Max, Theo, Maureen & Cedric

Ironman Florida

2011-11-09T07:21:00.000-08:00

I found reading other people's ironman writeups useful, so I hope this can help you prepare for your own swim/bike/run adventure.

Last Saturday my friend Misha and I competed in Ironman Florida. I arrived in Panama City Beach on Wednesday after a weeklong florida vacation. Panama City Beach is rather cold in November, with temperatures in the 40s overnight and 70s during the day. It is also quite windy.

Because of the tight real estate constraints (everything happens on the premises of one resort) the athlete's village is quite small and parking is very limited. I was glad we stayed at a hotel within walking distance. I had used Tribike transportation to ship my bike to the start, and picked it up on Wednesday night. It's really nice to get your bike delivered fully assembled!

On Thursday morning I went for a short bike ride to make sure my bike was completely functional. I rode the first ~22 miles of the course and I got a first taste of the wind on these flat and open roads. I also noticed my crank was loose, crazy how these things happen... There were many people riding their bikes, the proportion of aero wheels is incredibly high (if it was ~50% in 2007 - Arizona it was at least 90% here in Panama city). Also disc wheels became common (~30-40% of bikes) and pretty much everyone was wearing aero helmets. Of course Misha & I had none of these, but we also live in the mission district so we have to keep it real :) I registered and picked up my packet after my bike ride. I also attempted to go swimming in the afternoon but the water was too choppy so I gave up after a few minutes.

On Thursday evening we all went to the Athlete's banquet, a long drawn pep-talk/charity event/athlete's briefing. The room could barely contain the thousands of athletes and their families so it was a real pain for us (baby and super pregnant wife in tow). I know these things are mandatory, but I might skip it next time around.

On Friday I went for a short swim again, then checked in my bike and gear. My son was very excited about dolphins he found in a magazine at the hotel, so we went to see a dolphin show at the local marine world. On our way back I noticed my legs were cramping up for no reason, I blamed it on my poor diet in the last week and of course worried a lot. We had a big pasta dinner in our room at night and went to bed early.

I woke up around 2AM from pre-race excitement. I stayed in bed until 4AM, then got up to eat some oatmeal. I relaxed some more and headed out to the start around 5h15. I checked on my bike and borrowed my neighbors pump to get my tires ready. 5h20AM, nothing more to do. I could have spend another 45 min in bed. I got into my wetsuit around 6h15, then went to the beach to activate my timing chip.

The beach was cold as advertised in other writeups. The water was perfect: the wind had quietened down and there were no waves to speak of. It also felt really warm so I stayed in the water while waiting for the start.

The mass start was even rougher than what I remembered from Arizona. Perhaps because it's a 2-loop thing and the turns are tighter. I was wrestling my way through foreign bodyparts for the full first loop. I did not get punched or kicked in the face too hard, so all in all it was a success. Coming out of the water for the first loop the clock said 45min. What? It turns out it was set on the Pro time so it was actually 35 min, but not knowing that really put me down. The second loop was slightly better in terms of human traffic. Lots of jellyfish (Pink meanies - venomous) could be seen in the beautifully transparent water. I ended up swimming the 2.4 m (4km) in 1h13 min which is good for me given I don't really know how to swim or care to practice that art.

The transition was a mess, mostly because I get out of the water with the bulk of the people. People were going way too slow and some were even stopping in the fresh water showers. I tried not to be too brusk but I did push a few people away. Peeling happens on the beach, so you have sand *everywhere*. There were not enough chairs for everyone in the transition tent, and the whole thing was a zoo. For some reason my biking socks are drenched wet as I take them out of the bag, grr, I don't like the way this is going. This made for a slow-ish T1 time of ~8 min.

My bike was all the way in the back of the racks, so I had quite a bit of jogging to do to reach it in my biking cleats. The temperature after sunrise was not as cold as I had read in other writeups, and I did not put my armwarmers on. The bike out area was too narrow and clogged by a mix of mounted and dismounted riders, probably lost 20 sec in there.

Free at last, zipping along the shoreline on my bike. I am going a lot faster than in Arizona, and I can tell because I keep passing people. You are not supposed to draft, so I end up biking off the main line and pass hundreds of people in the first hour. The wind is pretty bad on our way out so I tuck in low in my aerobars and focus on my form. My watch says I am still way above 20mph (32kmh), so I am not worried just yet. I know the wind will pick up some more during the day.

I see my first crash at the 12-mile aid station. Note to self: stay wide on these.

The bike is going well, my legs are loose and despite the initial headwind I am hovering around 22mph (35.5 kmh). I see quite a bit of drafting, but I also see quite a few people in the penalty tent, so all in all life is fair. I am constantly passing people, I am making great plans to become a faster swimmer. The 100-mile mark is reached well below 5 hours, I am very pleased with myself and start to relax my back in preparation for the marathon. My final split is 5h23 (21mph or 33.5kmh average speed). Mission accomplished.

Nutrition: I had decided I am not going to use any "hydration system" instead solely relying on the single bottle cage my cervelo carries. This ended up working perfectly fine, I swapped bottles every 20 miles (missing only one aid station and going thirsty for 10 miles). I had packed 3 granola bars (18-rabbits) and 3 protein bars (cliff) and I forced myself to eat one every 30 min. Along with the perform bottles I believe I took in 2000 calories on the ride. Not great but that's really as much as I could do without throwing up.

The marathon is my leg (I am a runner). I get in and out of transition fast (~5 min including a potty stop). My legs feel springy and fast, and I blow by the first couple of miles well below 6h30 min/miles. I very much enjoy professionals (in their second loop) asking me whether I am a pro as I fly past them (they do this to decide whether they should chase me). I feel great, I go a lot faster than everyone else on the course at that time, passing hundreds of people. The course has quite a few turns and goes over curbs and bumps, so it does not lend itself to speed that well but then again: speed is a relative concept at this stage of the race. I get to the half marathon mark well below 1h30, and I get a glimpse of Maureen who came to support us at the turnaround point. At this point I am pretty certain I'll easily beat 3 hours on the marathon. Life is good.

On mile 16 I get my first warning shot: my left calf cramps up. I am limping along trying to loosen it up when my right leg joins the cramping fun. I have a short debate with myself whether I should take my chances and gun it for 9 more miles (risking a complete blow out and abandon) or cash in on my performance so far and just bring it home safely. Reason wins and I force myself to slow down to 8 min/miles. Like clockwork I cramp up every 0.5 miles until the finish line. 3h17 marathon, better than DNF. The clock says 10h09min when I hear the words: "Cedric, you are an ironman". I could not have wished for a better race.

Best of all: Misha also had a phenomenal race, which he wrote up here.

Haaaaa, broccoli ....

2011-04-22T08:11:00.000-07:00

Who do I look like ?

2011-04-22T08:08:00.000-07:00

Tummy times

2010-04-12T15:34:00.000-07:00

Tummy times are either really funny, or really tiring ...

A bunch of first times for Theo

2010-03-24T09:46:00.000-07:00

Besides his first month birthday, lots of first times for Theo this past week:

First trip to the wine country and his first fan club (mostly girls of course ;-).

First trip to Tahoe and first hike in the snow

First picnic in the park

First bottle with his daddy

First Google visit

Theo Dupont

2010-03-12T17:31:00.000-08:00

Our little Theo was born a few minutes after midnight on February 20th. He came into this world in the Astroboy position, probably because we kept calling him Astro in utero.

He is already very social and had lots of visitors: Marie-Catherine, Goeric and his buddy Timothee, Auriane, Sebastien and Tristan, Benjy, Misha, Mizuki, Beth, Trystan and Mirabelle, Marisa and Steve, Nathalie, Olav and Audric, Vijay and Ursula, Loyda, Scott and Luca, Catherine, Quentin and Antoine (visiting from Belgium), Ines, Olivier, Victor and Antoine, Alex, and of course his Grandma. All that in 2.5 weeks.
He is excited to discover the world and to meet more of you.
Maureen

Urban farming - do it!

2010-01-24T13:44:00.000-08:00

This is a typical weekly "harvest" from the 3 dwarf citrus trees we have in our backyard. We only get the oranges and tangerines during the winter months, the Meyer lemons grow year round. When you think about how much energy goes into getting a lemon from an orchard into your kitchen via the supermarket it really feels good (and tastes better) to grow your own. Do it! It's easy, its cheap and it's healthy. You don't even need a backyard, they grow fine in a container. Happy farming!

Roadtrip

2010-01-10T08:46:00.000-08:00

Given the airlines' no-fly policy for (very) pregnant women we took a road trip over New Year's. First stop was Santa Barbara visiting Nathalie and her newly minted offspring Audric. The town was eerily empty on Christmas eve, but we found an Indian restaurant to have brunch with Alok and Rachel and catch up on things.
We then headed south to San Diego, for a second Christmas celebration with the Spriggs family. Good times: we got to know the kids a little better, had a day at the Zoo, sailed on the bay... a SoCal blessing.

We were running out of California going south, so we headed back north on 395. Stopping at Lone Pine, a funny little town at the foot of Mt Whitney stuck in its old western Hollywood glory days. Next stop was Mammoth and a bit of skiing with friends. This is a *big* mountain with a summit at 11,053 ft (3,369m). It is also an active volcano and you can come across some pretty pungent gases while skiing, some of these are quite toxic and have killed skiers before.

Mammoth is a ~7hrs drive from San Francisco, so we decided to spend the night in Lake Tahoe on our way back home. Luckily our local mountain man Ray was in town, so we got to hang out with him instead of spending the night in front of the TV at the Motel 6. On the way to tahoe we stopped at Mono Lake for a quick stroll. The winter landscape there is absolutely mindblowingly beautiful, so we stayed as long as the bitter cold allowed us to and took a bunch of pictures (unfortunately I only had my point&shoot camera with me). Fun trip, happy New Year!

Babymoon II - north shore

2009-11-18T17:40:00.000-08:00

We spent the second part of our trip in the north of the island. The north is famous for its beaches, and there are quite a few gems indeed. The area around Princeville is far more developped than the quaint township of Poi'pu. Mega-resorts, a few large private estates and a multitude of beachfront properties make for a less remote feeling than in the south. Access to the beaches is often tricky given the steep terrain, but once you get there the views are grand. Most of them are secluded (did I mention the difficult access?) and the snorkeling is outstanding. There are also plenty of hikes, but they require diligent application of DEET and we figured that can't be good for pregnant women. A few pictures.

