Training Log Archive: barb

Do people ever get injured by these traps?

Oft-heard non-grammatical phrase of the day: "Can I help who's next?"

Lots of interaction with traffic in the 4-minute commute, and I wasn't always in the right.

C • Traps 2

Work commute

To the Fells for a CSU sprint. Then to MIT where I caught the very tail end of the science trivia contest, but at least I got to see Ira Flatow. He looks kind of nerdy. The one question (youth division tie-breaker) that I got to see was: name the 20 SI units derived from the 7 basic SI units, many of them named after scientists. (E.g., Volt, Newton, Henry...). The basic SI units are things like mole, meter, second.

Time is approximate.
Lots of trails which is pleasant.

Photos from walking around in Paris on 4/21:

Trampolines in the Tuileries gardens:





From the Eiffel tower staircase:



Looking down to where Grandma & Grandpa are waiting:



Looking across the river to Sacre Coeur:



Grandpa on the Batobus:



Notre Dame:



Feeding the birds:

C • Paris 2

Walked David to school, then biked to work. Lots of interaction with traffic today, including hand signals suggesting that a car give the bike lane more room, and screaming at a van that completely ignored me and pulled over right toward me. All part of a typical day on the streets here, not too stressful; I don't mind conversing with the cars.

Paris has a great bike rental system, though we didn't think we could use it because we were told that American credit cards don't have the chip that other credit cards have. LOTS of rental stations, very cheap. We saw lots of people on the bikes. And bike lanes (some shared with buses) have been established throughout Paris. They worked pretty well.

For the city streets part of our bike trip to Versailles, the leader had us travel in a pack, taking up a whole lane, so cars could not squeeze us against the curb or parked cars.

We couldn't figure out what this sign meant at first: no adults allowed to hold hands with kids? We attempted some civil disobedience:

C • so 4

Route.

We are leaving today. We didn't make it to either Disneyland or Parc Asterix.

Versailles bike tour

First stop after the train to Versailles was the market to pick up picnic supplies. Marcus, our tour leader, helped us park our bikes neatly:



The model village near the Petit Trianon, where Marie Antoinette pretended to be a simple country lady or shepherdess:



We bicycled around the Grand Canal. The approach to gardening is excessively geometric.



David and Isabel getting along in the Hall of Mirrors:

Morning run to the Seine and then across to Ile de la Cite where I stretched next to Notre Dame. I found the souvenir Isabel has been trying to find again ever since she first saw it on a walk with Grandma and Grandpa. (Red beret with "Paris" and the Eiffel Tower in sequins.) To the Tuileries, where I stopped to watch a duck family (1 relaxed mother, 2 quacking dads, and 10 little ducklings) stroll right past my feet. Back via les Halles. Route

Rest of day: with the family to the Picasso museum, then pizza. We ran into someone we knew on the street!! Helen, from Seattle, who we met at cooking school on Tuesday. Next, the Holocaust memorial (heavy security!). Across the river to buy Isabel's beret, then on to the Musee d'Orsay for impressionism etc. Ended up in the 9th arrondissement for outrageously yummy dinner with my 2nd cousin Sue and her hunky new French dairy farmer boyfriend, and her 17-year-old son (my 2nd cousin once removed) who is about to take his baccalaureat.



Dave had crepes flambee.

Wednesday we took a da Vinci Code tour of Paris, starting at the Ritz Hotel, where Hemingway and Coco Chanel and other famous people have stayed. We walked to the grounds of the Louvre, talked about the paintings in the book, and checked out the inverted pyramid. Here is our tour guide, Alex, with a picture of the Caravaggio painting from the novel:



The largest glass pyramid was being cleaned by a robot.

We walked across the river and past the Academie Francaise, where among other things they police the French language and try to get people to say things like "chien chaud" instead of "hot dog." Then into the Latin quarter and the church of St Sulpice, which has the Rose Line mentioned in the novel, running along the floor and up this obelisk. We checked out the heavy altar candlesticks that Silas supposedly used to smash the floor tile and get into the Brotherhood's hiding place.

After the tour we had lunch with a former student of my father's.

Then we went back to the Louvre but inside this time, and saw the Mona Lisa and many wondrous works of art. And I noticed this ancient Egyptian foretelling of the coming of Barack Obama:



But maybe I was getting a little slap-happy by that point. All that walking and looking at stuff...

The full set of our Paris photos is here.

Tuesday Dave, Isabel and I went to cooking school on the outskirts of Paris. We started by going to a market, where our teacher explained how to read the chalkboards describing the food for sale, the significance of the different categories of vegetables, how to tell if you are dealing with a farmer or a reseller, and so on.





We learned the meaning of the different labels on poultry. She also taught us about buying from a fishmonger, though that wasn't on our menu. There you could buy snails and really big shrimp. We bought bread.

Then we drove to our teacher's house where she taught us to cook chicken with a creamy tarragon sauce, and apple tart with a jasmine custard sauce. The first thing we did was make vegetable stock, using among other things an onion studded with a single clove; the combination of the onion and clove smells was pretty cool. Below, Isabel and Dave are measuring 50 grams of sugar for the custard.



