Tuesday, November 07, 2006

Fall in the Bay Area



I know this is the time of the year where things get a little dreary in most parts of the northern hemisphere, so I thought I would send you some pictures of our little West Coast paradise. We spend the weekend before last in Healdsburg (north of sonoma): good food, good wine, good friends, good times... See Jeremy's, Julie's, Mailys' and our own pix. Highly recommend it!

Monday, September 11, 2006

Royal Arches - Yosemite


Alex and I decided to go climbing in Yosemite on Saturday. It was going to be my first "real" valley climbing experience, so we went for a great classic: Royal Arches. 15-pitches and 1400ft of air sounds impressive in a book, and it turns out had quite an effect on my impressionable self. The topo presents the route as a long but moderate effort, adding that "the crux of the climb can easily be bypassed by a pendulum technique". What they really meant to say is that on the 9th pitch, you have the option of holding on to a fixed rope anchored 30 ft up the wall and make a spiderman run accross a blank (and pretty darn steep) slab of rock overlooking beautiful Yosemite Valley (1000ft below), trying to go far enough so you can reach a small ledge with your left hand (if you visualize this correctly at this precise moment you are hanging 1000ft off the ground, holding on to the pendulum rope that is pulling you back to the right with your right hand and fighting the pull of the pendulum with your left hand that is gripping a small rocky ledge to your left... comfy). You then have to let go of the pendulum and somehow hoist yourself onto the ledge you were holding, at which point you can stop hyperventilating. Needless to day I was scared out of my brains and I still wonder how I got myself to do this, I probably should blame heat exhaustion. Anyway, somehow I managed to get over there on my second run. 6 pitches later (all 15 pitches were led by SuperAlex, por supuesto) we were at the top. Of course we had run out of water a long time ago so we were quite relieved when - 11 rappels later - we set foot onto the valley ground. After 9h30 of climbing, it felt really good to inhale some powerade and sit down at the curry village deck. Two pitchers of water, a cold beer and a gigantic pizza later we collapsed onto our sleeping pads. I think I will stay away from rocks for a little bit. Alex's pictures can be found here.

Tuesday, September 05, 2006

Santa Barbara


Nothing like a short trip to Santa Barbara to feel that life is good in California. Mike, Wei, Maureen and I left the brisk breeze of the bay area on Saturday morning and headed down to SoCal and a textbook californian sun. The warm weather was a good thing since the plane had a little too much fuel in the tanks, and we had to pack rather lightly (5lbs per person max luggage). After meeting up with our local friends Damon, Nathalie and Olav, we decided to pretend to go surfing on the beach. For the majority of us, this mostly consisted of carrying a surfboard around the beach and staring at the ocean, although I did make a valid attempt to brave the rather frigid water (no wetsuit... 5lbs limit, remember?).
On Sunday, we did our traditional tourist walk down State street to the pier, followed by a visit of the Courthouse and the mission. We met up with the local crew at Franceschi park in the hills to have a picnic before taking off to (chilly) Palo Alto. A couple pictures of the trip can be found here, courtesy of picasa web. Mike & Wei's pics are here.

For aviation enthusiasts: here are some videos of our takeoff and landing in Palo Alto.

Sunday, August 27, 2006

Napa Din(n)er



After being sworn into the sacred brotherhood of pilotry on Friday, I found two brave souls to join Maureen to be my very first passengers as pilot in command. Amy, Alex, Maureen and I decided to fly to Napa on Saturday evening to have a steak at jonesy's famous steakhouse which most enviable feature is that it is REALLY close to the runway, as the food was much less extraordinary than the patrons (you'll have to go for yourself to figure that one out). The 35min flight to Napa was very pretty over foggy SF and we caught a beautiful sunset on the way back; you can find a couple of pictures here.

Sunday, July 30, 2006

Week-ends in the Bay Area

After all our trips around the globe, we spent a few week-ends in San Francisco and around, and enjoyed the great outdoor the Bay Area has to offer. We went biking in Tilden Park (close to Berkeley), spent the week-end in Sonoma with Cedric's Bain colleagues and did some more mountain biking and wine tasting, enjoyed a barbecue in Dolores Park with a bunch of friends followed by the free symphony concert and biked Angel Island's hills with the amazing views of San Francisco, Tiburon, Sausalito, ...

