We're just getting geared up for a big road trip to Las Vegas, Death Valley and Bishop.
Xmas was great, and we scored a Zojirushi induction heating fuzzy logic rice cooker and a bunch of other cool things. A lot fof our presents for other people are with our shipment from france which, after 10 weeks is still not here. For the amount of money they are being paid, Allied/Sirva is pretty pathetic.
When I first got here, I looked around for a service that would allow you to try to find out what time of day was best on a given commute (based on historic data). Unfortunately, I wasn't able to find any. However, since commute times are readily available via 511.org, I decided to write a perl script using LWP::Simple. 511.org is polled every 5 minutes and the results are written to a flat text file.
I wrote a second script which does some simple mining of the data: It calculates average commute times as well as standard errors, and produces a plot like on the left for south san francisco to albany. The data is only for weekdays and should exclude holidays (the only one so far is thanksgiving).
Similarly, in order to try to figure out when the best time to leave and come back for the weekend, I started gathering data on 80 west and east between albany and fairfield, as well as between albany and Livermore and albany and Walnut Creek (below).
Although I doubt I will find anything interesting, I also create graphs for each route across the hour, regardless of time of day. This would in principle allow you to see if there were any overall rules of thumb for leaving at :00, :15, :30 , :45 etc. So far things look pretty flat though.
Last weekend, I realized that averaging the data probably is an overly lossy thing to do. Better would be to be able to see a histogram of all the recorded commute times for a given route and time of day. My first idea was to image map the plot of average times vs. time of day to histograms. However, this is ugly and clunky. A better way to express this third dimension of data is with color. The idea is to have a color coded histogram of data for each time of day such that extremely frequently observed commute times get one side of the color spectrum (black for example) and infrequently measured commute times get another (white for example). It took a really long time for me to figure out how to get PM3d to work correctly, but I eventually did it. The major problem was actually just formatting the data. Another important trick is to make sure you have the same number of data points for each "slice" (= time of day), even if the data hasn't been measured... just make a lot of bins with zeros. The results are actually kind of beautiful and are beginning to show clear patterns where the average plots showed none. Some examples are shown to the left. It is important to note that because I am not smart enought to figure out exactly how PM3d works, the color scale is relative rather than absolute (i.e. even if the scale goes from 0 to 1.8, the number of observations in the black bin might be closer to 20).
If you have an interest in the project, drop me an email.
Some more data
We woke up to no power this morning. We found out later that a huge eucalyptus had knocked down some power lines near our house. Here are some pictures of the mess
Went for a bike ride over the Golden Gate and down to Kirby Cove today. I never get tired of looking at that bridge.
Later on I ate incredible bulgogi and kalbi with gail and kenji
I'll slowly start making updates on our new life in San Francisco. We moved into our apartment in the Presidio and bought a Subaru Outback XT. In celebration of our new non Renault car, we decided to take a trip to Bishop. It was windy and cold, but we got in a little climbing in at the Sads before my skin got removed and we chickened out
we slept in the back of the car, which was MUCH more comfortable than the back of my dads pickup.
We had our "Work" leaving party today, to which we brought all of our remaining alcohol (Chartreuse VEP, nice Sake, Ouzo, wine by the case, etc etc). People really loved the cheese plate, and in particular the Camembert au Calvados. Surprisingly, the second and third packages of party time crabs were also a big hit! Earlier in the day, we had managed to set up our mail forwarding to the US (very farkin expensive) and sold our Clio 1.4 RT for a song to a postdoc at the IBS.
The giant cheese plate had been ordered from les Alpages, and we had picked it up earlier that day. I had almost started crying when the Fromagiers at les Alpages pointed to my show announcement up on the wall and asked me how the photography was going. I realize that some explanation is necessary, since those of you who know me probably realize that this is a somewhat atypical response on my part.
When I had first arrived in France in 2002, I had immediately fallen in love with Les Alpages. We lived a block away in Place Vaucanson, and even though I spoke two words of french, it was the first store (apart from boulangeries) that I managed to summon the courage to enter alone. I spent a not insignificant amount of time preparing for my first unaided visit, having looked up the words in the dictionary and gotten advice from Chloe. I picked a time of day during which I had hoped that very few people would be in the store, and moved in for the kill. As I trudged forward in the line, I rehearsed my lines to myself. I looked at all the cheeses that I would NOT be oredering because they were outside my script. I paid attention to the feigned nonchallance with which the old ladies ordered their cheeses : I knew that they were just as terrified as I was. Everything was going according to my plan. However, when I finally got to the counter, I panicked and asked for 500 kilograms of comte instead of 500 grams. After the large bald fromagier in a white apron burst out laughing and asked if I wanted to buy the whole store (500 kg is about a half ton of cheese), I turned bright red and said 500 grams please! By that time, a huge line had built up behind me which stretched out the door. They were all laughing and enjoying the mental picture of this American walking out of the store with a wheelbarrow full of cheese. Then I took a month off from cheese buying. Little by little things got easier, and although we moved further away, I still managed to get back there from time to time. I learned that it was "Comte de Montagne, and not Comte de la Montagne, and Tomme Crayeuse, not Tomme cremeuse. My relationship with the store was a kind of abridged and poetic version of my stay in France; all the heartbreak, embarassment, frustration and joy of expat living in little snapshots punctuated by the ringing of the bells on their big glass door. I will miss you, les alpages.
As our going away present, our lab had generously bought us a meal (they even included the wine!!) at "L'escalier", a restaurant in Grenobel across from the museum. The meal was great, and the portions were BIG.
omlette in an eggshell with caviar
foie gras
seared tuna (this was a little too big for me)
excellent and perfectly cooked steak
the cheese plate
and dessert
Everything was fantastic except the cheese plate, which was a little too avant-garde. It features a parmesan mousse, and horrifyingly, a blue cheese ice cream!!
Our first of two fairwell parties was tonight.
This one was for various friends that we have made in our 3.75 years in france. My parents had generously mailed us more Party Time Crabs, which were the hit of the party. Here are some friends tasting an enjoying these delicious treats
Their popularity increased greatly as the wine and alcohol was consumed. Although we had said in our invitation email that it was a potluck, only our friend Franck brought any food, so Chloe had to make some emergency runs to the pizza place.
After breakfast in bed
and another castle-bath, we had a fully day of climbing at the Oasif sector where I came close to but repeatedly failed on ils ont marche sur la Tune. On the way out we stopped to take pictures of the beautiful old houses along the Tarn
and then made the long (5 hour) drive back to Grenoble.
Today was a touring day and we had a lot (pun intended) planned. The first priority was to eat breakfast in the castle, which had too many nice things to mention, so here is a photo
The second priority was to buy some cheap pants that would allow me to actually climb, which we found near Millau. I had read about the new Millau viaduct and heard from our friend Franck that it was stunning, so when I saw where we were staying, I knew we had to have a look. Along the way there was some beautiful light. We pulled over and I frantically got my cameras out. I haven't had my film developed yet, but a few of the digital shots turned out okay
We continued on
to the autoroute entry, and drove across the bridge
paid the 4 euros, and drove across. It's a beautiful and impressive bridge, and one of those things that you really need to see in person to appreciate: the scale of it is just amazing. The piers are more than 300 meters tall, which make it about as tall as most of the climbs I did this summer. It's funny that the same obsession with public works projects that tear up every street in france every summer can also produce something so fantastic.
We continued on past countless pretty villages, where we got stuck in front of sheep again
and we eventually arrived in Laguiole
We weren't in Laguiole by accident; I had read about a laguiole corkscrew in Peter Mayle's condescending but occasionally entertaining Encore Provence. His description made me wonder just how good a bottle opener could be. So I started reading about them, googled them and eventually wandered down to the scary knife store near the Jardin de Ville. The tire bouchon that the lady handed me when I asked for a Laguiole (Lah yole) was shoddily made and actually pretty ugly. Then I started reading more and found out that there are a lot of cheap imitation Laguioles, and many of them (perhaps even most) aren't even made in Laguiole and are machine made. There are a few exceptions, notably the Chateau Laguiole brand and the forge de laguiole brand. When I found a store in Grenoble which sold the Forge corkscrew, I was a little put off by the price, but it was beautifully made, so I decided that it would be a good thing to covet. However, since we were planning on going to the Tarn anyway, and the Tarn isn't so far from Laguiole I held off. In any case, Chloe used her magical route finding skills to take us right to the Forge-de-Laguiole forge and shop in the outskirts of town
and we wandered around the shop for a long time looking at all the different corkscrews and knives that were available. The handles are made from plastic, precieux woods like olive and rosewood and horn.
I hadn't really planned on buying a knife but was won over by the amazing craftsmanship and the fact that many of their knives are hand forged, assembled and finished. So in the end we got an olive wood handled sommelier corkscrew, a rosewood handles knife for me and a pistachio handled knife for chloe. And we applied to get the TVA back. Since it was monday and in between the weekend and another holiday, there weren't very many places open for lunch, so we ended up at a cafeteria like place for crepes and cocas.
From Laguiole, we continued to Ste. Eulalie d'Olt, another of the plus beaux villages de france and we wandered around the streets for a little while to admire the architecture
And the beautiful rock ducks
From here, we had a bit of a long drive back towards the Tarn on winding and headache inducing roads. Finally we made it to Ste. Enimie and had a look around since we didn't have a chance to do so on Saturday.
We continued on past La Malene and the castle to try to scope out climbing sectors for tomorrow, but darkness caught up to us and we weren't able to find very much of anything.
After another luxurious castle bath, we went to dinner. I didn't take any photos of this one, but I had the ravioli with scallops this time, and the perfectly done steak, followed by more cheese and the same dessert as yesterday. It was yet another perfect meal.
