Liguria (thursday)

We left the haze of grenoble today and drove (map here)through the fantastically over-priced Frejus tunnel into Italy. We continued past the signs for Sestriere (site of next years winter Olympics), down past Torino, over the aerial highways surrounding Genova, and finally down the winding road that leads to the Vernazza parking lot. Along the waym I was chomping on a bread chip and broke a chunk out of one of my teeth, so I get to go back to the dentist AGAIN. Our hotel (Gianni Franzi) was at the top of picturesque widing staircases

and had a private patio hewn into the rock with lemon trees and a shady trellis which overlooked the water.


We explored the town a little, and after watching a pack of Shirtless Canadianswho were jumping into the harbor, found a restaurant. Chloe shared a seafood risotto with Amy, and I shared an amazing grigliata mixti (sp?!) with Mark.

The meal was accompanied by a locally produced light white wine. Because we ate early (7 pm or so), the restaurant was filled with americans and I heard Rick Steves' name mentioned about twenty times.

We had no evidence that cheap Italian white wines were different from any other place in the world, but we risked it anyway and bought a 3 euro bottle to enjoy on the patio. After a few failed attempts to chill the bottle in the ocean which left mark with a wet sleeve and almost wineless, we walked up the stairs to the patio. The wine proved to have a remarkable hangover inducing quality, but at the time, looking out over the Med, lounging on chairs on a patio in the cliffside, life was good.

We had originally planned just one night in Vernazza, but quickly decided to book another room to have time to hike around the next day and relax.

late night collecting data

The field I'm in often requires some fairly late night stays at the synchrotron. Yesterday, however, we were doing a non standard measurement, and had to install a lot of new equipment. As a normal user, your nightmare is that you will make a mistake, cause any one of the moving parts on the experimental table to collide with another part, destroy a million dollar detector, and never be invited back. Well, we ended up colliding three parts of the setup due to their restricted spatial organization early in the day. Luckily, nothing was damaged, but it took us another few hours to re-align everything, and it was 5 PM before we could start data collection! We ended up collecting eighteen excellent datasets in a whirlwind of collection and processing. After we had disassembled everything and cleaned up, I biked home in a groggy half awake state. It turns out that there is no one on the road in Grenoble at that hour. The streets were completeley empty, and even the massive and always congested Place Dubedout was deserted, except for the birds, who were already awake and singing.

Show!

Yesterday I talked to the gallery manager at the Gaia store, and we confirmed that my photo show is on! IT will open on the 27th of May and run until the 23rd of June. I need to have several prints made, as well as invitations etc, so I have a lot of work to do (especially since I'll be on vacation for two weeks in May!).

You can find some of the work that will be shown here


In other news, since we have four days off for easter next week, Chloe and I are planning a trip with Mark and Amy (who are also coming with us to Kalymnos) to Liguria in northern italy. Our present plans are to stay in Vernazza for one night, walk around to the cinqueterre, then drive to Finale Ligure for climbing and more sight seeing.

Lab Ski Day

Today was lab ski day where I work, and more than fifty people were apparently signed up to go. The pack quickly got dispersed though. It was a beautiful day:




and I got in 8700 meters. I took one bad spill of an aborted jump attempt from which my whole body is still aching. Dave had a similar experience. I was waiting with another guy from work, and Dave was taking a lot longer than usual. We began to wonder if maybe he was waiting for someone else, but he eventually boarded up to us. His face was flushed, and his eyes looked like they werent quite focusing correctly, and he explained that a jump had tourned sour, and he had been dumped on his head and back! At least it solidified his resolve to buy a helmet for next season! Amy was another casuality from earlier in the day, when she had hurt (sprained?) her thumb. Chloe got off with only one major head dumping, but had to do a long and arduous traverse after taking an ill-advised turn onto a flat beginners piste.

