Marie-Catherine & Goeric in California

Timothée

noreply@blogger.com (MC & Go) — Mon, 21 Dec 2009 02:31:00 +0000

Timothée is born on Wednesday December 16 at 4:30pm, 55 cm tall and weighing in at 3kg590. We are very happy! Everything went smoothly: the staff at Stanford hospital was great. We came back home on Friday afternoon, and we are now enjoying the first days of parenthood :-)

A short movie gives you a glimpse of his first three hours, and here are some pictures of his first days (as always, on the movie page, right click on the movie version and "save as").

MC & Goéric

New Albums

noreply@blogger.com (MC & Go) — Tue, 08 Sep 2009 05:55:00 +0000

Just to let you know that a few albums are finally online.

Before Lieven left California, he still wanted to live a real backcountry experience in Yosemite ;-) So Lieven and Goéric, together with Michael and Alison, drove up on a Friday night and spent two days hiking and "climbing" to the summit of Half Dome.

August was the month of our first encounter with Asia. I went to Singapore for a conference, and then joined Goéric in Shanghai (Part 1, Part 2). We visited Inès and Tassilo who have been living there for a year.

Stay tuned: more albums coming soon... All the black and white pictures Goéric shot with his new medium format camera!

MC

Giro D'Vino

noreply@blogger.com (MC & Go) — Mon, 03 Nov 2008 03:45:00 +0000

Yet another biking WE. This time in the Central Valley: a mostly flat organized ride through beautiful vineyards and local wineries. Maureen organized this trip in September and although we knew the weather is pretty dicey at this time of year we immediately signed up. And indeed, things looked pretty bad when the first "winter storm" (= some clouds and rain in "Californian") moved in on Friday. We were happy to watch a DVD in a sweet little cottage on Saturday as it rained all afternoon and night. On Sunday morning however the weather was pretty much perfect and everybody completed the 100km loop without any trouble (except one flat tire for me). Pictures here.

Goeric

San Francisco with Olivier

noreply@blogger.com (MC & Go) — Mon, 27 Oct 2008 00:33:00 +0000

Our Napa tour ended on Monday with a visit in San Francisco. We parked the car on the Marin side of the Golden Gate. After crossing the bridge by bike, we visited the new Academy of Sciences (located in the Golden Gate Park). The museum reopened a month ago, with a new planetarium, a rain forest and a striking architecture including a "garden roof"... Quite interesting. Our day ended with a beautiful sunset while crossing the bridge back to the car.

For his last day in California, Olivier and I visited the San Francisco Museum of Modern Art (Moma) and the Yerba Buena Gardens. The kids' play garden near the Moma is impressive: as always, Americans are experts in designing pedagogically interesting material for kids.

Goéric hopped on the Caltrain to join us in the evening for our traditional sushi dinner at Kabuto! And then it was already time for Olivier to pack his luggage...

Marie

Olivier in California

noreply@blogger.com (MC & Go) — Mon, 27 Oct 2008 00:14:00 +0000

Hi all,

My brother came to visit us again! It's always very nice to have visitors, which are unfortunately quite rare :-(

He started his Californian tour with a few days in San Diego where two of his friends/colleagues had a conference. He visited the zoo, SeaWorld, as well as the UCSD campus and the Salk Institute in La Jolla. (If you want to see Goéric's old pictures of the Institute, click here.)

Last week-end we all went to Napa Valley. Beverly, my "American mom", had kindly reserved her condo there for us! We took a detour via Point Reyes, to show the lighthouse to Olivier. On Sunday we enjoyed a VERY long bike ride through the vineyards: from the resort to Calistoga, and back (total = 87km!). The landscape was beautiful, with the autumnal colors of the leaves. We managed to get a quick lunch in Calistoga before literally speeding back to be on time for a winery tour. Again thanks to Beverly, we had a private tour of the Rudd winery, as well as a delightful wine tasting! It was a great experience. And after such a long day, the hot tub and swimming pool in the resort were more than welcome :-)

