Paris: Go Scarf or Go Home

Tour Time!

2011-07-01T23:13:59Z

Can you feel the excitement in the air? That’s because tomorrow starts the 98th Tour de France, and it’s shaping up to be a great one!

If this is your first time paying attention to Le Tour, I’d recommend reading my ramblings from last year on the subject. Also, this, this, this, this, and this. Yeah, that’s an Oxford comma – what?

Also, have you signed up for Fantasy yet? Karen named the group “Jeremy’s Favorite Subject”.

This year’s race is shaping up to climber’s battle, a rematch between Alberto Contador and Andy Schleck. Contador, the three time winner, is coming off a win in Italy’s Grand Tour, the Giro d’Italia. No one has pulled off the Giro/Tour double since Marco Pantani in 1998, and he was fueled by EPO and cocaine by the kilo.

Speaking of drugs, Contador brings with him the spectre of drugs to this year’s race, as he awaits a ruling from one of the governing bodies over his doping case. When put your body under the stress of endurance exercise, your red blood cell count drops and you recover from work slowly (I don’t know, I’m not that kind of doctor). Last year, in the spring, Contador most likely took some clenbuterol to help cut some off-season weight. Too soon after taking the banned substance, he probably took some of his own blood and stored it in the frigo. Later, during last year’s Tour, he re-injected his stored blood, upping his red blood cell count and letting him recover faster. He then got popped for a) trace amounts of clenbuterol in his blood, and b) plasticizer from his blood bag.

Contador then threw the entire Spanish cattle industry under the bus by saying he ate tainted Spanish beef, leading everyone to ask the same question. There have now been a series of trials and appeals to determine if he doped (which he denies), and he should receive a final ruling in August. So, there’s a chance that all of his race wins might be nullified in August… which isn’t all bad, because all of France hates him for (further) sullying the image of cycling. If you’re looking for a heel, he’s your man.

Unfortunately, that heel is probably going to win. He’s joined Team Saxo Bank, with master tactician Bjarne Riis. It’s a pretty unstoppable combination.

About the only thing standing in his way in Andy Schleck, younger of the Luxembourgian Schleck brothers. Andy and Franck look out for each other, almost to their detriment. The big question is whether Andy is willing to spread his wings with out his Franck safety-blanket beside him.

There’s a lot of familiar faces back again this year. You should be cheering for Jens Voigt, this is probably his last Tour. Christian Vande Velde, a Chicago local, has managed to stay healthy so far this year. Philippe Gilbert has won the hearts and minds of all of Belgium, and is hoping to notch his first Tour stage win. Vinokourov is leading Astana this year, I’m hoping he wears his Vinokourov jersey:

There are three (3!) American teams to pay attention to, Garmin-Cervelo, HTC-Highroad, and BMC. Tyler Farrar is still trying to notch a sprint win at the Tour, he’s starting to look like quite the bridesmaid for HTC’s Mark Cavendish. HTC is also bringing newcomer Tejay Van Garderen, who is being heralded as the salvation of American cycling. Look for discord in the French AG2R squad, as John Gadret and Nicolas Roche battle for team leadership. I’m not really sure what to think of the four-headed-hydra of Radioshack this year, but I can tell you that Kloedi is one to cheer for.

After his win of the French national champion’s jersey, lets hope we see Sylvain Chavanel in yellow again this year, and I hope Thor keeps the wig. I’m sure I’m not the only one disappointed that Johan Van Summeren didn’t make the Garmin squad:

I hope you’ll watch – NBC has bought out Versus, which should hopefully improve coverage. Pete pointed me to the coverage listing here. Hopefully this means Craig Hummer was finally fired… I recommend the Team Time Trial on Sunday, always fun to watch!

Hot Feets and Yummy Eats

2011-07-01T21:20:54Z

A quick catch-up post, since I’ve been super-delinquent in writing lately. First up, I should probably give a better recap of the 100 Miles of Nowhere. I also hopped a train to London a few weekends ago, which mostly consisted of eating. Finally, I zipped off to Atlanta for an APS conference, but that’s not so interesting.

