a hike

a short hike through the Chartreuse:

wonderful fondue

Franck and Silvia generously invited the whole family (including the Screaming One). Dinner was a fabulous fondue and amazing handmade chocolate cake. I need to figure out how to get chloe to make those cakes. Perhaps a recipe subtly planted in her wallet, or a web page left open?

biking

For grenoble riders, I found PDF maps of the bike lanes AND a very handy test of bike locks

map1
map2
map3
bike locks

w00000000000t

Internet + free international calls -- FINALLY! (almost 10x faster than the normal DSL package in the bay area, too)!

yikes!

Almost crashed this morning on the bike: lots of wet leaves+slight downgrade = getting sideways on the bike!

le Mont Saint Martin

When I first started college, I joined the cycling team. I had never road biked before, but had done a lot of mountain biking and didn't think it would be that different. I turned out to be pretty far off the mark on that one. My style of mountain biking was anything but sustained. I would go all out for a few minutes then find a suitable descent and repeat for a few hours. The result was zero endurance, and a pretty serious spanking when I first started the endurance hungry sport of road racing. To be honest, I never was much good at it, and didn't even manage to finish many races because I was constantly getting dropped. I also seemed to crash frequently because of my lack of skill with toe clips. For all the failure and road rash though, I loved the daily team rides through the fall colors of New England, and the speed and teamwork of a mini peleton (when I wasn't crashing into rear wheels).

I started cycling in earnest again this spring after a long lapse, and am loving it: hills, flatland, rollers -- I love it all, even on low output days when it feels like my wheels are flat and melting into the asphalt. Yesterday I took the small road up to le Mont Saint Martin directly out of le Fontanil because I had heard so much about it. The word that I heard the most in association with the climb was 'steep', and it did not disappoint. There are *really* steep sections, and for all of my newfound love of biking, I found myself cursing my lack of power. Even in the cold air, sweat was pouring down my face and stinging my eyes, my heart rate was pegged and my legs were feeling like Jello. "Just how F@#$ing steep IS this?", I thought to myself. After twelve or so switchbacks, I actually asked a couple walking their dog whether it was far to the top. The man cocked his head in a look of pity and seemed to be forming a 'Oui' with his mouth, but then thought better of it, shook his head, said "Non.", and followed it with an "Allez!". Despite the pain, it was a beautiful ride -- full fall colors, chestnuts on the ground and blue water streaked limestone cliffs. The descent was a tad fast for my taste though.

sweet!

Here are beam shots of my cheapo light (Cree Xlamp CRE R(?) bin, 350 mA micropuck) vs a $50 cateye EL520.




Mine is the second. Exposure parameters are the same: 1 second, f2.8, ISO 80

Monastery

A trip to the monastery with the fam. Stephanie and Chloe and Alex had to go ahead because Zoe started obsessing over sticks and pebbles.

commuter bike

Attached my SKS fenders, mega tail light and Brooks saddle today. It involved hacksawing the stays, but hopefully they will work. They look pretty sweet though! Installation was aggravating.

our new place

Some photos. Note limestone in the background.

France update

We still don't have internet at home except on the iPhone, so it has been difficult to find time during the day to post, but here are the broad strokes: Chloe's mom is here helping (a lot!) with baby wrangling / other stuff. We moved into our new apartment in le Fontanil. There is an absolutely mind blowing market on Sundays with *three* cheese trucks, a rotisserie chicken mobile and various other awesome things. We are 20 feet from a fantastic boulangerie/patisserie. The town itself is lovely.

We still have a lot of things to unbox, but things are getting settled. We made one big trip to Ikea for a sofa, lights and other really exciting things like a hanging pan rack.

Alex is not sleeping very much, but is eating well. He had a bottle for the first time yesterday while Chloe was out talking to someone at the CNRS about applying for a position in their lab next year (it went well). He is still sleeping during the day and having baby poop/feeding parties all night long.

Zoe is adjusting well and is enjoying french food. She has a decent vocabulary of french words now, most of which are food related, and I suspect that it will not be much longer before hers surpasses mine. She goes to a nanny during the week and just had her second birthday. For her birthday, Chloe and I bought her a train set. How did we know she likes trains? It's a sad story involving a train set at a toy store and a full arching-back-pounding-on-the-floor-crying-meltdown at the suggestion that we leave. Unfortunately, while she really seems to like the train set, she uses it in unanticipated ways, such as chucking the train cars and tromping godzilla-like through the train circuits that I set up for her.

oh yeha, and chloe and I climbed some limestone routes near us! Only 6a, but man did it feel great to get outside climbing again.

commute

My commute is now pretty awesome: ~22 or so minutes by bike. It's not so great when it's wet out, but I am in the process of addressing that issue. Here's a video of the commute:


It's pretty shaky, and here's why: the camera mount that I devised is simply a seat post clamp with a 1/4 bolt in it. I have the Mino HD mounted on it, and it shakes a lot. I sped things up 4x in Windows Movie Maker(ughh) after conversion from mp4 to avi in ffmpeg. I know there is probably a better way, but I don't have admin privs on my work computer, and still no internet @home. Related to this: I just discovered that the version of iMovie I have (8) actually has far *fewer* features than iMovie 6 (including the ability to slow down and speed up video clips) -- thanks, Apple!!

anyway, things that need improving for the commute bike: mega bright lamp (in progress), bigger rear facing red lamp (ordered), SKS mudguards (ordered), seat that does not crush my nuts (ordered).

lunchtime ride

http://www.mapmyride.com/route/fr/fontaine/223125619352322180

There's a very dangerous turn towards the end: hairpin after a steep section

Zoe's two year Birthday!

here is her cake:

Appliances!

We have appliances finally! no more storing cheese outside on the balcony!

second bike commute day

very windy, and it's getting dark early. I'm going to need some kind of bike light, I think. I was worried that a single speed might be too painful for the job, but the gearing is just about perfect. According to the bike computer the whole commute is 8.9 km, which took 20 mins, so ~16.8 mph average. Not bad for a 20 year old steel frame bike with an alligator horn.

Quick update

No internet yet except on the phone but a quick update: we are moved into our apartment after the most hellish move ever! Still lots of boxes, but the new place is wonderful

the Wild West in Fontanil?

I was unpacking things in the office when I looked out the window and saw the bank guys loading up the ATM with money. A closer look reveals that the dude had his gun out!

Get Zoe out of Mommy's Hair Day

Zoe and I went to Place aux Herbes to pick up some fruits (pears, figs), veggies (zucchini, shallots, carrots) and a chicken from the Rotimobile. I almost bought some nice Comte, but figured that with the move on tuesday that I wouldn't have time to eat it. There was a flea market on the Quai, which was fun. It was mostly junk though, except for this stuffed Chamois, which is awesome

I also saw some kayakers on the Isere! I don't think I had ever seen any boat on this section except for the po-po.


After stopping back at home to drop off our booty, Zoe and I headed to the Chateau de Vizille. The friggin GPS tried to get me to drive through bus only lanes and various other hijinx, but we eventually made it there. Along the way, I saw a Velodrome! Zoe had just awoken, so she was unfortunately in no mood to walk. She was however in the mood for a gaufre au chocolat.

A few pics from our outing:





Once we got home, Zoe insisted on stroking the baby. She is actually really gentle with Alex and seems to be quite interested in him. As long as she gets enough parent time and Alex doesn't eat her chocolate things, I think she will tolerate him!

slow day

Brought AAZN to the hotspital to do a blood test for jaundice. Not much doing besides that

Zoe meets Alex

I picked CZ and AAZN up from the hospital today and then drove to pick up ZZN in St. Egreve from the nanny. I had been looking forward to seeing how Zoe reacted to her freshly minted brother all day. I loaded her into the car seat and she immediately noticed something was different: another little human was in the back seat with her! Zoe turned to look at Alex for a few seconds, contemplated him with a slightly disinterested expression, and then looked back at me and said "CROISSANT!".

Once we got him home, though, she really seemed to take an interest:

food

In all the chaos of our re-introduction to france, it's not often that I get to enjoy the benefits of being back. Occasionally, however, I do get to smell the roses. It's always small things of course, since it's not like I'm going to be going to Ceuse or Annot anytime soon. Today for example I was buying Chloe and I lunch at an Ile Verte boulangerie. This place had all kinds of beautiful tartes, delicious sandwiches on bread right out of their gigantic brick oven, pain au chocolat in dark AND milk chocolate, walnut breads, perfect croissants and many other things. The truly amazing part is that boulangerie/patisseries like this are not even that uncommon here. As much as I love the bay area, there really isn't a single place that I can think of that does proper viennoiserie. Even places that come close, but charge an arm and a leg like Tartine are swimming in such a pool full of turds that they seem like the best thing in the world. In Grenoble (not a culinary capitol really!), Tartine would not even rate. For a pastry and bread aficionado like myself, that's pretty good news.

here we are, a day later

Alex Arrives

After the very surprise labor last night, this morning I dropped CZ off at the hospital (no one under 15 allowed in the hospital so I needed to drop ZZ off). She had been up all night with contractions which were very painful but not frequent or long lasting enough to merit a trip to the hospital in the middle of the night. I drove like a madman to St Egreve to drop ZZN off with the nanny, then back again to La Tronche, where there is NO GODDAM PARKING. Seriously, a hospital without a parking structure next to the baby building? I had to park 20 minutes away on foot. There did not turn out to be a huge hurry, since we were in for a long wait. After some initial questions, they escorted us to the birthing room, which was really nice-- Chartreuse views! I had to wear little booties, a gown and a hair net the whole time, but hey, at least I wasn't giving birth, right? We requested the epidural immediately, and they examined chloe who was now at 5 cm.