Hotel critic: for this part we stayed at the Westin. The thing to note about this hotel is that rooms come with a washer/dryer and a full kitchen, which is probably really nice with kids. The hotel is on a cliff so access to the beach is cumbersome to say the least (you need to walk down a super steep, muddy, mosquito infested jungle path). There is a shuttle to the St. Regis (formerly Princeville Hotel) which has better access to the ocean and a stunning view of Hanalei Bay, so that's nice if you don't mind hanging out with the rich and famous. I have a suspicion that the Westin is full of consultants spending their Starwoods points, which may impact their "tight" management (why else is parking - $9/day - not included in a $250/night room rate?) For a more relaxed feel stay at the Hyatt.

Babymoon I - south shore

2009-11-16T20:50:00.000-08:00

We spent the first half of our babymoon on the south shore of Kaua'i. We stayed at the Grand Hyatt in Poi'pu (I mention it because this is a fantastic hotel, it outshines any beach hotel I've ever stayed at). The developed part of Poi'pu is tiny (if you are in shape you can jog from one end to the other in 25 min) and the sights include a few beaches, an area riddled with blowholes, and lithified cliffs. The reason you need a rental car is to visit Waimea canyon further to the west, a grandiose valley with a ton of hiking opportunities. It rained everyday, albeit not continuously. Somehow rain does not really matter in Kaua'i, it feels like a welcome refreshment rather than an inconvenience. The island is beautiful, we had some great snorkeling despite the somewhat agitated seas (come in the summer months for calm water). The underwater highlight was a head-on crash into a giant turtle on Poi'pu beach, and spotting one of these alien looking flaunders in the sand.
Best of: Tidepools (favorite restaurant); Lawa'i Beach (favorite snorkeling spot when the surf is up); Pihea trail (favorite hike).
More pictures, and one clip.

Mendocino anniversary

2009-07-29T19:50:00.000-07:00

We spend our anniversary in Mendocino, at the Stanford Inn. It was a pretty mellow weekend, and although the innkeepers failed to convert us to veganism, we were intrigued by the absolutist culture of non-meateaters.
We barely managed to beat the fog to the airport, but once there the pace slowed down to Mendocino rhythm. Culinary highlight: la Petite Rive is a french restaurant in Little River, with half a dozen tables overlooking the ocean. Very anniversary-y.
Pictures.

Fun with floatplanes

2009-06-07T16:51:00.000-07:00

For my birthday Maureen organized the perfect weekend. We drove up to Copperopolis, an oddly developed town on the way to Yosemite attracting golfing and boating enthusiasts. I don't care much about golfing or boating, but I was there to learn learn how to land a plane in the water.
It's hard to say what's so extraordinarily awesome about floatplanes. Maybe it's the freedom to land in the location of your choice, or the fact that it seems so absolutely impossible until you've tried it, or perhaps just the bragging rights that come with gracefully gliding into a lake at 60mph (100kmh) next to a jetskier or a speedboater who until then thought they were the hottest thing in the water. The closest comparison would be between skiing a groomer vs. off-piste, but I am not sure that does it justice.
I was lucky enough to "get it" on the first try, so we got to do a lot of really fun stuff on this 2 hr flight, including river flying (picture flying a plane along a windy river, barely off the water, with the cliffs around you towering 500ft higher than your altitude), squeezing underneath power lines and even sailing under the span of a bridge. The only regret is that we couldn't take any passengers, so Maureen stayed at the dock. That's the tricky thing about Seaplanes: they are rather dangerous and insurance constraints are very restrictive.
I'd recommend hanging out in Calaveras county more, it's a great place to hike and bike, and if you have the opportunity to hitch a ride in a floatplane while you are there, do it!
I have uploaded a short video of us taking off and landing in the pond that serves a the seabase, and a bunch more pictures here.

Mount Shasta III

2009-06-04T19:32:00.000-07:00

On memorial day weekend we headed back north for the now biennal Mount Shasta Extreme expedition. I have done this in 2005 and 2007, but this year really was the charm. Everyone made it to the top, including first-timer Misha, and the skiing conditions were absolutely fantastic. After spending the night in Weed, and picking up our permits at the ranger station on Saturday we left for the Brewer Creek Trailhead. We made it within 6 miles of the trailhead, where a single but unpassable patch of snow cut off the road. We reached our bivy site (10,400 ft; 3,200m) in the early afternoon, and as you can tell from this picture, hauling up our gear had taken its toll on some members of our party. A short thunderstorm with hail coming down hard got us worried for a few minutes (we had only brought a single 2-person tent), but this would be the last mountain weather we would see on the trip. The next morning, no wind, warm temperatures and our positive attitudes made for a very pleasant ascent, and a perfect spring skiing on the way down the Hotlum-Wintun route. Our snowboarding friend wasn't too much of a hassle, except for being a snowboarder of course ("Hold on just a sec, I need to loosen this, tighten that, readjust blah and change the geometry of blue"). You've got to think that snowboarding gear is in its developmental infancy, nothing really seems to "just work". Hat's off to Misha in any case for making it up there on his first try!
A bunch more pics from the climb, mostly courtesy of Goeric. I took a few videos and I'll post them sometime, maybe (actually I am just counting on Goeric to whip together an edited version - update: here it is - a very large video). Us at the top of the world:

Easter in San Francisco

2009-04-12T18:01:00.000-07:00

Easter is always a busy weekend in San Francisco and we stayed home to enjoy the beginning of Spring. On Saturday I played Lumberjack and took down one of the Eucalyptus trees in our backyard. Turns out cutting down trees is dangerous, don't do it yourself.
Sunday started out pretty conventional, with our first time visit to the SF Cathedral. This is an amazing buiding and is definitely worth checking out. If you can figure out how they keep the levitating cross from swinging North/South, please leave a comment on this post. After a really long mass that reminded me of my childhood in Vienna (they are still doing the kneeling business, and the "our father" was in Latin) we went for brunch at citizen Cake in Hayes Valley with Mike & Wei. When we got home things were just getting started in Dolores park. The Sisters of Perpetual Indulgence had taken over the grounds, and were dialing up the music, colors and occasional nudity. The party culminated with the annual hunky Jesus contest won by a "brokeback Jesus" duo.
We then walked to Potrero Hill where the annual BYOBW race was going full swing. Misha, Andrew an Bret were competing in the scuderia Target category, which made for a rather poor performance (Target's big wheels seem to get flimsier year after year, buyer beware!).
A few pictures.

Fleet Week 2008

2008-10-12T20:10:00.000-07:00

This weekend was fleet week in San Francisco. Fleet week is a gigantic air show/recruiting event put together by various military authorities. These pilots got some skillz, and pretty sweet flying devices. The setting of their performances is exceptional of course (SF Bay) - all in all a great time in the city. The pictures don't do it justice, and the sound is a big part of it.

Xterra Nevada 2008

2008-10-11T21:36:00.000-07:00

Last weekend Goeric and Cedric competed in Xterra Nevada. This is a beautiful race with a crisp swim in Lake Tahoe, a stunning bike loop (Flume trail & Tahoe rim trail) and a hilly x-country run. At least that was the original plan. It was very cold and windy on Saturday morning, so much so that the sheriff's department decided to cancel the swim for safety reasons. Hence we traded our wetsuits for running shoes and a duathlon-type running start. I struggled on the bike, probably due to a mix of the effects of the guelsome cold and lack of practice, and Goeric along with ~50 others passed me on the 21.7 mile (34km) loop in the mountains. I made up few positions in the run, but it was a little too short to matter.
Here are a few pictures of the event. We will be back next year - stronger, faster, further.

Safari in Tanzania

2008-08-16T09:05:00.000-07:00

We spend the last week in Tanzania, visiting a few of the major parks of the north. It was the dry season (so no mosquitoes, and lots of dust.) The whole thing started poorly, with a full day of waiting at Nairobi airport for the "delayed" Precision Air flight to Kilimanjaro. This was going to be our only logistical mishap on that trip, which is pretty much exceptional for African travel, so no complaints here.
After landing at Kilimanjaro international and meeting our guide, we drove to Lake Manyara, our first Park. We got there late at night, so our first "Game Drive" was to happen the next morning. The first game drive is a thrilling experience, because every sighting is a huge excitement (human nature, the amazement wears off after the 30th time you run into an elephant.) We saw a lion sleeping in a tree which is a strange behavior this park is known for. It really does not make much sense for me to describe things, you just need to check out the pictures.
In the afternoon we drove to Tarangire, our second park. We stayed at the Swala tented camp, incredibly luxurious. The food was exceptional (some dishes were decorated with fresh strawberries (!!), this is a tented camp in the middle of the bush. Craziness. There is an artificial
waterhole in the camp, which attracts elephants that spend their time hanging out in the camp. Turns out lions get thirsty, too, so at night a pride of lions came by and tried to convince the three large male elephants to let them have a sip or two. No luck, as the elephants did not bulge. Instead, one lioness decided to go for the herd of impalas that was grazing right next to our dinner table (needless to say we were eating outside: no fences, no walls...) As the impalas dispersed, the unsuccessful lion seemed to hesitate for a second to go for our plates of lamb shank (or was it our own shanks?), but then trotted back to her pride. Exciting. All night we heard the confrontation between lions roaring and elephants trumpeting, in the morning the positions were unchanged, the elephants were drinking and the lions had retreated into the tall grass.
After Tarangire, we visited Ngorongoro (long drive!), which I don't recommend during peak season (it's a zoo for dutch and french tourists) followed by Serengeti. During the drive to Serengeti we encountered an elephant in musk. This was by far the scariest encounter and you can check out this video of us ducking inside the Land Cruiser as the big male tries (and succeeds) to intimidate us. Another cool video shows a cheetah jumping off a tree it had climbed onto, which is not supposed to happen (cheetahs can't retract their claws, so they are pretty poor climbers). And here is a big cat scratching its back. Our most amazing sighting in Seregeti: Vincent Boone, a good friend from Belgium, in the Land Cruiser right next to us stopped to see a bunch of elephants tearing down trees. Small world...

Many, many game drives later we were heading back home with a ton of memories and vivid images of the amazing fauna of East Africa. We ended up spending 6 days on safari, and that is way sufficient. You sit in a car all day long, so even though the scenery and the sightings are amazing, you get tired of it at the end. Mixing it up with some physical activity like climbing Mt. Kili is probably a good idea. I hope you get to do this, it's truly amazing.

A few tips we gathered:
We can't speak from experience since this is the only place we went on Safari, but from our pre-trip research it seemed that Tanzania has some of the least spoiled national parks, as the Safari industry has developped later than in South Africa or Kenya. Not sure how true this is, but in any case we found the Parks to be immaculate and developed in a very respectful manner

When to go
August is the middle of the dry season. This has a few advantages (no mosquitoes, no rain) but it also means you won't see the large herds of wilderbeest (=gnus) and zebras in the plains of the Serengeti. You will see these animals, just not the huge numbers you can see there in January.
From discussions with locals, it seems that February is an interesting time to go, as there are many calves and cubs, and the grass is green, so it is much easier to spot the animals that are optimized to blend in with the golden grass of the dry season (most big cats. gazelles, etc.)
If you want to experience the migrations of 1M+ wilderbeest, you should go to Serengeti in May when they start their movement northwards. You may be treated to a "river crossing" although there is a lot of luck involved there, as the crossing times are pretty random.

