we headed up to donner summit today for some more bouldering at the Grouse slabs. It was a beautiful day and I did a few problems that had shut me down previously. We met two L.A. climbers, one of whom was a pro climbing photographer and was about to go to Ireland to take climbing pictures from a helicopter! I may be in the wrong business.
I worked on putting on new roof shingles today
And we drove back to Berkeley, stopping for strawberries near Dixon and Chinese food with my parents
Chloe and I got an early start and hit the Bliss boulders today. I still couldn't send that damn arete, but we had fun on some other problems.
Heres the arete that I kept getting spooked on
It was still too early in the season for a lot of traffic around the lake thankfully,
and the trip back to Alta didn't take very long.
We cooked up a birthday meal of fancy steaks on our little hibachi, and used our new steak knives from Correze, which work amazingly well
They even brought out a brownie birthday cake for me!
Chloe bought me a beautiful Correze knive with a "genevrier" handle. According to Wiki, Genevrier is Juniper. It smells wonderful, although my initial guess was that it was cedar rather than Juniper. Limited googling seems to indicate that they are very related though. She also bought me two great shirts from the Pacific Whale Foundation (The tour operator of our ill fated skin diving trip on Maui). THANK YOU CHLOE!!! My parents got me the Ceccaldi knife, some excellent books on furniture making, and some money to buy a new kiteboarding harness.
After baths in the rotenburo, we all went to sleep. My parents decided to try out the new tent that they bought, and chloe and I went to the loft to enjoy our windows. I took a few long exposure shots of my parents walking back up the path to their tent:
I had a nice after work session today at third ave. The wind was up and down with lots of holes in between the inside and outside, but my new kite handled it all with ease.
the 1 knot flood helped too!
We went to Castle rock for a little bouldering and then had a great indian meal at Ajanta with the parents. Chloes gift was a gift certificate for a prenatal massage from Every Mother Massage. Gails was a beautiful orchid.
We drive down to Castle Rock, and although we couldn't find the Klinghoffer boulders, we found a few other things to play around on
I found a topo with a decent map after we got back.
I had an excellent couple of hours kiting with my new Ozone Instinct. The low tide made it a pain to get out there, but once I finally got to knee deep water, I got going, went way upwind and had a blast
I went to third ave today after work for my first ride with the new kite. Things were going exceptionally well for a while and I was flying upwind, launching off of waves and generally having a blast. After eventually getting tired, I started heading downwind which is when things went south. Somehow my safety release on the chicken loop (the primary connection between my harness and the kite) got activated, which shot the bar into the air and dumped the kite in the water. I was still leashed in though, and started swimming towards the kite to get the bar. Unfortunately, and I'm not sure what I did wrong here, the kite got pulled to the side of the wind window and started to try to relaunch, which pulled the tangle of lines around my leg and started squeezing them in a very scary way. I decided to hit the leash safety at this point, which caused the kite to be totally cut free and it tumbled downwind towards the rocks. It was my lucky day however, and some guy from Helm ( a local shop) on a jet ski grabbed the kite and pulled it to shore before it got eaten by the rocks. I had a fairly long swim back in which reminded me of how mediocre a swimmer I am. argh. Hopefully the kite isn't damaged.
Before I left for france (while Chloe was in San Diego), I went to berkeley hort and bought tomato, sweet corn and strawberry seedlings. I made a small planter out of unused wood:
Later on, we filled in the second half of the microgarden with soil and plants (more tomato, purple basil, kabocha, japanese eggplant) from yabusaki's nursery. The latter plants haven't done as well, but the strawberries from berkeley hort have produced their first ripe berry!
(and it was delicious)
We picked up two weary parents today. They had stayed on a bit longer in the Paris apartment and had museumed it to the max. Unfortunately, they never made it to the restaurant that I found for them via Cityvox called Le Baba Bourgeois, so it will have to wait until next time.
They did bring me back the knife that I had been lusting after from Ceccaldi
THANK YOU PARENTS!
Here are a few notes for travelling in France
Transportation:
1)Rent a car -- it will get you to places that are not served by trains
2)Buy or rent a GPS -- dealing with the french driving is stressful enough without worrying about the navigation
3)Rent through autoeurope
4)If returning to a different location, make sure they give you detailed instructions
5)Rent a diesel and you'll save a lot of money
Places to go:
Plus beaux villages de france, and just wander around
Places to stay:
Try Karen Brown for the generally pricier places and
Chambres d'hotes on the gites de france site for inexpensive accomodation
Times to go:
Fall, Winter, Spring, period.