Lyon

After another tiring week, chloe and I decided to spend the day in Lyon. We got up late, drove in to the center and parked in the lot under Place Antonin Poncet (15 euro for the day). Neither chloe nor I had ever walked up to the Basilique Notre Dame, so we made our way through the Place Bellecour, alon the quai and across the footbridge and into Vieux Lyon. We had a big tapas lunch at Cafe Sol on Rue du Boeuf, and then walked up the stairs and gardens to the basilica. As we were looking out over Grenoble, Chloe and I simultaneously wondered aloud what the big hangar shaped building was. As we walked up to the map, two french girls came running up and said "Alors, CA, CA C'est l'opera!!" while pointing at the hangar shaped building on the map. So yes, it was the opera building. We walked down the long steps that end up at the Gare St. Paul, and wandered around looking for the much talked about "Traboules" (secret passages). We found the one that begins at the quai, and were pretty underwhelmed. I guess we were expecting a catacomb-esque passageway. The door to the one on rue du Boeuf was locked, but had a little plaque saying something about Traboules. We began walking back towards the rive Gauche and au-vieux-campeur (a wonderful outdoor shop: like REI but staffed with people who actually know what they are talking about), but were stopped by the sight of two shrieking college students. They were on the Pont Alphonse Juin, pointing north at the river, waiting, and periodically bursting into shrieks and giggles. We looked out onto the river, but there was nothing: not so much as a boat. In fact, the only thing on the river at all was a dirty and disheveled swan about a half kilometer up the river. Surely this was no cause for excitement. Then, all of a sudden, a diving duck of some kind popped to the surface with a small squirming fish harpooned on its beak! It shook its head a bit, then neatly tossed the fish into its mouth, swallowed it, then
disappeared again. This went on for several fish. It was very impressive, although sushi from the Saone strikes me as a bit unsanitary. Anyway, we went on to vieux-campeur and bought a helmet and some new shoes for our upcoming Kalymnos climbing trip. Along the way we stopped in at a store that was selling Apple Cinema Displays, and chloe had to drag me away from them. I think I left a little pool of drool on the floor on my way out. I forgot to mention that the main reason we were in Lyon was because we had reservations at "Le Sud", but we still had 4 hours to kill before dinner. After dropping off our booty at the car, we went back to Vieux Lyon and sat at a cafe in Place St. Jean for a long, long, looong time. A man was smoking a cigar nearby which cleared out the customers pretty quickly. After hours of sitting around, we still had two more hours before dinner, so we went to possibly the worst movie I have seen in recent history: Trouble. But hey, it was in french and I understood everything except the profound whisperings. Its key feature was that it was about an hour and a half long, so by the time we were finished being dragged through the immense bubbling pool of crap that was "Trouble", we were ready for our dinner. Le Sud wasn't as good as we had remembered, but I think its because we made the mistake of ordering the "Menu". It was a great day in Lyon, and we'll have to got back soon. I think I'd like to try a new restaurant next time, though.

new tooth

So all is well with my teeth: I had indeed broken a tooth, and the dentist re-drilled it out and replaced the inlay with a much bigger one.

Kick ass

I felt a large crack on the right side of my mouth while eating lunch. It was so loud, in fact that the guy across from me heard it and asked me WTF the noise was. I was hoping that maybe it was just a burr that had broken off, but no such luch. As I was drinking coffee, a small chunk of tooth came out, which I spit out and inspected. Ten minutes later, a slightly larger chunk came out, which was similarly inspected to determine its source and composition. When the last and largest chunk came out, I knew I was in trouble, because this one was big. I saved all of the chunks in a test tube and had Chloe call the dentist, who got me an appointment today at 5. I've never broken a tooth in my life, and if that piece of crap thinks I'm going to pay him to repair his incomptence, he's deluded.

Anti Dentite

Today was the big day: filling removal day. Having cleared the epxenditure with the insurance company, I was fully committed to the replacement of all of my amalgam fillings. I ate my "meal of the condemned": a ham and emmental sandwich with gusto. I climbed each route at our lunchtime climbing session like it was my last. I kissed chloe goodbye and took the tram back into town and picked up the film from my new camera. The images looked sharp and saturated, if generally poorly composed. Would they be my last images? Actually, I was busily scanning them in until the last possible moment and then ran to the dentists office. He drilled out all nine teeth efficiently and without causing any pain. After manging to spit on my pants and shirt because my bottom lip was so heavily novacained (I appreciated the discretion of the nurse to turn away as I grabbed at the long strands of mucous leading from my mouth to the spittoon), the dentist told me to come back in an hour while his CEREC machine printed out my new teeth. But perhaps I should explain how CEREC works. The doctor uses a technique originally conceived right here in Grenoble for making tooth inlays. The process is impressive: drill out the old filling, powder the tooth with infrared reflective powder, take a picture with an IR camera, make a 3D computer model of the hole, design an inlay to fit the hole exactly, "print" an inlay out of a ceramic like VITABLOC with a diamond milling machine, then glue it in. The machine takes around 15 minutes to make one inlay, and I had nine, so I went back to the apartment and scanned in more slides while I waited. It's a pretty bizarre experience to be able to feel the giant gaps left by the drill with your tongue. I began to get a little nervous about what would happen if I passed out or something; it can't be such a good thing to be waiting around for too long with your teeth like that! The four ampoules of novacaine were still in full effect and who knows what that can do to your brain. When I got back, the dentist glued in the inlays (3 on the upper left, 2 on the lower left, two each on the right: #s 17, 16, 25, 26, 27, 37, 36, 46 and 47), drilled off the burrs and little tooth dingleberries still remaining, and sent me on my way. Did I mention that I was also providing support for an ESRF beamline, which had broken twice during the day?

