Market, Brocante, Museum

Today was market day, as it is every Sunday. Zoe picked out eggs, and we bought other staples. Zoe found the hot chocolate vendor:


Wild boar salami!!



Someone had brought this tiny bike to market:

Next, we drove into town and experienced a mega traffic jam, which was centered around the Brocante (antique market) along the Pt. St. Laurent side of the river. They were just packing up when we arrived, unfortunately.


Next stop: The museum Café for more hot chocolate, a tarte tatin, and a little museuming

Cross de L'hopital

Today, after an intense regime of training (i.e. no training at all), I ran in the 19th Cross de l'hopital. Franck had run it last year, and this year tried in earnest to organize other people from work to go. As a result, we were quite well represented. I had planned on training for it, but only succeeded in running once, a few weeks ago. Since it was only 7 km, I was not very worried, and even less so given that it was a benefit race that no one in our section would be taking too seriously! While we were milling around the start line, I heard the name "Bernard Thévenet" several times, and finally realized that it was because he was announcing the race. I did not actually know who that was, but it turns out that he is a Tour de France winner from the mid seventies.

It was a beautiful, but cold day, and the pace was quite easy. Franck was wearing a fantastic set of gigantic red glasses with blue lenses, and a red mohawk, so it was very amusing running with him. Peoples faces would light up as he would pass by, and you would see photographers along the course scanning aimlessly through the crowd, see Franck, and then start madly snapping pictures. I'm sure he will be well represented on Flickr.

I rode my bike to and from the race. At 26 km, getting there was much longer than the race itself, but it was a nice day to be cruising along the side of the Isére.

A clown show

Every year, a children's "Spectacle" is offered through work. Zoe was too small to go last year (or I missed the sign up!), but this year I took Zoe. She had started the day with a visit to the doctor's office with Christine and Chloe, and lunch in town, so she was already a little worn out when she was handed off to me. For the spectacle, everyone meets at work with their kids, where they have arranged for buses to take us to the venue. It was a little strange (normally anyone under 18 years old is forbidden from entering the campus), but kind of cute to see so many kids running around. After getting some differing opinions about which bus to board, we got onto number six and waited for a while until it was finally time to go. We took a somewhat bizarre and circuitous route, but eventually made it there, disembarked, and then ... milled around again for a while before we were allowed to walk in and take our seats. Zoe and I were in the nosebleed seats, but we could still see well enough, and Zoe enjoyed the show. One of the clowns was named "Babu", which also happens to be Zoe's name for her most treasured blanket, so she was at first a little confused by all the yelling about Babu.

After the clown show was over, Père Noël appeared, whom Zoe recognized, and a kid riot commenced. Zoe is still quite shy around other kids, so I eventually had to step in to get her to make some progress towards the man with the treats.

Père Noël delivered a book and a bag full of chocolates


Afterwards, it was back to the work cafeteria for snacks and drinks. Chloe and Christine were waiting for us, much to Zoe's delight. It had been a long day, and she was ready to go home

New Camera

We bought a new camera (largely for kid pictures), after many months of looking at lens MTF charts, reviews, sample images etc etc. I was getting a little fed up with it all, mostly because I could not seem to find anything that met our needs. I was leaning towards the big sensor compacts, but very few of them seem to produce decent images. Recently, though, our friend Mark recommended that I look at the Pentax SLRs, and I was very happy to see that the new K-5 has a lot going for it: relatively small body, not ultra-heavy, excellent dynamic range, excellent low light performance, and best of all, super sharp SMALL prime lenses that were designed specifically for an APS-C sensor. I was beginning to give up hope on APS-C sensors, because I was worried about range, but the sensor tests at DXO reveal that this sensor is one of the best that they have tested, and in their tests even outperforms (in dynamic range) some full frame sensors.