Sunday, July 09, 2006

4th of July in the sky















This year was a quite original 4th of July. Marie-Catherine, Andy (Cedric's flight instructor) and I were all passengers of the soon-to-be licensed pilot Cedric. We flew over Sacramento, Napa, Sonoma and the East Bay and enjoyed the Bay Area fireworks from the sky. Now I am just really eager to go flying all around California, Oregon and Nevada, as soon as Cedric got his license. For more pictures and video, click here. Maureen

Tuesday, June 20, 2006

Stanley goes to Washington


It's official: Stanley will find a home at the Smithsonian National Museum of American History in Washington DC. Too bad I will miss the introduction party next week, since its my second day of real work... Anyway, a must see next time your in the area!

Sunday, June 18, 2006

Back to Tana - Andasibe


We headed back to Antananarivo on Friday and met up with Coco who took us to Andasibe. This time, we stayed the night at the Vakona Forest lodge, a very nice bungalow-style accomodation (second in our "best of" list best after Anakao Club Resort). We went on a nocturnal walk to observe some microcebus, and we even found one that stuck with us for the pictures. The next morning, we went into the reserve to try to find some Indris. Indris mark their territory by "singing" at the crack of dawn. They make these spooky supernatural sounds (part car alarm,
part scoobidoo-ghost) that carry for miles through the jungle. Amazing. We saw two families of Indris, the pictures are not great because it was raining a lot. Back at the hotel, we had a surprise waiting for us: our transfer back to Tana had been "postponed". All in all a routine day trip in Madagascar: hitch a ride with a family from La Reunion Island, 6 people + luggage in a Peugeot 309 (for car illiterates that's the size of a Corolla), run out of gas in the countryside, hitch a ride to the closest gas station (1-hour) to fill our waterbottles with gasoline and get going again. 5 hours for the 80 mile trip, not bad really. Last goodbyes to Balsama, Coco and the crew in Tana, and off we are. We'll be back.

Anakao


The transfer to Anakao was unremarkable: we took the same tiny De Haviland plane that took us to Morondava and had a mysterious layover in the middle of nowhere (see pix) en route to Tulear (I suspect the pilot had to use the boys room). In lieu of a romantic cruise from Tulear to Anakao, we had a slight logistics change that made us take a Taxi-Brousse for half the way, followed by a tiny fishing boat that stopped at every fishing village on the way to our hotel... very exotic. Five hours after landing in Tulear, we finally disembarked at the Anakao Club Resort. A rare find, our hotel was the first bit of real luxury we experienced on the big Island. Nice. We did nothing but relax and went snorkeling/bird watching on Nosy Ve (a tiny Island off the coast - a 30 minute pirogue ride). Anakao Club Resort is a brand new property held by an Italian perfectionist from the Val D'Aoste. Although it was not mentioned in any of our guidebooks, we highly recommend it for its exceptional management and impeccable facilities (currently 6 bungalows).

On the road again


The ride back from the Tsingys was our first true bush adventure. We had been cruising along on the "road" for about an two hours when our right back wheel fell off (I mean this litterally). The drive shaft gears had fatigued to the point it broke off and fell out. After stepping out and assessing the damage under the scorching midday sun, our driver confidently estimated he would need an hour for the repair. I know nothing about bush mechanics but this sounded rather optimistic so we looked for a contingency plan. We hitched a ride with a group of swiss people from Zurich to the next town, a crammed 1-hour drive (8 people + luggage in a mid size SUV). While we were having lunch there our guide arrived in another vehicle (a Toyota land cruiser seating 10...). He announced that the repair hadn't gone as smoothly as expected, and proposed his "solution": joining the group of 10 people in the land cruiser (between 4 and 5 westerners per row of back seats) for the second half of the trip. I gladly refused this unattractive option, and once again used my newly developed Malagasy negociation technique which consits of repeatedly stating exactly what you want (in our case our own car) with complete disregard for the other party's argument. A crucial point of this technique is to carefully listen to your opponents explanation, making it clear that you understand his argument and by facial expression giving him the impression he convinced you of his position. At that point, when his hopes are high he won the argument and stops talking, you calmly repeat what you want, making for a disarmingly absurd discussion that will quickly discourage the person you are facing. Works every time... We got our own car, the drive back to Morondava was a (bumpy) breeze, and after a night in a Bungalow on the beach we took off for Tulear en route to Anakao.

Tsingy de Bemaraha - size matters


The Tsingys are a UNESCO world heritage site (the only one in Madagascar), attracting more and more visitors each year. To get there you need to brave 130 miles (200km) of "piste" a loosely defined dirt road. The drive from Morondava can take up to 10 hours, so it's rather rough on sensitive stomacs. There are also two river crossings (the "ferry" only takes you accross twice a day, so you better not miss it, as we found out...). There is only one really nice hotel at the entrance of the park called the "Relais des Tsingy". The bungalows are rustic, but have water and electricity for 4 hours a day (a huge luxury) and are in a beautiful setting on top of a hill. We stayed three nigths and visited both the Petits Tsingy and the Grand Tsingy. The extra day was probably not necessary, as the larger Grand Tsingy are pretty much a bigger, more impressive version of the Petits Tsingys. However, given the 10 hour drive, staying the extra day is probably the more reasonable thing to do. Update to our critter count: we saw the elusive jumping rat, another check in our book.

Kirindy


Maureen arrived on Friday and we took off the same day for Morondava. We flew in the smallest Air Madagascar plane so far, an ancient prop with 15 or so foldable seats, fixed landing gear and an analog radio. In Morondava we met up with Florence, a friend from college who had spent 7 month in Madland to work on a small tv broadcasting project. She gave us the quick tour of the town feeling somewhat nostalgic as it she was leaving the same day for home (via Tana by Taxi brousse). After lunch we took the road to Kirindy, a forest preserve 30 miles (50km) north of Morondava. When I say "road" I don't want to mislead you into thinking of something paved (hah!), or even remotely straight or even. It took us 2 hours to drive the 30 miles, so this should give you some indication of the shape of the road. On the way to Kirindy we passed through the "avenue of the Baobabs", you can't get enough of these strange trees. In Kirindy Maureen got her first glimpse at Malagasy accomodations, as well as a bunch of lemurs. We did a night tour and the day tour, saw some snakes, some chameleons, the local (tiny) version of a puma a bunch of nocturnal and diurnal lemurs as well as the relatively rare mouse lemur (as you would have guessed, it's a lemur the size of a mouse - the smallest primate on earth). Early start Saturday morning headed furhter north to the Tsingys.

Thursday, June 08, 2006

Got Lemurs


Yesterday we took a quick day trip to Andasibe, a rain forest located about 145km from Antananarivo (~3 hour drive). The big attraction of this park is its Indris, the largest lemurs of Madagascar. The forest in Andasibe is much denser and wetter than in Berenty and it felt much more like a jungle, complete with leeches and other bugs. We walked around in a slight rain for an hour before we spotted our first group. Indris are very impressive animals, moving around by making huge leaps from tree to tree. Most of the time they don't even land but merely bounce off one tree trunk to the other in game of giant pinball in the forest's canopy (I realize this probably only makes sense if you saw it). Here are a bunch of pictures. On our way back, we stopped at a private collection of critters (from French entomologist Peyrerasse - spelling might be off - its 80 km from tana) where we saw some amazing chameleons as well as more lemurs. The collection was worth the stop, and its no detour on your way back to Tana. Here is a video of a brown lemur eating a banana up close, and a chameleon medley, enjoy!

Tuesday, June 06, 2006

Baobabs: check - Lemurs: check


We spent the weekend at Fort-Dauphin, in the far south of the Island. The place itself is a dump. The very few decent buildings are occupied by QMM, a mining company subsidiary of Rio Tinto, and there are really no good accomodations (we stayed at top-of-the-line but decaying "Le Dauphin") and surprisingly prices are the same as in Tana. Locals blame inflation on the mining guys. But people come here for another reason: the town is located in a stunningly beautiful setting - a peninsula with opposing half moon beaches and mountains only miles away from the shores. Botany enthousiasts have access to all three types of primary forest (dry/transition/wet) within an hour drive. On Saturday Alvin and I visited Berenty, which is a small enclave of primary forest that was preserved in the middle of a gigantic agricultural complex growing some kind of Mexican Agave to be exported to China. Today I am pleased to say: mission accomplished. In fact, not only did I see Baobabs and Lemurs, but I even saw Lemurs on Baobabs! Because of its isolated nature, the animals in Berenty are trapped on a relatively small surface, and there are very easy to see. There are (lots) of Lemurs (ringtails, brown lemurs and the dancing sifaka), as well as boas, flying foxes (a 50-inch wingspan bat), and a bunch of colorful birds (sorry, no names, not really into that). Unfortunately, the boas were hibernating, so we only got to see a nest, and we were not allowed to get close to the godzilla bats. On the other hand, we saw a LOT of lemurs and these things are really fun to watch. One of the species (sifaka) can only walk upright... and sideways. Imagine white fluffy monkeys breakdancing to "walk like an egyptian", very entertaining. Here is a video of a ringtail feasting off a cactus.
Travelling tip: if you want to get an overdose of lemurs you should stay at the Berenty hotel, a bunch of bungalows right in the park. This is the lemur-watching equivalent of Pier 39. Don't spend more than one nigt though, as the reserve is rather small. Berenty is only 88km (55miles) from Fort Dauphin, but it takes 3 hours to get there because the road is in such a bad shape.

Tuesday, May 30, 2006

Getting Around in Antananarivo



To get around in Tana people use Taxis which typically are (really) ancient tan-colored Citroens 2CV or Renault "quatrelles". I have learned a thing or two about cars riding along in these venerable vehicles. For instance, there is a simple procedure to follow when you run out of gas trying to get up a hill: you take out the emergency plastic bottle filled with gasoline (the one you always keep safely tucked between the two front seats), pour some of it into the tank, open the hood, take a sip out of the bottle (yes, the one with the gasoline), detach some tubing from your engine, spit the gas into it and see the engine come alive again. It works every time, and its clinically proven to fight germs causing bad breath and the gum disease gingivitis.
Maybe I need to explain why running out of gas is such a frequent occurence. Gas is very expensive in Madagascar ($4/gallon). To put matters into perspective $4 is a full meal at a very fancy restaurant, or 40 loaves of bread. Imagine an $80/gallon world to give you a sense of what it would be like (if you have trouble using your imagination, just move to California and wait for a couple more years). This means that cabs only carry the absolute minimum amount of fuel (or less) and use a peculiar driving style, shutting off the engine any time the car has sufficient momentum or when gravity supports forward progress. For our geeky readers: image some type of pulse-width-modulated engine control scheme. This allowed us to see many innovative ignition switch variations, from the traditional (but sooo conventional) key to self-wired push button devices, to bare bone hotwiring. The latter is kind of tricky given the extensive sparking, especially if you just rinsed your mouth with 87 octane stuff.
PS: No meters in these things (are you kidding?). Note to future travellers, at the time of my writing rides within Tana are 3000ARY and 6000ARY to the outskirts. As a white boy, you will be quoted twice that amount, but we now consistently haggle it down to these numbers.

Monday, May 29, 2006

An Island off the island - Nosy Sakatia


I wanted to explore more of the region, so I hitched a ride on some guy's speedboat to a small island visible from our hotel. I decided to bushwhack my way up the hill, and by a stroke of luck found a trail after a little while. The trail connected microscopic little villages (2-5 huts each) lost in the middle of a really dense jungle. On the way up the hill, the landscape would constantly switch from a lush forest to lunar desolation (laterite erosion, I think). Check out the pix of the malagasy emblem (fan palm), and some weird jackfruit-type trees.

Out of Tana - Nosy Be


We left Tana to spend the weekend in Nosy Be, one of the hundreds of little tropical paradises you will find all over Madagascar. Nosy Be is an island off the northwestern coast, a short 1-hour flight away from bustling Antananarivo. We stayed at "Auberge Orangea" basically a few bungalows right on the beach. This is a very typical accomodation for tourists in the area, as pretty much the entire shore is owned by one of these small independent family operations, the owners of which are mostly foreign. Amenities are really basic, but prices are almost european (5Euro breakfast, the equivalent of a 3-course meal in Tana). We were just happy to get out of the Tana-scent (a delicate mix of gasoline and diesel fumes with powerful sewage accents) for a couple of days.
After swimming in the Mozambique channel, Alvin and I went for an exploratory walk in the area. Alvin wanted to blend in with the locals, so he decided to go barefoot neglecting the fact that he did not benefit from the thousands of years of genetic selection and grueling practice that keeps a smile on the face of local schoolgirls when they walk around barefoot on viciously sharp gravel roads heated by the scorching sun to the point you can fry an egg on them. Anyway, this was an opportunity to try ourselves at some local handicraft: download craft tutorial here (this one is worth it). I had a good laugh (notice I was the one wearing Tevas) and we also made some furry friends along the way. Good times...

Wednesday, May 24, 2006

Madagascar Part 2 - How I Learned to Stop Worrying and Love CIPRO


After a couple of rough days I am back on my feet exploring Tana. We went to see the market (check out Alvin's coverage of a local riot) and marveled at the tasty delights only a local farmers market can bring, such as fly infested chicken intestins and mold-cured fish remains. This outing made us hungry, so we went to an indonesian restaurant for dinner.
I also saw my first lemur. I must say these things are really cute. They don't look like monkeys at all, more like a genetic screw up between a squirrel, a panda bear and a chimp. They are very loud and a lot of fun to watch.
We are flying to Nosy-Be this weekend to scientifically investigate whether the Malagasy beaches are truly up to their reputation. Hard work, but I feel we will be up to the task. Breaking news: I was able to upload a few pix so check it out.

Tuesday, May 23, 2006

Madagascar Part 1















After missing our connection in Paris-CDG we landed in Antananarivo (Tana if you are hip) on Monday at 4h50AM. This is one crazy place... On the day of our arrival we had an appointment with the minister of education and research. Because our luggage had been lost, we showed up in flip-flops and sweat pants at the ministry: "yo, we are from California and we are here to talk about biodiversity, dude-excellence" First impressions really do count! None of this crazy "computerized-tracking" of your bags around here. Instead, your request is entered in a nice large binder and you then conveniently show up for every flight landing in Tana and look for your luggage in the caroussel. It took us a mere 3 rides to the airport to find our bags (well, Shveta only got the contents of her bag as it had been compacted for easier transport, but I digress). After a new entry in the large binder, we were really looking forward to change clothes for the first time in 4 days.
On a less enjoyable note: after going out for dinner on our first day, I have spent the last 18 hours in my bed trying to hold some liquid in my body. Advice to future travelers: order your Zebu-filet "well done"...
I am hoping to get out of bed today, so look out for some cool critter pictures.
cedric
PS: my internet access is steam powered, so it may take a couple of days until I figure out how to upload more pix.

Tuesday, May 16, 2006

Grandma in California



Just after finals, we had my grandma over for a week. So I mostly wore my San Francisco tourguide hat for the last few days. Since she had planned to meet up with friends in Sacramento, it was a great excuse for a first high performance airplane experience to pick her up (I flew a 182TC, it's not a Malibu but it's still pretty sweet). The next blog will likely be from Madagascar, so stay tuned for those cool lemur pix.

Thursday, May 11, 2006

First solo

After 146 takeoffs (and landings... I heard it's good form to keep the number of landings equal to the number of takeoffs) it suddenly felt rather lonely in the cockpit. This is a short video of takeoff number 147. Exhilarating...

Tuesday, May 02, 2006

The Long Tail

We are now officially part of the long tail! From now on you can enjoy highly-targeted, ultra-relevant links on this page, courtesy of a premier internet company headquartered in mountain view, CA. Amazing what you can do these days from the comfort of your own home...

Monday, May 01, 2006

More Belgians in San Francisco


We had the great chance to welcome Laetitia, Audrey & Laurent in San Francisco just after our trip to Japan. It was great to have them here and we tried to impress them as much as possible with some of the great things California has to offer. Unfortunately, they only got to see a rainy California. Even worse, the sun came back just after Laetitia stepped into her plane back to Belgium. Maybe she was the one to blame ;-)
At least she can say she was there for the rain record in Northern California since 1904. So many things to do in California: they went to visit Alcatraz; discovered the steep streets of San Francisco; went biking on the Golden Gate; got a bay area tour in a small plane with Cedric the pilot, we showed them that one can eat well in California with multiple restaurants and a cheese & wine party at our place; we met Julie, Laetitia's friend who is doing her PostDoc in Berkeley; we initiated them to oysters bbq (everybody likes that, even those who dislike raw oysters); went camping in Point Reyes Park; went to Muir Woods with its giant sequoias; enjoyed Napa Valley under the rain; and finished the californian adventure for Laetitia with Mishapalooza and the mechanical bull. Laetitia is a real cowgirl now. Now it’s your turn to come see us ! For some pix, check: www.maureencedric.com/photos/LaetitiaAudreyLaurentSanFrancisco
Maureen

Wednesday, April 05, 2006

Lost in translation



This is the somewhat lengthy tale of our first time in Japan. We hope it will make you want to take the trip.
We took off from SFO on Friday and arrived in Narita Airport at 6PM on Saturday after an uneventful flight. We decided to take the train to Shibuya and we only were lost for about 15 minutes once we got there. It's really no big deal to walk to the Cerulean Towers from Shibuya station if you can find a map of the area and you have a compass (thanks for the advice John). The Cerulean Tower is REALLY nice with great views in most rooms. Although we had grand plans to see some of Tokyo by night the first day, We crashed in our beds as soon as we got there.
On Sunday morning, we took a stroll in Shibuya, which is a rather busy place where mostly young people hang out to shop and play games (we saw a line of ~150 people at 7AM who were waiting to play some weird game involving little steel balls in a 3D pinball-like machine). We met up with Miz, Shamayn and Tom for lunch and had our first local culinary experience: tonkatsu. Basically some super finely sliced pork that is formed into a patty with various tasty things (cheese, pepper, garlic or oignons) inside, then the whole thing is deep fried - YUMMY. Although it felt exotic and all, this was rather tame stuff considering our next few meals. After lunch, we took the train to Harajuku. Tons of people shopping, with bazaar-like shops (takeshita st.) right next to flashy ubertrendy malls. There is also a bridge where teenage girls show off their peculiar vestimentary style (along with some skin usually), the whole thing is covered by national TV and a dozens of specialty press reporters. A shrine (Meiji) and street bands in the park wrapped up our afternoon. That night we met up with Shamayn's friends to have shinko-nabe, the thing that makes sumo wrestlers huge (and there only meal). Tasty stuff!
On Monday we took advantage of our jetlag to meet up at 4AM with Miz & Tom (who had no jetlag to take advantage of, they are just troopers...), and head out to the fish market. We saw a lot of sea creatures in crates, and check out these videos (here and there) of the Tuna auction. This was followed by one of the culinary highlights of the day: a 6AM sushi breakfast. We crammed ourselves in the world's smallest sushi restaurant and committed to eat all the (really tasty) sushi the guy behind the counter presented to us. This was more sushi I could have handled at any time of the day, but we felt it was the honorable thing to do... We visited the Google office later that morning, and left for Hakone at lunchtime (needless to say we did not have lunch). The trip to Hakone was an adventure, as we quickly came to realize what luxury Tokyo's translated informational signs really are. None of this foreign stuff in the countryside! We were using all our imagination to (unsuccessfully) infer meanings from the ideograms on the Odawara station's signs, as any official looking person we would approach for help would tell us with a terrorized look he does not speak english. By some miracle we ended up not only buying the right ticket, but also finding the correct bus terminal for our ride to Hakone. Of course, this made us realize the main difference between travelling by bus or by train as an language-ignorant foreigner: busses get stuck in traffic jams, which screw up their schedules which in turns makes the universal measure of time useless in order to identify where we need to get off! From an incompletely translated time table (which gave us the ideograms for Ashinoyu) we found a word that was spelled the same, but with some stuff before it, and we concluded this must be our station Higashi-Ashinoyu. We got off at that one, then followed our precise directions ("a 2 minute walk from the bus stop"). We picked a street at random and started walking. Using a print out of the name of our Ryokan, we actually made it with the help of very helpful (and super-friendly) locals. At night, we had our first kaiseki dinner served in our room (very cool). Kaiseki basically consists of a lot (~20) of different plates, the content of which we made no attempt identifying. Our guidebook qualifies the food we ate as "adventurous" for westerners, and some of it certainly was. While we felt pretty good about trying all the exotic dishes, little did we know that the real rough stuff would come in the morning. Think you know what breakfast looks like? Think again. That one was a little harder on our stomacs, and the maid kept on serving us more and more... Anyway, I must admit this stuff is more filling than a croissant and a hot chocolate, so I guess we headed out of our first ryokan experience full of energy after soaking for a while in our own private hotspring (the volcanic (=smelly) water was piped directly into our room). In Hakone, the highlight is the view of Mt. Fuji. You can see the mountain from a gondola that brings you up to an area of volcanic activity. The whole scenery is very beautiful, although the Swiss-themed facilities are somewhat tacky. We then took a scenic cruise on lake Ashi on a pirate ship (we like to travel in style) that took us back to our bus. Next stop was Toyotashi (Toyota city) where we would visit Elisa & Elia, two friends from College who expatriated to Japan. On the way, we had our first experience of the meaning of "cash society", as we ran out of cash and were told this was the only way to pay for our ticket. If you ever go to Japan (which I hope you will after reading this fascinating post) you will notice there are A LOT of banks. Even 7 elevens have a banking division over there. But this does not mean you can get cash at just any old ATM, as we were soon to find out. After trying a dozen or so different places, I called Elisa who gave us the secret handshake: the post office is where it's at! This is something you should remember on your Japan adventures: the ubiquitous post office and the much more rare citibank is where your foreign plastic is most likely to be changed into cash. Sure enough, we found a post office and salvation and half an hour later we were on our way to the industrial Japan of Toyotashi. Elia & Elisa live in an amazing appartment with all the technological gizmos you'd expect from our stereotypical view of hi-tec Japan. After a Geijin breakfast, Elisa drove us around in the city and dropped us off at the Toyota Technical center for a tour of the factory. Very interesting stuff, you can actually enter the factory floor and see the ballet of the welding robots, various moving assembly lines and the Toyota Production System is explained to the uninitiated. For Maureen, it was the first time seeing the production site of a company that makes "real stuff" and I think she was impressed with the sheer size and complexity of a firm with a market capitalization smaller than Google's. On Wednesday, we took off for Kyoto in a Shinkansen (tricked out superfast - and supercomfortable - train). We arrived early enough to take a stroll in the old town before dinner. As a first time visitor, you have to be in awe walking through the streets of old Kyoto. The city is amazing, with shrines and temples all over the place, small restaurants and shops everywhere, people dressed up in traditional clothing, the whole enchilada. That night it was the return of the kaiseki, and I think we put up a decent fight. I am not going to say much about Kyoto except that you have to see it if you go to Japan and are into shrines and stuff. Check out the pictures we posted, and remember photography is prohibited in the most of the really cool places, so there really is much, much more. After two days in Kyoto (awesome hotel btw: ryokan Kohro, ask for the "cypress room"), we are off on the Shinkansen back to Tokyo just in time for the giant cherry blossom picnic Mizuki had organized.

