Tiredness

French-speaking people can just listen the video... For the others, an extract:

Bruno: "(...) and what is in the lake"
Romaric: "A huge trout"
Bruno: "And what does it eat?"
Romaric: "It eats cows..."

I have to concede this occured after a rather long and sunny day, and that I wasn't in possession of my full brain capabilities...

Someone is lucky to have such a great cook as a sister! :D

Look at the last success of my sister: pistachios macarons, and many of them... I suspect it is a technique of my sister to make me visiting her (plus my brother in law, and my terrible nephews) in cold and rainy Alsace! :D

Skiing Aneto - Climbing in Garraf

Well, I haven't published anything about climbing or skiing stuff for ages, don't know why... Maybe this was linked to the fact I didn't take picture for a while? Which I can't explain neither...

Anyway, I stop philosophizing around... I made an effort for this long weekend. We went with Joan skiing the Mont Blanc of the Pyrenees, i.e. the highest summit of the range, in the name of Mr Aneto. Usually, this is the last ski tour of the season, but the average snow conditions made it an early season objective. It was pretty good, minus the CO poisoning at the hut due to the fact that an old gas heater has, somehow, been running all night... Fortunately, the dose was not too high, and just gave us a bad night, a massive headache, and the bad sensation to have a solid saliva...

Thereafter, we planned to climb around, but the weather was cold and wet there, and we came back to sunny Barcelona, for some climbing at Garraf, Jonatan joining us for the day. This is only one of the many climbing crags around Barcelona, but I like this place in particular: it offers excellent climbing, and its very scenic with its belaying ledge 50m above the sea. Just a shame that some people treat it as a rubbish bin (see last picture), with I have seen in a few other pretty places around... No further comment about this...

Going fixie

Okay, this post is mainly about making Nicolas jealous, since I know he has been looking after buying a fixed-gear bike for a while...

In other words, I just got myself a "fixie" bike. I already ear some people saying that I am just being a fashion victim... Well, I hope I won't become like that. I am not a purist neither, and I added a front brake, which is not very pure for a fixie, to be minimalist...

Some people (probably the same ones as previously! ;o)) will say that having a front brake is being a big girl, a wimp, or anything like that... But, well, it already saved my life a couple of times in 4 days... ;o)

Anyway, I don't really care. It is fun to ride, and it makes a nice city bike for Barcelona, a not too hilly city.

Semaine en famille a BCN!

Un post en francais pour une fois! (Desole pour l'orthographe, le francais n'a jamais ete mon fort! :D)

Voila, Annette, Fred et Alex etaient a Barcelonne la semaine passee. Du coup, mon petit apartement s'est tranforme en auberge espagnole le temps d'une semaine, bien sympa! Entre beaucoup de visites (et quelques kilometres a pied! ;o) ), nous avons eus le temps de caser quelques bons restaurants:
- Almadea: bon restaurant vegetarien (et sans alcool!), cuisine simple, bonne et copieuse pour un petit prix!
- restaurant du marche de Santa Catarina: un peu plus cher, mais vraiment excellent! Cuisine assez elaboree a partir de produit du marche, et le cadre tres sympa ne retire rien!
- Xadors: bar a tapas typique catalan une zone tres touristique ou les bars a tapas espagnols ou basque sont plus courant ... j'y retourne toujours avec plaisir!
- El Poseidon: cuisine catalane a un tres bon rapport qualite prix, a 5 metres de chez moi... Je risque d'y retourner! ;o)

Advocating the bike-sharing programs!

A study has been done in Barcelona about the health benefits of cycling in the cities, saving 12 lives or so per year. The study was made possible (in terms of statistics) by large-scales bike-sharing programs such as the one in Barcelona. The scientific version of the study is here.

On a personal note, the cool design does not detract anything!

A bit of New Zealand...

I was on vacations for a week, in "the world famous in Spain" Pyrenees. Amongst other things, we climbed the "antiques" ridge of Mount Vallier (the prominent ridge of the first picture), in Ariege, the wildest range in the Pyrenees. The climb was done with the extended "Bieth's team"*, and somehow reminded me of mountaineering in New Zealand:
- the starts low in the valley
- very green around
- not so good rock... (Travis' gonna like this!)
- we stayed in a rough shepherd hut...
- it rained at the end...
- good feeling of wilderness (for Europe...)
- fantastic scenery, above a "sea of clouds"
- sharing the surroundings with sheeps, cows and goats

A much fun&funny trip in any cases!

* Bieth is the family name of Bruno, our god to all of us boulets. Bruno's dad (Eric) managed to drop his backpack during the climb, backpack which ended 100m down with a few broken things... a nice B3/B4! This may suggest being a boulet is in the genes, but this will need some further statistics to be validated... Dear boulet colleagues, any other examples related to these interesting genetics?

PS: the nice pics are from Eric Bieth, Bruno's dad.

Spring is the seaons of...

flowers!...

Granada

Hard to beat as a pretty city!

Mulhacen...

Mulhacen is the highest peak in the iberic penisula... Not the most impressive mountain in the world, but still a very enjoyable over-night trek!

Pedraforca's hike with workmates!

Here are a few pics from the Pedraforca hike we did with some people from my lab, away from the current mess in Spain. Pedraforca is an iconic mountain the Pyrenees of Catalonia, even the most beautiful mountain in the world according to some Catalans! ;o) Somehow (?!), I forgot to take a picture of the general mountain, but you can find one here.

In any cases, this is a beautiful mountain, and we did a great and varied circuit... with some varied weather, including a tiny bit of hail! Many thanks to Xevi for the organization!!!