The cat

Bento has become popular with the castle kids, to his great misfortune. He is chased, and generally given more "love" than any cat could handle -- even a half kitten like Bento. He has been less of a hit with the castle cats, who have as expected looked upon this new arrival with suspicion. Because Bento is still small though, he tries to make friends with them and yesterday came back with a nice scratch on his nose. Apparently the other day the kids cooed as they watched Bento try to make friends with a particularly large and fluffy neighbour, rolling on the ground in front of her while the other cat hissed and arched her back. The kids were convinced that they were "falling in love" like in the movies though, and very excited.

Chloe loses her mind

A while ago I foolishly mentioned the existence of something called the Birthday Challenge (http://www.birthdaychallenge.com) which inspired chloe to do something crazy:  40km of running with over 7800 vertical feet of "up" and 4000 calories over the course of a day.  The kids and I did some support, and although she did not even notice it, I went out beforehand and wrote "Allez Chloe" in chalk on the ground.  Midway through we met her up at Mont St. Martin to bring her water and say hi.  She eventually called us from her second run up to Mont. St. Martin (this time with lolo) and we drove up to pick her up.  Congrats, CZ!!  My Bday challenge will be to eat 40 croissants.

New internet, at last!

Well actually we are paying for two internet connections, and one (Bouygues) has never really worked, and the other has not officially been in stalled yet, but we have wifi access from the middle of the yard. Anyway, we should be back in business soon.

Today, on this first real weekend day of Spring weather, we all went into town for some supplies for Ozenya: I'm going to attempt to make okonomiyaki, and ice creams for everyone at the green arch. The center was absolutely mobbed with people, so we all gave up pretty quickly.

Earlier, I did a ride up col de la Placette, the Grand Vervier, 1000 martyrs and back. The new bike position feels better on the knee, so I am quite happy. All told: 78 km and 1470 meters of climbing. I was taking it easy, but even so it felt pretty hard today.

Into town

For ice cream

Triple Zero

Exciting news:  we bought a new duvet.  OK, not terribly exciting, really.  It had been a while and I thought it was time for a new one, especially considering how long it had been and the fit that the down had been moving around a lot.  Rather than buy another cheap one, I checked out the well known French mountain apparel company: Triple Zero.  They use the best French down and have been working with it for a long time.  I looked at their jackets a few years ago, and the construction is really impressive.  The only thing I don't really like is the cut and looks of the jackets (same story with Valandre).  Anyway, they make fully "cloisonné" duvets as well, which means that the seams do not traverse the duvet.  We received it today, and WOW is it warm and well built.

Climbing

Bento exploring the top of the hedges

Catnip

A ride

Along the digue, then Parmenie.  I did the very steep little road that goes North from the col too:  very pretty!

Christine here!!

Nerd cat

Hank's stomping grounds

First ride of the year with Hank, and this time on his side of the valley. I rode through town to meet him at a funeral home (is it bad luck to start a ride at a funeral home?) and stopped at a bike shop that I had never seen before. It is a warren of old bikes, wheels and parts and is apparently the oldest bike shop in grenoble. The owner has rooms full of bikes (300 or so per room, if I understood correctly). I'll have to get back there to spend some more time looking through them.

Anyway, on to the ride... It was great to ride with Hank again, catch up and put places to the names of the climbs that he does frequently. We probably ride together once every few months, but every time we meet it feels like we ride a lot more often.  He's like an old friend that I haven't actually known for that long.

We did three nice climbs (Hurtieres, Ayes and Barrioz), all under the Belledonne and the 7 Laux resort. Memorable things were: two amazing descents, riding next to the snow banks, almost crashing because there were huge piles of sawdust in the middle of the road, and just enjoying the biggest ride the year (so far) with a buddy.

