Marc's Public Blog

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.

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):

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):

And thankfully I managed to avoid catching covid for long enough to fly home, it was a close one:

'Adieu les cons' is a fun movie :)

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 :)

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 :)

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.

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 :)

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:

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: