint the room before we do that, as long as we've lugged all of our stuff upstairs. EXCITING!

oof!

Since my accident, I've had several stress dreams related to car accidents. In one, I had crashed chloe's GTI (which we sold ages ago), and I was desperately trying to re-attach the bumper, wheels and other parts of the demolished chassis. LAst night I was driving some kind of classic car -- an old Merc, I think -- and was worried about not having ABS or traction control. Shortly after thinking about that, the car went into a skid and plowed into a building. Nice! I'm no psychotherapist, but I have a hunch that these dreams just might be related to my car crash in January.

grommets in the gym

Now that I've given up any hope of climbing outside in our day to day life, the climbing gym has become our new home. We usually go to the oakland gym, but occasionally end up in Berkeley, which has gotten ridiculously crowded recently. Last night we totally lucked out and happened to be there when the teenage mutant climbing team was working out. It was sweet: every inch of the lead cave decked out in ropes and kids climbing 5.13. While I was cursing our decision to climb on a Tuesday night, I came to the realization that 1)zoe (hopefully) will be one of those kids at some point, so I should just calm down about having to elbow our way through them to get on the moderates and 2)competitive climbing in the US is amazingly under-resourced compared to europe. Even poor european countries have full time coaches, dedicated training facilities and state money to climb. France, for example, which has historically produced many international competitive climbing stars, has a very impressive facility in Aix-en-Provence. A lot of the kids from the gym are internationally competitive, but you have to wonder how much better they would do with the euro resources!

Museum

We went on a family trip to the new California Academy of Sciences, which was fabulous. Unfortunately, the rain forest sphere was closed, but we made up for it by spending a lot of time in the Water Planet. We did the following routine for almost every display:

1)Carry Zoe towards exhibit
2)Zoe starts trembling with excitement and demands to be let down
3)Zoe stands in front of glass and pounds on the glass/plastic with fists
4)Zoe points at fish and makes "oooh!" noises
5)Repeat 3 and 4 for five to ten minutes
6)Pick Zoe up
7)Zoe begins screaming and arching her back, stretching her arms back towards the fish
8)Zoe begins crying and peoples heads turn
9)Zoe sees the next exhibit
10)Go back to 1)

We also checked out the rooftop garden, where I overheard a docent say that they had evacuated the viewing platform earlier in the day(swarm of bees). From the CAS, we walked to the botanical garden, and then had a big Japanese dinner in Japantown. I'll upload pictures in a few days.

Zoe at the park

Röyksopp strikes again

with another great song and video

http://www.vimeo.com/3281558

First Zoe Steps!!!

The Hazards of Velcro

After I pick Zoe up from day care we usually go for a walk to the park or around the garden. Before the walk, however, Zoe gets a snack, and because she is sixteen months old, she usually ends up smearing whatever she is eating all over my hair and clothes. Because of this, Chloe and I have taken the simple precaution of always changing into non work clothes as soon as we start handling our little walking hazmat. Today I did just that, grabbing a pair of shorts (woohoo California!) out of the dryer and walking out the door, led by Zoe. She's not walking on her own yet, but she enjoys walking while holding our hands. I was trying to steer her towards the garden, but she seemed to be fixated on walking down the street, so I followed along. Several cars passed by with people smiling broadly at the two of us. I just assumed that they were smiling at Zoe's cuteness at the time. When I got home though, I discovered another possible explanation: it turned out that a pair of red panties had attached themselves to the velcro closure of one of my back pockets and I had been walking around with them stuck to my ass the whole time.

Pressure Washer

I pressure washed all of the brick walkways at my parents and our house today. I'm not sure why it didn't occur to me, but pressure washers generate a LOT of mud and dirt splashback. I looked like this by the end of the day:

Zoe the fruit epicurian

Zoe has been an enthusiastic accomplice in my recent quest for unusual fruit. I think that she is probably pretty unique in having already tasted Feijoa, White Sapote, Red Strwaberry Guava, Babaco, Cape Gooseberry, Passionfruit in her first fifteen months! Despite their sourness, her favorite seems to be passionfruit, with Cape Gooseberry a close second.

Seckel Pear

I just planted a bare root Seckel Pear. Here's hoping it survives and maybe even sets fruit!

Persian Mulberry

Planted!

More plums

I grafted Elephant Heart, Golden Nectar, Santa Rosa and Satsuma to this tree


View Larger Map

Skydiving, Aquarium

I redeemed my Birthday gift from Chloe today, at long last. We drove down to the hangar that houses Skydive Monterey Bay(in our new Prius!), but upon arrival were informed that there would be another few hours of waiting. The catch is that they want you to wait AT the hangar, where there is pretty much nothing to do except watch people pack parachutes and gripe with other people about the lack of organization. Instead of waiting, we hopped over to a nearby deli to grab a sandwich, and soon enough I was getting the quick five minute training on what was about to happen. Chloe had ordered videography as part of my package, and to the video guy's credit, he was doing his best to get me visibly psyched up for my impending doom. I was actually very excited, but tend not to be effusive in a way that might make for good TV, but I did my best. I think they were looking for more whooping and shaka's than I was able to earnestly deliver. At any rate, we were soon on board the twin engined turboprop and packed in like sardines on two long benches that ran the length of the cabin.


The plane was quite fast and had us up to 15,000 feet very quickly, at which point (or shortly before), my instructor cinched all the straps that connected me to him. I found the experience of being strapped to another dude to be vaguely humiliating, by the way. Any self consciousness about the indignity of it all or at being a human backpack was soon replaced by the very cold air rushing by and the fantastic views.