Marie

Tour for Woodside

noreply@blogger.com (MC & Go) — Tue, 30 Sep 2008 05:08:00 +0000

We did it! Two weeks ago, we participated in the "Tour for Woodside" with Lieven, Frank and Felicity. It was a lot of fun. It is a long bike ride in the area organized by the public high school of Woodside. Three rides are proposed: 32 miles, 55 miles and 100 miles, with rest stops along the way. It was funny to see the students greeting their teachers. We "modestly" ;-) went for the 55 mile ride which still had a total of 4,160 feet (= 1260 meters) of climbing! Lieven bailed out for the additional 20 mile ride to get to and back from the start. Our total mileage for the day thus amounted to 75 miles (= 118 km)... Enjoy the pictures, and maybe we will be back next year for the 100 miles :-)

MC and Go

Fourth of July

noreply@blogger.com (MC & Go) — Thu, 10 Jul 2008 05:54:00 +0000

Hey,

We spent a very relaxing Fourth of July week-end. We enjoyed Independence Day at Shoreline Lake in Mountain View: picnic, followed by some sailing! Three boats, for the 12 of us. Before coming back for the firework, we played "Celebrities" at Lieven's place. To avoid traffic, we biked back to Shoreline: the ride goes along side the Bay, which at sunset is beautiful. We arrived on time for the firework as you can see on the picture!

MC and Go

Long distance call

noreply@blogger.com (MC & Go) — Fri, 11 Apr 2008 06:50:00 +0000

Using Skype Marie is able to "visit" her little nephew Jean-Pierre about once a week :-) It's already hard for our generation to imagine the world without these technologies... But then, what about Jean-Pierre when he'll be our age!

Goeric

Vortex family reunion ;-)

noreply@blogger.com (MC & Go) — Tue, 25 Mar 2008 02:37:00 +0000

Here are some pictures from the symposium organized in honor of Anthony (Tony) Leonard's 70th birthday at Caltech. Tony was my advisor's advisor. I had the opportunity to work with him and some of his (former) students during my PhD. For the occasion we drove down to Pasadena and spent the week-end there. It was nice to meet again with the people from the vortex world :-)

The picture above shows a gift Tony received: three stages of the evolution of a vortex ring, like the smoke rings you can blow --if you smoke and you are skilled enough ;-). These were obtained by numerical simulation and reproduced by rapid prototyping ("3D printing").

Goeric

Fraud

noreply@blogger.com (MC & Go) — Tue, 18 Mar 2008 06:18:00 +0000

No you're not crazy :-P ... Even if that is what you might think: you came by every once in a while during the last three months, didn't find any news and now realize that three posts have been published since then. In fact, it's just because we backdated them. Anyway, below you will find some (not-so-fresh) news.

Stay tuned: there's even more old news to come ;-)

Goeric

Road biking

noreply@blogger.com (MC & Go) — Tue, 11 Mar 2008 05:17:00 +0000

This winter we did a few rides in the foothills but on the road... We realized this is actually a lot of fun too. We then quickly figured out (with the help of Cedric and Maureen ;-) that road bikes are actually much better at this than mountain bikes. Thus, on a Sunday morning, we rented some road bikes and biked all the way to the Pacific and back to Mountain View: climbing over the foothills twice. Marie was a bit (hum) exhausted at the end of the second ascent, but enjoyed it nevertheless. That's how, a few weeks later, our bike collection expanded a little more :-$

Goeric

My parents in California

noreply@blogger.com (MC & Go) — Tue, 04 Mar 2008 06:08:00 +0000

Hi all,

Beginning of January (two months ago thus...), my parents came to visit us. We were of course very happy to see them! They spent some time in Los Angeles and drove up the coast before coming here. I was kind of busy with the ACL deadline the first day they were here, but I could take the Friday off. We visited the Computer History Museum in Mountain View. It was fun to do that with my dad who showed us the computers he started working with ;-) For the week-end, Goéric and I managed to convince my parents to go to Lake Tahoe. My dad agreed reluctantly but after all he confessed that it had been a very good idea :-) On Saturday we drove around the lake, stopping for a short walk here and there. The weather wasn't too bad. On Sunday we hiked down to Vikingsholm, at the head of Emerald Bay. The house is closed for the season, but it is still impressive to see if from outside and to admire its location!

