Cycling Clemenciere via Narbonne with Franck

perfect weather

Museum with Zoe

A robbery!

At the Proxy mart 100 feet from our house. I heard the gunshot -- it took me back to our East Oaktown days. Actually, not really, since it didn't sound like a handgun.

Cycling Clemenciere via Narbonne with Franck

We were passed like we were standing still by some guy on an electrically assisted bike. I'm amazed by how fast they can go.

Museum

with the kids



then a trip to the park

running the whole way


with a stop for a strawberry eclair

Circus

The circus was in town, which of course meant that Zoe had to go. It was quite small, but the upside was that the furthest you could get from the ring was about three feet.


It was the usual stuff: animals

juggling

and trapeze.
Dramatic songs accompanied the performers at all their entrances. This backfired a bit before the trapeze show, when the music started thumping, the curtains parted, and a woman appeared with a ... shovel? She then scooped up the poo from the show horse as discretely and ceremoniously as possible before exiting the ring.

Zoe requested a big purple balloon

on call all weekend

booo

Faculty retreat

In Germany. A lot of interesting stuff going on. I ate a vast quantity of food and hit golf balls on the driving range (for the first time in my life) in between talks. They gave me a left handed club for some reason, which did not work for me at all. After exchanging it for a right handed 7 iron, I soon got in a escalating competition with a fellow grenoblite to crush the ball the furthest. By the end, we were hitting them to 150 yards, with the occasional drives into trees and the hotel roof (the nets were seriously low).

Family biking

We went for a ride along the bike path that runs along the Isère today.

It was another beautiful almost-Fall day, and there were a lot of other people on the path as well. I've seen quite a few other trailers on the road, but for some reason ours always gets people's attention (maybe because it is bright green?). After six or so miles, we stopped for Zoe to pick flowers and to hydrate a bit. It was a little exhausting herding her away from the path, but we managed to avoid any catastrophic collisions with bikes.

I mounted the helmet cam on the tow bar of the trailer, and here is the resulting video (trimmed down from 6gb of raw HD footage!) with suitable non copyrighted music

A short (but wonderful) hike

We hiked the fabulous Boucle du Cuchet today. As we were nearing the cables to go up the cliff, I heard the distinct sounds of climbing gear being jostled, which got me very excited to see if there were any routes on the cliff. It looks like excellent quality rock, but I had not seen any evidence of any routes up it. We caught up to the climbers at the top, who informed me that therethere were indeed a few routes, but they were all aid routes. Booo! In any case, it's a beautiful hike.



which ends up back in Mont St. Martin. Here is Zoe enjoying the flat paved section at the top


Mont Saint Martin looks like it would be a nice place to live.

Crossey 2

Checked out the Gorge du Crossy II for climbing. Short, bouldery routes on decent stone. I'm sure we will go back.

Zoe enjoying Chloe's "Yay, your job interview is done!" rose.

more tears

at drop off today. It was very hard for me to leave amidst the wails of "Want Daddy-oooo!". It makes it hard when she isn't really there for consecutive days: half day on friday, full day on Monday, teachers on strike Tuesday, no school on Wednesday and then back to school for a full day on thursday. Poor thing!

Baked Chicken with Artichokes

camera?

I'm looking for a replacement for our G9, but there are sooo many cameras available now. I'm leaning towards an SLR if we can afford it.

Zoe's second day at school

Today was Zoe's second day at school but her first full day. There were a few tears at drop off, but she apparently did great. We are so proud of her!

Museum!

With Zoe and Alex again


Zoe's new thing is to make me walk ahead and then run up to me with Chloe


Occasionally, she can be convinced to go ahead though

bike ride

I rode along the bike path today; I almost never do the flats, so it was a nice change. On the way back, I passed an older guy, who began drafting off of me. After a while, I pulled to the side and started talking to him as we approached saint egreve. It turned out that his son was the former world and French champion in several track disciplines. He had also gone to the Olypics four times. Very impressive!

As for the ride: 30 miles/48 km, averaging 20.3 mph/32.6 kph for the 24 mile section on the bike path, 216 watts for 1:12 mins. I'm not used to riding at a higher cadence, so 81 rpm felt a little weird.

Zoe's first day of school!

In France, school begins much earlier than in the states (at 3 years old), so we inscribed Zoe to start this September. After a lot of hand wringing, today was the big day. We walked to the school:

introduced her to the teacher, and sat her down in front of some toys. Amazingly, she was totally fine! Chloe and I, however, were a wreck.



The classroom looks great: very lightm abd with toys and activities everywhere. The class itself is a bit big, but there are teachers aides to help out.

booger

ACT I
SCENE I. The car.
Max in the driver's seat, Zoe buckled in to her car seat
Max
Wait! You have a booger on your nose
Zoe
with furrowed brow Eat booger, Zoe?
Max
waving arms ... Nooooo!
Zoe
Eats booger
Max
helpless, with a mixture of disgust and amusement on face
Zoe
smiling broadly ate it all, booger!

mt saint martin

I'm getting slower! 33:46. Sprints at the end: 5s at 900 watts, 30s at 544 watts.