The videographer was spinning around us for most of the way down, and I gamely gave the thumbs up sign to humor him. At one point, I was given the parachute controls and turned us gently to the left, and right before being instructed to pull down hard on one of the straps. This put us into an dramatic and fun-at-first spin, and it felt like we were almost horizontal for most of it. Soon enough, however, I was starting to feel a little queasy from the spinning and was happy to come in for a landing

All in all it was pretty fun. The instructor and videographers were excellent, but as many other people have commented on Yelp: the front office is seriously disorganized.

From Marina, we drove to the Monterey Bay Aquarium and paid (ok, we let grandpa handle it) the extortionate admission fee and wandered around with Zoe. At fifteen months old, Zoe is really noticing things around her, and she *loved* the aquarium -- pointing her finger at various fish and staring transfixed at the schools of fish. Her favorite seemed to be the open ocean tank, with the tuna and sardines

Luther Burbank

Quite a few of the plum varieties that I obtained from the CRFG scion exchange a few weekends ago are Luther Burbank varieties. I was intrigued by his legacy of so many plum varieties, so I started browsing through 1849-1926 / Luther Burbank: his methods and discoveries and their practical application Volume V (1914). It is fairly lyrical fare for a description of hybridization within the prunus genus and it made for interesting, if specialized reading. Imagine my surprise then, when out of nowhere I came upon this rather shocking passage:


When I find our almost perfect prune lapsing back in the next generation to a condition that robs it of all value as a prune, I am reminded of the story of a young Indian who was taken from his tribe and given every advantage that the Government could furnish him.
Years were spent in teaching him the studies of the modern curriculum, mathematics, history, literature, language, and even a smattering of art.
At twenty-one he had a better education than many of our presidents, and his future was considered very promising by those who had to do with his training.
Ten years later this educated Indian was one of the most worthless of his tribe.
He had simply "gone back to the blanket stage of existence." The pull of past heredities was too strong upon him. The transitory influence of a few years of education could not efface the racial instincts that had been implanted through thousands of generations of breeding of a more primitive sort.
And so it is with prunes.

Link here.

A little digging reveals that he was a Eugenicist, and the above passage seems positively benign next to some of his other statements (which can be found in the above article). I find all of this disturbing and disappointing, considering how esteemed and revered he is in California. It is even more troubling, I think, that so many schools and parks are named after him. Is this appropriate for someone who wrote in his "The Training of the Human Plant"
"When all the necessary
crossing has been done, then comes the
work of elimination, the work of refin-
ing, until we shall get an ultimate prod-
uct that should be the finest race ever
known."

Guerilla grafting part II

Variety: Golden Nectar
here

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Guerilla grafting

variety: Catherine Bunnell
here

View Larger Map

Grafting

I tagged along with the master grafter Tom A. to see how he turns wild plums into multi variety mega trees. It started with liberal chainsawing of the various trunks, and then moved on to grafting (mostly by whip and whip and tongue) various varieties of plum onto the suckers coming off the main trunk.

Playground/Chef

Today was another daycare day off, which I luckily have off as well (Chloe does not), so I had a father-daughter day in the park and at the grandparents with Zoe. We drove up to Codornices park and was delighted to see that the long cement slide that I remember from when I was a kid was still there. Zoe and I tried it and some of the other slides out before going to the swings. As I was pushing the swing, I heard the father next to me speaking in French to his daughter, so I asked him where he was from. It turned out that he was from Paris and was the former Chef/Owner of the "Le Charm" Bistro in SF. He had recently sold it to have more time with his daughters. One of the places at which he had worked and trained was in the famous Parisian Brasserie La Coupole, which he said was excellent training. A typical day meant three thousand meals served (open from 6AM to 2AM when he was there), and if you finished at your station you could either call it a day or go to another station. Why would you go to another station? Well, you wouldn't, unless you were motivated to learn new techniques, and even then, you would be washing the floor of the new station for a few weeks before they let you near the real work.

I asked him where the best croissants were in the Bay Area, but he didn't have a good answer, except for the fact that he was planning in the next few years to start a small business on Solano Ave. which will sell pastries, mise-en-place, sausages, all manner of tasty things... and croissants! I can't wait. He's also planning on selling at Farmer's Markets. As far as good croissants, he said the best place in recent memory was some place in the Bellagio, but they were $4 each.

His answer to the question of what the first foods he seeks out when he goes back to Paris are? Crevettes grise and Langoustines.

Scion Exchange

Today I went to my first Scion Exchange, hosted by the Golden Gate Chapter of the California Rare Fruit Growers. The idea is that people bring in 'Scion' wood (which can then be grafted onto various rootstocks) which other people can then take samples of. I had never been to such a thing, and have only recently been inculcated into the ways of the rare fruit (by a fellow Williams alum and climber), so I didn't really know what to expect. I arrived early to try to help set up and get some words of wisdom before the unwashed masses arrived and was immediately given the task of alphabetizing the European plum scions. My first impression was amazement at the number of available varieties of both Asian and European plums. It turned out that the number of apple scions was even larger, but I was quite impressed nonetheless. Thankfully, my Williams friend turns out to be something of a fruit Yoda, and he very generously took me through the plums, quinces and pears and told me which ones tasted good, produced well, produced early/late, etc. etc. Basically, I would have been awash in a sea of sticks if it were not for him. I regret it now, but I didn't pick up any apple scions, despite knowing where some good rootstocks are up in Alta, but there is always next year. I did pick up Seckel and Des Urbanistes pears, Elephant Heart, Beauty, Santa Rosa, Satsuma, Golden Nectar, Inca, Catherine Bunnell(sp?) plums and an Aromatanaya quince. Some people brought in samples of fruit as well, and I tasted two different white sapote, some feijoa and passionfruit (all delicious). The CFRG also offers a short class in grafting basics, which was quite helpful.