Putting together the tart:



After the food was cooked, we sat down and ate it! And drank wine. Yum!!!!

Returned bikes to Fat Tire.
Spent the day walking around Paris with the family. Climbed the Eiffel Tower.

To the Gare de Lyon where we missed the train by about 3 minutes. Then back home with pains au chocolat for the family, and coffee. Then back to the Gare de Lyon for the next train.



Moret Veneux des Sables train station to the orienteering. Then back. Then back home in Paris.

Time is not accurate - we started late because of missing the train, and I forgot to note what time we started. It was somewhere between 1:45 and 2:00. I actually beat Dave by a couple of minutes, which surprised me, since I saw him ahead of me repeatedly during the course - and he's faster. But if the course is long enough, then eventually he'll make mistakes and I have a chance.

This was really fun; mostly very runnable forest, some climb and a lot of fairly flat terrain. Map was 1:10,000 with 2.5m contours. Name of map is L'Homme Fossil.

While Dave and I went on our orienteering adventure, the kids and my parents slept in and had a late breakfast. Then they went out and walked past the Pompidou Centre where a street artist nabbed David and drew a caricature of him, and then asked for 50 euros but the family bargained him down to 10. Then they went to the river and watched boats go by. They went to Ile de la Cite and looked at buildings. Then they went to see Notre Dame from the outside, and inside Saint Chapelle and the Conciergerie, the prison during the Reign of Terror. The grandparents ran out of money so they couldn't go get ice cream at Bertillon's. Grandpa suggested that one grandchild go to Denis Gillain (a former student of my father), and one grandchild go home with Grandma. After Grandpa avoided the question of what they'd do at the house of Denis Gillain, and how long it would take, the kids decided they'd both go home with Grandma.

From bike rental place to the apartment. What an amazing city! Bike travel is a little scary, but we were on either bike path or shared bus/bike/taxi lane most of the way. The sightseeing along the way was perhaps the biggest danger.

We met my parents (whose plane arrived 2.5 hours after ours) at the Place de la Republique this morning as planned. Earlier I had been telling the kids it was a popular place for protests.



By mid-morning, sure enough, it was jampacked with Chinese students protesting against boycotts against China for its actions against the Tibetan people. As a result of hanging around there for a while, we were given a Chinese flag, another flag, a T-shirt and a bunch of literature. Which I hid in my bag before leaving the Place. When the man gave David the T-shirt, David thanked him. "Don't thank me; thank China!" said the man. "Thank Beijing!"




This picture was taken early on; later there was a big crowd. And police.




The Chinese students had a bunch of photos from the when free-Tibet protestors tackled the Olympic torch last week.




Also at the Place were some guys with flags:





They were marking the anniversary of the Berber Spring in 1980, when the Algerian government violently repressed those demanding more recognition of this indigenous people. However, today their flags were drowned in the sea of Chinese students. At first they were at a different end of the park, but soon all of the park as well as the sidewalks around the Place were teeming with the anti-anti-anti-Tibet student demonstrators. Early on they had some discussions with some of the students at their end of the park who had boxes of T-shirts for distribution. We thought maybe they were trying to negotiate staking out space for themselves.




(The Berber guys are the three on the right.)

How's your French history? Can you interpret the friezes around the base of the Place de la Republique statue?:










In Temple Park near our apartment there is a simple holocaust memorial, a sign listing all those children under the age of 7 from this neighborhood (arrondissement) who were sent to Auschwitz and perished before ever even having had a chance to attend school.




The park is in a place that used to house a Knights Templar fortress, complete with moat. People would stay there to be out of reach of the King. Now it is near a small Chinatown, and women do Tai Chi in the morning. We saw this boy and his dad playing ping pong.





Leaves are out and flowers are blooming.




Because we were fried but couldn't get into the apartment until the afternoon, we found a movie theater with plush seats, and sat and watched "Penelope" in English, and I confess that I liked it and cried a bunch. This international travel, with overnight flights and a full day of stumbling around afterward with maps in unfamiliar terrain, has got to be good rogaine (sleep deprivation) practice.

C • sweet 1

C • How's my French? 1

work, school, work, home.

Thought we were late for the orthodontist. We weren't.

Preview of the map Dave & I will run on Sunday:

From David's architecture review last night:

Caz (my stepson):

Work commute.

Followed Isabel around CSU's "beginner" sprint at Pine Hill. She navigated competently, and was relaxed about it. David was not into orienteering today.

Isabel conducted an experiment this evening for homework.

C • Temp 6

2:05 quarter mile.

Event: 30th Annual Billygoat Run
 

Billygoat

The Goat - Splits

1:53 quarter mile

Cambridge - Arlington - Cambridge - Boston - Cambridge - Boston - Cambridge. Saw the Big Apple Circus. Wow.

Oh!
We've been acquired.

C • Acquisition 5

Article of the day: shrimp goby and mutualism in general.

Photo of Amisi and Isabel backstage in the opera:

To work, to Boston, to home.

