Alinea

Today, after much prodding I convinced Chloe to go to a store called Alinea, which I had heard a lot about but somehow never ventured out to. In the past couple of weeks there were at least four occasions when I would mention that I was looking for something and someone would say: "Oh they have those for really cheap at Alinea". So today we drove to St. Egreve, and (I was at least) were blown away. I was expecting a kind of Le Ikea, but it was so much more. Most of the furniture was of pretty high quality, and their lighting department was amazing. Instead of having a large section of floor dedicated to say "beds", they have little three walled setups to simulate what a room would look like with a bed, and a perfectly chosen dresser, lamp, footstool, desk etc. It made both of us yearn for a place of our own where we could buy a nice bed that doesnt break our backs, track halogen lighting, and a bookcase! But we were there to find frames for the twenty or so 16x20 cibachromes I brought back from Berkeley. Except for a metal bathroom rack, a pyrex measuring cup and a fancy ergonomic oyster knife, we stayed mostly on track. I found some decent light oak frames with pre-cut mats; the only problem is that many of my cibachromes have white borders, so I'll still have to cut mats for some of them. Now I just need to enlist the sage advice of my dad on tricks for archival framing.
Here is chloe, red handed in the glass section

Grenoble at night

Theres a certain understated elegance of just plain white xmas lights

Xmas

The center of Grenoble is charming even in the half freezing drizzle that we get this time of year. It has a certain somber beauty to it, which is quickly lost as soon as you move out of the center and into the socialist block house neighborhoods. Yesterday we had xmas lunch with a woman from work and her family in the region between the center and the block houses (in a quiet part of town near the Parc Paul Mistra)l. They have three children who are perfectly bilingual; I was very jealous (of being bilingual, not having three children)






It was a lot of fun, and we ate a bit too much food, as usual. The highlights were oysters and a goose with apple stuffing. I made potatoes in our new saucepan


Several hours later we left, and went to our friends Dave and Sandy's apartment. Sandy gave birth to a son (Dylan) earlier this month, and it was the first time I got to see him, which was a lot of fun. We continued gorging ourselves, but ate a more north american meal than lunch: turkey, more potatoes, broccoli, stuffing and a wonderful 1982 Bordeaux which had been given to us as a wedding present. It was a nice day, and hanging out with two "real" families with actual Xmas trees made us feel a bit less lonely, but we both still missed being with our families!

Snow is coming in at lower elevations today, so I hope to be able to finally snowboard this week. Heres a picture of snow on the Neron (taken from our window)

Gratin

Today I worked from home, and took care of some much delayed errands. Most notable was bringing my wonderful Fuji GA645 (perhaps the perfect travel camera) in for repairs. Its nothing serious, but the focus seems just a touch off, which is an annoying "feature" of rangefinders in general. Going to the store reinforced my general experience that being a photographer is a very expensive proposition in France. The up side is that French people seem to appreciate good photogtraphy more than Americans, but that is hardly surprising! Still, 60 euros just for them to just tell me whats wrong is ridiculous (update: it would cost 500 euros to fix the camera!). Actually, I'm looking at buying its successor, the GA645Zi, since all the pros are dumping their gear on Ebay now.

On the way, I stopped in at a snowboard/skate shop called Speed, and was a little surprised to see that it has gotten sucked into the trajectory of all successful board shops. That is to say that while half the store used to be devoted to actual skateboards and snowboards for you to uh, go snowboarding with, now the boards are relegated to a little corner, and the rest is a fashion shop. I'm not trying to be a crotchety old school guy here; they can get rid off all the remaining 10 snowboards that they stock; I understand where the real money comes from. But how about calling the store "Board Fashion", or "Teenage Fanclub", or even "Poser"? ANYWAY, the best thing I saw there, on my way past the Arnet display case, was a series of decks that had things like "Gratin Dauphinois" in Gothic font. You see, "Gratin Dauphinois" is a speciality of the region, and it seemed like a strange place to see it. It turns out that theres a local board manufacturer with a team and everything! Its so entertainingly french that they would call a signature model the "Gratin Dauphinois"'. There is simply no equivalent in the US.

