Alta, Salmon Lake, Exploded tire

We drove to Alta today after our customary stop at Awful Annie's for waffles etc. Zoe was in a fairly good mood, but has developed a new and slightly annoying habit of insisting that she walk up and down the restaurant when she should be eating. She is impossible to resist, though.

I did some chainsawing in Alta to clear paths down to the river and bucked logs until Terry arrived, and then we all piled into the Subie. We hadn't been to Salmon lake in ages, so it seemed like a good moderate hike to do after last weekend's snowfest. Unfortunately, the first part of the hike to Salmon Lake was also covered in snow,

and the trail as a whole was a lot longer than I remembered for some reason. We all enjoyed the lake for a while (no desire whatsoever to jump in though!) and watched a family try to catch small catfish at the North end of the lake. After slipping and sliding back to the car, we discovered that the left rear Subie tire was COMPLETELY flat. The car was parked on a muddy slope, which made changing the wheel a little dicey: the jack sunk pretty far into the mud. Happily, the wheel came off without a problem and I had the spare on in fifteen minutes or so. Next came the teeth gritting six miles of dirt road back to pavement. Ergh. We decided that it was late enough that tire replacement was going to have to wait until tomorrow. In the mean time... beer and blue cheese burgers. ZZN was a little backed up, which had been making her understandably irritable all day, and it was aggravated by her being tired. Happily, the dam reached a breaking point right before before bedtime, and chloe and I settled down to a relaxing night into the brand new tent with Zoe. By "relaxing", I of course mean a hellish night of crying, loud snorting noises and random kicks to the head. Zoe managed to rotate perpendicular to chloe and I and repeatedly kicked off of my face in order to head butt chloe. I lost count of how many times this happened, but suffice it to say that we will not be repeating the baby camping experience any time soon. I guess we will have to be happy with day trips. Here zoe is, looking tired after an exhausting night of parent abuse:

See how she feigns innocence with her thumb in her mouth!

new bike!!!

A hand built lugged steel frame with Campy Chorus components (bought used).

(image by Phil S., the bike's previous owner)

alea iacta est. ESPP suspended!

Chloe pregnant!!!!!!

chloe pregnant!

ugh

Yesterday we discovered that the workers had accidentally unplugged our deep freezer in the course of their work two weeks ago. And by "we", I mean that I found Chloe whimpering and pointing to the freezer and then to the obviously unplugged cord. Knowing that Chloe would practice a strategy of avoidance, I tackled the cleanup operation today.

Rather than go into the details of the olfactory assault that awaited my opening of the freezer door, let me just tell you what was in there: steaks, seafood, chicken stock and a few other things. The thing about steaks packed in paper is that they tend to leak when they thaw. Imagine what a standing pool of blood smells like after two weeks at room temperature. It was a nasty business, and hopefully the neighbors didn't get too freaked out. I had elbow length gloves on and was soon spattered with a mixture of Formula 401 and blood. Also, shuttling black garbage bags from the basement out to the trash might have looked a little suspicious. All I can say is that I take payment in Cooks Illustrated recipe brownies if, for example, someone wanted to thank me!

feijoa

One of our Feijoas is flowering!

Hopefully they will get fertilized and set fruit!

Freeley Lake

We drove up to the Carr Lake trailhead today, but discovered that it was completely snowed in! Not willing to give up, we parked the car a few hundred feet down from the trailhead and set off on foot, but soon got into the deep stuff. Even though we weren't sinking that much, it was tough going, and we gave up at the East end of Freeley Lake (mostly because we couldn't tell where the trail went). A few pics:




On the way back, I noticed a peculiar bluish-grey dust near the edge of some snow


and bent down to discover that it wasn't so much dust as a seething lawn of disgusting bugs:


We drove to Alta, where I was happy to see that the apple was doing well and had even sprouted new clusters of leaves. No sign of life in the grafts though. Zoe was too tired to even leave the car,

so Chloe stayed with her while I brought another 25 gallons of water up to the tree.

ugh

we were supposed to go to hawaii today, but missed the flight -- going to the mountains instead. :(

alta

We drove up to Alta from Sacto for the day and met Paul + family for a barbecue: blue cheese burgers, corn and sausages. We *finally* planted the fuji apple tree that had been sitting around in my parents front yard getting root bound for the past three months. Hopefully it will survive! I hand toted ~25 gallons of water from the river up to the apple tree's new home, so here's hoping it's not grafted onto super thirsty rootstock. I also set up a few grafts which are very very unlikely to work. I had been saving scion wood from the CFRG exchange back in January. Normally, I think you're only supposed to keep them around for a few months, so there is a good possibility that they are dead! The "rootstock" (i.e. what I was grafting onto) was a wild cherry tree, which was also quite a long way away from being dormant, so it will be interesting to see if any grafts take. I'm told grafting plums are pretty stupid-proof, but I wonder if they can be THIS stupid proof? Grafts completed:


Santa Rosa
Satsuma
Golden Nectar
Elephant heart (x2)
Inca
Beauty

rock and roll!

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