Medical stuff
Before you go to East Africa, you probably need to update your immunizations, and possibly take prophylactics while you are there. Check the CDC website for requirements and recommendations. We were there during the dry season so although I took Malarone (a no-side effect antimalarial drug), it was probably useless as there were barely any mosquitoes. We also brought DEET and stopped using it after the first two days. This may be different if you are going during the rainy season, however.
For personal comfort bring lots of sunscreen, and I wish I had brought saline solution for my eyes and nose. It is very dusty, and rather windy during the dry season, so your nose and eyes dry up badly.

Zurueck nach Wien

2008-08-16T08:47:00.000-07:00

We celebrated my dad's 60th Birthday in Vienna with the whole family. I had not been back for 15 years, and it was Maureen's first time in the imperial city. We all stayed together at a "Heuriger" very close to our old appartment. Since I could not sleep due to jetlag I got up at 3 AM and ran through our old neighborhood for a few hours: it was weird seeing the sights from when I was a kid (Primary school, day care, old church, grocery store where I used to pick up rolls on the weekends, park we used to luge and ski, etc.)
Vienna is a beautiful city, if you have not been you should go. It is truly classic without flamboyance, and romantic without the cheese. A few pictures.

Dansk Kalifornik

2008-07-19T14:01:00.000-07:00

We drove to Santa Barbara last weekend for Nathalie and Olav's wedding. We stayed in the town of Solvang, puzzling... I actually saw tourists from Europe, Japan, Kansas and more flocking the (danish) one-dollar stores and (danish) pizzerias and pie shops, the whole thing remains a mystery. Absurd.

4th of July

2008-07-05T13:02:00.000-07:00

We spent the 4th of July in the town of Columbia, an original mining town turned state park on the way to Yosemite. If you have been on thunder mountain at Disneyland, imagine this the size of a small town and you'll get a feel for what this place looks like.
The town has a nice airport (used by tankers for fire fighting operations) and a beautiful fly-in campground with spacious campsites in the shadow of giant oak trees. it's first-come first-serve, but even on this holiday weekend there was still plenty of room left (~9 aircraft for 25 sites).
We landed at noon on Friday. There are a few hills around the airport, and I botched my approach after changing my mind about which way I would land (the preferred runway seems to be 17 when there is little wind), I ended up slipping the plane all the way through final.
The state park is a 10min walk from the airport, and after setting up our tent we walked to the mining town. Everyone was out and about, celebrating in red, white and blue. Plenty of good ol' fun, with a pie eating contest, a greased pole contest, needle in a haystack, nail pounding, cake walks, bucket brigade and a fire engine exhibition. Very exotic!
Following Arnold's request their was no firework display at night, so we snuggled into our sleeping bags early for a delicious 12hour night. Here are a few pictures of the trip

Sophie in San Francisco & Biking in the Wine Country

2008-06-21T19:54:00.000-07:00

Sophie came to visit us for 10 days and re-discovered San Francisco and Northern California. After a sporty first day (a unplanned biking through the steepest hills of San Francisco), we had a busy week, full of American adventures: biking through golden gate bridge, bay tour in a Cessna with Cedric the pilot, American BBQ, blues concert, good food, and biking through the wine country. We spent the last week-end in Healdsburg, with Trystan, Beth, April, Eric, Misha, Steve, Marisa, Sophie, Cedric and I and tried as many wines as we could, following Misha in his quest to get drunk, and trying to bike safely through the vineyards and wineries.

For more pictures: Sophie's trip, our pictures from Healdsburg & Misha's.
Maureen

Auburn International Triathlon

2008-05-18T18:44:00.000-07:00

Goeric and I competed in Brad Kearns' Auburn International Triathlon on Sunday. This is one of the most scenic races in the area (scenic=hilly and twisty=tough). Ray had been the instigator of the whole adventure but had a last minute "bike accident" and had to bail. To his credit he and Robbe still came down to Auburn to cheer us on. It was really warm this weekend (107F/41degC) so things got a little hot on the bike and then really toasty on the run. The race started as anticipated, I exited the water a little before Goeric, and then he caught up with me on the bike. Unfortunately for Goeric, his brake came loose and started dragging against the rim. This added handicap allowed me to stick with him, then pass him and pull away in the last 10 miles (he stopped a few times to try to adjust the bike). The run was brutal. Really hilly. Really hot. I don't recall running a slower 10K, ever. Still waiting for the official results, guessing a 2h50 for Cedric and a 3h12 for Goeric. Pictures.
update: official results ; Goeric's pics

Boston Marathon

2008-04-22T13:37:00.000-07:00

We took the red-eye to Boston this Saturday and spent the weekend visiting the "most historical" of US cities. Beautiful weather made for a great time: we walked the Freedom Trail on Saturday, then visited MIT and Harvard with tour guide Misha on Sunday, who had flown in that morning. On Monday, I ran the 112th edition of the Boston marathon. This the oldest, and by some measure the most prestigious, Marathon of modern times (the first was held in 1897). This event is a huge circus, the whole town mobilizes for this and although the participant count is not that large (25,000 runners) the organization outshines any race I have ever been to. The runners are shuttled to Hopkinton from Boston in a gigantic convoy of hundreds of buses, waved through traffic by police as if we were royalty. The Athlete's village in Hopkinton is rather "rustic", basically a bunch of tents with runners trying to stay warm in the morning fog. Note to prospective runners: if I have to do this again I would time a later arrival, as the two hour wait in the cold thoroughly chilled me down.
At around 9AM starts the he usual pre-race routine: judicious timing of port-a-potty visits, tightening of shoes, warm up jog. I feel horrible, as the cold made my legs super stiff and numb, but I try not to think about it and join the huddle of my fellow runners in corral 1. Gun goes off at 10AM and off we go. The excitement, combined with the fact that the course is a slight downhill for the first few miles makes most of us start way too fast. I reach the first mile marker after 5:45min, here goes my well thought out plan to run a perfect 6:15 pace. Right around the first mile marker I see Lance Armstrong and his entourage, there are so many people bunched up around him that the narrow course makes it difficult to pass. Of course my secret objective is to beat Lance, so I get overly excited that I passed him so early and keep moving way too fast. My average pace over the first 6 mi (10km) is 5:55 (3:40min/km). I am mad at myself and my legs are killing me, this is the dumbest marathon start ever. I decide to force myself to stay behind a guy who "feels slow" and after a few trials I find the perfect pacer who runs a clockwork 6:17 per mile. I promise myself to stay behind him for the next 10 miles, no matter what. This was the right decision as my legs loosen up a little and the next 10 miles are uneventful. My first half time is 1h19, the Wellesley girls are crazy (runners actually do stop to kiss them) and I am thinking that this next half will be a world of pain. The Boston course is rather difficult, because of the "Newton Hills": a series of 4 hills between miles 16 and 21, a time when most of us are running on fumes. On top of the first hill my legs show signs of seizure, which is a bad omen with 10 miles to go. I slow down a lot knowing that if I actually seize up the race is over. There is roadkill all over the place, runners limping along the side of road (including a few pros), reminding us to take it easy. In the third hill I see Misha and Maureen (actually I barely see them, I was pretty "focused" at that point) and I am thankful I have made it this far and still no sign of Lance catching up. Heartbreak Hill is the last of the 4 hills. It is very painful, but its legendary reputation had increased my expectations and so it turns out to be not that bad. Now we are in the 20-something miles, it finally feels like we'll get there. My legs feel terrible, I keep telling myself to slow down "you can loose a minute or loose the race" is the mantra. The crowds get huge as we get into Boston, so it's hard to take it easy, I run a mile in 6:15 on cheers. Pretty stupid. A couple of bumps but a mostly flat road gets us into downtown Boston, it's complete mayhem in the city 100s of thousand of people lining the streets, the last 2 miles drag on forever but I turn around (for the first time in the entire race) and see no signs of Lance. Let's enjoy this. Slow down. A lot. Finish line.

Cabo Wabo

2008-03-11T21:13:00.001-07:00

For Maureen's 25th birthday, we made the trip south of the border to discover what all this cabo fuss was all about. Lots of silliness, two large casas and more booze than our old bodies could handle. Here are the pictures. Breaking news: misha's pix.

Disneyland

2008-02-06T20:50:00.001-08:00

We spend this Tuesday at the happiest place on earth. It was a ton of fun. We had the park to ourselves at night. A few pictures.

We got snow - lot's of it!

2008-01-27T20:33:00.000-08:00

It has been unusually wet and cold in San Francisco lately, which translates to a ton of snow in the Sierras. We flew to Salt Lake a few weeks ago to get a taste of "The greatest snow on earth" and I doubled down for epic skiing in Squaw during the Product Team Ski Trip. Several feet of powder. Very satiating. Here is proof (tilt your head sideways for this one) of knee-deep greatness, as well as a bunch of pics:

San Francisco Bay Trail Ride

2008-01-20T18:57:00.000-08:00

Disappointed by the snow conditions of last weekend, we decided to plan a bike ride for MLK weekend. We settled on the Northern part of the San Francisco Bay Trail, a network of trails that is supposed to allow you to hike/bike all around the bay area. The full length will be well over 300miles when completed (but as it turned out, we are not at that stage yet...) Misha, Mike, Maureen and I set off from the ferry builidng at 9h40AM on Saturday. After crossing the Golden Gate bridge and leaving behind the familiar neighborhoods of Sausalito and Tiburon, we ventured into uncharted territory on our way to meet up with Jeremy (he had taken the Bus to Novato). When I say uncharted, I mean it rather literally as I was using a crappy printout of the Bay Trail maps, big mistake. I will take the time to write up my suggested route and post it here for future generations of adventurous bikers, and this route will definitely include certain "adjustments" to the route recommended on the website above.
Summary of Saturday morning: magnificent ride through Marin county, a beautiful loop around China Camp, and then things got ugly. We reached John F McInnis Park,where there were supposed to be a dense network of paved trails leading north to Ignacio (and Jeremy). The reality looked like this (more pictures to come once Misha uploads his):
and involved mountain biking for 45 minutes through marshland, scaling a 40 inch pipeline and driving through a US army restricted airfield. Of course all this offroading claimed the fist mechanical of the day (puncture, Maureen). Needless to say we arrived late and the restaurant we were supposed to meet Jeremy at for lunch had closed. We filled up at an Italian restaurant (Grazie on Grant), and hurried back on our way in order to beet the sunset. The afternoon riding was mostly Highways (37, 121, 12), not great but at least we were going at a quick pace. Unfortunately, we had a string of bad luck (3 flats in 90 minutes) and we were caught in darkness on Old Sonoma Road. 45 min of scary night riding later (we had two lights to share amongst the five of us) we were quite pleased to see the Marriott.
The second day was uneventful, we left late (11AM) after stocking up on tubes and truing my back wheel at a local bike shop, destination Berkeley. The ride was mostly Highways, and roads through crappy industrial neighborhoods, but there were occasional highlights such as the stretch north of American Canyon, the ride through Valejo, the crossing of the Carquinez Bridge and the stroll along the Richmond seashore. Total mileage: just shy of 145miles (233km). Pictures.