Data Collection/Snow

We got our first good snow yesterday, so chances are improving of our actually being able to board in the next month. Heres a view of the Vercors on my way to work

And then later of the Chartreuse

I had a productive but very long day frantically collecting data on EH4 before the shutdown. Normally this is supposed to be the best time to collect, but there were periodic problems with the beam which led to some datasets being thrown away. Ergh. I'll be going back today after a little gym climbing at Espace Vertical

party time

We went to an Xmas party at our friends beautiful new apartment which overlooks the Isère River. Much of the entertainment was provided by the son of a lab guy:


still no snow here

Car decrapification

We picked up our car today, after leaving it in the mechanics care for two weeks. The purpose of this extended visit was to remove the absolutely ridiculous car alarm system which would periodically make it impossible to start our car. Hooray! The garage guy told us that the company that was responsible for the alarm system has gone out of business. This might be related to the fact that their alarm system is completely useless.

Back in Grenoble

after a long day of travel whose only redeeming part was a beautiful view of the Vercors

from the bus.

We managed to stay up until eight, after watching my favorite car chase movie(They pass by Les Baux in the movie!), but slept fitfully, and I was wide awake by 4 AM. We got an early start and went to the marketwhere the arab vendors were wearing Santa Claus hats with blinking red LEDs on them

and then stumbled upon an Antique street fair on the banks of the Isere

so we checked it out. There were some nice tools

and some very nice armoires:
(2800 euro, but willing to deal)
The vendor saw me taking pictures, started joking with me : "Hey you can't take photos here!", then showed us a less expensive, but also very nice armoire:
(1600 euro, and also negotiable. there was no cornice)
And told us that it would go perfectly in our chateau: "You have a chateau, right?". Interestingly, the armoires he has seen in chateaux are as a rule not of very good quality. Here were some more, in the low 1000 euro range:

There were definitely some deals to be had.

Later, we found out that a chocolcate shop one block away from us sells Valrhona chocolate, as well as a few other things

And we ended up buying three "special" bars:

Ampamakia, from the Millot plantation, from Madagascar

Palmira, from the Palmira plantation in Venezuela

Gran Couva from the Gran Couva plantation in Trinidad

I'm no expert, but the difference in tastes are striking. This could become an expensive habit.

Berkeley

Berkeley was great, despite the fact that it was only for two weeks (1 week really, considering the fact that we were on the road for almost a week). We had made a tick list of restaurants to go to while in the bay area, and I am proud to report that we hit almost all of them. They ranged from the pedestrian (In-N-Out, the only fast food we can eat without guilt after reading Fast Food Nation) to the extremely embarassing (Rubios Fish Tacos) to the sublime (Kirala Sushi

(the bamboo device is a sake dispenser!)
and Ton Kiang Dim Sum, and finally to the unclassifiable (carne asada tacos from taco stands in Fruitvale). And of course we had some nice meals at home as well:
Heres chef Kenji with his Shabu Shabu setup:


While my dad and I were at the Japanese food store, a packet of orange mini crabs with the words "Let's Party!" caught my eye. At $2.85 these might seem over-priced, but consider the effort of the humble japanese fisherman, and how hard it must have been to catch all those little bastards with chopsticks. Here's Kenji with a particularly enticing sample:

The initial flavor is sickeningly sweet with a bit of sesame thrown in for good measure: think Japanese Halvah, only worse. Then, as you crunch through the exoskeleton, a wonderfully potent crab essence fills your mouth, leaving you breathless and vaguely sickened. The most interesting thing about the Party Time crabs is their ability to elicit a very reproducible and consistent series of feelings: deja-vu (i.e. other sweet Japanese snacks), then confusion, followed quickly by regret. It's hard to imagine any circumstances under which you might want to eat the Party Time Crabs, and the idea of coating your hands in crabby fishyness (and thats not even talking about the crab breath) at a party seems foolish to say the least.

