Bridgetown Swing

Last week we joined M's dad at his West Coast Swing convention. I took advantage of it to take a few pictures of dancers. Despite it not being the first time I still find it quite difficult to capture the right instant and nail the focus perfectly (in the dark, very large aperture and manual focus).

You can find a few more here.
Anyway, it was interesting to see him and M dance and also see what the "pros" would do.

Engaged

Where is my mind ?

Yesterday M had a dinner out with her dad. As they came back, she suggested we go out to MFNW (Music Fest North West). For a week, groups play every night for one hour each in 15ish concert halls around Portland, most of them around Burnside. I had a quick look at the (large) program and didn't recognize anything and figured it was expected as it would probably young underground alternative groups.

We headed to the Crystal ballroom to join Allen, but as we arrived it was sold out :(. We decided to walk on the direction back to home and pick a concert on the way. M picked the shows at Dante as she knew a song of the group that was on. We stopped by, payed 15$ each for 2.5 shows (6$ / showing). The group playing: The Moondoggies actually sounded quite good. The following group, Bobby Bare Jr. was really weird and honestly I didn't care for it.

The last one was a single, older guy with his guitar singing some bluesy, hardish, rough songs. We sounded really great. After 10 minutes I was commenting to M, that this guy really deserved to have a group with him and it would sound great. I checked again the program and saw the name "Black Francis". It didn't take me too long on wikipedia to realize that this was the guy I knew under Frank Black, formerly singer of... the Pixies... Yeah the purists will remind me that his old scene name was Black Francis... Anyway, I'll remember this night as the night I saw the singer of the Pixies for 6 bucks in a tiny room, 3 meters away :).

And yeah, he definitely would have sounded better with his band but still, he was great :). I didn't have my camera as Concert halls tend to not allow to take pictures, but this was apparently not a problem :(. So I only have phone pictures.

Portland Japanese Garden

Last weekend we had a looong saturday doing chores and finishing some long due home improvement. We bought a few boxes in order for me to store all my camera gear in orderly fashion and organize my desk.
We also bought a cabinet in order to store all the liquor instead of having it take counter space. We found a nice looking, cheap little wooden cabinet at Bed Bath and Beyond. Label said "Made In China, Easy to Assemble". I opened the box with enthusiasm until I realized that there was no assembly manual and we had taken what appeared to be the last box in the color we liked. After about 20 minutes staring at the disaster, spreading the pieces around, turning them, shuffling them, I decided I would go ahead without the instructions. It took me a while, a bit of trial and error, but my recent experience with Ikea furniture helped me figure out what some apparently weird parts were for. Success ! We now have a nice little cabinet full of booze awaiting happy thirsty guests.

We had enough with chores so we took it easy on sunday and Michelle suggested going to the Portland Japanese Garden. I had never been there and always wanted to. We found a very nice, soothing, aesthetic but slightly overcrowded garden. I really loved the place and definitely want to come back once fall colors have started. I took quite a lot of pictures, here are a few to give you an idea on how it looks like.

Peaceful


Reminds me Monet's garden


Swirly ?

You can find more samples here.

Chicago

Two weekends ago we had a 3 days long weekend thanks to Labor's day. On 09/09/09 we were going to attend Michelle's uncle wedding in Chicago so we flew a few days before and enjoyed some time visiting the city. I have to say I was not thrilled at the idea of spending 5 days in the midwest in just one city, but I actually really liked Chicago. The city architecture is fantastic, the skyscrapers and "the loop" area actually impressed me more than Manhattan. Apparently this is where all this frenzy of building tall things started, after the city suffered from a massive fire in 1871.

You get Gothic towers, glass towers, the Sears towers are still the second tallest building on earth (the view from atop is fantastic).

The Chicago Tribune building at sunset


View from the Sears Tower.

I enjoyed walking around and recognizing all the areas that were providing the background to one of my favorite movies ever: The Blues Brothers. I wished for a few seconds I could jump in an old cop car, and jump over the river using one of these mobile bridges as a ramp, with some loud blues playing: "sweet home Chicagoooo".


Or a little bit later listening to the Elevated Train (The El) passing buy, I couldn't help but remember Elwood's hotel room. This thing is really loud!


We stopped for an afternoon at the Art Institute and enjoyed the largest collection of impressionist paintings outside of France, and as Impressionism is my favorite painting's style we took our time. Their collection of Monet, Renoir and Van Gogh is worth the visit. We also spent some time in the modern art wings, and for most of it, neither of us really get it, but it's still interesting to look at.


When M saw this one, her first words were "that's my brain!". You can clearly see it on the picture :).

We also spent some time in Millenium Park and I really enjoyed "The Bean" (Cloud Gate), this large reflective metallic structure (kind of like a giant mercury bubble) shaped like a bean is exposed among many other large displays of modern public art. I enjoyed taking pictures of people taking pictures of their reflections.


