Friday, June 29, 2012
Tuesday, June 12, 2012
Roanne-Villerest Aquathlon Longue Distance
4km swim followed by 20km run
Will = racer # 50; Sandi = racer # 51...
Relaxing before the starting gun
Still relaxing (if you haven't spotted us we're to the left)
And they're off! (I'm #50, remember)
Still reluctant to dive in...
And now I'm finally swimming...
Sandi finishing the first lap (2km of swimming done...)
Getting those goggles off...
And taking a breath
Getting to l'australien
Half-way done (the swim) and smiling for the camera
Still smiling
And back into the water...
Emerging from my first lap
Off come the goggles
And taking a breath!
Making my way to l'australien
Running towards the camera
And smiling :)
And back into the water...
Finishing the swim...
And high-fiving the fans
Happy to be done the swim
Also happy to be done the swim (but not showing it as much)
Thinking 'wow that was long'
Getting the goggles and cap off
Now the run!
Running by the lake
See the sailboat?
Sandi approaching a competitor...
Sandi overtaking a competitor...
And the pass is nearly made!
Running strong...
Still strong...
Looking funny
Very green scenery
Victory!!! (i.e. I completed it)
Very happy to be done
Finished as well!
Happy to be finished!!!
LA FIN
Sunday, June 10, 2012
Le Vercors
A couple of weekends ago we took a bike trip up on to the Vercors mountain range. The sights were really amazing as was the cycling. As usual, the pictures don't really do it justice but I took some because I had my phone with me and they do give a glimpse at least of how cool it is. The ride starts from Grenoble and right off the bat you go to the top of the mountain. It's about 18km up to the top and you go from ~200m to ~1000m. It's hard but totally worth it (especially on the way down when you get to glide for 20 minutes or more...).
The best part of the ride are the Gorges de la Bourne. The roads were carved out of the mountain ~100 years ago and go right through huge pieces of rock. You're right at the edge of these gorges that drop down hundreds and hundreds of metres. Super cool. Here are some pictures from that area...
This one above is really neat. For a long ways you're cycling in a kind of half-tunnel I guess where if you look up you see rock above you. It goes on for a long time. On the other side of the road is a drop of about 1000m down to a river below.
This one (above again) shows Sandi about to enter one of the tunnels that you go through where the road cuts right through the mountain. It's a cycling paradise.
There are better views but this last picture was where I had a chance to stop on the way down to take a picture. This is probably half way up the mountain and shows Grenoble in the distance (we're still clearly pretty high up -- I'd say this is about 600m [?] elevation)..
We did the Aquathlon yesterday and it went really well. When they post pictures I'll put some here (if there are any of us) and I can write all about it at that time.
Friday, June 8, 2012
Pre-Roanne Aquathlon
[watch how I go from one subject to another like it's nothing... it's a magician's trick actually]
So my good friend D* and I were talking about how despite the great money that we were making this whole law firm lifestyle was most definitely not for us. Everyone's all fake and everything and they want to work work work all day every day especially on the weekends and money's super important and you should lie just a little bit every now and then to make sure your client will win the most money (or lose the least), and cetera. "No way I'm working here next year" he'd say early on. Then, eventually that became "I'll work here for 2 years maximum". Interestingly, out of 20+ articling students, he is the ONLY one still working there! But anyways, we had some cool plans about what we could do instead and one of them was this really cool master's program in sports management that took place at 3 different universities in Europe. I can't remember the details exactly but it was a 1-year program and for the first four months you were in England, then Switzerland I believe, and then I think it ended in Italy. Awesome stuff. But, in the end, that dream never worked out. I also applied to some different places to do graduate work in law. I even got offered the first ever full scholarship to do a Masters in IP law at Chicago-Kent and they were quite upset when I said I would go and then changed my mind a few weeks later (the reason I know that my full scholarship was the first one ever is that they called me after I changed my admission decision and said they were really sad because they tried to 'secure' me by offering this and they'd never done so before. This was quite good for my ego but anyways...). I also applied to do a Masters in IP law at Duke and got in but by then had decided on other things and I of course applied to Harvard and Berkeley but didn't get in. I also applied to two universities in Australia to do my PhD in IP law and got in there but they didn't offer any kind of scholarships so it would have been impossible because the international student's tuition was something like $20,000 a year. And in the meantime Sandi was applying for teachers college because that seemed like a good idea and she got accepted to both York and Laurier. At that time I think we thought we would probably go to Australia because that seemed like a cool idea (NOTE to parents: we may seem far away now but France is WAY closer and easier and cheaper to get to than Australia is) but if we didn't we'd stay in Toronto because maybe I would keep working at Gowlings but who knows really.. Anyways, so we definitely didn't think we'd be in the Waterloo area so although Sandi had an interview for Laurier and would for sure have done fine she decided not to go because we were SO sure that we wouldn't be in that area. Anyways, then I got this crazy idea that I should do a Masters in computer science. But this was quite late and most of the admissions decisions had already been made for the following year. I guess in hindsight (20/20 vision and all that...) I could have taken some time and really thought carefully about what to do and not rushed into anything but that's not really how I roll so... There WAS this place that had a CS graduate program and it was at Guelph and they seemed quite happy to take me. So I said hey Sandi we should go live in the K/W/Guelph area and you could go to Laurier and I could go to Guelph and it would be fun. But, unfortunately, she'd already turned down her interview and Laurier was no longer an option. Instead, she accepted to go to York. In the meantime, Guelph said they'd be happy to take me but (a) for some strange reason the masters program funding would be complicated but they did have funding put in place for a phd student; and (b) since I'd already done a 'post-graduate' degree of some sort then they'd let me straight into the phd program. So I was like sure, why not? By the way, I still don't have my phd even though I've submitted the thesis a long time ago and who knows if it will ever actually happen this defence I have to do to be able to get it. Anyways, so we moved to York and I took the GO bus to Guelph and blah blah blah and then I saw this job posting for a postdoc position at the Xerox research centre in France and I applied and then I had 2 phone interviews and then they flew me over and then something like 2 or 3 weeks later (after I was sure that there was no way that I had gotten the job) they told me I had the job. Then, we moved here in February and all that has been leading up to TOMORROW!!!
Tomorrow, we go in the Roanne/Villerest Aquathlon Longue Distance. It's a 4km swim followed by a 20km run. In fact, for us, it's a 500m walk followed by a ~2.5km tram ride, followed by driving a rental car (this is rest time for Sandi) about 200 km over mountains to a small town called Villerest and THEN a 4km swim followed by a 20km run (and then all that other stuff to get home). I think it should be quite difficult.
* identities masked to protect the innocent/guilty
So my good friend D* and I were talking about how despite the great money that we were making this whole law firm lifestyle was most definitely not for us. Everyone's all fake and everything and they want to work work work all day every day especially on the weekends and money's super important and you should lie just a little bit every now and then to make sure your client will win the most money (or lose the least), and cetera. "No way I'm working here next year" he'd say early on. Then, eventually that became "I'll work here for 2 years maximum". Interestingly, out of 20+ articling students, he is the ONLY one still working there! But anyways, we had some cool plans about what we could do instead and one of them was this really cool master's program in sports management that took place at 3 different universities in Europe. I can't remember the details exactly but it was a 1-year program and for the first four months you were in England, then Switzerland I believe, and then I think it ended in Italy. Awesome stuff. But, in the end, that dream never worked out. I also applied to some different places to do graduate work in law. I even got offered the first ever full scholarship to do a Masters in IP law at Chicago-Kent and they were quite upset when I said I would go and then changed my mind a few weeks later (the reason I know that my full scholarship was the first one ever is that they called me after I changed my admission decision and said they were really sad because they tried to 'secure' me by offering this and they'd never done so before. This was quite good for my ego but anyways...). I also applied to do a Masters in IP law at Duke and got in but by then had decided on other things and I of course applied to Harvard and Berkeley but didn't get in. I also applied to two universities in Australia to do my PhD in IP law and got in there but they didn't offer any kind of scholarships so it would have been impossible because the international student's tuition was something like $20,000 a year. And in the meantime Sandi was applying for teachers college because that seemed like a good idea and she got accepted to both York and Laurier. At that time I think we thought we would probably go to Australia because that seemed like a cool idea (NOTE to parents: we may seem far away now but France is WAY closer and easier and cheaper to get to than Australia is) but if we didn't we'd stay in Toronto because maybe I would keep working at Gowlings but who knows really.. Anyways, so we definitely didn't think we'd be in the Waterloo area so although Sandi had an interview for Laurier and would for sure have done fine she decided not to go because we were SO sure that we wouldn't be in that area. Anyways, then I got this crazy idea that I should do a Masters in computer science. But this was quite late and most of the admissions decisions had already been made for the following year. I guess in hindsight (20/20 vision and all that...) I could have taken some time and really thought carefully about what to do and not rushed into anything but that's not really how I roll so... There WAS this place that had a CS graduate program and it was at Guelph and they seemed quite happy to take me. So I said hey Sandi we should go live in the K/W/Guelph area and you could go to Laurier and I could go to Guelph and it would be fun. But, unfortunately, she'd already turned down her interview and Laurier was no longer an option. Instead, she accepted to go to York. In the meantime, Guelph said they'd be happy to take me but (a) for some strange reason the masters program funding would be complicated but they did have funding put in place for a phd student; and (b) since I'd already done a 'post-graduate' degree of some sort then they'd let me straight into the phd program. So I was like sure, why not? By the way, I still don't have my phd even though I've submitted the thesis a long time ago and who knows if it will ever actually happen this defence I have to do to be able to get it. Anyways, so we moved to York and I took the GO bus to Guelph and blah blah blah and then I saw this job posting for a postdoc position at the Xerox research centre in France and I applied and then I had 2 phone interviews and then they flew me over and then something like 2 or 3 weeks later (after I was sure that there was no way that I had gotten the job) they told me I had the job. Then, we moved here in February and all that has been leading up to TOMORROW!!!
Tomorrow, we go in the Roanne/Villerest Aquathlon Longue Distance. It's a 4km swim followed by a 20km run. In fact, for us, it's a 500m walk followed by a ~2.5km tram ride, followed by driving a rental car (this is rest time for Sandi) about 200 km over mountains to a small town called Villerest and THEN a 4km swim followed by a 20km run (and then all that other stuff to get home). I think it should be quite difficult.
* identities masked to protect the innocent/guilty
Friday, June 1, 2012
Update to last post
In the last post I claimed that Marseille is closer to North Africa than it is to Paris. I thought I should check that. It turns out I was basically wrong but (a) almost right; and (b) practically (like in the practical sense as opposed to just a synonym of almost) right. A straight line from Marseille to Algiers is about exactly 750 km, whereas a straight line from Marseille to Paris is only 667 km. So, I'll call that almost right. But, depending on the driving route you take, actually getting from Marseille to Paris is between 777 and 855 km! Since in a boat you could theoretically go in a fairly straight line, but because of mountains, rivers, lakes, and historical decisions of city and road planning/building, you can't in a car. So I'll call that practically right.
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