I usually try to help out with tasks that my parents would be crazy to do by themselves, like clean out the gutters, chop tree branches etc. This time we built an anti-deer fence out of opaque fishing line (the efficacy of which remains to be seen), and tried to seal a water leak in the camping shell of the pickup. On the latter job, we failed miserably. Heres a picture after a night of rain:


notice the water bottle floating in the pool of water!


This morning the reality of being back in Grenoble sank in when I realized that there would be no Japanese breakfast waiting for me: no kasuzuke Salmon or rice, no tofu or kamaboko, no Nagaimo with seaweed and soy sauce, no fried tofu (age), no miso soup with bizarre and delicious mini-mushrooms, and none of the other dozen or so other staples of my dads morning ritual. The only thing I won't miss is the natto. Incidentally, two of the foods Anthony Bourdain vowed never to eat again (after tasting some pretty disgusting things) were normal parts of my breakfast every day (Natto and Nagaimo).. w00t!

Bishop

We got in just as the sun was setting over the sierra and darkness was falling. After filling up on Mexican food, food for the next day and another ridiculously overpriced climbing guide, we drove into the climbers campground. Chloe was initially put off by the fact that the campground is called "The Pit", but warmed up to it as soon as she saw that it was not literally a fetid pit. We started a fire as soon as the wind died down, roasted marshmallows, and then settled in for a luxurious night in the back of the truck. It turned out to be a lot less cold than I expected, and we both slept a little before the sun came up. The air was so dry that by the morning the truck was filled with condensation which had turned into sheets of ice and mini-icicles. The ice melted as the sun came up and dripped refreshingly onto our sleeping bags and foreheads

We got up, enjoyed the spectacular view of the Sierra and Panamints, jammed all of our gear neatly back into the truck

And headed to Jacks for a warm breakfast. We stopped on the road to enjoy the view again for a few minutes.

After pancakes etc, we drove up to the Pollen Grain boulders. On the walk in, we saw a large herd of deer running away, spraying crap on the trail as they ran. We spent most of the rest of the day on the boulders

and then on to the Get Carter boulder, which is just amazing


By this point, our skin was shredded, and we both decided that it was a good time to drive back to berkeley. I was a bit scared by the prospect of another nightmare driving experience on icyhellroad (395), but it turned out to be clear, and we got some beautiful views of Crowley Lake

and Mono

before we drove back on 50 to 80 and home.

Miles: 362
Total: 1200 miles or 1930 kilometers

Death Valley

ok, this will be a photo intensive entry, so modem people: give up now.

We took 95 north past the federal prison

and its warnings not to pick up hitchhikers (duh! I suppose they should add an especially strong caution against picking up people with metal balls attached to their legs who try to pay you in cigarettes as well), up through all the stark and beautiful desert basins until we reached Beatty. We were orignially planning on going north and across the mountains through Westgard, but decided to take the much more scenic route through Death Valley National Park, some of my old lizard catching stomping grounds. I had always wanted to see "The Racetrack", but the ranger told us that we needed 4wd with good clearance, so it will have to wait for some other time. Instead, we took 374

To the Sand Dunes near Stovepipe Wells. We parked on the road and walked to the second highest dune, passing some truly spectacular scenery


At the base of some of the dunes were mud flats

and eventually we ended up on at our destination


We ate lunch, then started walking back

and on the way decided to do some dune jumping




and ended up with a little sand in our shoes

and a sickening grind in the focus motor of my Fuji rangefinder. I did manage to get some nice transparencies though!

We continued on to Mosaic Canyon

which is surrounded by water sculpted cobble walls

The whole way up I was picturing what a flash flood woutld be like.

Finally, we continued on through the park, resisting the temptation to frolic at the Panamint Dunes, and on to Bishop.

Miles: 289