We also tried the local food specialties including super duper extra thick stuffed Pizza (not bad, but not breathtaking) and steaks at Morton's (breathtaking, this was truly amazing).


I got to meet all M's family (on her mom side) and we had quite a nice time at the wedding, dancing to a great band's music in great company.

You can find more pictures of Chicago there (first series all in B&W) and pictures from the wedding here (I am changing my digital workflow and it seems I overexposed many quite a bit in post-processing and will probably do another round of corrections).

Edit: I did one round of corrections on the exposures, it should be a little bit less blindingly bright.

Balcony Garden

We had been gradually adding plants on our balcony over the last few months: cacti, carnivorous plants, small trees, flowers... Yesterday we decided we would go farther and get a small herb garden. We picked a nice plant nursery (Cornell Farms) and went quite wild. We came back with like 30 pounds of soil, small and large pots, herbs for my herb garden, various decorative plants, an orchid and organic fertilizer. We spent most of the morning on that little project and now have a much greener balcony.

Here is the finished herb garden, from left to right: cayenne chili, coriander, mint, basil and rosemary. And yes I know, a dwarf is hiding in there.

Hawaii big Island

So I'll try to tell you about all our vacation in one post, I don't know if I'll succeed as we really did a lot for just one week, all this thanks to great planning (I obviously am not the one that planned :)).

Day 1:
We took our plane in the morning, went to the airport with a cab as we realized it would be cheaper than shuttle services, and after 5-6 hours landed in Maui. From there we took a plane to Kona on the west coast of the big Island of Hawaii. We picked up our rental car and drove tou our Bed and Breakfast, a local coffee plantation on the volcano slopes above Kona. There was enough time left for us to rush to the beach, swim a bit and enjoy a great sunset.


Day 2:
We woke up early to go scuba diving, but actually I think we were up at 6 pretty much every day of the week so we had quite some time to go around. It was our first time scuba diving since Israel and I was a bit nervous. It ended up being great and simple: the organizers were taking care of absolutely everything we just had to put the gear on and dive. As usual M spent her air about twice slower than me and got a lot more bottom time, I am so jealous. Anyways we had some great reef diving with quite a lot of nice fish species floating around. We saw a turtle and I think my favorite are butterfly fishes.
M took a little nap after our 2 dives, and in the afternoon we drove south to Kealakekua bay where Captain Cook is burried. We looked at the monument across the bay, played with black crabs hiding on black lava and continued to Honaunau National Historical Park. There we visited archeological remains of Hawaiian culture and some reconstructions of the traditional houses and temples. I especially like their statues with big smiles :).


We had yet another great sunset on the beach and I opened a coconut for M. It was her first tasting of a fresh one and it was well worth the effort (when you do it with a miniature swiss army knife it is really a lot of effort).


Day 3:
We had a nice relaxed breakfast at the b2b, and chatted for quite a while with the owner that explained us how he started his organic coffee farm and how complex it was to develop and manage it. It was very interesting for when we'll get tired of high tech. We stopped at the Kona Blue church on our way out and enjoyed the view on the surfers.



We drove to South Point (southernmost part of the US) and stopped at various vista point, fruit stands, chocolate macadamia stores on the way. I was a bit worried as there was a hurricane alert for the same night and we were going to camp in Volcano National Park, on the side of the island the most touched by hurricanes usually. After enjoying the landscape at south point we drove a bit east and then hike to the only green sand beach of the island.



The sand is made of olivine so it is actually more khaki than green, but it is still quite original. I played with the waves and swam a bit but undertow and currents were strong and waves started quickly to be bigger than I could handle so we left.



On our way out we heard the radio saying that the hurricane warnings were lifted, what a relief ! We headed to the Volcano Park and set camp.

Day 4:
After a nice night of sleep under the tent we visited most of the easily accessible center of interest of the Volcano National Park. It was my first time seeing active volcanoes and even if I didn't see molten lava close it was still impressive. We toured museums, museums, sulfur vents and fumes, Kilauea caldera,


Kileauea Iki crater hike,


chain of craters road, hike on the recent lava flows,


lava arches, view of the current Pu'u O'o flow arriving in the ocean, Petroglyphs (ancient traditional carvings in Lava),


and drive to a viewpoint... in the fog. Another night under the tent but this time under the rain: no leak yay !

Day 5:
We started in the morning by a lava tube exploration, and a short hike on devastation trail, then left the park and drove to the southeast of the island in Pahoa region.
We started by the visit of Lava Tree State Monument, a park set in a jungle like forest where a long time ago a lava flow ravaged the forest and petrified a large number of trees. It is interesting to see this mix of lava constructions (what remains is the lava that surrounded the tree like a shell, not the tree themselves actually) in the middle of this green forest with gigantic trees.