Christmas & New Year 2007 in Belgium

2008-01-11T13:54:00.000-08:00

The Dinosaurs museum with our nephews and nieces

The Village People at St Idesbald - New Year 2007

Giving thanks

2007-12-02T19:37:00.000-08:00

We improvised a Thanksgiving at home this year. Laurent. Audrey and their baby (Antoine) came to visit for the weekend and Wei brought two Jahrs to the dinner. The belgian cooked American style turkey was pretty yummy, and it came with all the traditional Thanksgiving dishes.
We had a relaxing long weekend driving around, enjoying wines in Sonoma, and walking around many neighborhoods of San Francisco and Berkeley. Check out the pictures here. Maureen

Already 140 miles and more to come ...

2007-12-02T18:08:00.000-08:00

After a few months of watching Cedric biking to work once or twice a week from San Francisco (42 miles/68km) and thinking he was crazy, I finally got tricked into trying it out (for some reason, Cedric always succeeds to convince me to do these things - it sounds like so much fun when he talks about it...). So one morning Misha was nice enough to let me borrow his bike and surprisingly I really enjoyed my first ride, trying to keep up with Cedric aka speedy gonzales (love the draft).
The next challenge was to convince Cedric not to buy a new fancy bike for himself and recycle his "old" bike on me: I wanted my own new fancy bike!
After a lot of test-riding, the best fit was a Trek Pilot 2.1. Two weeks later, the bike already clocks 140 miles (225km). The pictures are from a weekend ride with Jeremy around Tiburon (paradise loop). How is the weather in December where you live?

Steady as she goes

2007-10-21T14:28:00.000-07:00

This weekend was the Nike women's marathon. Tens of thousands of women runners flock to San Francisco for the occasion, pretty amazing stuff. Wei ran her first marathon, and Mike ran his last (or so he swore at the finish line). Maureen joined them for the second half. Beautiful weather, good times, pictures and a cool video here.
UPDATE: Wei's official time: 4:03:04; that's 266th out of a bunch of people. Unnur also finished, 1865th in 5:09:05 Both promised to work on their sexrank for next time, whatever that is. Reminder: the SF course is very slow (=hard), so don't go on comparing these times with flat courses.

Catalina - Airport in the sky

2007-10-08T08:53:00.000-07:00

This weekend we flew to Catalina, a small island off the coast of Los Angeles. We packed a crew of 7 into two planes (C172 & C182) piloted by captains Roetter and Dupont, and headed down to SoCal on Friday afternoon.
Our first stop was supposed to be an isolated campground in an idyllic setting in the outskirts of Pismo Beach. The airport was indeed on a beach, but it turned out the place looked like the backdrop of a Mad Max movie with every "car" we came across towing another vehicle of some sort, liquor stores selling race fuel, and modern frontiersmen circling their (airconditioned) wagons in the dunes and entertaining themselves by burning the aforementioned race fuel in devilish 4-wheeled toys.
We were back in the air on Saturday morning. A beautiful flight over the ocean, with the Californian coast to our left and the Channel Islands to our right. Lots of pictures. After a little more than an hour we reached Catalina. The airport was built on the top of a mountain, it is a rather intimidating sight as the terrain drops off at both ends of the runway. Some say it is like landing on a (3000ft long) aircraft carrier. I would not know. I don't land on boats. The runway is also curved, so that you only see about half of it once you touch down, giving you the illusion you are running out of room, spicy...
A 35 min bus ride later we arrived in the town of Avalon, mingling with L.A. fauna. We ditched our original plan to camp for a last minute hotel room vacancy at the Glenmore Plaza (thinking of going? don't be fooled by the rates, lodging seems to be crappy but expensive everywhere on the island). Avalon is a great little island town with nothing much going on, probably very relaxing for a few days at a time. We spend the afternoon walking around and (for Mike and I) pondering if we should heed the warning signs for excessive amounts of Enterococcus faecalis (yes, it is what it sounds like) in the water, or go for a swim anyway. The water is amazingly clear down there, this is probably a pretty good diving/snorkeling spot. To be investigated further.
Saturday night was spent at a local karaoke bar, some of us enjoying the music, some the beer, and others marveling at the advances of plastic surgery and the effect of alcohol on a person's dignity. On Sunday, we rented "power" boats and fooled around in the water for a while before hopping back into the plane for a last good view of the island. Alex took his aircraft non-stop to Palo Alto, whereas I had to do a fuel stop in Oceano. We had a little hiccup on the ground (starter would not engage) but resolved the situation with the help of a fellow piloteer. Turns out the starter on this line (2006 C172SP) fails every 200hrs. Good to know. We landed in Palo Alto just before 5PM. Good trip!
Amy's pictures, Mike's pictures, my pictures and a cool video of the Avalon take-off

Xterra 2007

2007-09-30T19:14:00.000-07:00

We spent this weekend at Ray's place for Xterra Nevada 2007. Brad Kearns, Goeric, Ray and Cedric had signed up for the race. Unfortunately, poor health took a toll on our crew and only half of us ended up competing in what was going to be a rather "unique" Xterra. Weather started playing tricks on us on Friday, when Ray spent almost an hour looking for a hole in a unusually overcast bay are sky. After fitting all my gear (including my bike) into the back of the very spacious Malibu Mirage we took off hoping for a short hop over the mountains. Unfortunately, ATC somehow thought we were headed to Oregon, and we ended up erratically navigating the crowded SFO airspace, following the confusing directions of a confused air traffic controller. Soon enough they realized their mistake, and we were back on track to Lake Tahoe.

The next day we woke up to snow and 23 deg F (-5 deg C), highly unusual for September in Nevada. Of course I was not equipped for these kinds of conditions, so Ray hooked me up with full gloves and arm warmers.
Maureen and I left south lake at 7AM to meet up with Goeric and Marie-Catherine at the expo area (Ray was one of the health casualties and stayed home to rest). We picked up our race packets, sized up our competition, and changed into our wetsuits. It was cold, really cold. I ended up waiting in the water for the start (yes, this is Lake Tahoe: if it feels warm, something is wrong...) I barely heard the cannon, I think my ears where frozen shut at this point. I swam poorly, maybe it's the altitude or maybe it's the cold but my breathing was off and so was everything else. I swam the 750m (~1/2 miles) in a slow 16 min, and ran the relatively long distance to the transition zone barefoot. Big mistake. At the end of the 2-3 min run through ice and snow, I could not feel my toes anymore. I should have heeded the advice of the MC who "strongly recommended" racers to wear shoes during the T1 run. I knew better of course and my toes would remain numb for the next 2h30. After squeezing my frozen feet into my bike shoes and strapping on my helmet, I decided I would not need the arm warmers after all. Second big mistake. My brain must have skipped a beat because of the cold or something. Anyway. The ride was cold and slippery (about 75% of it was covered with snow and/or ice), but this still is probably one of the most beautiful courses in the world. Goeric, who had come out of the water just a tad after me passed me within the first 30 min, no surprise there. He would gain even more on me during the rather technical descent and ended up almost 10 min ahead of me in T2.
The last leg was uneventful, it is a very twisty run and it is hard to go really fast because of all the obstacles, but I managed to make up some time on my favorite leg. Our finishing times: 3h07'51 for Goeric and 3h10'09 for me. Here are the pics.
We'll do it again next year!

Tintin in Waikiki

2007-09-22T20:29:00.000-07:00

Pedro came back to visit us two weeks ago and this he brought his lovely wife Aurelie with him. In order to hedge our bets against the sometimes chilly Californian summers, we decided to spend one weekend in the Wine Country, and the other in Hawai'i. Good times all around, here are the pictures Pedro took, and here are mine.

Better late than never for more pictures and stories ...

2007-08-25T13:01:00.000-07:00

These past 3 months have been pretty busy in terms of visit, travel, week-end getaways, open houses, ... So it's never too late to post more stories and pictures.
Last May, before our trip to Mexico/Belize, Cedric's parents visited us, to attend Cedric's (hopefully) last graduation and also to climb Mt Shasta. We prepared a busy schedule full of local californian experiences, to make them discover all the great things about the Bay Area: week-end in the Wine Country (in Healdsburg) with biking among the wineries, Berkeley graduation, Mount Shasta backcountry skiing for Cedric, his dad and Goeric (see Mount Shasta Part Two), San Francisco sightseeing, flying tour of the Bay Area with Cedric the pilot, great food tasting, and whale watching trip. We hope this will give some great ideas of traveling to California to some of you.

The same day Cedric's parents flew back to Belgium, we took our plane to Mexico.
After our trip, we tried to have a few "relaxing" week-ends, going to open-houses, and enjoying the numerous festivals and concerts San Francisco offers during the summer.

We also went rafting with Wei, Mike, Misha and Benjy on a class 4 tour. That was so much fun ! A little bit like the Radja river in Walibi but of course in much better ;-)

For more pictures, check Mike and Misha's pics.

The last 2 weeks of July, I flew to Brussels to attend a conference in Amsterdam (some pics here) and also took advantage of the week-ends to visit family and friends in Belgium. It's always good to be back home (even if this involves catching a cold in the long flights) !! There are so many babies back home now ....

After I came back, our busy week-ends started again: Steve and Marisa's wedding in Olema (close to Point Reyes), a great surprise week-end in Seattle and orcas island, and this week-end, Cedric is running a 200 miles relay in Oregon (Hood to Coast) with other crazy super fast googler runners. For live info, go to http://h2c2k7.blogspot.com/ .
Stay tuned for more adventure-stories from California ! Maureen
PS: pre-race pics from H2C

Puget Sound

2007-08-21T21:32:00.000-07:00

We celebrated our anniversary one month late by going on a mini trip to beautiful Washington state. This was a top secret operation meant to surprise Maureen, carefully planned together with my co-conspirator Vijay "Ron Paul" Boyapati. We left for Seattle on Friday and met up with Vijay at his Manor for a little taste of this beautiful city. After brunch on Saturday we took a small seaplane to Orca's Island, a small island close to the Canadian border. Robert Morgan, a shipbuilder from the turn of the century (not this one, the previous one) built an amazing house there that is now the central piece of the rosario resort. The place is REALLY relaxing. No cell phone coverage, no laptops, great! We spent two days there enjoying the environment. Maureen got one of these fancy spa treatments and I got to run through the woods up a mountain. We barely made it home as the weather was rather crummy on Monday morning (the seaplane flew back to Seattle cruising below 300ft altitude, spicy!). Somehow we still managed to get to SEA-TAC on time and were back at work by 2PM. Here are the pics.