Single Parenthood, day 5

After another early morning, the kids and I made Mickey Mouse(tm) pancakes and then headed to the climbing gym. The kids let me do a little bouldering while they played with toy cars, and then I belayed Zoe up some climbs. It was the first time that she had clipped a rope into quickdraws, and I was quite proud of her. This was on top rope, and she back clipped every draw, but still! From there, we went to the Grenoble Museum to see the new Giacometti show. It had just opened and was totally mobbed. I was a little chagrined because I couldn't find my membership card, and it is not computerised... and then I remembered that a yearly membership costs 18 euros, so I just bought another one. "Kids" under 18 are free by the way, so a one day father and kids visit to the Cal Academy is two times more expensive than an entire year of all-you-can consume museuming at the Grenoble museum.

In the exhibit, I ran into our old friends (and climbers!) Martin and Marianne and their kids. I remembered that Marianne's cubicle at the IBS had been plastered with Giacometti postcards and was actually about to text them to tell them about the exhibition. My kids ran out of energy about midway through, so we left, went home and spent the rest of the afternoon doing very little of anything.

Single Parenthood, Day 4

Chloe is in CA, so I have had the rodents kids to myself. I honestly don't understand how single parents do it without any help. After a few days, I was pretty exhausted. Now, after the fourth day, I am VERY exhausted. I was thinking that since the kids are impossible to wake up during the week, that I would get to sleep in a little this morning. Unfortunately, both were up at 7:15 and pounding on the bed. After trying the Picard corissants that a friend recommended (pretty good!) I went to the garage to dust off the bike trailer, and attach it to my mountain bike. The plan was a little expedition to the market in la Monta, and the kids were literally jumping up and down with excitement. We did not end up using the bike trailer that much in Fontanil because it was such a hassle to carry it up and down the stairs. Now that we have a garage, however, it is no problem. Let's ignore the fact that both kids should be biking by themselves. I took a winding, traffic avoiding route to get to the market, with squeals of excitement piercing the calm EARLY morning air. We eventually arrived at the market after I discovered that even mild uphill grades are not easy while towing the kids. We loaded up on cheese, bread and veggies and then headed home, with more trailer excitement along the way. After the kids ate all the bread (no I am not bitter), we took the car down to the nursery and bought two 40 Litre bags of dirt, one 20L bag of rocks, and a whole mess o' flower seeds, planters and potted plants. When I asked about big shovels however, the guy looked at me like I was crazy. I guess it's another one of those cultural differences, because to him it seemed perfectly normal that they would not have big things like say, a rake, but did have small things like mini garden shovels! Anyway, the nursery is great despite it's lack of tools, and the people are very knowledgeable. We drove back home, did a lot of digging and accidental massacring of worms (ok, less than accidental in Alex's case, despite my repeated admonishment) and planted almost everything. Later, we went back for even more soil and rocks, and now my back is killing me. I bet the garden will look pretty nice soon though. I left room for tomatoes and other veggies, which we will put in later. Bento spent a lot of time scattering the dirt, so I decided against planting the catnip seeds we bought.

Montaud, again

I took advantage of the beautiful weather and rode Montaud via St. Quentin today. Above the village a car pulled over while I was putting my wind breaker on and the guy inside the car asked me where I was from and told me that he rode a lot too and had in fact done the climb I just did the day before… after more than 100 km of riding! He looked like he was in his mid sixties too. The fitness of the average Grenoblois always impresses me

Hey, no internet again!

We haven't had internets for the last 1.5 weeks, so it's been hard to post… i'll try to do a few updates anyway though, using the phone. Thanks, Bouygues!

More skiing

Chloe and I had not really anticipated how much Zoe would enjoy skiing, and actually I was resigned to having to bribe her just to take lessons. Over the last few weeks though, she has surprised us both with how quickly she picked it up and more importunely how much she loves it! The result has been that we have taken her for half days at several places, like St. Nizier, l'Aigle and lans. It looks like this was the last weekend of snow, however so we thought we would bring both kids up to Lans for lessons. Alex, seeing his sister's excitement, has been dying to go but at only three years old cannot go into the group lessons, so we signed him up for an individual lesson. We put Zoe in a two hour lesson in the "Jardin des infants". It might have been due to the fact that the instructors had by now probably picked kids up thousands of times, dealt with many hundreds of temper tantrums, wiped a few hundred noses, and many taken them to many peepee breaks, but our impression was that the group instruction was way better at Meaudre; I think we'll stick with Meaudre for next year. Anyway, Alex's lesson did not begin well


With much crying for mommy for the first few minutes. The ski instructor was very patient though, and after pitching off the moving walkway

Alex was on his way







By the end Alex was even snowplowing a little! The instructor (Benjamin) told us that he was really impressed with Alex's first lesson. At one point the instructor had Alex hold onto Zoe, and they skied down together, which was adorable.

