Giving thanks

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 ...

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

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

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

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

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 ...

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

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

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

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.