Christine here!!

poo storm

I just had one of those moments that most parents have probably experienced: the terrible moment when you realize that your child has pulled a Trail of Poo on you. For those of you without kids, or for whom the Trail of Poo is a distant memory, it goes a little like this: You pick your child up and notice that he or she smells bad. This is nothing out of the ordinary: we have long ago come to terms with the reality of wiping excrement off the butt of another human being. You are a pro. You heave the child up to your chest, bring him/her to the changing table, and strip off the pants. It looks like a big one, but again: you're a pro, right? Then you see that the poo has escaped the diaper (mounting alarm). Shortly afterwards, you see that it has escaped into the onesy (flustered searching for a second box of wipes). Next, things happen in rapid succession, and you're not a pro anymore, you're a first-day-home -from-the-hospital newbie again. There is crap on the OUTSIDE of the onesy. There is crap on the outside of the shirt. You look down: there is a big dab of poo on the front of your shirt. And look! There's some on your arm. The next steps are hardly worth discussing except to note that it involves shrieking, a bath, lots of wipes, a laundry session, and industrial cleaning solutions.

Sledding

after being cooped up for three days with various sicknesses, I felt well enough to take Zoe down the street for a little sledding

Ooof

Well, in addition to the weakness sickness, an intestinal disorder of some kind attacked at four in the morning last night. Excellent. Alex happened to be up too, so I could at least take care of him. Meanwhile, the stack of things that I need to do at work is reaching a critical level. Today, my office has been the bathroom, and it has taken all my energy to foce down some bread and brew countless cups of tea.

It started snowing quite hard again:





Someone call Monsieur Plow!

Snow

It's snowed quite heavily over night; we had a six inch thick mattress of snow on the car this morning! Zoe was of course delighted, and started scooping up snow to throw at me as soon as we stepped outside. Unfortunately, her second handful was about two inches away from some yellow snow. I managed to grab her before she got to the urine snow though. Both Chloe and I managed to get the cold that has been going around, and feel terrible.

Williams

Chloe and I continued our training regime in the climbing gym today, and in the changing room I noticed that a man was wearing a "Williamstown, MA" sweatshirtt. It's rare to hear English, let alone American English being spoken in the gym, so I quickly got the back story: His dad was a math professor at Williams, and he is a professional translator in Grenoble. The Williams connection is everywhere!

Thanksgiving

We went to have Thanksgiving dinner/lunch at Mary-Jane's today. We all had a very nice time, with Zoe playing with the other kids, Legos, and a big, fluffy dog. Alex also accosted the dog, demanded to be held, and played with Legos. I realized afterwards that it had been two years since our last Thanksgiving meal! Of course, last year Chloe and I made grand plans to make a big meal this year.. but you know how that goes. Recently we have been in survival mode, just trying to keep up with work and the kids. Maybe next year.

le Sappey

On the first major snow of the season, we loaded the kids up and drove to Le Sappey to do some sledding. Zoe was in heaven (PLUS VITE!! (faster!)), but the wind and cold did not exactly agree with poor Alex, and we had to abort "Mission: Luge" after fifteen minutes. I'm sure there will be plenty of other opportunities


We though Alex might enjoy riding the sled WITH Zoe, but he expressed a slight preference to instead go back to the warm car.

Oysters!

We bought oysters from Utah Beach today from the fish guy, and they were *fantastic*

market

ZZ, as usual, chose the eggs for us

Then we went into town, walked up to the middle of the Bastille


and then went to the Bookworm cafe for scones and espresso. yes!

on call

another wasted weekend!

Hamburg

Work trip to Hamburg. Note to self: get sick just before future work trips to Hamburg. The only redeeming parts of the trip were:
+remembering to get on the right side of the plane for the best views


A panorama pieced together from many photos. I used the amazing content aware fixing to fill in a gap at the upper right. A bit of cheating!




+A fun dinner with some of the Grenoble guys
+And a 30 euro bottle of Ardbeg at the Duty Free.

I barely made my connection in Toulouse on the way back. No idea why it makes sense to fly from Hamburg to Lyon via Toulouse!

Attack of the pig clouds!

Market, Bastille, Grenoble

After a morning at the market (the most exciting purchases was two year old comté and Tomme au marc de raisin)

Next, we went into town and walked up a few switchbacks of the Bastille

Before stopping into the Bookworm café, which was wonderful. They even have a kids area downstairs.