We took the Paris shuttle into CDG this morning, which is a deal and a half at 38 euro for two people, door to door. We somehow managed to get the meekest French driver in the history of French motoring but got there on time. I bought a few more bottles of 2005 bourgognes in duty free and then it was boarding time. The flight was awful as usual. No leg room, no individual screens, no snacks, and the flight was late. The captain got on the PA and said that we were "Legerement en retard" -- lightly late. The contrast of such flowery language and the sight of hundreds of us crammed into uncomfortable seats like cattle made be chuckle a little.
--fin--
Trust our luck that the one full day that we have in paris is a national holiday. Almost nothing of interest was open, except for the markets. However, the morning light was beautiful and I left Chloe and Kenji to go buy some bread and fruits at the local covered market, which was just getting set up around 8:00 AM. 
I wandered around near Notre Dame for a while
and a furniture repairman let me take a photo of his shop.
on the way back to the market, I ran into Kenji and Chloe:
and then Kenji insisted that we go for another walk and take more pictures near le Notre Dame.
The park to the east of Notre Dame was now open and I eavesdropped on some drunk french guys (drunk at 8:00 AM!) trying to pick up on a crowd of American girls. "We just got off the plane!! tee hee!" they tittered.
I took this picture from le pont de l'Archeveche
and then Kenji and I headed back to the apartment for breakfast.
Shortly afterwards, Chloe and I ventured out again to go check out a restaurant near the Odeon metro called la Bastide Odeon, but we were waylaid by the market which was by now in full swing. We ended up buying a bright yellow and blue tablecloth, some excellent Tomme de Savoie, a big chunk of excellent Comte de montagne, and a little chunk of appenzeller, 
and last but not least, two warm baguettes, fresh from the oven.
We all had an early lunch, and Chloe and I set off again to see what la Bastide Odeon looked like. Along the way, we stumbled upon a storefront on la rue Racine which sold exquisite cutlery.
If you're okay with paying Laguiole prices for steak knives, these are just so much more beautiful, and basically the same price.
I subsequently found out that the knives are all hand made, and the somewhat Italian sounding name (Ceccaldi) is actually Corsican. The shop was originally opened in an atelier in the Southern Corsican town of Zoza.
After Chloe got tired of my pawing at the window and pathetic whimpering, she dragged me away towards the rue Racine. Surprise, surprise, la Bastide was also closed for the day, so Chloe and I dejectedly walked back towards the 5th past le Vieux Campeur (the climbing/camping/sport everything megastore near la Sorbonne). We decided it was time for some Berthillon ice cream... but it was closed. However, a place nearby sold Berthillon ice cream -- excellent of course, but somehow not the same.
We walked down by the river and watched the Parisians making picnics on the cobblestones and saw the french cops (or firemen? They flew by so fast that I couldn't tell) showboatingkeeping the Seine safe
As I was looking out over the water, I had the thought that in high winds, there might be enough room to kite there! I wonder how long you would get thrown in jail for that.
We headed back to the apartment and I took a picture of it from the outside:
while I was resting on the couch, I noticed this curious inscription on one of the rafters:
and I have no idea what they could signify... any thoughts? Anyone?
After packing, we rewarded ourselves with a few more Gauffre.
chloe: sucre, me: nutella.
Thinking that perhaps Ceccaldi would be open after lunch , we headed over towards rue racine again. Along the way, we found two amazing map stores on rue Condé, which were OPEN! Just kidding, they were closed too. One of them had this very cool engraving of the Seine:
We also passed this patisserie with a line out the door
And then headed for Ceccaldi again. Unfortunately, it wasn't just a lunch break, so after a little more coveting and squinting through the window
We headed back to the apartment and got ready for dinner at Chez Michel, a recommendation of my friend Dominic. The food -- Bretonnais -- was excellent. It started with tiny crustacean hors d'oeuvres and toothpicks with which to pry them out. This was more of game than a source of nutrition, because they are pretty hard to extricate and offer miniscule quantities of meat. Chloe and I had glorifed chevre chaud salads, which were excellent, and gail had a salad of some kind. Kenji, being Japanese, ordered the pickled anchovies, which I have to admit were excellent. Mom and I ordered the breton style cod, which was pretty unique: a bit stew-like with morsels of cod, potatos, and lots and lots of butter. Kenji had the same thing except with duck, and CZ had the pintade. I won the prize for the best dessert order with the Kouign Amann -- a Breton cake with just a touch of butter. Actually, if you so much as nudged it, a syrup of sugar and butter would leak out, and it tasted fantastic. The others went with more traditional fare, like a fromage blanc with fruit (gail and chloe) and some kind of buttery chocolate dessert, which Kenji decided would be a good idea to smear all over my Kouign Amann, despite Chloe and I simultaneously yelling "NOOOOOOOOO!". The meal was also entertaining because for whatever reason, there were almost no native French speakers, which resulted in all kinds of table hijinx. First, the wrong table was given to someone, then a Japanese party (left of Kenji, below) showed up and asked for their reservation for eight people at seven o'clock... and discovered that they had actually reserved a table for seven people at eight o'clock. An older american couple who spoke little snippets of french insisted on moving tables twice... And the maitre d' and her wait staff were by this time looking pretty stressed out. Just when things couldn''t get any worse, a painting fell off the wall and clocked the two people on the left on their heads before hitting the ground and shattering. I should point out that we were *easy* in comparison to all of the other tables, even though they had given us one of the worst tables in the house. All in all it was an excellent and thoroughly entertaining meal. We took a taxi back to the apartment and it was time to go to sleep. 
Today was a straight shot to Paris: around two and a half hours on the autoroute. But first things first: it was time to yell about not having a flushing toilet. I'll leave the specifics to Chloe's guest blog entry, but suffice it to say that she kicked ass.
As for the drive: The GPS brought us in via the peripherique and to an underground parking garage flawlessly; it really is worth its weight in gold. We had a quick lunch at a brasserie on blvd. St. Germain and then went to meet the contact from the apartment rental. Gail had found a small, but amazingly situated apartment on the rue Maitre Albert, which is a small but surprisingly loud street in the 5th. We pulled the car around, dropped off the luggage and then chloe and I headed for the gare montparnasse to drop off the car. This last part was a bit of a farce, since there are NO signs anywhere for where you are supposed to return the car. It turned out to be a parking garage a few blocks away from the actual train station. A hearty "screw you" to National for not giving us ANY information about returns. I did get to yell at one of the car rental guys and argue with him in french, which is always fun.
Anyway, the important point was that we returned the car in one piece, and we didn't have to drive it in Paris anymore! All in all, it really was a fantastic little car though:
excellent gas mileage, comfortable and good ergonomics. Why is it that we can't buy this car in the states again? By the end of the trip it had also become a bug graveyard. Let's have a moment of silence for all the bugs who gave their lives for our transportation:
Have fun cleaning those off, National! Don't even bother with a pressure washer -- you're going to need a putty knife and a wire brush.
We took the metro back to the 5th, but stopped along the way to buy some gauffres to improve our spirits after the stressful circling of montparnasse. A woman tried to do the old "Let me just look at the menu board, and then I'll slide into line in front of you" trick, but Chloe was having none of it. She's one tough cookie!
Since we had a feeling that things would be closed tomorrow, Chloe and I headed to rue de Rivoli to try to find here some maternity clothes. Here she is after a successful visit to Xsara. 
Next was Dehillerin
Where we could only really sumon the nerve to buy one of those cool silicone madeleine molds. I guess we'll have to find a recipe for madeleines now! I hemmed and hawed over a fancy mandoline, but decided that for 120 euros, I might as well buy a Cusinart. Dehillerin is so cool though.
From Dehillerin, we went to le Forum des Halles where chloe found some pants, and I found a few shirts and a new pair of pants. I tried to get some more minDV tapes for Kenji (he had taken an unprecedented FIVE tapes by this point), but the lines were way too long. Finally, with acheing feet we walked to Balzar to meet the parents for dinner.
Where gail and chloe had the poulet fermier (we used to have that in our cafeteria at the ESRF!), Kenji had the veal, and I had the lamb chops. For dessert, I had the tarte au citron, CZ had the tarte tatin, and kenji had the diabetic-friendly creme caramel. Gail was desserted out by this point.
