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.