Chloe and I exchanged nervous glances, since that was how things started out with Zoe, and that was a loooong and painful story. A little later, after getting pumped full of epidural drugs, chloe was feeling better, but still at 5 cm. This was not looking good. Then the epidural stopped working, and the anesthesiologist very begrudgingly gave CZ another dose, to no avail. She even checked Chloe's drug port to make sure it was going in and not just running out over her back. I'm not sure if they thought chloe's screams of pain were a show for us, or perhaps she was a junkie in search of a fix or what, but it took a long time before they switched drugs. The problem with no working drugs was that Chloe was pushing before she was supposed to (because of the pain). The baby hadn't descended enough, so that was not a good thing. The good news was that she was at 10 cm now. After switching drugs, the baby's heart rate started slowing a bit, so all of a sudden I found myself in a very familiar situation: wife wheeled out of the birthing room, with me told to "restez la, monsieur" in an empty room hoping someone would remember to come get me. In a few minutes a nurse returned with scrubs for me to don (those things are comfy! I want to wear them all the time), and summoned me to the C-section room. "C-section room -- uh oh!!" Thankfully, drug #2 had kicked in and chloe was by now feeling pretty happy. It was 6 pm and they were going to give the baby another 40 minutes to descend. However, 20 minutes into the wait, the heart rate was not looking fantastic and they decided to try a vacuum extraction. I won't go into the details of this, but it was a pretty incredible thing to watch. They attach a vacuum cap to the head of the baby, and then pull like crazy while Chloe pushes. This is not a delicate maneuver -- the doctor looked like he was starting a two stroke engine. After four cycles of this and a little cutting (agh!), Alex was out and very cone headed. Chloe had been pushing like a champ and looked like she was about to pass out, but assured me that she was in no pain: her 8.5 month plan to get a drug fix had succeeded! They cleaned the baby off while chloe had to push the placenta out. The placenta is kind of disgusting looking and gigantic, to be perfectly honest. I have a nice picture of it for those of you that think that eating them is a cool custom. Next came 40 minutes of holding chloe's hand while they sewed her back up.

Hooray for Chloe! Alex was a little upset at being prodded, but otherwise quite happy.


Big thanks to Franck for offering to pick up ZZ, and for Lolo and Vero for picking her up and bringing her to their place. I didn't make it to St Egreve until 10 pm or so and they even put me up for the night so I didn't have to drive all the way across town.

labor!

on the way to the hospital.

plateau d'Emparis

We did a quick Carrefour run this morning, and then geared up for hiking in the Ecrins. After a little vacillation, we decided to try something new rather than le Lavey and chose a trail past some alpine lakes near the Col Saint-Georges. This also gave me a chance to shake down our new civic, and it definitely didn't disappoint: plenty of power to pass even going uphill, and it handles great. The ergonomics are very good too. Even with some pretty spirited driving (a little to the dismay of Chloe, probably), we averaged 35 mpg, which is very good in the mountains, I would say. The road to Bourg D'Oisans has been greatly improved since our last stay, with new wide roads and roundabouts where there used to be tiny roads that took you right through small towns. I'd be interested to hear about whether it has made much of a difference to the traffic going to the big ski resorts or not. Anyway, we didn't read the description of the trailhead access very carefully and missed the part about a 14km long "piste pastorale", which turned out to be a pretty goddamn scary narrow dirt road with a few thousand feet worth of cliff right off your bumper. No stress at all. Here's one of the less steep parts:


And here's our sexy new ride in the parking lot, a little dusty from the road up


The hike itself was beautiful. It passed through rolling alpine hills and unbelievable views of glaciers and La Meije for almost the entire walk.
Le Lac Noir (2440 meters):


Le Lac Lerie

The trail back

I must be out of shape because it was a pretty tiring hike, despite being quite short, and with very little altitude gain. While I was slogging up one of the steeper parts right near the Lac Cristallin, I reflected on how much your perspective can change once you have a kid. Chloe and I used to argue about equitable load distribution in our packs ("I have the rope!","But I have all the quickdraws!"), which seems pretty silly these days. The thought of a 9 pound rope in a one pound pack seems positively sublime compared to a screaming and lurching 30 pound 23 month old strapped a few inches from my ears.