looking for a hot water boiler?

of course you are.  This one is fantastic (having melted two cheaper ones already.  We are a tea-heavy family)

Another excellent ride with Hank

Up the infamous climb from Sechilliane to Luitel:  Tiny, very steep roads!

Spring is here

And the cherry and plum blossoms have arrived

Zoe and Alex sidcovered that Nutella come in family size today

and I saw a balloon floating down the Isere

Quaix

Zoe has been going up to Quaix with school for field trips -- they have been doing hikes, nature discovery and today she brought home a chausson pommes that she had baked in a wood fired oven.  Excellent!

A ride up to Proveysieux and down by Quaix.  The Tour de France will ride up this road this summer.

A hike on the Neron

with the kids!  

They are getting much better about hiking, finally.

Trieves

It had been a long time, but I finally rode with Hank again!  A wonderful and scenic ride through the Trieves:  what a wonderful area.  There is something very unique about it, but I haven't yet put my finger on it.

Skiing

Today was the last day of skiing classes for the imps.  Chloe and I drove up (chloe was somewhat sickened by the ride, unfortunately) into the snow to watch the last few seconds of their skiing and to see them get their medailles.  All this time we had been terrified that theyw would not have enough food to eat, but discovered that they get all sorts of snacks and drinks.  At one point we turned around to find Alex, cheeks stuffed chipmunk like with marshmallows.

Cheese

For Chloe's going away party

which was then finished by our little fromage-enthusiasts

POWAH

yay for measuring power again -- this time at the pedals !

First recovery ride

Digue, then Montaud.  My legs felt sooooo terrible, but the air was good today, and the sun was out

Chloe, slapping for slopers

Cactus cupcakes, v 1.0!

Back in the saddle

I discovered a new trail down from Proveysieux, the hamlet above where we live.

A hike with alex

I went on daddy-son hike with Alex up to the Aiguille de Quaix:  a solitary finger of rock visible from the valley floor.  Alex is still finding his hiking legs, so I wasn't sure if he would make it, but he really impressed me and stomped his way all the way to the rock.  Along the way I carried him across a river (twice!),

we found a patch of snow and threw snowballs at each other, we both slipped and fell in the mud, and we scrambled up the rocky flanks of the aiguille itself.

 I should mention also that the pollution has been terrible lately and the particulate count was as bad as Beijing today.  That was part of the motivation for going up into the mountains: usually the air is a lot betters.  And while I'm sure it was better than the valley, I was surprised that even at that altitude (~1100 meters),

I could barely see the Chamchaude (2100 m) because of all the haze.

APCs

My morning commute, while short, can still be entertaining.  I cross a train bridge as part of it, and today there were people staring at something in the train yard below.  I stopped and discovered that it was the army, rolling armored personnel carriers into a neat row.  Who knows where they are off to, but they were in a hurry.

A cake

A cake for Stephanie!

A bike ride

Which precipitated some crazy flu like symptoms.  Back to the sick bed

CT

So I've been pretty sick for the past two months.  Sinusitis compounded with a bunch of other stuff.  Finally, my doctor wrote me a script to go get a CT done of my head to determine if there was excessive inflammation/fluid buildup/etc.  They give you a CD at the end with all the tomographic slices, so I did the obvious nerdy thing and assembled a 3D model.  I give you: GoldMax

I'm trying to get it into a format to 3D print now.

A train, closeup

Falling cats

Bento seems to enjoy jumping on the roof and tailgate of our car.  Normally this isn't a problem, except when I don't see him up there!  What happens next is that I shut the tailgate and get clawed by a desperately scrabbling falling furball

The Vercors

Climbing!

The Vercors

Hamburgers!

Hanging out with Zoe

Zoe finds an egg!

Grenoble

My new go-to recipe:  Broccoli soup!