Goéric made a nice movie (78MB: right click and save as) about our trip to Tahoe. Enjoy :-)

Marie

Canyons Road Trip: Albums

noreply@blogger.com (MC & Go) — Sat, 26 Jan 2008 07:08:00 +0000

Finally the links to the albums from our Canyons Road Trip. Those who already dropped by the main picture gallery page probably already found the first two albums. The third one was just uploaded:

Part 1 -- Grand Canyon
Part 2 -- Arches
Part 3 -- Bryce and Vegas

Goeric

End of the Canyons Road Trip

noreply@blogger.com (MC & Go) — Mon, 31 Dec 2007 07:47:00 +0000

A quick post to tell you that we made it back to our apartment in Mountain View after:

- 2350 Miles of driving
- 2 nights camping in the "backcountry" (Grand Canyon and Arches)
- 1 refused backcountry permit (Bryce)
- Subzero temperatures (degrees Farhenheit, i.e. -20ºC)
- Tons of beautiful landscapes
- 4 hours at the Emergencies at a hospital in St George, Utah (Goeric's turn, but nothing serious: don't worry)
- A Cirque du Soleil show as impressive as Vegas is kitsch
- And more ;-)

We'll try to put some albums together and maybe some more details about our trip later!

Goéric

Update from Bryce Canyon

noreply@blogger.com (MC & Go) — Thu, 27 Dec 2007 06:16:00 +0000

Hi all,

We are now at Bryce Canyon. Yesterday we hiked in Arches National Park, discovering the impressive landscape there. After a cold night, we hiked back to the car this morning and drove to Bryce Canyon through Capitol Reef NP. We took Utah Highway 12, "Utah's first all American road", whatever that means... Really worth driving there! The views are unbelievable. It's now snowing ;-) We will see what we'll do tomorrow. A priori some backcountry hiking in Bryce if it's feasible.

More later,

Marie and Goéric

Canyons Road Trip

noreply@blogger.com (MC & Go) — Tue, 25 Dec 2007 16:25:00 +0000

Merry Christmas from the Grand Canyon ;-)

We are currently in Moab (Utah): that's our second stop on our "Canyons Road Trip". We left Mountain View on Saturday morning and drove all the way to the South Rim of the Grand Canyon (a looong drive: 770 miles). After one night at a hotel in Grand Canyon Village we hiked half way down in the Grand Canyon (800m down from the Rim) and camped there for one night. After a not too cold night we took down our camp and hiked out. By noon we were back on the road: first further along the South Rim with a few stops along the way, then a very nice drive through the Arizona high desert and later Monument Valley. We also made a nice side trip on a dirt road through the "Valley of the Gods" which is like a miniature version of Monument Valley without people (highly recommended). This morning we drive into Arches National park and we will camp there for one night! Maybe some more news and pictures later...

Goeric & Marie

Del Medio Fire

noreply@blogger.com (MC & Go) — Mon, 17 Dec 2007 08:32:00 +0000

That's a picture of the apartment that completely burned down in our building this afternoon, but luckily nobody got hurt. Our apartment is on the top floor: the one with the light in front of the door in the picture. This happened ten minutes after MC took off to go Christmas cooking at a friends' place and 5 minutes after Cedric and Maureen went back home (we did a nice biking tour together in the morning). It was really impressive to see how quickly the apartment was completely on fire with huge flames. When I looked outside after hearing people screaming for help there was only a small amount of white smoke coming out of the apartment. I rapidly grabbed our two laptops and our wedding pictures (yes I know this sounds cheesy, but these are fine B&W prints on fiber based paper :-P). When I rushed outside less than a minute later the white smoke had already turned black with big flames. The firefighters arrived only a few minutes later. They rapidly extinguished the fire but we had to wait for one or two hours outside to make sure that everything was safe.

Other than that, we spent a nice evening at Caroline and Daniel's place with Lieven, Frank & Co.