I woke up to a beautiful, warm Sunday morning, and managed to even get out of the house a little after nine. I warmed up by riding to the Hippodrome. The first 21% clicked by quicker than I had planned in an hour – there was a good pack of over a hundred riders in a quick moving peloton circling the track. The wind picked up in the second hour, which seemed to trash any cooperation in the group. The second hour ticked along pleasantly enough, and I was already up to 40%. I have to admit, things were clicking along faster than I’d originally planned which was both good and bad. Good in that I was progressing faster than I expected, and bad in that I probably wasn’t pacing myself like I should.

Over the next twenty percent my legs really started fading. By 70%, I was worried I wouldn’t make it. I wouldn’t say I bonked, but it certainly felt like I would before I reached the end. I ate another Clif Bar (I should have gotten sponsorship, I polished off eight Clif Bars before the day was over.) Finally, around 80%, I felt like I could make it! I’d made it over the Wall, there was only a fifth left! I could do it!

Minutes later, around 84%, they closed the course. Paris Cycliste Olympique, a local cycling club, was holding a race that they’d permitted for. In fact, they’d had permit problems and were forced to move the race to my race day! Merde!

So, I suddenly had to find somewhere else to do the last sixteen percent of nowhere. After staring at a map for a bit, I made my way to riding along the Seine. After almost killing a kindergarten’s worth of children in prams, I finally just noodled about Paris until I found myself at 100 miles and home. Fin! I think I’m game for tackling another one now, maybe even one a little more… formal.

Did you know London has really good food? Who knew? I think I ate my bike’s weight in food over four days in London. French cuisine is wonderful, and the preparation is often exemplary, but it excels in its sublety. Consequently, you can’t find a whole lot of spicy food in Paris. I really never thought I’d say this, but food in London seems to be thriving! Here’s a quick rundown of some of my eats recommendations in London:

Mushu – Yummy Dumplings! I’m sold!

Barbacoa – Jamie Oliver’s new upscale BBQ restaurant. I think every agrees at this point that Jamie Olivier is slightly annoying, but he produces some mighty-fine non-Southern BBQ. I think BBQ might be the reason the South hasn’t risen again…

Roka – Fancy Japanese! Get the duck, you won’t regret it!

Marie’s Cafe – Super cheap Thai and breakfast food, together, at last! Sadly, the don’t serve breakfast for
dinner. That would truly be heaven…

Ok, enough rambling, it’s time to start paying attention to the Tour!

Finished!

2011-05-29T14:42:17Z

A zippy 5 hours, 46 minutes moving, and a glacial 7 hours, 7 minutes elapsed time! There was an unexpected course closure at the 135 km mark, meaning I suddenly had to find somewhere to go nowhere. More later, I’m gonna go lie down for awhile…

100 Miles of Nowhere!

2011-05-28T20:11:40Z

Tomorrow morning is my attempt at The 4th annual Fat Cyclist 100 Miles of Nowhere, or as the French call it, “Quoi?” Since this is my first century, my goal is 6.5 hours, we’ll see how I do. Some of you just said, “No Josh, this is the twenty-first century, not the first century.” Allow me to explain: A century is riding 100 miles on a bike, the cycling equivalent of running a marathon. When I say the word “century”, you can just replace it with “marathon on a bicycle.” Now that we’ve taken care of that, have I mentioned The Harbour?

For this race I’m taking advantage of the “Paris Respire” program, which closes a fair amount of the streets of Paris on Sundays for recreation, including a popular 2.25km (1.4 mile) loop around the Longchamps Horse racetrack on the edge of the Bois de Boulogne. I’ve been going the last few weekends to train on the course, and it’s been quite entertaining.

For one, it attracted a wide range of cyclists, people on bikes, and other recreationalists. Time-trialists, rollerbladers, longboarders, Dutch garden bikes, power meters, Velibs, aero helmets, race tandems, and of course, even smokers. Last weekend I saw an elderly woman doing laps on her Rascal. There’s also the occasional streetwalker who wanders in from the depths of the Bois. (I’m sorry to make assumptions about someone, but if you’re 6’4″ and wearing a cowboy hat and a catholic school girl skirt on a Sunday afternoon in the BdB, you’re probably not out for just the sunshine.)

