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