Mexico/Belize: Muy bueno/Nice man

2007-06-17T11:28:00.001-07:00

To help me with my transition away from student lala-land and into the harsh reality of real work, Maureen organized an amazing trip to Mexico and Belize. After a few days in Mexico City (a really big town!) we flew to Chetumal on the border between Mexico and Belize and rented a car for a few thousand mile road trip through pre-colombian sites in the Yucatan peninsula and Chiapas. Along the way we hit the big guys (Chichen Itza, Tulum, Uxmal, Palenque) and some of the smaller sites (Bonampac, Coba, etc.) At the end of our loop, we were pretty much mayaed-out and ready for a change of scenery. We left the humid, mosquito-laden jungles of the Yucatan and headed for the immaculate coral reef of Belize. There we spend a few days relaxing on a sailboat, and swam around with colorful water creatures (the sharks in the pictures are not dangerous, supposedly). There are a lot of pictures, so I split them into groups: the main set is a chronological selection of shots, the nature album contains a bunch of additional nature/animal shots that I thought were neat (iguanas rock!). Finally, here are a bunch of examples of Toltec/Aztec/Mayan art if you are into that kind of stuff. The guy with the weird nose sticking up or down is rain god Chaac, as you can tell by the frequency of representations he is pretty important.

Done

2007-05-24T17:16:00.000-07:00

And that's it for school folks! Here are the pictures from my (last) graduation. The part on stage is me getting the top nerd award (academic excellence) from the Dean. Proud moment indeed. Can't wait to get the actual degree signed by Arnold. I will definitely frame that one and hang it next to my autographed Mr. Olympia shorts.

Mt. Shasta, Part Deux

2007-05-24T16:50:00.000-07:00

Two years ago, Goeric and myself attempted to climb Mt. Shasta. Things were different back then: kids would not listen to that foreign rock music, and snow would fall in the mountains during the winter. This year the snow cover was extremely thin, so we abandoned our initial plan to climb through Clear Creek and chose Hotlum-Wintum instead. Perfect weather made for a great couple days in the mountains. My dad (who flew in all the way from Belgium for this) and Goeric made it to the top, I turned around a few hundred feet shy of the 14162ft/4316m summit (altitude sickness again, I'll bring oxygen next time for sure). This was the virgin journey for my telemark skis, amazing sticks! I am sure Goeric will put together a killer video, but in the meantime here are a bunch of pix.

Canyons'r'us

2007-05-15T10:43:00.000-07:00

This weekend we went to Zion, where Maureen had organized a surprise weekend for my Birthday. The whole trip was amazing, with Friday night spent in Vegas partying in a 57th floor suite at the Wynn's with Haas people, then driving to Zion for two days of Canyoneering. Over the weekend, our very own Eagle Scout Alex managed to herd our motley crew (Mike, Wei, Tom, Denise, Benjy, Misha, Maureen and I) down Keyhole Canyon and Pine Creek Canyon, a rather formidable feat indeed. The idea is that you follow the path of an intermittent stream through a crack in the beautiful sandstone formations characteristic of Zion National Park. A few passages require rappelling down the slick rock, sometimes right into the water below. Speaking of water: if you followed the descriptive links above, did you notice that the people are wearing wetsuits? As we learned after our first excursion, this is not for comfort, but for survival: the water in the canyon stays very cold (48F or 8 deg Celsius). I did not bring my camera on Saturday, but here are a few pictures from Pine Creek (on Sunday) and The Narrows (Monday). Mike's pix, Alex's & Misha's. Best time in Utah ever!

Vote for Pedro

2007-05-08T14:49:00.000-07:00

Two weeks ago, Pedro paid us a little visit. He posted some pictures here and there.

Ironpeople

2007-04-20T07:56:00.000-07:00

The official results are out. I finished the race in 12:04:38. Out of 1860 finishers (~2000 starters) I placed 943rd in the swim, 1240th on the bike and 124th on the run. Guess what leg I enjoyed the most... This makes for an overal place of 547, meaning I passed over 500 people on the marathon, sweet! The offical pix are now posted (low res, I have to order the hi res). Misha finished in13:51:48, placing 1415th, 1635th and 550th for the 3 respective legs, for a total place of 1217th. The creepy part is that his time is exactly (to the second) Ray's time for IM Wisconsin 2003. Weird...

Men of ferrous material

2007-04-03T16:10:00.000-07:00

I have experienced pain.

On Sunday Misha and I competed in Ironman Arizona. This sounds like a rather simple plan, but in fact it turns out an ironman presents quite a few extra challenges in addition to the 140.6 miles (226km) of swimming/biking/running. Here is the full story and because I feel sort of talkative, I have split it into chapters so that you can select the sections most interesting (?) to you. If you don't want to suffer through any of my ramblings, you may still enjoy these pictures and this video (check back for more soon).
The narrative
We flew into Phoenix on Thursday and after collecting our bike crates and luggage, made our way to the hotel. This is where the first leg of the ironman starts: rebuilding your bike. You need to understand that in order to fit your bicycle into these ridiculously tiny shipment crates, you basically have to gut it down to its bare parts, which you then thoughtfully arrange into the box[ pic]. When I say "you" I am speaking for myself. Misha "I value my time" Zatsman opted for the "simpler" option of paying a bike shop to pack the bike for him. This option turned out to be less attractive than originally planned, as by the time I was tucking myself into bed with my fully assembled iron horse to my side, my fellow aspiring ironperson was still scratching his head over a heap of bike parts spread out over the hotel room floor. Luckily, we found a bike shop the next morning willing to put the thing back together on the same day. If you ever need a bike shop in the phoenix area I strongly recommend Domenics, they rock (and saved Misha's ass).

The second leg is Registration. Ours was to take place on Friday, and along with 2000 other people we stood in line to get weighted, tagged and stamped (this triathlon thing involves a lot of body markings, as it turns out). The line was so long and slow that we got a good first look at the athletes village through which the queue wound for what seemed like forever in the brutal Arizona sun. We also went for a morning swim in the lake just to get our wetsuits broken in. Water report: warm (68F) and dirty (visibility less than 2 inches), mildly offensive taste. Hanging out at the athletes village, I came to confirm my impression that most athletes were MUCH bigger than me. I made a mental note to expect to get crushed in the water, and to pray for hot, no wind conditions on race day. On Friday night, we ate at the welcome dinner (pasta, por supuesto!) and sat through the rules meeting where we learned the basics about how this whole thing is going to work. Quite a complex operation indeed, involving dropping off and picking up various gear bags at various times in various locations, in between which we were to swim 2.4 miles, bike 112 miles and run a marathon (26.2 miles). Mightily confused, but psyched by our evening conversation with fellow participants, we left the village around 8h30PM, picked up Maureen who just arrived at the airport and went to bed at the buttes.
On Saturday, after our now customary morning swim we packed our transition bags and checked them in with race officials, along with our bikes. They were to spend the night in the Tempe Beach park. Had our traditional pre-race pasta marinara at the hotel's restaurant, and went to bed really early to try to get some sleep.

The race
"Wake up" at 4AM (not much sleeping going on up to then anyway), eat something (oatmeal, blueberries & a banana for me), pack our swimming stuff and off we are to athlete's village. It is a strange atmosphere, like a busy marketplace with nervous people running around doing things except it's still dark outside. We make sure our tires are inflated, pack the last few items into our transition bags, make a few trips to the port-a-pottys, and soon it is time to slip into our wetsuits, and jump into the lake.

The swim (2.4miles - 4km)
The mass start is a very impressive sight: 2000 people waiting in the water for the cannon to go off. Few people are talking, the nervousness is amazingly palpable. It finally sinks in: this is Ironman! At 7:00AM the cannon goes off, and it is mayhem. Imagine sharing a swimming lane with a few hundred people, and you probably would get a feel for what this is like. I try to get a few strokes in, but wherever I reach I hit bodyparts. I had spent quite some time carefully adjusting my goggles for the perfect fit before jumping into the water, it turns out that was not necessary since someone took care of re-adjusting them for me with his heel a few minutes into the swim (you might notice a black shadow around my right eye on some of the post swim pictures, that's not eye liner). I learn a few things on the fly, such as keeping your teeth tightly closed at all times (elbow hits to the chin hurt much less that way) and staying close to people's feet (most people do not kick too hard given the extra flotation from the wetsuit, so kicks hurt less than punches). All in all, the first 1.2 miles are somewhat rough. I took a few solid hits, some of which caused me to inhale significant amounts of lake water. On the good side, swimming with the pack clearly pulls you along. I am unsure if this makes up for the horrible form you have in the pack... it's probably a wash. Then comes the buoy. The crowd there is so dense that there is no way to actually swim through the turn but somehow the combination of people pushing in the back and the pull of people leaving the pack keeps things moving. The second turn is a few hundred yards later, and then it is straight back to the finish. Here the pack is less dense which allows me to work on my form a little bit and I start feeling pretty good. I get out of the water after 1h14, a very good time for what was supposed to be my weakest leg and I had barely used my legs. In the transition zone, there is an army of volunteers helping you to get out of your wetsuit, hand you your transition bag and apply sunscreen while you are changing into your bike clothes. This makes for a very quick transition time (~8min)