Then, back over the Pont Saint Laurent

and home

Garde Adhémar

We hit the road today and headed to La Garde Adhémar today (~1:30 from Grenoble). We had seen the town many times because it is perched on a high bluff overlooking the A7 to Marseille, but we had never stopped to take a look. It turns out to be yet another charming Southern town,




with cobbled streets and charming doorways -- yawn (just kidding)! There is a small garden

where they grow medicinal herbs on the western side, which we walked through and in which I discovered a nice Arbutus. The arbutus looked essentially the same as the one in our yard in Oakland, and I was reminded of my friend and coworker Steve, who brought me back some delicious medronho from Portugal. Thanks again, Steve! Anyway, there is an excellent central square with a few cafés. After a few weeks of Grenoble rain, it felt great to sit outside at a table soaking up the sun, drinking espressos and eating crêpes. We watched people playing boules in the dirt while being serenaded by the lilting whine of Alex and the "FEED ME"s of Zoe.

In addition to the beautiful sunny skies (did I mention that it was sunny?), it was also quite clear, and we could see all the way to the Giant of Provence: Ventoux

As well as the less scenic cooling towers from the nearby nuclear reactors. Interestingly, "the man" appears to have reduced the available resolution of Google Maps for the reactor complex:

View Larger Map

Day off with Zoe

Today was a French holiday, but I was on call for work, so after setting up the beamline, I decided to go into Grenoble with Zoe. I figured that if something bad happened at the beam, I could drop ZZ off at home and be back there within the acceptable time (happily, no problems occurred). We started off with a trip to the museum, where we saw the Balkenhol exhibit. I quite liked it but Zoe was generally unimpressed until she saw the room full of Penguins. Next, it was downstairs to see some of the permanent collection, where I saw a painting from Gerhard Richter's series of candles (familiar to many of us as the cover to Daydream Nation). From the musée, it was on to a park in the quartier St. Laurent. It met with Zoe's approval, except for the fact that there was no slide, so it was soon time to move on. Along the way, we passed a really cool looking cafe which was unfortunately closed. We had a lovely café and syrop de menthe right next to the pont Saint Laurent.

From there, it was on to the excellent, but chaotic park at the jardin de ville, where I received more questioning looks regarding my black eyed daughter.



After chasing Zoe around for a while, we left with the intention of buying some shelves at the IKEA, but it was a complete mad house, so I chickened out and left without even parking. Instead, we went to Espace Montagne, where zoe played on the kids climbing wall, and I tried on some fancy down jackets. For some reason Espace Montagne has organized their gigantic outerwear section according to brand, not function! So if you are looking for a shell, you have to traverse the entire floor looking at the various brands. Even so, it is more comfortable than the tiny Vieux Campeur, where every jerk outdoors enthusiast in Grenoble seems to go!

dropping Zoe off

Today, Zoe's eye socket is an angry shade of purple, but at least her eye is open. More explanations were of course necessary at the school drop off. This is getting embarassing!!

Chloes run

Chloe ran the Ekiden today with Francois and Laurent, and did really well! She was the 28th woman out of 235 (unfortunately classified as a man by the organisers, though).

Meanwhile, I took the kids shopping at the market and had to explain the state of Zoe about ten times. She is better today, but still looks pretty bad.

Zoe's black eye

Zoe tripped today, while running through the living room and smacked her eyebrow on the glider chair. We didn't think it was anything out of the ordinary at first, but a gold ball lump appeared within a few minutes, and had almost closed her eye by the early evening.

Proveysieux

swapped front wheels today and went for a ride up to Proveysieux. They finished reopaving the lower half and it is soooo nice and smooth now! Of course, tractors have already managed to grind hardened mud into the beautiful and otherwise pristine asphalt... bastards!

Vieux Campeur .. in Grenoble?

One of my favorite outdoor stores in the world is Au Vieux Campeur. They might not have very good prices, but they have *everything*. For years, there has been debate in Grenoble about whether a VC in Grenoble would be a good thing. It actually seems a little weird to not have one in such a sporty town, but they finally opened one in a new american style mall downtown that used to be military barracks. I'm not sure who the biggest opponents were, but I have heard that places like Espace Montagne were behind the anti VC campaign. Who knows. My suggestion to Espace Montagne is to think about ohh I don't know... lowering their prices?! I'm not sure what they are really worried about, since it is possible to stay in business with the worst possible service and products (e.g. Intersport). In any case, the new VC is pretty good, and they had a huge selection of down jackets (doudounes in French), and I have a new object of covetousness: a Pertex enclosed 850 fill power jacket. I was also amazed to see the asking price for the GoPro Helmetcam: 349 euro! In the states it is 300 dollars (~213 euro). Highway robbery! There should be outrage and burning of cars in the French helmet cam community!

Annecy

Since it was raining AGAIN, we decided to take a drive up to Annecy for a change of (wet) scenery. We wandered around the lake, ate some crepes in a cafe, rode a merry-go-round (twice), and fled when it started to get really cold.

ducks

Zoe and I went to the Rocheplaine park to feed ducks.


On our way out, I saw that some company has been contracted to remove some of the rocks perched above the roundabout. You can see the climbing cliff at the upper left of the top photo. The base of the cliffs are now fenced off, and climbing has of course been shut down. It looks like they are doing a pretty terrible job though: many white rock scars now dot the face from rocks getting crowbarred off. I have a feeling that a lot of bolts will need replacing. Color me unimpressed.

Update

Not too many updates recently, as we have been pretty busy, as well as a bit stranded with the lack of diesel. We went to the gas stations three times over the past few weeks, but they were either out, or closed! Nest time we will do as the French do: at the first sign of a strike, head for the gas station to weather the storm. After a pre-reconnaissance on bike on Monday, I managed to get 50 euro worth of fuel. Nice.

In other news, I finally cut Alex's hair, having learned the secrets of fine coiffure via the YouTube Haircare Institute. I was actually prepared for an emergency trip to the hair place for him, but it turned out great! I will post pictures soon.

happy birthday Zoe!!

Zoe and Alex sick!

all weekend... and it rained the whole time, too!

Strike

We are now having a hard time finding diesel for our car, and the ATM machine in town is out of money (armored car service on strike, apparently). At least is obliges us to bike to work! I don't really understand what all the noise is about. There must be something else at work besides moving the retirement age to 62, because that really does not sound so bad!

A bike for Zoe

The nanny had told us that one of the other children that she watches has a new bike, which was the object of much Zoe desire (and the source of some disputes, apparently), so we decided to look for a bike with training wheels for Zoe this weekend. After trying out five or size bikes, we bought this fine machine.

Despite the fact that it was raining, we had to go test it out immediately. She insisted on riding up the gentle hill that takes you to the park "BY SELF", which was going fine until she ran out of torque and started rolling backwards down the hill.


That's the first part of me saying "Uh oh" at the end, and running to stop her.

Once in the lot, she amazed me with her speed and bike handling.


She did manage to wreck once, when she attempted a turn at high speed and ended up toppling over. This was followed by tears and daddy hugs, and a puzzled look when I asked her if she wanted to go home. She backed away from me as if I was insane (for having the temerity to suggest that she stop riding her new bike, I assume), threw a leg over the bike and sped off. I think she's going to be a professional cyclocross or mountain bike rider. After twenty or thirty laps around the baby park criterium, we headed home for cupcakes.

Down jackets

I've been looking at replacements for my now not very lofty down jacket, but have been unable to find anything decent. Chloe's excellent Moonstone jacket is still in great shape, eight years later, and is my benchmark for excellence. It had fleece lined pockets and a comfy, insulated hood back when those features were pretty rare. Unfortunately, Moonstone appears to have gone out of business, so I've been looking at Mountain Hardwear and Patagucci. I thought that "fill power" was the only important number in assessing the quality of the the insulation, until I came upon the web site of Valandre. Valandre is a French company that makes some of the lightest and highest performance sleeping bags in the world (with an appropriately elevated price). I've probably mentioned them once or twice before. In any case, they make jackets too, and when I was browsing their web site, I came upon a page that they had created, which was devoted to information about their down:

http://www.valandre.com/graygoose.php
translation

Things I did not know that affect the quality of the down:
the age of the animal,
the quality of food,
how the goose was raised,
the BREED of the goose!