Packing

The hardest part was the bike. Also, we had to weigh everything since there were so many kid gifts

Sukiyaki

I miss sukiyaki a lot too. I'm not sure what I did to aggravate Zoe here, but she was clearly not happy with me. Note the learning chopsticks which the children appear to have already lost.

Dinner at Rivoli

Wonderful, as usual. Terrible pictures though!

Academy of Sciences

We went to the Academy of Sciences with the kids and nana today. It is a fabulous museum that the kids love, and we were happy to take them there but whoever runs it needs to get a grip -- it's just too much money. We were talking to a camp councillor in the East Bay, and she told us that even with the (meager) discount for camps, they could not afford to bring their kids there. Science education is a privilege of the rich, I guess.

From there, we had some amazing Pho in the Richmond district and we ACTUALLY FOUND PARKING ON CLEMENT STREET!

Arrgrghghgh

Broke the iPhone back

more food!

One of the other foods that we really miss is Indian food. One of our previous favorite places in Grenoble seems to have replaced their cooks with teenagers, so the food is terrible now and for some inexplicable reason, everyone seems to love this one place (Namaste?) which has *terrible*, over salted Indian food. Basically, there are a few ok places for Indian food in Grenoble, but nothing that is really off the charts like Ajanta.

Today, the parents and I went with Zoe to Ajanta for lunch, and it was awesome. The best Indian food anywhere.


And then it was "cool sunset time"

NYE

My first new years eve at a party in many years, I think. I met up with Terry and Ben at their friends place jun Oakland, not too far from where Zoe used to go to day care. Their friends had an amazing bar setup in the basement of their house and were making an impressive array of mixed drinks. They also had several really nice beers on tap and fancy aperos. Oh yeah, and one of them had built his own custom bike frame. Cool company.

Mt Diablo

Somehow in my entire time living in the bay area I never made it up to Mt. Diablo. Today I rode the Ritchey up it with Dominic, and it's a pretty fantastic climb. Not especially steep, but with good views and a lot of elevation.

The Codornices, Rose garden

My mom and I took Zoe to the Rose Garden and the Big Slide at Cordonices. We brought cardboard with us and Zoe loved it, as predicted

Nest

Some of you might have heard about the Nest smart thermostat. I had been looking at these and if not for the bungled software when used outside of the US, I would have found a way to replace our thermostat chez nous with one of these fancy things (the other technical problem is that the Nest is a low voltage device, and thermostats in Euroland run on the full 220V). As it happened, my parents' fifty year old thermostat was not regulating temperature anymore, so I told them about the Nest. My mom accepted the idea with some trepidation, we went to Best Buy to get one, and I pulled off the old thermostat. The old thermostat was quite a simple device, with a HUGE glob of mercury jostling around inside an ampoule

Nest make it pretty easy to do the install, but they cannot help you if the wires are fifty years old, are fabric insulated and have no markings whatsoever on them. The good news is that there were only two wires, and I happened to guess correctly regarding where they should go and we were quickly up and running. There were some hijinx with the Nest account, but that turned out to be on the Nest server side. I suspected my parents older router but that happily turned out not to be the case. I downloaded the Nest app to mom's iPad (and my iPhone -- hee hee!) and set up here account. It worked pretty much instantly and I'm really impressed. At first I thought that it was kind of a lot to pay for a thermostat but having actually installed and used it I think it is well worth the money. If they ever get their act together for a Euro version I will probably get one. The only Nest "competitor" is the Tado (http://blogs.wsj.com/tech-europe/2012/11/15/will-europe-warm-to-the-tado-smart-thermostat/), which seems to have gotten every part of it wrong. Annual subscription, smartphone dependent, generic white box… what's the opposite of a home run?

Anyway, my parents are officially high tech now.

Sauls

With the parents and Zoe


Meanwhile, Chloe and Alex are off to Arizona and Utah… sniff!

Kirala

This trip has been a bit of a culinary extravaganza for us. The food is of course wonderful in France, but it lacks some of the diversity of the Bay Area. A few things in particular are dearly missed: Thai food, Mexican food, Chinese food, decent Hamburgers (I know, sometimes it's the simple things), and Japanese food. (dorothy voice)I miss YOU most of all, Japanese food(/dorothy voice). So tonight we got to go to Kirala, and it was wonderful … and everything I had built it up to be. The kids loved it all too, except the wasabi. They also spurned the usually kid friendly tekka-maki. Zoe was a big fan of the tempura ice cream



Bliss!!

Pinhurst

Rode Pinehurst withe Vera! pretty cold today

Enjoying the grandparents place

LHOS

Went to Lawrence Hall of Science with Big and Little John, Evie, Amy, Chloe and the kids. We started off upstairs

Then wandered to the magnetic shavings in liquid

then to the ping pong ball whirlpool

Where two parents thought it was hilarious that their kids were crawling under the display to stop the balls from exiting the funnel.
Then to the fluid flow display


Then outside to some of the seismic installations


and then downstairs to handle animals!

(note the look of awe on the face of the kid to the left)

And then Zoe graciously shared her French Fries

Bibimbap with Keith at Bowl'd! The Mung bean pancakes were awesome.

Xmas eve

Briefly met up with the gang at Inspiration Point after I rode 3 Bears

Crappy weather be damned!

Alex and I went up to one of my childhood haunts: the Tilden steam trains! I don't think Alex had been up there before. The weather continued to be very unCalifornian, but we are tough dudes, so we went anyway. The first bad sign was the light drizzle accumulating on our windshield. The second bad sign was the fact that on a Saturday we were one of three families up there. Anyway, Alex and I thought that the view would be better from one of the uncovered cars, which in retrospect was maybe not the best idea. Soon the rain began in earnest and then the hail started. Happily, it was not golf ball sized hail, but little mini hail balls. Regardless, alex was not very happy

Tree decoration

Bike ride

Got to ride (with the new bike!) some of Ian's previously local roads around Stanford, including Old La Honda. ~43 miles round trip. There is some pretty nice riding out there.

The bike

The plan was simple: buy an old crappy bike so that I could enjoy some riding in CA, and then leave it there. While I was shopping for one, however I found a used steel travel frame (Ritchey BreakAway) on the 'Bay for a great price, so I bid on it and got it. From there I bought every component, one by one used off the'Bay as well and had them delivered to Berkeley (sorry, mom!) and arranged for it to be built up at Mike's bikes. The build went fine, and here is my new to me travel bike!

The guy building it said that it built up as light as a low full carbon rig he had just done at 18.2 pounds (8.25kg). Not too shabby for a steel travel bike.