Goeric

Remastered picture and movie galleries

noreply@blogger.com (MC & Go) — Sun, 09 Dec 2007 03:00:00 +0000

Ever since we started this blog we have been using a lightweight PHP package for our image galleries. A package Romain developed probably more than 5 years ago. We liked it because it had a simple and personal interface. These days image galleries such as PicasaWeb are much fancier: you have a nice slide-show mode, images are preloaded so that you don't have to wait and some even have cool transitions between images. We thought it was time to update to these modern technologies... However, we still wanted to keep everything on our own website, with a simple and personal interface as before. After some searching I found "SimpleViewer": a small Flash-based gallery viewer. The only thing I had to do was write a small script to convert the old galleries to the new format. We also wrote a script that builds a nice interface (at least that's what we think ;-) to our image albums and movies.

Here's how to use the new galleries (remember we have grand-parents and great-grandparents reading this blog :-P):

Album Gallery (also linked in the sidebar): all existing albums are listed. By clicking on either the album title or image you open the selected album. You can also directly access the post(s) linked to each album. As you might notice, some albums have no post linked to them so you might never have seen them!

New albums: The new albums use a Flash interface. There are three ways to navigate through the pictures: -1- by clicking on the thumbnails (and use the arrows underneath to go to the next thumbnail page); -2- by clicking on the arrow that appears when you hover over the image with your mouse; -3- by using the keyboard arrows (you first need to click somewhere on the page).

Movie Gallery (also linked in the sidebar): all movies are listed. As for the albums, the links to any related post are provided. Again a few of them where never linked to from the blog. To download a movie, right click on one of the versions (indicated by the version's size and format) and select "save as" (some movies are "streamable" but due to their large size, it is not really recommended).

Hope you'll enjoy the new layout and maybe browse through our older albums and movies!

Goeric & Marie

PS: For those not having Flash a message should come up when loading an album providing a link to download and install Macromedia Flash. If it doesn't work use the third link to view the gallery using the old interface.

From 3100m (-12ºC) to -86m (+24ºC)

noreply@blogger.com (MC & Go) — Sat, 08 Dec 2007 05:48:00 +0000

Hey!

2 weeks ago during Thanksgiving, we decided to try to climb Mount Whitney (4421m) via the Mountaineer's route. We left the Bay Area early on Thursday morning, and drove to Lone Pine through Yosemite (due to the lack of snow so far, Tioga Pass was still open). We started hiking around 3pm, and reached the first camp (3100m) at sunset. The climb was hard for me. I also had some altitude sickness: a bad headache that would not go away... After a cold night (-12ºC), we decided that it was more reasonable to turn around. While we were going down, we thought we could as well continue all the way to the lowest point in the US ;-) Next stop thus: Death Valley! We camped in the sand dunes after a short walk lit by the full moon. The next morning, the sun gave another perspective on the landscape. We visited the southern part of Death Valley that we had not seen before. We then crossed the state of California from East to West and stopped for the night at San Simeon (a long drive, but Goéric enjoyed our new car and its cruise control system ;-) On Sunday, we drove back on Highway 1. Even if our trip did not go as planned, we had fun!

Marie-Catherine

PS: The pictures feature our new car :-)

Climbing in Switzerland

noreply@blogger.com (MC & Go) — Sun, 11 Nov 2007 04:25:00 +0000

This is old news, but some of you might not have seen the pictures and the slideshow from my trip to the Swiss mountains in September... So here are the links along with a brief account of what we did!

[Hum not that "brief" in the end ... if you don't want to read, go to the end of the post for links to the pics and the slideshow]

The last time I climbed with Thomas was in November 2005! Somewhere in March this year, Thomas and I thought it was about time to do some mountaineering together. However we couldn't make definite plans until much later because I didn't know if and when I could take enough vacation to go back to Europe. In the end it turned out almost perfectly as I would fly back to Belgium with Marie, spend a few days there together and then go for a full week to Switzerland with Thomas and Romain (and Claire who would stay with us for the week-end)! Marie on the other hand had her trip planned long ago to do some experiments for her research on Language Acquisition, go to a friend's wedding and visit Evelyne in Crete (more about that in a future post).