new camera

I received my new used GA645Zi this week. I was pleasantly surprised that the shot counter had only 400 shots on it and the previous owner was the first! Cosmetically the camera looks great, but the lens sensor and bar code reader might not work. To test everything else, I went on a small photo safari with Mark around the Bastille and then neat the col de Clemenciere and pont de Vence. I shot two rolls, and ended up knee deep in snow trying to setup some semi interesting compositions. Normally I wouldnt shoot two rolls of film in a day, but I wanted to test everything. Amazingly, Phox photo now takes three days to process a roll of E6 film (This should take 2 hours in non third world countries.)

snow in grenoble

again! Bucket loads of snow are coming down

Serre Che

We went to Serre Che with Amy and her sister, but took the worst possible route there (my fault, in combination with a road being closed) through the Frejus tunnel and past Briancon. Apparently they havent had new snow since the end of January. In spite of their web site which states that they have a meter of snow, most runs were bare and the runs that were open were covered in patches of ice and rocks! We went back through the col de Lautarec (sp?) and by the legendary La Grave/La Meije:

dentures

I heard back from our insurance provider and happily they will be able to cover 80% of the cost of my fillings being ripped out and replaced with ceramic ones. The bad news is that they apparently consider these "dentures", which hopefully means something else in french. But hey, for 1400 euros they can call them what ever the hell they want to.

boarding

I had a great day boarding with dave at 7 laux. Waist high powder and endless off piste.
on the lift:

first tracks from the ridge

hiking the ridge

halfway down


from the base

teeth

the dentists appointment turned out to just be a consulatation. He explained that all of my amalgam fillings have cracked my teeth, causing cavities. They need to be replaced (nine of them!) which i'm so completeley psyched about that its hard to articulate. Before I do it, I need to make sure my insurance company agrees to it, because it will cost 1800 euro!!! Somehow I never realized that fillings have a limited lifetime.

boarding

Went out for my second and chloes first day of boarding of the year. There wasnt any powder at all; not even the heavy stuff that we usually get around here, which made for sore knees at the end of the day. Here's chloe looking very cold:


Theyve built an impressive park on the other side of the mountain:

They look well built, but are the most intimidating jumps I have ever seen, and I have been to a lot of board parks before. It might have something to do with the abruptness at which you will be chucked into the air. Usually with a jump like the one on the left, you see a group of kids uphill from it, trying not to look scared and steeling themselves for the inevitable painful crash. Every once and a while one of them will start boarding down to it, make some last minute turns to slow down, hit the jump with no speed, and land flat on their backs. I know this because I was frequently one of those kids. Then you have the fearless mini-kids with helmets, who pull up to the group, cast a scornful sideways look at the group, then bear down at full speed and huck themselves off for a perfect landing.

Pinhole

Last week I finally got back into pinhole photography. I started off with a 24 cm x 18 cm paper negative camera with a fairly large field of view, and by the saturday afternoon I had built three cameras of varying focal length. A guy at work had kindly drilled the .5 mm pinhole for me, and I subsequently made the .4 and .3 myself out of a swatch of aluminum can. Hypodermic needles and an emery board gave me a decent pinhole under a stereo microscope, and the images are decent. The Electron Microscope guy gave me a lot of 24 cm x 18 cm Ilfospeed paper, which I have been using as negeatives. Our darkroom has some stocks of Kodak X-ray film developer, which is not ideal but works well enough! Here are some of the images:

wheels

reason #2 (reason #1) not to park on the street:

(thankfully not our car!)

SNOW

its been snowing for a few days, so Dave and I hit the slopes at les 7 laux, a smaller local resort. I managed to take one of chloes gloves and one of my own (both right hands of course), but luckily Dave had a spare wool mitten. If you have ever snowboarded before, you know that a wool mitten is not a particularly good supstitute for a gore tex glove! It was a perfect day: just overcast enough to drive away the sun seekers, enough fogginess to hide the best untracked off-piste, and tons of fresh powder.
Looking south:

Looking at the fog (Grenoble is somewhere underneath)

Dave (little tiny blue speck under the central finger of rock) after taking a wrong turn and ending up on the top of rocky outcrop

double OOOF

went to the high tech dentist here in town who showed me how basically all of my amalgam fillings have cracked my teeth and caused cavities under them. Three cheers for U.S. dentistry! We're the best in the world at everything! yay! Its going to
take a lot of visits to fix everything, which is awesome because I love going to the dentist.

In other news, I met with the gallery manager today, who seemed very interested in my photos! Were going to throw
a big party if I get a show, but I wont know until feb 20. While I was showing my photos, some random guy came in and started complimenting my pics, which probably helped.

OOOF

I've had a little writers block recently, which is a little silly considering that this a BLOG after all. anyway, last week, I treated myself to some nice oysters, and a day later was sick for a day and a half. I'm actually very picky about my oysters, and inspect and sniff them scrupulously. I usually buy more than I think I'll eat specifically because I always end up throwing one or two of them away. Anyway, I found out that there is in fact another way to get sick off oysters besides eating spoiled oysters, and that is Norwalk Virus (as a funny aside, I could hear my moms heart stop from across the planet when Chloe told her that it was a virus). You can distinguish between plain old food poisoning and Norwalk by the time of onset. In my case, I ate them on tuesday night, and got sick about 40 hours later, about an hour after climbing in the gym. I had been feeling crappy all day, but that afternoon I asked chloe to drive me home because I felt awful. Anyway, because I love you, the reader so much, I'll spare you the details about how I was crapping water and simultaneously puking into a bucket, but suffice it to say that it wasn't pretty. I stayed at home on friday, and by saturday morning I was basically healthy again, but white as a sheet and a few pounds lighter.

norwalk virus comes from raw sewage dumped overboard by fishermen who deserve to be kicked in the groin for a week while being force fed infected oysters. Oysters are filter feeders which concentrate the virus from the excrement into handy bite sized packages for innocent oyster lovers such as myself. From now on I'm going to pay close attention to the provenance of the oysters. even so, no more oysters for a while.

market

we went to the market near Place de Gordes on a freezing morning. There was a trail of either bloody or strawberry coated footprints out of the jardin de ville.

where we bought some wonderful walnuts and ugly knobbly potatoes (that tasted great)

swans

on my way to work. Thank you mom and dad for the sony T3 which I carry everywhere now!

laxness

Okay so I've been a bit lax in my postings recently, but what can I say; there simply aren't very many interesting things going on, and I've been working hard on writing a paper.

This Sunday we went to Ombleze to climb with Mark, Amy, Dave, Sandy and Dylan (Dave and Sandy's son). It was a beautiful day, made more interesting by the fact that I did a beautiful and scary Piola route and by the fact that the car we were in had the low gas light on for most of the day. After a failed attempt at syphoning gas from the other car, we ended up coasting down towards St. Jean en Royans (the nearest gas) in a stressful and brakeless 20 minute run.

zoom

I've been getting ~300 MB 24bit scans off of 6x6 negatives, and I'm pretty happy with the detail; here are some examples of the max resolution from the Venasque photo below:


Impressive quality for such an inexpensive scanner!

The Strange Things People Do

On the way back to work today we pulled up to the neighborhood gas station. We waited for a woman in a white Fiat Panda to drive away, since she had been sitting in her car for a little while. We assumed that she would pull her seatbelt on at any moment and drive away, seeing as she was blocking the pumps. After a few more minutes, we gave up and pulled into the adjacent pump and pulled the fueling hose to the gas tank over the car, onto the opposite side. We looked over at her, and to both of our amazement, she was casually turning the pages of a newspaper on her lap while smoking! As I finished fueling, she rolled down her window, flicked the lit cigarette into the station, folded up the newspaper, took off her seatbelt, and.... opened the door and began fueling.

I found this experience to be remarkable not solely because it reminded me how singularly, amazingly, fantastically inconsiderate people can be, but also because it showed me how much we want to believe that people aren't sociopaths. When we pulled up and she wasn't moving, I wanted to believe that she was about to pull away. When she didn't, I assumed that it was because her friend or husband was inside paying. When I saw her reading her paper and smoking, I assumed the same thing. I had a little twinge of doubt when the only other person at the cashiers desk came out, got into a delivery van and drove away. Watching her draw long drags on that cigarette, it really never occured to me that she hadn't even started fueling up yet.

Venasque

A medium format shot from Venasque on our last trip to provence

St. Eynard

We walked up the snow covered road

to the Fort St. Eynard

enjoyed some tea

And some nice views of Grenoble

and the Chamchaude

I was using my hassy/gitzo 1228 legs/arca head, and on the way down I realized just how light my camera bag is without the damn tripod. Most of the weight is from the head, so now I'm looking for a lighter one. The arca is a fantastic head, but I originally bought it to hold a much heavier camera (Toyo 45AII view camera), and I think its kind of overkill for the cameras I use right now.