The bike (112miles - 180km)
Remember how I was hoping for a hot day with no wind? Well, the weathergods were not cooperating that day with cool (for Arizona standards) temperatures along with strong winds (20mph+). Those are pretty much the worst possible conditions for a lightweight like me. Unfortunately, this will not be the last piece of bad news for the day (do I see a pattern of trying to come up with excuses here?). A few miles into the bike ride, my left knee starts hurting (at the patella tendon), a relatively uncommon pain I had only experienced a few days before while riding my bike around the hotel. I know there is no way I could run a marathon on this, which is really a mental hardship since I realize for the first time I probably will not finish. So I start pedalling mostly on my right leg, trying to relieve the pressure on my left knee. The bike leg consists of three identical loops. I finish the first loop surprisingly quickly given the circumstances [2:06], and pass Maureen for the first time after 37 miles. As she is cheering I felt like crying (in a very manly kind of way, of course!) because my knee was not much better, so I was rather certain by now I would not be able to run. I start the second loop out of my arrowbars, figuring I might as well enjoy what's left of my race, eating a clif bar and enjoying the tailwind that was blowing us along during the first part of the loop. I was chilling, but averaging 21mph with the wind, this was great! Even better, my knee was showing signs of recovery and as a result I was really pumped at the 55miles turn around. As you probably figured out, the strong tailwind one way meant we were facing a punishing headwind on the second part. Again my right leg is doing all the work, and although I am going pretty slow at this point (~15mph/24kmh) but I am feeling much happier with the knee loosening up and all. There are aid stations every 10 miles on the ride, but I noticed I can really only drink about 16oz per hour without vomiting so I did not spend a lot of time at the stations, picking up gatorade every 3 stations or so. I also ended up only eating two clif bars and a nut snack for the whole ride. In retrospect I clearly should have tried to get used to eating more on the bike during training. I also got a chance to see how the real hardcore people carry powerbars on their bikes: they wrap them around their frame bars like some kind of sticky tape and just grab chunks of them when needed... disgusting. The second loop went by relatively quickly, my average speed at this point is just shy of 18mph (29kmh). Then comes another hour of tailwind sailing, I spend some time out of my saddle just to get some blood back into my butt, and my knee is steadily improving. Then at 89 miles (143km) something weird happens to my right foot, there is a knuckle-cracking sound followed by sharp pain in the outside of my foot. I am slowing down a lot, trying to put less pressure on the ball of my foot ("pulling" mostly). This sucks. I am approaching the turn-around, the wind had picked up and I feel like things are falling apart. My foot is hurting like hell. This is by far the most humbling moment in any sports event I ever participated in. I get passed by a 66 year old man (a Japanese guy named Shoji), and soon after a 55 year old woman zips by (our age is written on our calves). Ouch! I shut off my brain and focus on forward progress. I keep repeating to myself that as long as I am turning these stupid pedals I am getting closer to getting off this stupid bike (I was more creative with my adjectives in real life). I slow down a lot more. Finally I reach the transition area after 6h45min on the bike (my average speed had dropped to 16.6mph/27kmh through the last loop). I see Maureen and I pray that by taking off my shoes, my foot suddenly will stop hurting. Unfortunately that does not happen. As I am limping barefoot to retrieve my transition bag I tell Maureen I think I broke something in my foot, and things are not too happy. I change into my running gear and head out to get some sunscreen slapped on.

The run
While I was standing there with 3 volunteers applying sunscreen as fast as they can, I am considering quitting. I look at the timing mats hesitant to cross them, thinking "what for?". I do it anyway, and as I am limping my way through the cheering crowd (there are a lot of people around the transition areas) I tell Maureen it is worse than I thought and that I will call her cell phone from the medical tent. I did not want to quit in front of everybody, so I decide to "walk" a little bit before calling first aid. While limping along, I am calculating whether I could make the cutoff at this speed. After reaching the first mile in 30min, I know I would need at least 12 more hours to finish, way past the cutoff. It becomes clear that this is useless, I will not become an ironman today. There is an aid station a 1/4 mile back with medical support, I am thinking of turning around. At that point a guy with an amputated right arm is running past me. Looking at this guy somehow flips a switch and I get mad at myself for being such a whiner and feeling sorry for myself while I enjoy the use of all my limbs. After apologizing to my foot I decide to bite it and just start running. The pain is curiously strong for the first minute or so, but then my foot slowly numbs to the point I can barely feel the pain. This is awesome, I think, and I start gunning it. Probably helped by the adrenaline released from the pain, I am moving really fast, taking home a few sub 6min30 miles. This is the first really good news of the day: I can go much, much faster than most everybody on the run. I get very excited, and find that it helps me to have obnoxious thoughts like: "you're in my house now Shoji" (for the record: he finished first of his age division in a little over 13 hours... amazing... I really hope I could be half (1/4th?) as strong at 66.) and "who is looking strong now?" - referring to the "encouragements" people would give me while zooming past me on the bike: "looking strong buddy!"... yeah right. Anyway, I run the first of the three loops super fast, supercharged by these obnoxious thoughts. Then I finally come to my senses: by some miracle, I had been given a second chance to finish this, I had been a few split seconds away from throwing in the towel and now I was about to screw it all up by running like a madman and cramping up 5 miles before the finish line. So I loosened up, running at a more reasonable pace through the last two loops, feeling extremely grateful for this turn of events. There were hundreds (thousands?) of motivational signs that had been placed along the course by friends and family, some of which were really "out there" (Honey I am pregnant! Love Karen). These and the high spirits of the volunteers staffing the aid stations provided great entertainment at a time when things seemed to drag a bit. After 3h47 of running (30 min of which was spend limping through the first mile) I reached the finish line right when the sun hit the horizon. I heard the sacred mantra through the PA system: "Cedric Dupont from San Francisco CA, you are an Ironman". This felt good. Real good.

Post race
After meeting up with Maureen in the end zone I tried to force myself to eat some food. They were serving pizza, burritos and french fries. Mmmh! I ate a few salty french fries and changed into warmer clothes. I checked my time [12h04] on the official results table, and again could not believe the luck I just had. We tried to find a good spot from which we could film Misha coming in. I had seen him on the bike, and he seemed to be doing great. Maureen also told me that he was running really fast, so it dawned on us that he might just do it. Mind-boggling... At 8h45PM the PA system announced "Misha Zatsman from Mountain View CA" he had broken 14 hours, a truly incredible feat. Misha had a much better appetite than me (surprisingly enough...) and we had another round of pizza, french fries and pretzels after which we picked up our bikes, gear and headed back to the hotel for the last leg: putting our bikes back into their crates (our plane was leaving first thing in the morning). It took me an hour and a half to pack my bike, and I collapsed into my bed around midnight. Needless to say I fell asleep relatively quickly.

Training
I started the "real" training in October (obviously I did not start from scratch...)I even tried to log my workouts to track my progress and check for overtraining. I had read crazy stories of people bragging about ridiculously intense training programs in many web-forums, but for what it's worth you can take the numbers on the log at face value. A typical "intense" week towards the end of the program included 2-3 one-hour swimming sessions, two 60-mile bike rides, and several 9-13 miles running workouts. My biggest regret is that I did not spend any time in the weightroom (I hate lifting weights) which is essential to build strength. As you can notice, I did not do much of a taper as I felt that the gain in endurance outweighed the benefit of additional rest up onto the very end. I had my last hard bike ride on Sunday and went on my last pre-race jog on Wednesday night. The result of all this training? Before the race I felt ready for the running leg (the napa marathon test 5 weeks before had felt great), I did not feel very confident about the bike leg although I clearly improved a lot over the last 4 months, so I figured it would be a good day/bad day kind of situation. Finally, I knew I would be slow in the water but that I would somehow manage to finish within a reasonable time.

Gear
I used a blue seventy reaction wetsuit that I selected because it fit my shoulder shape best. The tradeoff was typically between mobility (i.e. enough room to move) and too much material bunching up at the armpits. I tried many suits, including the top-of-the line orca apex, but none fit me as well as the reaction. My bike is a Cervelo Dual, pretty much stock except for a replaced bottom bracket (ultegra). I swapped the excellent (but puncture-prone) vittoria diamante pro light tires for a continental set (GP Attack in front and Force in the rear). As far as trunk space goes, the cervelo frame only fits one cage and I mounted one of these carbon fiber ones. They look really cool, but I am not that convinced about the ergonomics of these cages, as I found that inserting a waterbottle is much harder than in conventional cages. But hey, looks count in this world... I also used a Profile Design bottle that you squeeze between the arrowbars, which works OK, but is somewhat hard to drink out of while riding on rough surfaces. It also spills quite a bit, and I ended up having sticky gatorade all over the bike. I used a small timbuk2 saddle pack for tube repair gear. That's it.
Competitive analysis: about 80% of the people use some type of fancy wheels on the ride (Zipp or similar) and about one third have the full carbon lenticular or three spoke setup. Not sure how to quantify the benefits, but they sure look cool, and make frightening noises while zooming by.

Fashion matters
In terms of clothing I went for full comfort, meaning that I changed completely at every transition. I am puzzled that it is humanly possible to spend 6 hours on a bike wearing a speedo like the pros do. I wore a pair of super-padded (nice-ah) Sugoi reflex shorts for the ride, along with a bike jersey with big pockets to carry all the food I planned to eat. I changed socks for the run (I got these fancy assymetrical socks by nike that worked great i.e. no blisters) and wore running shorts (no compression). I also wore a tri-top for the marathon, thinking I would be using its pockets for gu. This was probably not a good idea, as it was hard to slip on and because aid stations were placed every mile, I really did not need to do much carrying at all. Looking at the other competitors, most everybody was wearing compression shorts so this probably is something to look into for the future.

Nutrition [Disclaimer: I have no idea what I am talking about, and none of this would withstand FDA scrutiny]
Aside from increasing the proportion of carbohydrates (=sugars), I did not pay that much attention to my everyday diet. The focus on carbs probably did decrease my body fat somewhat (measurement in March showed 4.7% body fat, which is dangerously low), but I did not actively monitor my weight. As far as supplements go, I tried a glucosamine/chondroitin complex for 60 days before the race, and I must say I now am a believer in this stuff. My knees stayed happy throughout the last two month, even after the pounding induced by a 2h50 marathon on a concrete road, and several telemarking trips in the Lake Tahoe backcountry. I also took some Flax seed oil gel tablets (my belief was that this could help increasing my fat levels). Nothing to report here. I also took some generic multivitamin supplement during the 4 hardest training months. I took Ibuprofen for a couple of days to speed up recovery from a bike crash during which I injured my hip, but other than that I stayed away from anti-inflammatory drugs (NSAIDs as they are known in the business). In terms of electrolyte drinks, I am a real fan of Cytomax for efforts longer than 2 hours or for recovery after any hard workout. This stuff is truly amazing in its ability to prevent cramps and reduce soreness. Unfortunately, they are only serving Gatorade Endurance Formula during the race (which I know nothing about except that it tastes very salty, ew!). Because of the high calorie needs during the Ironman I needed to get used to eating while exercising, something I had never done before (I am a "water only" kind of guy). I started by using energy gels (Powerbar, Gu-shot), and I was surprised how easy they are to digest even while running. I am planning to eat about 5000 calories on the bike leg (I am writing this before the race), so I also got used to eating solid food while biking. I found Clif Bars to be effective and easy to eat, Powerbars work well too but are a pain to eat (sticky, gooey, hard to squeeze out of their wrapping).

Cost
Unfortunately, this thing ain't cheap. A race costs about $2000, split roughly 4-ways between registration, travel, lodging (3-days minimum) and incidentals. Of course this assumes that you own all the necessary gear. It is hard to spend more than $500 on a wetsuit ($200 is easily feasible for dealseekers), but there is no upper limit on how much money one can spend on a bike ($10-15,000 bikes are common). Running is the thriftiest leg, as $200 buys you all the running gear you need.

Back-Country Skiing in Tahoe

2007-03-25T11:58:00.000-07:00

Fully recovered from our 26.2 miles of running along Napa vineyards, we ended up climbing up 1800 feets to the top of Mount Tamarack on our backcountry skis, with Wei and Mike (our faithfull travelling companions).
The effort (2.5 miles in more than 2 hours ;-) was well rewarded by the 10 minutes ski down hill.
The weather was great, the views amazing and the snow still pretty good for a 65 degrees fahrenheit (18 degrees celsius) day.
Enjoy the pictures here and here.
Maureen

Mendocino

2007-03-18T20:57:00.000-07:00

We discovered Mendocino this last week-end with Mike and Wei. We did some hiking, biking, food tasting, hot-tubbing, and whale watching. Pictures here.

Napa Valley marathoning

2007-03-04T18:47:00.000-08:00

If you hung out with Maureen lately, you probably remember her mentioning preparing for her first marathon (if you don't you must have only been paying attention to the remaining 20% of conversation topics). Well Sunday was the big day. Needless to say, our whole weekend was dedicated to the event. Misha, Maureen and I headed up to Napa on Saturday to pick up our bibs and other random schwag at the marathon expo. Maureen made us sit through the first 30 min of a discussion panel on "tips and trick to handle the Napa course" which included useful advice such as "uphill will feel harder than downhill" and "don't go too fast or you will hurt", after which we went on to discussing the optimal GU shot intake schedule (a topic near to Misha's heart) and had some medical fun with body mass measurements (lots of joke opportunities there). At 5h30PM, we had a special dinner prepared at the hotel where Marisa and Steve joined us (I forgot to mention that Steve, probably intrigued by Maureen's description of her learnings from the panels, had decided to join the fun and registered on the spot). For Dr. Zatsmans tips on making sure to ensure adequate calorie intake click here.
A marathon starts in the evening: you prepare your gear, pin your bib to your top, set redundant alarm clocks (Misha had trouble with that specific task, as it turned out the next morning), and try to fall asleep as early as possible.

Wake up is at 4AM to start fueling up: oatmeal with blueberries and bananas worked for us. As you can tell from the picture, Maureen is enjoying her breakfast in bed. 4h35AM noticing that the room next door is awfully quiet, give wake up call to Misha who encountered technical difficulties setting his alarm. 4h55AM leave for the finish line, where a fleet of school busses is waiting to shuttle us to the start. 6h10AM reach the starting line, it's pretty chilly (~40F) but there is no wind, so conditions look optimal. After a jolly good time in the port-a-potty lines and meeting up with Mr. Baker, it's finally time: 7AM h-hour of d-day! After this point, I can't report much of our virgin marathonians adventure since I did not run with them. But judging from their times, they all had a great day and, most importantly, met their goal of a 4h run (Steve 3h44, Misha 3h55 and Maureen 4h00). If you were ever involved in something like this, you know that is REALLY fast for your first try. For my part of the story I thought the conditions were great and the course was very fast, although it got a little lonely at times. I went a little too fast given that this was supposed to be a training run for Arizona, but I guess I was overexcited to feel that this old body still has some juice left in it. After getting mad at myself for running the first half in 1h21, I slowed down to 1h29 for the next 13.1 miles.
Award ceremony, hottub at the hotel, and back to San Francisco. They don't know it yet, but they'll want to do it again!

February spring skiing

2007-02-07T14:51:00.000-08:00

We were back in Tahoe this weekend, where it has not snowed since Jan 4th. We decided to check out a new resort and went to tiny (only 4 lifts) Homewood on Saturday. This turned out to be a really good decision, as the conditions were surprisingly good compared to Squaw. On Superbowl Sunday (I think the Oakland A's were playing the Chicago Bulls, but I could be mistaken), we decided to go on a hike up Mt. Tallac. Beautiful weather and grandiose views of Lake Tahoe made for an amazing trek up to the summit. Then we decided to take a "better" way down. It started out allright, with the first 1000 ft sliding down on our butts (tons of fun, I'll post videos later). For all the fun we had, it suddenly became clear that we were completely lost. We had to get to a road before sunset (of course we had brought no flashlight or map for aerodynamic reasons) so what started as an easy hike slowly morphed into quite an expedition, with our motley crew struggling through knee deep snow down to the (wrong) trailhead. Most of us were completely drenched from our previous butt-luge activities, so things got a little cold and rough. Fun times! Here are Jeremy's pix (notice how he didn't take many pictures from our "shortcut" back to the car) Mike's and Amy's.

Thanksgiving in Chicago

2007-01-07T17:47:00.000-08:00

We spent another Thanksgiving with Audrey & Laurent in Chicago. We left, fully prepared to face the cold weather, but we found a rather warm Chicago (even warmer than California).
We enjoyed great food (Laurent impressed us with his turkey cooking skills) and Chicago sightseeing, we went on a road trip to Madisson, relaxed, and just enjoyed spending time with Audrey & Laurent. We also made a detour to Elgin where Cedric spent a year after highschool and randomly bumped into his host mother. Fun times. For more pictures, check picasaweb
Maureen

Fall in the Bay Area

2006-11-07T14:34:00.000-08:00

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!

Royal Arches - Yosemite

2006-09-11T14:08:00.002-07:00

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.

Santa Barbara

2006-09-05T21:04:00.000-07:00

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.

Napa Din(n)er

2006-08-27T14:40:00.000-07:00

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.

Week-ends in the Bay Area

2006-07-30T17:11:00.000-07:00

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, ...

4th of July in the sky

2006-07-09T19:22:00.000-07:00

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

Stanley goes to Washington

2006-06-20T06:53:00.000-07:00

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!

Back to Tana - Andasibe

2006-06-18T18:41:00.000-07:00

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

2006-06-18T18:30:00.000-07:00

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

2006-06-18T18:25:00.000-07:00

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

2006-06-18T18:17:00.000-07:00

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

2006-06-18T18:01:00.000-07:00

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.

Got Lemurs

2006-06-08T02:08:00.000-07:00

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!

Baobabs: check - Lemurs: check

2006-06-06T04:41:00.001-07:00

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.

Getting Around in Antananarivo

2006-05-30T06:45:00.000-07:00

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.

An Island off the island - Nosy Sakatia

2006-05-29T12:41:00.000-07:00

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

2006-05-29T12:35:00.000-07:00

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...

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

2006-05-24T21:21:00.000-07:00

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.

Madagascar Part 1

2006-05-23T22:07:00.000-07:00

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.

Grandma in California

2006-05-16T22:49:00.000-07:00

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.

First solo

2006-05-11T22:35:00.000-07:00

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...

The Long Tail

2006-05-02T08:35:00.000-07:00

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...

More Belgians in San Francisco

2006-05-01T20:43:00.000-07:00

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

Lost in translation

2006-04-05T22:13:00.000-07:00

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

A week-end in San Francisco

2006-03-19T21:25:00.001-08:00

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

Orthopaedics for dummies

2006-03-09T11:51:00.000-08:00

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.

Sierra snow

2006-03-05T14:28:00.004-08:00

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.

More Tahoe Snow

2006-02-20T16:04:00.000-08:00

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!

Bay Area From Above

2006-02-13T19:50:00.001-08:00

(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.

Bear in Mott Canyon

2006-01-22T20:44:00.000-08:00

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...

New Year - New Ski Season

2006-01-18T14:52:00.000-08:00

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.

Go Bears!

2005-10-20T19:26:00.000-07:00

Dear reader (I originally wrote readerS, but then I figured I might be overestimating my audience), the last post was 3 months back, and you may wonder if nothing worth blogging about happened since then. Well, quite the opposite: since July, Maureen discovered charming Zurich, I became a student once again (Cal - hence the title of the blog), we donated the very first vehicle we ever owned to charity, our team won the DARPA Grand Challenge (no comment on my share of the $2M...), roughly in that order. I just finished my first set of classes, which means I have a two day break which I am spending 15 precious minutes of to write this blog. More good news: we got a crew together for a house in Tahoe this winter, we can't wait for the first storm to hit the Sierras.

California Road Trip

2005-07-27T11:16:00.000-07:00

Thomas, Didier and myself took a short road trip across central California. We started out in Monterey (aquarium) and camped in Big Sur. The next day, we drove down the coast on Hwy 1 (where we saw some elephant seals) and headed inwards to Death Valley, were the temperature was a cool 122 deg F (50 deg C) at 7h30PM! We spent the night sleeping in wet clothes to try to control our body temperature, as the thermometer never went below 105 deg F (40 deg C) during the night. The next stop was Yosemite National Park where we hiked from Tenaya Lake into the Valley, climbing Cloud's Rest and Half Dome on the way. During our 2-day trip, we had to fight off ferocious mosquitoes, set up a bivouac under a rock (we deemed our tent flys superfluous, a thunderstorm taught us we were wrong...) and although we were prepared to fight off bears with our camping sporks, we did not see any, to the great disapointment of the belgian contingent. In the Valley we had arranged to meet up with Goeric who drove in from the Bay Area. Our plan was to get a wilderness permit to climb Mount Sill . We hiked the approach on Friday and set up our base camp at 10100 ft (3030 m). The next day we got up at 4AM and headed for the summit. The climb was mostly rock-scrambling and some snow-hiking up to ~13,000 ft. Then the serious climbing began: 50 meters roped climbing, followed by 5 "real" pitches to the top at 14,153 feet (4,314 meters). The face of the Mount Sill is VERY steep, and we enjoyed some rather airy moves, ratings range from 5.7 to 5.9 (French equ. 5-6a) depending on the logs you read but most of the climb is moderately easy and offers sufficient protection, the hardest thing is to forget about the void beneath you and dealing with the effects of high altitude.
We returned to our base camp at 6h30PM. In the meantime, a storm had moved in and the 14+ hour climb had taken its toll on me. I collapsed into my sleeping bag immediately upon reaching my tent, only to wake up the next morning for the descent. The hike out was easy, although we got lost several times, and the mosquitoes were as aggressive as ever. The drive back through Yosemite was uneventful, except for a speeding ticket for Goeric, and an all-American Applebee's experience that did not suit our Belgian friend's digestive system too well (or was it the stop at Soda Springs to taste the naturally carbonated water). I am sure Goeric will put up pictures as well, so go check out his post.

Back to Blogging

2005-07-27T11:07:00.000-07:00

I have not been very consistent with this blog since May. It's not that nothing happened, it's just that we were too busy to report. After 4 weeks in Germany (Cedric) we moved to San Francisco on July 20th, and enjoyed the company of many visitors: Maureen's brother (2 weeks), Kenneth & Anne (1 week) and Thomas & Didier (2 weeks). We spent some time in San diego on the Spriggs' boat , went oyster-grilling and kayaking in Point Reyes and generally took our role as a tour guide very seriously.