Tokyo is amazing. It's really hard to describe so you will need to see by yourself. "Bustling Metropolis" really is an understatement when referring to Tokyo, there is no city in the world (that I have been to) that is in the same league. Standing in front of Shibuya station at any time of the day (or night) and watching the endless flow of people going places is absolutely mezmerizing. The fact that we were there during the peak of the cherry blossom season made it even more special. City dwellers are magically attracted into the parks to enjoy the beautiful pink trees. They will sit there on tarps for hours to reserve the best spots for afternoon picnics. Tokyo-ites play hard, and the drink of choice during these picnics are half-gallon bottles of Suuntory whiskey. Mizuki had organized a picnic for googlers so we spent the night under the trees at the Yasukuni shrine. The next day, we tried to visit some sumo stables, we didn't see much as most wrestlers were in Osaka for a tournament and it turned out these stables are not really open to the public. We had a lot of fun being gently chased away by big fellows, though... Saturday night, we went to my friend Taku's wedding which gave us a nice glimpse of a special part of japanese social culture. After that we went out with Lila and Mark to some bar in Shibuya until their hotel-imposed curfew (!). The next morning we went to Ueno park for more cherry blossom sightseeing and met up with Miz & Tom who gave us the insider tour of the electronic neighborhood (basically a Fry's of the scale of a medium-sized city). At night we went to a Korean bbq place and then had a drink at the "icebar", a bar that is actually made of ice imported from some swedish river and serves (chilled) vodka based drinks in glasses that are made of ice as well... weird stuff. Although we were wearing stylish eskimo-style capes, it got rather cold and we did not stay very long. Monday was the last day of our trip, and we were treated with an amazing view of Mt. Fuji from our bed waking up. After french breakfast at Viron and a nice walk in Shinjuku, we headed to Narita Airport where we had our last Sushi on Japanese soil. We will be back... for sure! Here are the pix

Sunday, March 19, 2006

A week-end in San Francisco

This was a pretty quiet week-end, no skiing, since the ski season has been shortened with Cedric's accident. On Saturday, Cedric took a break from his homework to get his triathlon bicycle that he wanted to get for a long time. It will mostly be used for rehab now. I am pretty jealous because he has 2 fancy bikes, while I am still using his old mountain bike from Stanford. I think he's scared I might get faster than him !!!

On sunday, we initiated Benjy to climbing. I hope we convinced him to come back.
I also did more planning for our trip to Japan (I am looking forward to it, it will be fun) and finally updated our photos. Check it out: www.maureencedric.com/photos
Maureen

Thursday, March 09, 2006

Orthopaedics for dummies

I went to get a second opinion from an orthopaedic surgeon this morning, and the latest news is that my ACL is still attached. Instead, it's the lateral meniscus and the LCL who took the bullet. The guy made it sound like good news, so I am pretty happy although I still don't know if I'll need reconstructive surgery. check out those tasty images of knee surgery.

Sunday, March 05, 2006

Sierra snow



Some Lake Tahoe resorts were claiming an unbelievable 5 feet (150cm) of snow over the course of the week. We had to go check it out for ourselves, so we headed to the cabin on Friday night. After the now usual Caltrans-induced traffic pain on stormy nights (6 hours "drive"), we woke up on Saturday to find near perfect conditions: cold, 2ft+ of new snow, sun shining, etc. We decided to ski Alpine, as we had not been there this season. Snow conditions were absolutely amazing, in some spots I could make my entire pole disappear in the powder (50inches-125cm). To make our friends who stayed home jealous, Maureen took a couple of video clips of me playing in the white stuff. I hope you enjoy them, because this is the last bit of skiing I will be doing for a while. At 3:30 PM I was enjoying my last run of the day, when my right binding released. Unlike John Cusack on K-12, I decided to abort my run (Let's pretend this has nothing to do with my one-ski skiing ability, but more with the fact that I did not feel like hiking up too much to look for my ski stuck in the powder). Unfortunately I twisted my leg trying to come to a stop, and while I was taking a glorious faceplant I heard a nasty pop in my knee. Ski Patrol, luge, first aid hut, Truckee Emergency Room, what a fun way to end a ski weedend. At least I made a new friend in the ER.
The ER-Doc thinks my ACL is torn, I'll get a second opinion next week so I keep my fingers crossed. More pix can be found here.

Monday, February 20, 2006

More Tahoe Snow


Tahoe was hit by a much needed storm this weekend. We headed up to the cabin (along with Mike & Wei, Benjy, Marc and Ovi) for two days of great powder skiing. The drawback of the storm was a 6-hour drive through a mess of stranded 2-wheel drive vehicles (an ancient type of automotive technology) and hibernating trucks at Applegate. The snow kept falling all weekend, and strangely enough for a holiday (today is commander-in-chief day), there were no lines to speak of at the lifts. Happy Birthday Wei!

Monday, February 13, 2006

Bay Area From Above



(posted by Maureen) This Sunday I went flying with Cedric for the first time. We flew around the bay right over San Francisco, enjoying amazing views of the city and the Golden Gate. The trip to Napa takes less than half an hour this way... I am looking forward to Cedric finishing his license to go travel around California.

Sunday, January 22, 2006

Bear in Mott Canyon

I forgot to mention Ray and I ran into an adult black bear while skiing at Heavenly's Mott Canyon last weekend. The poor fellow was sitting in a tree in the middle of the skiable terrain, probably scared up there by the first skiers of the day. It spent the whole day at about 10ft off the ground, balancing its massive body on a 10 inch branch. Incredible...

Wednesday, January 18, 2006

New Year - New Ski Season


I spent last week at Ray's place in Stateline. The snow cover is still thin, but we had a lot of fun playing on the slopes. I got to try a Stalmach snowbike - pretty cool stuff! On Friday, we picked up Maureen and Misha in Ray's pimpin' plane (see pix here). I got to fly this Mirage over Lake Tahoe at night, which is an experience which cannot be described without audio effects and uncoordinated hectic hand gestures by the narrator (me). The long-awaited storm finally hit on saturday, and after a day of skiing in Heavenly we headed to our cabin in North Lake and met up with Mike and Wei to eat at an excellent italian restaurant recommended by Amy. We spent MLK skiing at squaw (1-2ft of powder) and headed back to the Bay Area on Monday night.