On the uni-watch side of things, I’ve noticed that the French penchant for layering carries over to excercise clothes. Even in 80F weather, many people are out in long pants or long cycling bibs. In the last thirty years the French professional cyclists have shied away from doping (that’s why they don’t win much), but French amateur cyclists flock to doping jerseys. A huge number of Festina jersey, lots of Phonak jerseys, and I’ve lost count of the number of Astana… even a Phonak Swiss Road Champion jersey (Greg Rast fan? Martin Elminger?) In terms of embarrassment, this equivalently sits somewhere between wearing a Pete Rose or Jose Canseco jersey, and a Maurice Clarett Broncos jersey. (Do people wear Canseco gear again? Is it just ironic now?)

My race number is attached to my bike, everything is all bic-ed, and now it’s time for me to get some sleep! I’ll post tomorrow with how it goes, hopefully I’ll come in first place!

Gilbert for President ’11!

2011-04-27T21:26:18Z

Oh, snap! It’s that time again, when I drive off my readership writing about, wait for it, cycling! Spring classics season is winding up for the first Grand Tour of the year, the weather here has finally taken a turn for the better, and the souplesse is slowly returning to the legs. The big news is that I’ve finally signed up to do a small race here at the end of May, the 100 Miles of Nowhere! I’ll be riding a little more than 71 laps around the Hippodrome de Longchamps the last weekend in May. The city of Paris, in a program named “Paris Respire,” closes a good stretch of the streets to cars on Sundays, leaving them open for walkers, bikers, and rollerbladers (yes, that’s still a thing here). It turns out there is a 1.4 mile loop around the Hippodrome de Longchamps (just past Roland Garros and through the Bois de Boulogne) that is popular with cyclists (why did no one mention this to me earlier?) The horses and whores should keep things interesting, even if the terrain doesn’t change! Ostensibly, the race is to raise money for LiveStrong, but it looks like donating to LiveStrong is the philanthropic equivalent of lighting cubans with hundred dollar bills. Instead, if you’re feeling charitable, I would suggest a great organization like The Harbour.

In other news, who watched Liege-Bastogne-Liege yesterday? (No one raises hand.) Belgian Philippe Gilbert’s dominance over all three of the Ardennes classics (plus De Brabantse Pijl) will probably be the greatest performance in sport in 2011. If you haven’t heard, Belgium has been without a national government for just short of a year, with no reconciliation in sight. I’ve spent some time trying to understand the current Belgian political climate, and gotten nowhere with it. After reading quite a bit, I can tell you, with certainty, that the Lion Flag of Flanders is way cooler than the Bold Rooster Flag of Wallonia. That’s all I’ve got.

But, if anyone can reunite the Flemish and French speaking parts of Belgium, my money is on Gilbert. As the announcers on France3 suggested during yesterday’s L-B-L coverage, Gilbert for Belgian president!

The Cannibal

2011-03-15T23:31:14Z

I always assumed that after a year of living and cycling in Europe, I’d look something akin to a long-lost Schleck brother:

Bescarfed, slim cut suit, euro-diculous haircut…

Nope. After a ride, I look like this:

Cycling has transformed me into a 1973 Eddy Merckx.

I really have to stop going to the north Africans for 10€ haircuts…

On Casual Racism

2011-02-20T18:20:29Z

Just a quickie. This week at lunch I learned that Chinese people with green cards never die.

Instead, when they shuffle off this mortal coil their green card is passed down to a similar looking relative or friend, l’dor v’dor. Since the police “can’t tell them apart,” this process gets almost completely looked over. Various members of the lunch group confirmed that this occurs in Bulgaria, France, and Italy, with a strong agreement that the Chinese all look the same. The two Chinese visitors, being both alive and without green cards, couldn’t really comment.

An unrelated note:

On our weekday ride when my legs were exhibiting more vigor than usual, Thierry asked me, “Did you get a hold of some product when you were in Spain?”

“No,” I responded, “I just ate a lot of beef!” Ba-zing!

Free Fuyu Li.