On Thursday I picked up Thomas, Romain and Claire much later than planned (which was already kind of planned). We arrived in Verbier around 10pm, with just enough time to set up our "base camp" (5 computers for 4 people 8-) before going to bed... Friday morning we slept late and had a nice breakfast in the sun. In the afternoon we went for some rock climbing at "La Pierre Avoi": a beautiful piece of rock along the ridge that divides the Val the Bagnes from the Rhone Valley. Romain and Claire climbed "P'tit Train", a four pitch 5 something route, while Thomas and I climbed the similarly rated "L'arête" next to it. When I reached the summit, I heard Romain shouting somewhere below "Vous êtes en haut? Vous pouvez faire descendre une [biiiiip]". No further details will be disclosed. Thomas and I decided to go for another round and rushed down to the base of the north face. We climbed a nice 6 pitch/200m route (5c/6a max). Romain and Claire called it a day and hiked (!) back to the chalet. In the end, we arrived more or less at the same time and we all had a delicious raclette.

After carefully studying the weather forecast for the coming days, we decided not to wait any longer and hike in to the Arpitetaz hut (Vallée de Zinal) on Saturday. On Sunday, we would try to finish a climb we started three years ago: the Weisshorn (4505m) along the Young ridge (D-). On our first attempt it took us 12 hours to reach the summit of the "Grand Gendarme" (4300m) at which point we decided we would not make it to the top (not such a hard decision when you know that the topo gives 6 hours to reach that point). Instead, we "directly" went to the summit of the Bishorn following the North ridge. We reached the Bishorn by sunset... Beautiful views but not such a good place to be at that time of day, since we were still at 4153m. After a looooong descent, we finally made it to our car at 3am --24 hour after we left the hut. Anyway, let's come back to this year's climb! We started our climb at 3am on Sunday. The approach to the base of the Young ridge was pretty much uneventful. On the ridge (which is actually more a face configuration than a ridge), we didn't make the mistakes that slowed us down on our previous attempt. We also decided to skip the part to the summit of the Grand Gendarme itself and traverse immediately to the North ridge. This way we bypassed the few last rope lengths which have some nasty 6a moves (we climbed that part 3 years ago wearing our big mountaineering boots! I'm still impressed at how Thomas led those sections). Once we reached the North ridge, we switched to ice gear and started climbing the magnificent and airy snow ridge towards the summit. At 12.30pm we stood on top of the Weisshorn (much better than the 12 hours for the Grand Gendarme but still slightly behind schedule)! After a short break we started the descent along the East ridge, sometimes climbing in the clouds. We made a few navigation errors on our way down, but safely made it to the final portion of easy glacier crossing before the remaining day light disappeared completely. At 11pm we finally crashed down at the Weisshorn Hutte for a good night sleep. On Monday morning, we raced down to Randa (Valley of Zermatt) and were just in time to catch the train to Visp but decided to give hitchhiking a try. We quickly understood that we would simply have to wait for the next train. After changing trains in Visp, Romain picked us up in Martigny and we drove back to Verbier.

In the meantime Romain and Claire had been enjoying the nice weather at the chalet. On Sunday, Claire did a tandem paragliding flight with an instructor: from Savoleyres all the way down to Le Chable. That was the perfect opportunity for Romain (who has been flying since a year or so and just bought his own wing) to quickly get up to speed about Verbier's take-off and landing sites as he simply followed Claire and her instructor! On Sunday evening Romain dropped Claire at the railway station in Martigny as she was going back to Brussels.

On Tuesday the weather was really bad but, since we were still kind of tired, we didn't really mind... We essentially spent the day playing around with computers. In the evening, we started planning our next ascent. We settled down on the South Ridge at the Dent Blanche. While we had been thinking since quite some time about the longer and more difficult Arête de Ferpecle, the fresh snow and cold weather conditions weighed towards the normal route. Wednesday morning the clouds rapidly dissipated. We started our long hike to the Cabane de la Dent Blanche (3500m) under perfectly blue skies. Despite the late hour and the shining sun it was really cold. A good indicator of what we would have to expect the next morning. We spent a calm evening with a beautiful sunset alone at the hut. That meant that we would be alone to go to the summit the next day. A real luck on this usually crowded route. The next day, the climb went perfectly well except for cold hands and feet. A little too easy according to Thomas. I was happy to lead on the Grand Gendarme, the only part that is a little more technical. From the summit we had a nice view on a bunch of our previously conquered summits. It almost looks like we are more or less done in the region :-P (hum, not quite yet). We were again really slow on the way down to the hut, but we made that up by literally running down all the way from the hut to the car!