We stopped on the coast to snorkel in tide pools, the corals there were really pretty. I then tried to do 4x4 with a compact rental to reach the Champagne Pools (some bubbling thermal pools) but the road beat me (and the car) and we had to back off with a few scratches (on the car) when the road started to be too difficult.

We went to another thermal pool made of mixed salty and fresh water (brakish water) and dipped for quite a bit there.We headed then for our first black sand beach who was also the local nudist beach.


Along with another thousand of people we went by night to see the current lava flow that ends up in the sea. I was a bit disappointed because we ended up being blocked quite far from the action, it was raining and packed with people. Still we saw a few explosions, bombs projections, glowing red fumes etc... A little more than a barbecue, a little less than if you try to barbecue bacon ;). I didn't have a tripod so enjoy the blurry, cropped, noisy night shot...



Day 6:
After a night at Hilo we visited the Onomea bay botanical gardens a little north of town, in a spectacular area of the coast. The landscape in this region had completely changed and was clearly showing that it receives like 20x the rain of the western shore. The botanical gardens were the best I had ever seen, it was luxuriant with species from all over the pacific, most flowers were blooming and dripping water. It would have felt like heaven if not for mosquitoes: despite tons of deet on M and none on me, she still got machine-gunned. We took literally hundreds of pictures of flowers, but if you want to see more than this one you'll have to go see our Zenfolios.



We stopped at a delicious smoothies stand on the side of the scenic highway, had some nice healthy local food, headed to Akaka falls (must resist to tell the bear and the little white rabbit joke, must resist...), then Laupahoehoe point state park and finished with Rainbow falls.
We went shopping and discovered that Wallmart has actually a food section, well not really by my standards so we moved to the next store. There we bought ingredients for our only self cooked meal of the trip besides sandwiches (won't resist, gotta eat a lot of sandwiches on the Sandwich Island, ah-ah-ah). It was with local original ingredients and quite tasty: purple sweet potatoes puree, Japanese eggplant ratatouille, seared Ahi Tuna.

Day 7:
On our way to saddle road we stopped at Peepee falls and hiked in the Kaumana lava tube. This time the tubes were quite untouched and rougher to explore. It was quite fun.


We drove up Mauna Loa up to 11000ft and got a nice view on the fog, storm and clouds that surrended us and the gigantic lava fields. Then we drove up Mauna Kea, did not listen to the ranger warnings saying we needed a 4x4 to go up to 14000ft (he was wrong this time it was easy). We arrived late enough on top for the clouds to start settling down. This gave us some quite spectacular views.



We spent some time on top hiking around the crater and looking at the impressive observatories. The air here is more pure and perfect for star observation than anywhere in the world. This is due to Hawaii being alone in the middle of the sea with no air pollution, light or even anything causing turbulences within 2500 miles. On top of that there is a natural trend for clouds to cover the lower parts of the island, blocking away the light they produce by night (and they use some special lighting to disturb less the observatories which is pretty cool). The top is litteraly covered with observatories and antennas, way over 10, I stopped counting.


On our way down we caught another very pretty sunset.


We went down to the ranger station and spent the first part of the night stargazing and listening to the great tutorial that some astronomer gave. After M froze, we headed to our tent that we had hidden not far behind a bush so the rangers wouldn't spot it :). We camped at 9000 feet and didn't even get cold, great new tent.

Day 8:
Early morning we drove down Saddle road back to the west coast. We had booked a night at the Hilton resort to see what most people see of the island and rest a bit, but decided to do a small loop in the north of the island before in order to see the landscape there. It is actually quite different, the land is drier, a few cacti here and there and is occupied mostly by ranches, actually mostly one ranch: the Parker ranch.
We passed Waimea, Hawi and reached the north point where after some morning ice cream we had a very nice view on Maui in the clouds. We stopped at Lapakahi park to see some archeological remains and old Hawaiian houses. The beach was windy but very pretty.


We then checked-in at the Hilton resort, spent the afternoon in the pool doing nothing but playing in slides, drinking cocktails, and doing more nothing. We finished by fine Japanese dining experience, our guess was pretty good as a good half of the resort occupants were Japanese: the Japanese restaurant was good :).

Day 9:
We mostly just flew back home.

Pittock Mansion

Sunday was more relaxed, we started with a late brunch at VQ with some good cocktails, relaxed at home for a while and then went for a visit of the Pittock Mansion. Wikipedia pretends it's a renaissance castle, but I honestly don't know what the editor had smoked that day. This is the rich house of the Oregonian newspaper founder, located on top of the western hills of Portland.


The view from there is fantastic, he hired an architect with a lot of taste, used stones, and had all what modern times could offer in 1910: phone between rooms and servants, electric elevators, heated water on the tap, fancy showers, a fridge, etc...


I want the same stove


Nice staircase


Shower


And a very nice garden.

