Wednesday, September 24, 2014

Tour de Chartreuse

My college buddy Micah came up for a little (ok a big) ride through the Chartreuse. Placette->St. Laurent->St Pierre d'Entremont->Granier->return via the plateau. It's a stunning ride, and we both felt pretty studly because it was raining for a good bit of the ride!




We stopped at Hank's at St. Pancrasse, and eventually made it back to our place. What a great ride.

Monday, September 22, 2014

Sad

Many nice beans, all incinerated in typical "French Roast" style. Maybe someone can explain what the upside of dark roasting is?


Friday, September 19, 2014

Karen and Fran here!

Hopefully the kids will not attack them too much

Tuesday, September 16, 2014

Sunday, September 14, 2014

Saturday, September 13, 2014

this stuff

Is awesome

and so is this stuff

and this too -- fromage magique!


Friday, September 12, 2014





Sunday, September 07, 2014

Hanging out with Ben and Terry!

Great as usual! We went to two breweries in Marin, and I enjoyed hoppy beer

Then back to mom's place where we sampled some Medronho, and broke out the turn of the century, pre-ban Absinthe


Saturday, September 06, 2014

Climbing with Ian and Susan


Later on, mom and I went to drop off MORE coins!

and mom and I picked up tortilla to bring back to France, and I had chilaquiles




Friday, September 05, 2014

Dim sum with Christine and Terry!

We kidnapped Terry for a great Dim sum meal



Aftewrwards, Christine and I headed to 4 barrel, to power up



Thursday, September 04, 2014

Omakase with the mom!

A truly amazing meal with mom. Only thing missing was dad









Wednesday, September 03, 2014

Tuesday, September 02, 2014

Saturday, August 30, 2014

A ride with Howard

Up Tunnel. He has a super ridculous new bike:


Yes, that's Campy 80th anniversary on there



Friday, August 29, 2014

Aeropress

We've been drinking mediocre coffee so much, I thought it was finally time to try my hand at it. Friends had been recommending the Aeropress coffee maker for a while, so I ordered it for US dilvery, to coincide with my visit,

and went down to Artis coffee for some beans (and an espresso of course)

I also had bought a small hario hand cranked grinder. The coffee was their Aricha natural Yirgacheffe. The results, without too much tweaking, were fantastic!

Thursday, August 28, 2014

Sunday, August 24, 2014

Tour de l'Aiguille

I did my MTB/VTT goal of the summer: ride to the Aiguille de Quaix. It ended up being a lot of walking the bike but was pretty cool



Tuesday, August 19, 2014

Back to Grenoble

We got a very early start to avoid any problems like last year. The moped was way-overburdened, but after a half hour we eventually made it to the port, returned the bike, got on the ferry

took a taxi to the airport
took the plane to Bergamo
Drove for hours on the autorute, stopping for coffee (two are mine)

Then more hours

and eventually home! Nobody ever said it was easy getting to/from Kalymnos.

Monday, August 18, 2014

Last climbing day

Chloe started the day by getting slightly turtled by a too heavy pack

And then we did some nice routes at a new crag (to us): Arginonta. We started on some 6's, then moved on to the left, where I flashed Lysistrati (yay!),

and then got shut down on No Sleep til Hammersmith (booo). We coordinated with Carl, to FINALLY, after all of these years do the above water traverse in Vathi, but could not convince his beautiful American climbing protege Rachel, who lives in Berlin, to come join us. We had lunch in Emporios and then putt-putted out to Vathi by way of Massouri to rent shoes and do a few other errands. It was a lot of mopeding. Maybe we'll rent a car next time. The traverse turned out to be a blast. I had planned on using a makeshift chalk pot,

but instead came up with a cunning and brilliant plan: fill my pockets with chalk! And because I am such a good husband, I would leave little chalk stashes at random places for chloe. So the traverse is long -- 350 meters, and there are a few easy cruxes, then some harder ones and then one stopper move. I latched it for a millisecond and then took the plunge. Being a pretty terrible swimmer, I exhausted myself doggy paddling back to port. A must do for the summer though! From there, we rinsed the shoes off, bought a gigantic load of baklava (to take home to Grenoble), had the moped guy check the bike over, returned the somewhat soggy shoes to the climbing store (note to self: bring our own shoes next time), then back to Emporios to pack :(.

One of the cacti was blooming -- apparently it only blooms for one night of the year



life in Grenoble, France as an expat postdoc
life in Grenoble, France as an expat scientist
life in San Francisco, CA as a biotech nerd life in Grenoble, France as an expat scientist

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