On Barcelona

2011-02-13T16:51:43Z

So I finally got around to doing some non-work, non-skating, non-cycling related traveling! Two weeks ago, I was talked into going to Barcelona with my new friend Natalie. Normally, I would recommend against traveling to Spanish-speaking countries with people you don’t really know, since I have a semi-rational fear of waking up in an ice-filled bathtub, missing a kidney with a cellphone duct-taped to my hand. Now that I’m back, kidneys intact, I thought I’d do a quick summary of the trip!

First, a summary of how I know Natalie:

Natalie is the friend of the daughter of the friend of my Aunt Marla’s childhood friend. I think that means Natalie has a personal connection to Kevin Bacon that she failed to mention. (I’d actually assume my Bacon number is only three, through Marla, which crushes my best known Erdős number of five.) The slightly longer explanation is as follows. My aunt, Marla, has a good friend Susan, who moved to Paris last September. (For those keeping score at home, Susan also has a cousin who lives in Paris, Dana, who is best friends with a woman named Jill Klein that I’ve never met, who was college roommates with Aunt Gayle, and has a son (Jake?) who studied abroad in Italy with Cousin Lisa, who is in a sorority with Susan’s niece.) Susan has friends from Seattle who have a daughter, Perrin, who is studying for the year in London and periodically comes to visit Paris. Perrin has a friend from high school, Natalie, that’s traveling in Europe for the month. Susan and I have become fast friends, and through her I’ve met Perrin once before. Whew.

Two weekends ago, Perrin and Natalie came to Paris to eat sorbet on Ile St. Louis. In February. Yeah, I don’t know. Natalie has a rather loose itinerary in Europe, and was trying to decide where to go after Paris. Over extended hors d’ouevres at Susan’s, we were throwing out suggestions:

Me: “I’ve heard Barcelona is cool.”

Susan: “Yeah! Barcelona is cool!”

Natalie: “Anyone want to come to Barcelona next weekend?!”

Me, jokingly: “Suuuure.”

Natalie: “Really?! Want to go to Barcelona?!”

Me: “Suuuure.”

Me: “Wait, what?”

After a moment’s reflection, I realized I didn’t really have a strong reason *not* to go, other than a mild fear that this pre-med student I’d just met may try to sell my kidney on the black market. Barcelona is certainly warmer than Paris right now, and Natalie speaks fluent Spanish. Susan and Perrin were both willing to vouch for Natalie’s noninterest in harvesting my internal organs, so I bought a cheap ticket on EasyJet for the next weekend and traded phone numbers and last names with Natalie so we could meet in Barcelona the next Friday.

I think we managed to hit most of the highlights of Barcelona, while keeping with what seems to be a rather relaxed local flavor. We checked out some of the bizarre Gaudi architecture, including La Sagrada Familia and La Pedrera. I don’t like it, but I like how different it is. We went to the Picasso Museum, and the Museum of Contemporary Art, both good, but mostly wandered around the Old City and the Eixample.

Barcelona has a lot of public space to walk around in, and walking provided a nice way to work through the huge quantities of food we ate. I really can’t say no to bocadillo sandwiches or tapas. Going to Spain with a vegetarian also means never having to share the good stuff:

Although one of the more impulsive decisions I’ve made in quite a while, the trip ended up being a really fun time! It certainly showed the ease of taking a quick weekend trip in Europe, which is probably something I should be doing more often while the weather is still no fun in France. The full set of photos can be seen here. Even came home with both my kidneys!

Languages

2011-01-26T22:05:50Z

We’ve had a variety of visitors recently arrive to our lab group for the spring. There were ten of us at lunch yesterday, with conversations in five concurrent languages. In summary, it was a little crazed. I drew up an Euler diagram to keep track of what languages people (denoted by their initials) were speaking:

I think this helps to explain a lot of the difficulties of the European Union.

Company Man

2010-11-01T17:55:16Z

I just got back from two weeks of business travel – a week outside of Düsseldorf and a week outside Aix-en-Provence. I got a small taste of what working in the private sector is like, as well as a contrasting study of small enterprise R&D in Germany vs France.