Sailing on the Bay

2005-05-17T14:30:00.000-07:00

While Goeric and myself were playing in the snow, Maureen was living the good life, sailing on the San Francisco Bay. Pictures of this trip can be found here.

Mount Shasta Skiing

2005-05-15T09:43:00.000-07:00

Goeric and I decided to do some serious backcountry skiing this weekend. We headed out to the beautiful town of Mount Shasta on Thursday evening, and spent the night at the very authentic Mountain Air Lodge.
After talking to the local Ranger Bobs in the Morning, we drove to the "trailhead" (actually, the road was cut off by excess snow, and we had to hike 2.5 extra miles to get to the official start of the trail). We were the only ones leaving that day, as the weather was somewhat unstable, and avalanche danger was considerable. The climb on Friday was uneventful. We skinned a gentle slope all the way up to base camp and pitched our tent on a small plateau at 8,300ft. I was feeling rather miserable with a light case of altitude sickness kicking in, so I rested in the tent while Goeric went on to conquer a slope next to our camp. The next morning, we left for the summit at sunrise. We were making good progress on hard snow, keeping a reasonable pace of 1,200ft/hr. At 11,000ft the snow became very unpredictable, varying from too icy for the skins to grip, to too soft for crampons. I switched back and forth quite a bit, and I really got to love the fast adjustment of the Black Diamond sabretooth crampons that I had borrowed from Roetter Outdoors Works, Inc. Everything was going smooth, the mountain was beautiful and the cloud ceiling well below us offered amazing views. Then (at around 12,000ft) I suddenly started choking and our climbing speed dramatically decreased. At this point, I had to face the fact that I would not make it to the summit safely, so I decided to dig myself in at the top of the most skiable terrain, at 12,600 ft. Goeric went somewhat further (we were on a rocky ridge at that point, so there was no avalanche danger). For the full story on this beautiful trip, Goeric put together a movie available here. You can also find pix here.
The mountain humbled us this time but as true as our Governor is a 6-time Mr. Olympia: we'll be back!

Tahoe - The Last Stand

2005-05-08T09:28:00.000-07:00

This was another Tahoe weekend. On Saturday morning, we met up with our very own localite Mr. Sidney, and headed for the sunny slopes of Squaw Valley. May skiing in California is a interesting experience. The snow was surprisingly good in the morning and some of us applied what they learned in flight school (FlyingRoetter), others just chilled in the gigantic base camp hot tub after a good day of skiing: pix here . The day ended with a nice BBQ on the deck, and we headed back on Sunday for the bay area.

Hawaii - The Big Island

2005-05-01T09:02:00.000-07:00

We spend the last week in Hawaii with our mum's. Travelling with your mother in law, you'd say? Well, we have great mum's and besides the trip was meant as a way to thank them for all the work they did to organize our Belgian wedding. Among the highlights of the trip were:
- swimming with sea turtles, pygmea dolphins, and other colorful critters
- poking flowing lava with a stick
- surfing the killer waves of Kona (or at least their little sisters)
- drinking pina colada out of a coconut

If a picture is worth a thousand words, here are
149,000 words worth of blog, as well as a couple movies.

Vegas Baby: Part Deux

2005-04-20T18:02:00.000-07:00

Almost exactly a year ago, I learned the meaning of the expression "I thee wed" in the beautiful setting of The Little White Chapel's "Tunnel of Love". The opportunity to celebrate this anniversary was too good to miss, so we headed out to Vegas last weekend. Our agenda was rather simple: party, sleep (some), drink (a lot), and repeat in random order. We started out Friday night with dinner at Mon ami Gabi (Paris), followed by Studio 54 (MGM Grand). The party was alright, and most of us left the club in reasonably decent shape between 2 and 4AM, the married boring people heading for their hotel room, the young bloods going for the craps tables. Long story short: everybody ended up getting some sleep, and by 2PM the next day, all of us had made it to the Paris' pool.

The following night was planned out by mastermind Turco. We formed a party of ~30 people and went to Simon (Hard Rock) for an amazing dinner after which off to the Body English, where Turco had arranged for a private lounge with drink service (pretty high performance organizing).

As far as I remember, the Body English is highly recommendable, we had a lot of fun and most of us where decadently intoxicated by the time we followed the natural urge to go home and snuggle in our covers. On Sunday we went to Red Rocks Canyon with Alex and Jules, and pretended to do some climbing. We (=Alex) were able to set up a grand total of 1 top rope and after I miserably failed to set up a second one (~5.10+) we rushed back to the airport in order to catch our flight to SFO.

Some picture links:
Misha's
Andrew's

More Tahoe snow

2005-04-04T17:47:00.000-07:00

We went up to the cabin again this weekend. It was a full house (Julie, Ellen, Mark, Sarah, The Ginsberg brothers, Mike, Alex, Siobhan, Marcus and Monique), and most of us went skiing at Alpine Meadows on Saturday. A storm moved in on Sunday, so we decided to pig in for breakfast instead of going skiing, and headed back to the bay before the traffic got too crazy. Donner Pass was already snowed in when we passed it around 11AM. On the way back, Maureen and I stopped in Berkeley to get me some Telemark boots. To Maureen's delight, it took 1h30 to get them fitted. I can't wait to try them out!
It will be a long season, most of the resorts have 10s of feet of base, and there is more snow coming in this week.

Randonnee Skiing - Ostrander Hut

2005-03-28T18:12:00.000-08:00

This weekend we went to Yosemite. Maureen had wanted to try backcountry skiing for a while, so we decided to head out to the mountains once again. After a little bit of research, and because the weather forecast for Tahoe was rather bad we chose to go to Ostrander Lake in Yosemite (altitude 8550ft).

Marie-Catherine and Goeric left on Thursday night to get a head start, and Maureen and I were planning to meet them on Saturday afternoon in the mountains, silly enough to think our cell phones would be working up there. I had Friday off (Good Friday), so I went to Berkeley’s famous Marmot Mountain Works store to get gear for our expedition. The picture below shows our packing list:

- Randonnee ski package (K2 Shes Piste + Diamir Titanal + Garmont GSM boots)

-Telemark ski package (K2 Instinx + Scarpa T2 boots)

- Avalanche gear rented from Marmot and Alex Roetter, Inc.

- A pack full of heavy stuff (18lbs)

- A pack full of heavier stuff (32lbs)

- An all wheel drive 225-hp 6-speed manual Audi A4 quattro + 18 inch rims

Friday night, we slept in the beautiful town of Groveland, CA and got up early the next morning to drive to the park’s only ski resort (Badger Pass) where our trailhead was located. We started the 10.1 miles (16.5km) trail at 9h30AM. At 9h37AM, Maureen discovered what every generation of first-time randonee skiers have discovered before her: randonnee boots are not comfortable. The following hour or so was spent re-adjusting, re-tightening followed by re-loosening Maureen’s boots. To be completely fair, we did make some progress in between the boot-adjustment sessions, and we were hitting a swift (under these circumstances) pace of 2mph.

After ~5 miles on relatively flat and groomed terrain, the trail turns into single track and the serious climbing begins. The weather was perfect with absolutely no wind, and the fresh snow made for a beautiful scenery. Maureen’s feet were toughening up (or was she getting tired of complaining), and we (I?) started fully enjoying the wilderness (we did not meet a single skier all day) and the magnificent views of the valley.

We reached the Lake at 4h15PM, but Marie-Catherine and Goeric were nowhere to be found (but then again, they are always late… :). I started following tracks in the snow hoping to find their tent and stumbled onto the two of them napping in what would be our base camp for the weekend. We enjoyed the rest of the daylight setting up our tent and preparing a comfortable pit for dinner.

In the morning Goeric and myself left at 7AM for a quick downhill run in the morning snow. The snow conditions were rather poor (crust) but the setting made up for it (see Goeric’s pictures). A 60 feet drop into a beautiful, 30 deg slope (the tracks are visible exactly above Maureen in the background of the picture with the two girls). This was my third time on Telemark skis, which made the whole thing much more interesting.

We were back at the base at 9AM and ready to leave by 10AM. The first half of the trail (single track) had some great tree skiing, and then came the groomed part… a gruelsome, 2-hour hike on boring semi-flat terrain really tested our mental stamina. We reached the cars at 3PM. Maureen’s blisters had at that point developed in lovely 2-inch diameter pouches. In retrospect, a 7-hour climb on your first time backcountry skiing could have been considered as daring.
For more pictures, click here or here

Tahoe Storm

2005-03-21T21:11:00.000-08:00

Maureen and I drove up to the cabin on Friday night, where we met Otto (the swedish contingent of the house) and his friends Anika and Tobias (and little Linus). Julie, MM. Ginsberg and Jahr drove up later that night as well. There were a few snow showers at Donner pass, but nothing to write home about. It started to snow gently overnight and we spent Saturday playing in powder at Alpine Meadows. It was rather windy, and since we were soaked form the falling snow, it got very chilly, and we decided to head home for Julie's now famous warm chocolate. Albert and Kristin had come up that morning with their front wheel drive Jetta (this fact is of no significance at this point, but may well be later...).

Things got serious that night. When we woke up, it was snowing hard, and 12 (30cm) inches of new snow were covering our deck. Unfortunately for Albert's Jetta our deck was not the only thing covered with a thick layer of snow. After numerous but unsuccessful attemps to get the car moving in any direction other than downhill with the car had to be towed to the highway. Check out the attached pictures of this white inferno (taken Sturday BEFORE the bulk of the storm hit)!

Despite the storm and the fact that most lifts were on windhold, we headed to Squaw, where the lower mountain, and most importantly KT-22 and Olympic lady were running. it had snowed close to 20 inches (50cm) by that time (storm total 34 inches), and for little people like me, that meant knee-high power pleasure. The winds and the near-zero visibility could not spoil an amazing day on the slopes. Unfortunately I did not take any pictures that day, because it was technically too challenging to operate my camera in this blizzard.

After warming up a bit at the Chamois, we decided to hit the road. We drove 2 hours in the snow, and progressed a grand total of 6 miles. Being Engineers, we quickly calculated that at this pace, it would take us 60 hours to get to San Francisco, hence our quick (?) decision to turn around. We had dinner at Wolfdale's and slept at the cabin, hoping the traffic would clear up overnight. The next morning at 6AM Highway 80 was still covered with snow and stranded trucks were piled up from Reno to Truckee, but the friendly Caltrans people let us pass through chain control thanks to the quattro logo on the grille (the ultra-low profile performance tyres luckily went unnoticed).

We were at work at 10h30 that day.