February spring skiing

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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.