I first spent a week in Kaarst, which is 10km outside of Düsseldorf, at Sirah Laser- und Plasmatechnik GmbH, the best little laser-company in North Rhine-Westphalia. It’s a scrappy little company of roughly twenty people, and they offer a free week-long laser training course for their Matisse series Millenia pumped CW Ti:sapphire lasers. Our lab bought a Matisse last January, and as the person who has been primarily responsible for operating it over the last nine months, I’ve mostly wanted to throw it off the lab roof. In early October they emailed me that there was an open space in the training course, and after signing up, they opened up a second spot so our new permanent researcher, Patrick, could come as well. Yay for company on a five day business trip! That also meant Patrick had to put up with me humming Kraftwerk’s Trans-Europe Express the whole way to Düsseldorf City, even though we neither rendezvoused on Champs-Elysees, nor met Iggy Pop and David Bowie.

Patrick and I were a little concerned that a five day laser training course was about three days too long, (“Day 1: What is a laser?, Day 2: Laser Safety”, etc.), but it ended up being a half hour of theory in the morning, followed by working on their demo unit for the rest of the day, with a precisely one-hour lunch break. One of the co-owners of the company picked us up from the hotel each morning a little before nine, and each night someone from the company took us out for dinner. One night each in Kaarst, Düsseldorf, Köln, and Zons, which made for a nice little tour of the area. Düsseldorf has a giant concrete radio tower with an observation deck where you can see the whole area. The NRW region is the driving force of the German economy, and it shows. Coal burning power plants speckle the horizon everywhere you look. The night we went to Zons (a somewhat preserved medieval town), the head of the company took us to a giant brown coal mine in the area. Rather than dig what we can now refer to as “Chilean-style mines”, the mines in the area are open-cast style mining. This means there’s just a giant pit in the ground. When I say giant, I mean 48 square kilometers giant. That’s about the area of Evanston, Wilmette, and Skokie, IL, combined. The whole thing is something like 200 meters deep (the Washington Monument is 170m for comparison).

Although work has slowed down at the mine due to the high costs and low energy density of brown coal, people in the area seem really proud of the mine. There’s an observation platform where you can park your car and stare into the abyss. I would think in the States something of this scale would have protesters chained to the digging machines or bombing the conveyor belts.

Köln was a pleasant surprise, we managed to stop by after work one night and tour the cathedral. The cathedral is one of Europe’s largest, depending on your definition of large (highest, widest, longest, best height to width ratio, etc.) The cathedral is directly next to the train station, so Patrick and I were able to quickly see the church exterior on our stopover on the way to Kaarst. We went back one night to see the interior, featuring a Gerhard Richter stained glass window that angered Cardinal Meisner so much he said is was “better suited for a mosque.”

To get from place to place we were shuttled around in a Mercedes-Benz Viano, which made for my first introduction to the German Autobahn. I found out that my internal Awesome-o-meter tips from “Totally Awesome” to “Pants-Shitting Terror” somewhere between 185 and 190 kph when riding in the back seat of what is essentially a commercial panel van with a wheel alignment that pulls noticeably to the right. I think we topped out around 195kph, or maybe I just stopped glancing at the speedometer.

In reward for putting my life in the hands of Sirah employees I was consistently rewarded with my fill of hearty German dinners – lots of schnitzel and wurst, and Düsseldorf steak, roast beef with a mustard onion crust that probably took a decade off my life. Yeah, I ate that twice.

Laser training itself was really helpful, I highly recommend it if you’re one of the hundred or so people in the world using Sirah’s Matisse. All killer, no filler. When Patrick got back to the lab this week he realigned the cavity and increased the output power by almost 40%. Each day started at 9, with “Guten Morgen!”s all around and went until 18. I was surprised to see all the workers punching in and out each day with an electronic time-card system at a twenty-person laser company, but it is Germany. The most entertaining quirk of the week was experiencing the German love of academic titles. Coming from France, where I am uniformly addressed as Monsieur, was almost jarring. Herr Doctor this and Herr Doctor that. Supposedly if you become a professor after getting two doctorates you can become Frau Professor Doctor Doctor Whatever, and everyone is totally cool with it. You just start piling up your CV in front of your last name. Last night I bought my holiday tickets back to the US on Lufthansa. Check out all the titles they toss around for the confirmation email footer, just in case you were worried that the Chairman of the Supervisory Board wasn’t qualified enough:

Corporate Headquarters:
Deutsche Lufthansa
Aktiengesellschaft, Köln

Registration:
Amtsgericht Köln
HR B 2168

Chairman of the Supervisory Board:
Dipl.-Ing. Dr.-Ing. E.h.
Jürgen Weber

Executive Board:
Wolfgang Mayrhuber (Vorsitzender/Chairman),
Dr. Christoph Franz
(Stellvertretender Vorsitzender / Deputy Chairman),
Stephan Gemkow, Stefan H. Lauer

People even put their academic titles on their mailboxes. This of course can cause slight problems, as the guy running our training told us. His neighbor knocked on his door one day, pleading for care for her sick mother. “I’m not really that kind of doctor” in no way dissuaded the woman.

“Anything you can do to help, Doctor,” she pleaded.

After a few frustrating minutes, he finally inquired, “Is she lasing?” I think that finally cleared things up.

Also, two side notes on German bathrooms. For starters, this was in the men’s room at Sirah:

Second, the toilets at the hotel were backwards:

I’ll let you think through the implications of that on your own.

Aix-en-Provence was an equally nice, but markedly different experience. Unlike Germany, Aix-en-Provence is the Dorian Gray of weather systems, with each day sunnier and more temperate while there’s probably some long-lost Cezanne painting growing colder. One of the Ph.D. students from my lab, Leïla, moved her research to a company outside of Aix-en-Provence last May, and I spent the week helping her with her research. (This Ph.D. students researching at companies idea seems more common in Europe. The company financially supports the student during their Ph.D., and usually hires them after they finish their degree.) Each morning we’d take a coach bus out to work and arrive a bit before 9am, followed immediately by a coffee and cigarette break.

The only bad part of the day was the bus ride, simply because the drivers choose the music to play on the bus stereo. The morning bus driver played Katy Perry’s Teenage Dream every morning. The evenings’ selection of Celine Dion hits was welcome in comparison. Katy Perry’s music is certainly catchy, I’ll give that to her - that tripe sticks in my head all day long. I wanted to take a ball-peen hammer to my temple. I think I exhibited the full Kübler-Ross over the course of the week.

Tuesday’s ride was “No, this can’t be happening, not to me.” This was swiftly followed by anger about this terrible song being in my head all day. I’d say I roller-coastered between bargaining and depression on Wednesday and Thursday. By Friday I was singing along.

Thankfully we arrived each day a little before most everyone else, meaning I was already at my desk for the complicated morning hand-shake ritual. When you show up to work you go around the office and say “Bon jour!” and shake hands with everyone else. For women it’s double cheek kisses. No “Hey everybody!”, no waves. Handshakes and kisses. If you arrive a little late your penance is spending the first twenty minutes of your day shaking hands with everyone else in the office. Well, it probably means that many companies are mostly kisses, as illustrated by the below Allele chart:

However, Focused Ion Beam technology is, unfortunately, a handshake dominated field. It seems like a strange practice in what is globally a more casual work environment, but in retrospect I think it’s a nice idea. Stopping to individually acknowledge everyone isn’t such a bad idea, and it certainly served as a gateway to get to know everyone there a little better than I think I otherwise would have. If I was the French-speaking visitor for four days working in the US, I think most people would have just smiled and ignored me. There are quite a few professors at UVA who even go out of their way to avoid eye contact in the hallway.

The rest of the work day is mostly squeezed around generous coffee and cigarette breaks, along with a hour and a half lunch. Surprisingly, it works. Leïla and I got a lot done, and I got to know some of the researchers there, who are all really nice folks. I’ll probably be headed back for a month or two in the early spring, and I’m not complaining. The nicer weather should let me get in better shape for riding season, and it seems easy enough to get back and forth to Paris for the weekends now that I have a small social life here.

We had originally planned for me to stay in Aix-en-Provence for three straight weeks, but decided on the train down that having me out of the lab for five straight weeks (Germany bookends) wasn’t a great idea. Consequently, I win the award for most over-packed person for a four day trip ever. So Friday night, my giant bag and I jumped a TGV back to Paris for the three day weekend.