On Wednesday Romain was able to make another flight, from Les Ruinettes this time. He also found out that it was a little cold that day! On Friday it was already time to drive back to Belgium. After packing our stuff and closing the chalet, we gave Romain a ride up to Savoleyres so he could do a last flight. The conditions were not ideal as it was windy and it was not perfectly oriented... In the end Romain managed to take off and we picked him up in Le Chable after a clean flight and landing in Le Chable!

For those who made it all the way down here, congratulations ;-)

Here are the links to the pictures:
Part 1 -- La Pierre Avoi
Part 2 -- Weisshorn
Part 3 -- Dent Blanche
Part 4 -- Flying back to Belgium

And here's the slideshow:
Verbier, September 2007 (214MB: right click and save as)
As usual, the file is very large but it's high quality with music ;-)

Goeric

Frank's birthday

noreply@blogger.com (MC & Go) — Mon, 05 Nov 2007 05:17:00 +0000

On Thursday we celebrated the birthday of our friend Frank. He had invited us for a delicious dinner, at his new place (amidst redwood trees, quite an amazing house where he rents a room). As usual it was very nice to spend an evening with our "American" friends!

Goéric and Marie-Catherine

Blue Angels in San Francisco

noreply@blogger.com (MC & Go) — Thu, 25 Oct 2007 04:26:00 +0000

For those of you who have read Buck Danny, no need to explain who the Blue Angels are. For the others: it's the US Navy aerobatic team. They recently showed their skills at the annual air show held in San Francisco. Despite the long drive (for some reason the traffic was really bad that Sunday), it was really worth seeing them doing all kinds of incredible tricks... And with the Bay and the Golden Gate as a background it's even better!

Here are some pics... and for those who don't want to click through them, I made a quick little slideshow (11MB, right click and save as).

Goeric

Xterra Nevada

noreply@blogger.com (MC & Go) — Wed, 17 Oct 2007 06:01:00 +0000

Hi all,

Finally some news and pictures ;-)

2 weeks ago we went to Lake Tahoe for the Xterra Nevada triathlon (750m swimming, 32Km mountain biking, 5Km cross-country running). Goéric and Cédric had signed up for it, and as you can certainly guess Maureen and I were supporters :-)

Goéric and Cédric participated in a "unique" Xterra since, believe it or not, it had snowed the night before. Unfortunately for us, we have been caught in that snow storm on our way up to Lake Tahoe, and we thought we would never get there. We finally managed to reach the hotel. After a short night, we discovered the starting point... and how cold the day would be! Nevertheless Goéric and Cédric did very well: 3h07'51 and 3h10'09. Maureen and I were proud! Goéric's only regret is that he was passed by the first women in the last few hundred meters 8-) ... You can read more details on Maureen and Cédric's blog.

Marie

PS: Some of the nice pictures in our album are by Maureen :-)

Afternoon in the City

noreply@blogger.com (MC & Go) — Fri, 20 Jul 2007 06:09:00 +0000

Here are few pictures of an afternoon in the City. This was already one month ago when we visited the relatively new "de Young" Museum with Ani (a colleague of Marie) and Cedric & Maureen. After visiting the museum, we spent a few hours at Cedric & Maureen's apartment before going to Dan Jurafsky's house warming party.

Goeric

Happy Thirtieth ( :-S ) Birthday Marie !

noreply@blogger.com (MC & Go) — Thu, 12 Jul 2007 17:14:00 +0000

Updated - Pictures here.

Marie answering an early morning Happy Birthday call... As you might have noticed, she already opened my birthday present to her ;-) Thanks also to all of you who sent her an e-mail or a greeting card!

Goeric