At Wed afternoon club, we learned how to grow sprouts (to eat as sprouts) from Daniel. You can sprout all sorts of things. Alfalfa, beans, French lentils, mustard, broccoli, radishes, ...

Ran around the block twice, once fast. I guess it must be less than 1/4 mile, because it took me about 1:25 the 2nd time. ah, gmap-pedometer says around 0.21 miles.

Micro-training. It's better than no training.

To the Blue Hills and back, and then to the store for groceries. Through Roxbury, Mattapan, Milton. Signature sound: crushed beer can blowing along the street. Saw someone on a Bike Friday. Stopped by the Dunkin Donuts on 138 on the way to Houghton's Pond.

Orienteering training set up by Jeff Saeger in the Blue Hills. Dave and I alternated memorizing legs and navigating them. Very fun. Faster than I'd have gone on my own, especially near the beginning. Weather was raw, which was fine for orienteering and biking.

Highly recommended book: "Dr Tatiana's Sex Advice to All Creation"

Tonight I'm looking forward to a book discussion club ("Suite Francaise").

I am starting to work on making reservations for a family canoe trip in Algonquin Park, Ontario, for this summer. I used to go on trips like this in the Boundary Waters & Quetico in northern Minnesota & Canada every summer as a kid, and I'm psyched to finally be able to introduce my kids to it. Afterward, we're going to drive for 3 days east to go to the orienteering in the Bay of Fundy.

C • BWCA 15

David's homework: Design for a Holocaust Memorial





Here, at the front of the monument, is the small gate labeled "Arbiet Macht Frei" (Work Will Make You Free). This slogan was used on the gate to one of the German labor camps in the Holocaust.



Here is the whole monument from the front. You can see the incinerator chimneys in the middle, the maze-like passageways on the front and sides, the strange blocks in the back, and just a bit of the dome of ashes. Reaching to each corner are four segments of railroad track symbolizing the trains that were used to ship Jews, gypsies, homosexuals and others to the concentration camps.



Here is a birds-eye view of the monument. The maze represents the trickiness of being in hiding or running and trying not to end up in the hands of the Nazis. A few dead ends are marked with pictures symbolizing different events that happened in the Holocaust.



Here are two examples of the pictures at different dead ends of the maze. Above, a synagogue is burning in the fires of Kristallnacht.



In this picture, a woman and two children are cowering in front of a Nazi soldier.



Here are the incinerator towers. The tallest one reaches to a monstrous hight of 86 feet. They are built in the middle of the monument to symbolize that they were the one dead end most concentration camp prisoners ran into.



Finally, here is the "pile of ashes" at the rear of the monument. It is supposed to represent the ashes of all the dead who were burned instead of buried.

C • I am impressed 4

PR for quarter mile. Racing Elizabeth, who is turning 10 today.

C • Excellent, perfect rogaine ... 3

To Anna's Taqueria, then to King Open school to drop off burritos for Isabel and Zedal before their show, then on to the Burren in Davis Square to hear the Bag Boys with Dave & Bill, then to Harvard Square to catch David's dance performance. Giovanni's dad Renato is in town and we got to see him at the show - the last time we saw him was at that excellent outdoor dinner in Italy, at Katia's parents' house. Hopefully we will get to hang out with him some during the 2 months that he is visiting Boston.

Event: Flying Pig XII
 

David drew this design for a house on stilts, with a pool, in Google SketchUp:

school for parent teacher meeting, work, home.

Yesterday evening we went to a lecture at MIT by David Macaulay, author of The Way Things Work. It was titled "The Way David Macaulay Works", and aptly so, because the lecture was a breathtaking fly-through of how he develops ideas for his books. It was entertaining - he was really funny. We were treated to sketches for many of the drawings of his books, as well as ideas that he started to work on but did not finish. He showed us the sketches for Why the Chicken Crossed the Road while telling a brief version of the story. Same with Unbuilding, about deconstructing the Empire State building to send it to the middle east for a rich sheik. Weirdly, in that 1987 book he'd mentioned the twin towers of the World Trade Center - something about the oil baron being willing to pull them down too. After 9/11, he started working on the book Mosque, and showed us how he carefully researched it and built models (we got to see photos of these) and checked in with experts. He loves Rome for many reasons including the juxtaposition of old and new. He showed us several of his failed attempts to write a book about Rome and then a draft of the story he did end up publishing, Rome Antics. In that book, he has some nice visual devices to imply movement, and David was pretty interested in these. For Ship, he told us about learning to snorkel and dive, and how he drew underwater archaeologists as they worked, using a #2 pencil and mylar paper, floating above them with his snorkel. We got to see several other books as he worked on them, including Black and White. He talked a lot about his current project, on the human body, and mentioned his next two projects which I'm spacing on at the moment, but which sounded interesting. Oh, one will be about Earth.

Felt fat & slow & sore. Ran over to the quarter-mile MIT track and went around it once as fast as I could, at the blazing speed of 1:58.

Family & friends surprised me with a birthday party this morning at 7 am:



Ann Marie talking about the shingles she's just recovered from...


Still F45...

C • Happy Birthday to you!! 10