Ecola Park

We have a visitor from the east coast this week and we spent the last Saturday on the Oregonian coast. We stopped in the morning for a short hike at Ecola park, just north of Cannon beach. The park has some of the nicest views on Oregon coast you can find, and after last week's heat wave, we welcomed the cool coastal weather. We were actually very lucky and even got some blue skies. This was the perfect day for panoramas, so here they are (click on them for larger versions):

Looking north towards Cannon Beach.


Cannon Beach rocks and some clouds (it's as far as Oregon coast gets in term of blue skies!)


Looking South, towards Indian Beach.


Indian Beach


Ecola Park

Gigot a la cuillere

Two years ago, for Christmas, my cousins wife departed from the traditional "gigot de noel" and instead of seeing the entire family fight over 5 minutes more or less of cooking time, she cooked it for the entire day. Yes you read it, the whole day, not 35 minutes nor 40. It was so delicious that since then, this is my preferred way of preparing it. So if you want to get that juicy, melting in the mouth lamb taste, here is how you do it, and it's so easy that I doubt anyone can fail.
To reproduce what I did last sunday, you will need:
- a lamb leg that fits in your dish, we had ~7 pounds of meat with the bone. Got it at our local New Seasons market, they cut off the shank so it would not be too big.
- a dozen of garlic cloves (don't peel them)
- a dozen of mushrooms (the "champignon de Paris" kind)
- 3-4 carrots cut in large chunks
- 2 bay leaves
- a pinch of salt
- optional: a few slices of bacon
Preheat the oven at 275F (135C, that s very low). Put the lamb leg in your oven proof dish (eventually lay the slices of bacon at the bottom of the dish). If there is a side with more fat start with it at the bottom. Add the other ingredients in the dish and 2 glasses of water. Cover with aluminum foil. Put in the Oven for 10 hours. After a few hours (3-5), turn the meat, remove the extra juice and save it for later (pour a bit of juice on the meat). You might want to check another time that there isn't too much juice.
Towards the end you might want to remove the foil and put the oven on broil to finish it. What I did is about 1 hour before the end I added potatoes in another dish with some of the juice and baked them at 400 (leaving the meat covered by the foil). It worked perfectly. Reheat the juice that you saved so your guests can soak their meat as much as they want ! No picture, we destroyed it before I even thought of bringing the camera.


You might want to serve that with green beans, and M would certainly suggest finishing with a raspberry chiffon pie :).

Backpacking Around Mt Adams

Last weekend we headed for a 2 days backpacking trip around Mt Adams with Ian and Jagan. We left Portland at 6:30 am and were at the foot of Mt Adams at 8:30. There was a rather large crowd at the start of the trail as it happened to be the start of the path that climbs up Mt Adams. As soon as our trail separated from theirs we were pretty much alone for 2 days. The views from the side of mount Adams were gorgeous, especially towards Mt Hood and Mt St Helens. Between the flowers, the butterflies and the scenic landscape we were all 4 busy taking pictures all day.
I took advantage of the opportunity to play a little bit with filters and take some Infra Red landscapes. Bellow is a demonstration of the effect. You can see how haze pretty much disappears in Infra Red that offers very detailed and contrasty horizons and skies. Mount Hood and Stream from Mt Adams trail:


Mount St Helens seems to still emit puffs of smoke once in a while:


We established camp away from the trail near a little (dried up) waterfall. I think it was the first time I camped in an area that was "this wild". In France you can never really be that far from civilization in an area that is so untouched. Besides the fact that cellphone network was reaching, there was no sign of civilization and it felt great. We filtered water from a snowpatch melt, hanged our food in the trees for the night and fought mosquitoes all we could (they still mostly won) while playing cards. We played a game called Euchre which happened to be close enough to our good old French Belotte so I had quite some fun :). Ian and Jagan went away at sunset to take pictures, but I slacked and stayed at our camp and snapped from there.

Mount Adams at Sunset


We woke up just after sunrise, just int time for a great Panorama on Mt Hood


You can find the rest of the pictures here and Ian's pictures there.

Seattle with Olivier and Claire

The second weekend of July we drove up to Seattle and spent 2 days with M's dad and old friends of mine from France that were in Seattle for a conference. As they had spent the week around downtown, we picked them and the 2 kids at their hotel and headed for the countryside. We went to the nearby Snoqualmie falls, enjoyed the landscape, went for a (good) burger in the nearby town of Fall City and stopped at Chateau St Michelle winery.

We unfortunately arrived too late for the winery tour, so we just hanged there for like an hour before heading back to M's dad home. We had a nice relaxing afternoon, sipping beer in the shade and preparing a barbecue for the dinner. Fiona and Tristan enjoyed the house quite a bit and played with the balcony door for easily an hour :).


Snoqualmie falls


Olivier and Fiona


Claire and tristan