I had never heard about Chateau de Vaux le Vicomte, it's about 1H outside of Paris, an was a famous castle with fancy garden that were used as an example for Chateau de Versailles, built later for the king. It's a pretty impressive castle that I'm happy I got to see thanks to my dad:
They had cool indoor displays:
The castle had timed entry and very nicely decorated rooms:
nice 3D video mapping
very nicely done show
After the visit, I went to walk the grounds to the end back (long walk, almost 1H):
sun started setting on my walk back
Finally it was time for the night show with more video 3D mapping on the castle, very nice:
Very nice castle with very good decorations, well worth the visit.
This was another idea from my dad, there are so many museums in Paris that seeing them all is a never ending task :)
Musée Méliès was really good given how pioneering and famous this French cinematographer, was, especially as he can be said to be the first real one, and with so much success.
The museum does a great job recounting his life, inventions, and firsts, including how he built his cameras based on the frères Lumière's work who didn't believe their own invention would be worth anything:
There were multiple screens showing some of his early short movies:
even then, some of the movies were hand colorized, frame by frame
the whole story board for 'voyage vers la lune'
He built an entire studio, the first one, in Montreuil:
Really cool visit (and we got lucky to have a guide walk by and give us nice explanations). After we were done, we went to see a different expo on Jean Paul Gaultier, the famous French fashion designer, and how his work got into many movies (including 5th element):
π
2021-12-26 01:01
in France, Ntrips, Paris, Trips
Another year going to Paris, Air France has had much better deals in business seats for miles, so I've been going with them again. Nice 1-2-1 layout (especially during covid):
The previous year, because of covid and no vaccines, I literally didn't go out at all, or see anything. This year I was triply vaccinated, so I went out to enjoy the city again, plenty of pictures:
nice views from top of Printemps
newer building, not sure what happened there
Printemps was great to see as always:
yum but totally overpriced
Great to meet some of my friends for lunch while I wsa there:
Arc de triomphe:
I went to arche de la défense to check out the view and the Xmas market:
The top of the arch has a small expo each time, this time photos:
I then went to the Xmas market (remembering that it closes at 18:00 on the last day, but 20:00 on previous days). So many yummy things:
so yum
I was weak and got a seared foie gras sandwich
those bottles were beautiful
look at the patterns blown inside the glass!
Random pictures while walking around in Paris:
the flower market is always nice
that weird building again, I'm not sold
cartoons showing the rebuild
we shall rebuild!
it rained many days, but not every day
After doing the Xmas market at arche de la défense, I did the one by jardin des tuileries:
yeah, I didn't have of those, fixed :)
Oh yeah, I also went shopping for the essentials. The entire row of cookies fell from the shelf into my cart :)
that's why I shop for chocolate in france :)
Back another day for some night pictures:
While I was in Paris, I also saw (click on the links):
Last minute, I was able to get Air France to move my flight a day early (the day of that is), and arrive for a party wth old family friends. That was great news, my dad was already getting food ready when I arrived:
Our guests arrived, they were fine that day, but some ended up getting covid a few days later, which was a theme for that holiday season:
foie gras soup, yum
Then, we got ready for Xmas Eve and Xmas:
nice Xmas present
yum
nice dessert
The next morning we had a brunch for Xmas lunch:
Then time for games:
more games
more games
Nice breakfast the next day:
2 days later, we went to see "Chance", a nice musical in Paris. The performers joked that they weren't sure if they could keep performing for much longer (as in until one of them caught Omicron). It was a fun enjoyable musical:
nice tapas like middle eastern dinner after that
New Years Eve, we went to a nice buffet:
I suck at trivial pursuit, but they were nice and helped me a bit
The next day, we were invited by the francs for New Years lunch, very nice as always:
custom made foie gras again, yum
The crowd asked me for a tour of my scottevest jacket, and what on earth I had in the pockets for it to weigh that much. I was happy to oblige of course ;)
I had a nice model :)
everyone seemed happy with it :)
Nice lunch and afternoon again, thank you for the invite.
Another 2 days later, we were supposed to have dinner at my brother's place, but by then one of his children had caught covid, which my dad had to stay very clear of, and in my case I was trying hard not to catch it before my plane home, or it would have cancelled my flight home an caused clear issues.
So, I still went out a bit, but tried to lay low and wear my N99 mask as much as possible. I definitely had to worry about passing my covid tests, so that I could fly home, thankfully I did, and ended up catching a very mild covid a few days after getting home, which was perfectly fine :)
I've been lucky and thankful to meet so many wonderful people at trance events over the years, including so many DJ producers, who are pretty much all the nicest people you could ever meet. One of them happens to be a coworker who came to introduce himself to me at a party one day "eh, dude, we work together, my name is Chris Le" (aka Triode).
Needless to say that in the years since that day, I've been impressed by all the music he's made, and his crazy ass DJ skills across a vast variety of music genres. And one day, as a special favor, because he's super nice, powered by red bull and not by sleep :) he made by request, a super nice demo of how a trance track works, layer by layer for my ex whose ears couldn't process an entire track when all the layers were on.