We also managed to get our car stuck trying to get out of the parking area.

old photos

I took a 6 month old roll of reala 35 in to be developed a few days ago, and after the usual photo-store-employee sneering and unpleasantness I picked up the prints and some other velvia I had shot recently. To our surprise, the 35mm shots were largely of our lunch/dinner at La maison de Marc Veyrat. It was a truly memorable meal: unquestionably one of the finest we have ever had. Out friends Deb and Howard were celebrating their wedding anniversary, and took us out to this dinner (and another at le Pere Bise) as a wonderful wedding gift.

We all had the tasting menu, which is listed below, with some pictures:


Pot de yaourt de foie gras, gelée végétale,
myrrhe odorante (plante sauvage cueillie au dessus de 1800 mètres)




Trois ravioles de légumes, trois souffles de vinaigrette


*
Nouilles plates sans œufs et sans féculent
aux arômes de parmesan, d'anchois et de poivrons


*
Jaune d'œuf de 9 heures, piqûre de cumin des prés,
mouillettes aux amandes


*
Féra du Lac fumée, écorce de sapin, boudin de riz craquant,
hostie virtuelle du pauvre, pinceau de benoîte urbaine


*
L'omble chevalier confit à basse température
(si cette Dame désire taquiner l'hameçon)


*
Turbot en croûte d'argile, laitance d'oxalis des sous-bois


*
Homard en pièces, vapeur, bonbons sans sucre de serpolet


*
Bonbons de caviar, chocolat blanc, écume de tussilage


*
Soda vera


*
Brochette de gros haricots blancs en conserve,
souffle d'acha (cousin du céleri)


*
Purée de rates, truffes de Seyssel, cacao très amer


*
Papillote de veau, bonbons de café sauce
de chicorée des talus, cube de polenta

ou

Volaille de Bresse rôtie enveloppée de citrons,
mélissés, citrons


*
Plateau de fromages des Savoies


*
Les trois desserts de ma fille Carine



and here's the man himself

mini whitehouse

Today was the last day of an unproductive work week for me: I was trying to get some data together for a paper we're writing next month, but was unmotivated. I did figure out what the problem was with a structure that wasn't refining well today, but that was about it! I also have framed three photos. I've completely given up on the idea of cutting the mats myself. It's just not worth saving an extra 10 euros per photo when the framing shop will sell me perfectly cut custom mats.

After work, Chloe and I walked up through to the bastille

Where there was snow on the ramparts

and a beautiful sunset over the Chamchaude

the Belledonne

Grenoble

and the Vercors.

Later that day we went to a FANTASTIC framing store called L'eclat de Verre. While I was picking out mat colors, Chloe got waylaid by the manager. I was a little surprised to find her still missing by the time I got back to the counter, but the manager told me that she was upstairs. What was upstairs? Well as it turns out, Pierre-Yves is a fanatical model builder, and wanted us to see his giant room full of models


including Versailles, the Orangerie, etc etc. However, in a special place of honor on the landing was this:

yeah thats right: the Whitehouse. With a silver prom limousine out front, a Little Bird attack helicopter and a fully camouflaged presidential Seahawk (with a big presidential seal on the sied: isn't that a bit counterproductive to the camo?) parked on the roof. There is of course an associated web site which, Pierre-Yves was quick to point out, has no membership fees!

Kenji

I'm finally continuing the scanning of my parents old negatives (My original project was to print them out, but I dont have enough time to get into the darkroom right now) on my excellent new epson 4870. Heres one of my dad:

which I thought was kind of interesting because I didnt know they had color film back then. Just kidding, dad.

Natto

OK first of all, now I'm not sure what it was that Bourdain was served that was called "mountain potato". It was probably Nagaimo, but maybe in a special kind of preparation. In any case, I dug up this quote about natto and nagaimo:


I thought I would die. Nothing, not bugs, not iguana, not live reptile parts, not tree grubs, nothing I'd ever eaten would approach the horror of these few not unusual breakfast items. I'm not sneering. I'm sure that natto AND mountain potato are, as they say, 'Acquired tastes.' And I'm sure that over time I could learn to appreciate them. If I were incarcerated and natto was the only food available. But for right now? Given a choice between eating natto and digging up my old dog Pucci (dead thirty-five years) and making rillets out of him? Sorry, Pucci.


so there you have it.