Zoe did great, mastering left and right turns as well as stopping and received her "Ourson" certification.



We of course bought the little medal for her

And a Piou-piou medal for ales


Despite not having skied ourselves, Chloe and I were pretty exhausted by lunchtime.

Later on we went to a friends place in Bourgoin, where I grafted some plums and plots to various trees (Apricot, Cherry, Plum) and we had a delicious meal with excellent wine.

Ride

I rode 4 Seigneurs for the first time today -- a decent climb, but I think next time I will do it from the other direction (Herbeys). Terrible air quality though, which seems to be common in the early spring here





Later on, I drove the kids up alongside Chloe, who was running to Poroveysieux, and we I got them to yell "A-llez maMA!" as we passed her

Montaud

Rode Montaud from Veurey for the first time since 2011. It felt ok but was again suffering with the pollution

Zoe Skiing

Today was the second day of Zoe's ski lesson. Her first day went a little poorly: according to the instructor, Zoe cried for the whole lesson! Chloe told me that despite this, she did very well. I was on call at work, so could not go. Today, however it was my turn (Chloe had PTSD from bringing Alex and Zoe on Saturday). Anyway, after convincing Zoe that she just had to go for long enough for me to take pictures so that I could get send them to Nana and Jicha (who I promised would be really impressed), we drove up to Meaudre. It had been absolutely dumping snow all night long, so it took a while to remove the snow from the car and the roads in St. Egreve were a bit of a mess. The road up to the plateau was, however totally clear. I guess they keep it well cleared for all the ski traffic. After Lans, we made a right to go over the col du Croix Perrin. This road was totally unplowed and very slippery, but no match for driving slowly, four snow tires and traction control. Some complete morons stopped in the middle of the road -- 10 meters from a chain turnout) to put their chains on, nearly causing accidents in both directions. This was right at a bend in the road! It is vacation time now, so there are a lot of clueless drivers about. Anyway, we eventually made it to Meaudre, which is a tiny town with a tiny ski resort. On the walk to the lesson, Zoe was already beginning to get apprehensive, but the prospect of showing off for Nana and Jicha (and a lollipop) changed her mind. The instructor put the bib on and off she went.

In France, there is an organization called the ESF: It is an organization that molds floppy and unwilling babies into stylish hot-doggers. I was a little worried that it would be the Ski version of Les quatre cents coups, but it was awesome. The lesson is only an hour and a half long, so I stayed at the side after being reprimanded by one instructor for coming too close. I took pictures and watched the pros at work. The instructors have a very effective and amazingly child adapted lesson plan. There is always something new for the kids to try, but at the same time (unbeknownst to them), they are learning the fundamentals of balance and movement on skis.

Observing the instructors, you could tell that this system has been extremely well thought out, and that the instructors have been well trained. When things started going wrong and a child started melting down, they would respond gently but quickly, and with more patience than I could muster after picking up the hundredth kid with skis going in opposite directions and bawling. I saw one kid making a daring escape, only to be chased down by an instructor and coaxed back to the group. The little one had made it an impressive distance towards the exit and had even managed to remove one ski! Instructors here are not like the average US instructor: they are not here just for pizza money and a free season pass, but for a lifetime career in the ESF and it shows.

Anyway, I got to see Zoe master the top tow:

Skiing through obstacles

and then proudly finding her daddy at the end of the lesson


She is in the "Piou-Piou" section. There will be a test at the end of the week, which if she passes will qualify her for the Ourson level (which also has a test)… then there are a bunch of other levels like Flocon, etoile etc etc. I think i might be more excited than Zoe for the Piou-Piou medal!