This demo is super cool, check it out. Thank you Triode, loveya.
After a very bad start of season (resorts not being able to open due to lack of snow), we got more than 7ft in a week, which well, was very nice :)
I tried to time the storm systems and drove to kirkwood in between 2 storms, when Carson Spur was open. It was too cold and I had to drive at night, so the temperature and headlights made it so that I would have arrived at kirkwood with -4% battery from my after the fact estimate, but thanks to the new supercharger in Jackon, a 5mn detour and 10mn bathroom stop gave me more than enough battery to arrive there comfortably. Drive up took just over 3h45 with the charging stop and the snow:
the bad news is that most of the chargers are broken, and the 2 left are sharing the same power (only 20A each)
It was early season, KW had only been open for 3 days, so they were still getting things ready and cleaning up :)
coverage was amazing
Normally, 6 would have opened on tuesday, but didn't like I predicted, and opened late (11:30) on wednesday. It was a longer wait than planned, but better than nothing:
we all waited eagerly :)
and finally got up
plenty of snow
coverage on chamoix was amazing
Day #2 got an extra 17", which caused Cornice to open a bit late (9:50), but not terribly:
ski patrol was training
chamoix started being scraped a bit :)
this is why the run is called hole in the wall :)
plenty of freshies
Palisades opened
we were all eying the wall and hoping it would open the next day
Day #3 started being a bit repetitive running 6 all day, but we held hope for the wall opening:
beautiful conditions
by 13:00 people started lining up for the wall
so I went to join them and waited about 45mn
and at 14:00 it opened, wee!
people who waited 1h30+ got first tracks, but there were plenty for everyone
After lapping the wall until they closed it, I was definitely spent, and with a huge grin on my face :)
Last show of the year for me before flying to Paris. So great to have Aphex and ChrisPy open up with a great B2B:
getting ready
Around 23:15, Solarstone took over for an extended set (3H), and it was a journey. The coolest part was the many mashups he made on the fly for us. Holly crap, those were a trip, nothing like this heard before, and I lost count, but we got more than 5, what a treat. Thank you Rich!
Rich nicely stayed for pictures at the end:
And of course, I got mine too :) All the pictures I found on google images that would fit on my display (along with black background), had him with a serious look. It was awesome when he took a picture looking just like it, before doing one with a nice smile :)
Video summary, including some of the great mashups:
I have driven some formula cars before, with skip barbers and later the formula 3 cars at Sears Point. I also did a day with the Ariel Atom some years back. None of them have driver's assists, and it was a bit challenging, but I managed and got decent enough times for those cars.
But the Pescarolo was a different ball game. From the start, it was clear it was going to be a handful. It was easy to lock up its tires under braking, so I had to brake earlier to have some margin to recover if I got it slightly wrong, which I did a few times. I also never could really tell how much extra grip I had when going into a momentum turn like 8, where you are committed once you go in (if you went too fast, you're going out, no recovery is really possible).
for unknown reasons, the steering was on the other side, making it tricky to know how close I was to the track edge
good aero
pretty simple inside
My first 2 sessions were pityful, I was quite slow trying to lean how tricky the car was going to be. Because the inboard recording was broken, there sadly isn't video showing how slow I was, or of miatas passing me :)
My 3rd time out, I stock a gopro on my helmet and started going for laps, hoping to go a bit faster (without any idea of how slow I was). It was all nice and good until I went a bit wide coming out of T10. At this point, I honestly have no idea if it was a driver mistake, or something caused the car to be unstable and track out just a bit too much. In a normal car, I would have put a wheel out and that would have been fine. In that car, it's so low to the ground that the fibreglass underside caught the track (despite maybe just a 5cm height differential), and that grabbed the car, spun it, and damaged the underside. Sad news....
In the end, my times were not that fast. On that last session, I was hovering around 2:05, until I got down to 2:00 on my last lap. There was no next lap unfortunately.
oops
This car is definitely a handful, I have no idea if I have enough skills to read it as if you ever go over any limit, odds of recovery, unlike in a GT car, are very low and consequences are high. It was fun to try, but I'm not sure this level of car is for me, it requires superior handling and feedback reading skills that I might be just a bit short, on.
The day was however interesting as it was a test day before 25H of thunderhill, so lots of cars, RVS, and people doing testing:
It was interesting, but an expensive day, not sure how expensive yet...
I had not been to Yolo yet. I was a bit worried because it's related to Pure Nightclub in Sunnyvale, a very nice club, but with questionable policies like over the top searches and more importantly to me, a nonsensical policy of banning small handheld cameras. Looking online seems to show that they have relaxed those policies, so that's great news, thank you!
The lighting system at Yolo is definitely super cool, worth experiencing for sure:
The show was really good, he finished with playing ATB - 9PM 'till I come, the original mix for 1997, what a treat. And because everyone was having such a great time, he was even allowed to play an extra track past the deadline of 02:00, nice! Here is a video summary:
After the show was over, he was super nice as always and stayed with his fans to take pictures:
Thank you for coming ATB, it was a pleasure to have you again:
