En Juin dernier, après le mariage du frère de Justin, on a pris une semaine de vacances pour faire la route entre Salt Lake City (Utah) et Spokane (Washington) pour visiter les Parcs Nationaux sur le chemin. Le mariage avait été émouvant et nous étions également épuisés par le travail à l’époque, donc prendre ces jours de repos était vraiment un coup de génie. On a pu vraiment se resourcer.

Je ne sais pas où on était, peut-être sur la route vers le Parc National Grand Teton, ou quelque part sur la US-287 entre Yellowstone et le Parc National Glacier, mais on a commencé à se demander à voix haute… et si on pouvait faire ça plus longtemps? “Ça” étant un mélange entre voir défiler le paysage, voyager, être loin, avoir du temps et stimuler les sens avec des nouveaux environnements.

Ce n’était pas la première fois que nous avions parlé de la possibilité de voyager à plus long terme, mais c’etait le debut de queqlue chose de beaucoup plus sérieux. Après de nombreuses conversations (et des calculs sur un bout d’envelope), on a convenu qu’on se donnerait un an. Le temps d’économiser, le temps de planifier, et le temps de penser a tous les details.

Maintenant, on est ici. Un an plus tard. Et on est prêt.

Le (ou autour du) 7 Septembre, Justin et moi allons monter à bord d’un navire porte-conteneurs, le Cap Cleveland, à Philadelphie (Pennsylvanie) à destination de Auckland, Nouvelle-Zélande. On s’arrêtera aux ports de Savannah (Géorgie) et de Cartagena (Colombie), avant de traverser le canal de Panama.
En tout, nous serons sur le bateau pendant 28 jours — la plus longue période en mer étant de 18 jours entre le Panama et la Nouvelle-Zélande.

(Cap Cleveland photo © Knut Helge Schistad)

Le voyage est certes une aventure en soi, mais ce n’est que le début d’un plus grand voyage autour du monde. On n’a pas de plan après notre débarquement à Auckland, sinon d’explorer les deux iles et peut-être visiter certains fromagers. Après la Nouvelle-Zélande, il y a plusieurs autres pays qui piquent notre curiosité, dont l’Australie, le Cambodge, le Népal, le Kenya, et la Turquie, mais nous n’avons pas l’ombre d’un itinéraire. Juste un désir brulant de découvrir où la route du monde nous mènera.

Qui sait, on peut aller quelque part, tomber amoureux de l’endroit, et ne jamais partir. Ou bien on pourrait se lasser de la vie sur la route et rentrer aux États-Unis après deux mois. C’est ça le plus beau. On est complètement ouvert à toutes les possibilités. Et on est prêt.

Since I said goodbye to my scooter, I’ve been walking a lot more in the city. I love walking to work. But do you know what I like even more? Taking the cable car. And so, for the first time in 3 years, I bought a bus pass that enables me to take the cable car regularly… especially uphill.

When I ride the cable car I feel as much of a tourist as any other foreign (to SF) passenger, which makes me want to take pictures. Recently I also got hooked on a nifty little iPhone app called ToonFX Paint. It pretty much cartoonifies any image you take and you can colorize it later.

You then get neat little effects like this…

View from the cable car, up California St.

I preferred to keep the images black and white.

Looking down California St. towards Financial District.

Cable Car wannabe’s (yep, they’re buses).

Looking out on Jones st.

What a fun ride home.

In my cheese-making experiment lineup, I wanted to try to make a cheese with “eyes” (or holes). The kind of cheese you would see in cartoons to lure a mouse into a trap, but the mouse would outsmart the ambush and end up savoring the piece of the yellowish cheese with large holes.

The piece of cheese with eyes is pretty much the universal symbol for representing the idea of cheese in general. If you were to play a game like Pictionary and draw up a piece of cheese, it’s likely you will end up with somewhat of a triangle wedge with holes. If no-one gets it, you’ll draw a mouse and point at the cheese. At least, that’s what I would do… maybe I watched too many cartoons as a *cough* child.

I knew that making a cheese with eyes required a culture called Propionic Shermanii. I went and got that here and flipped through my favorite cheese making recipe book to figure out which type I would make. I needed to start easy (with mild ripening necessities, aka no brushing the rind for months and months, for example). So I settled with Jarlsberg.

After a fairly easy washed curd cheese-making process and a couple of months to ripen, the result is pretty darn great. Starting with the way it looks:

I know Jarlsberg as being (quote from Wikipedia): “mild, buttery, nutty and slightly sweet. It is an all-purpose cheese, good both for cooking and for eating as a snack. It has a characteristic smooth, shiny-yellow body, and a creamy supple texture. ”

And my Soleil Jarlsberg ended being “mild, buttery, nutty and slightly sweet. [...] It has a [...] smooth, shiny-yellow body, and a creamy supple texture. ”
Incredible! Success! Hurrah!

I could just eat the whole wheel as is (ok… with other people too) or I could use it in things like quiche or potato gratin.

2010 it is and I live in San Francisco. After leaving Fayence for Houston, TX, coming back to Nice for high school and college and moving to California in 2001, I met the love of my life and live with him in this fine city. Needless to say all this moving around took a toll on my friendships. I was very close to my friends in Fayence and from high school, but pretty much lost contact over time.

And then came the very un-poetic Facebook. I slowly reconnected with my old French friends. Incredible! My friends! From France! From tiny villages of Provence! One of which was Magali Escapin. She was traveling in Australia for a long while trying to escape from certain aspects of the French mentality (just like me). Long story short, she loved Australia so much that she wanted to take her MBA in Melbourne. To do that, she had to get out of the country and take the GMAT. Turns out the most convenient pace to do that was where? In San Francisco. Well gosh darn it, what a coincidence!

And there she was, on my door step, 15 years after we saw each-other last. What a trip! She stayed in the city for about 2 months, so we had time to catch up, have a few lunches… and take some photos…

So, Magali… how is it being here in SF?

Yep, we got our groove back on.

And yep, we still like each-other.

Oh oh oh and the BEST part is… remember that old little ballet photo? She was there too! On the very left!

And guess what? Here we are, more than 20 years after that photo was taken…

… not too bad, no?

Today, I live in San Francisco. 20 years ago, I was living in a little French village called Fayence. It’s an adorable hilltop village less than an hour away from the beautiful coastal towns of Frejus, Cannes, Antibes and Nice. It’s the beginning of Provence with its olive trees, lavender fields and cicadas. My grandmother still lives there. I love going back to visit her.

Photo courtesy of www.ville-fayence.fr

20 years ago, I was a little ballerina. And there was an excellent (and very small) ballet school in Fayence. Our teacher, Jacqueline Lavielle, was a fine ballerina herself and was considered one of the finest teachers of the region. She taught us well. Gave us a strong foundation and a passion that most of our little group carried on as an adult (several of us became dance teachers, another danced in a company and others kept dancing for pleasure).

In 1987, I was 8 years old and we were photographed for the local news paper in honor of our success at the ballet exams of Monte-Carlo. Yep, in ballet, you take exams and dance in front of a jury to move up to the next level. Frightening! Jacqueline’s students pretty much always passed and had honorable mentions regularly (I did twice!).

I wish I had more photos of that time period, but I treasure this copy of the article. We were all so proud.

From left to right: Magali Escapin, Vanessa Moltenis, Alexandra Ducamp, Stephanie Soleil, Vanessa Cottone and Sadou Zeeghers.

Update: The photo doesn’t represent all of us in the group. Others not in the photo were Sarah Paiman, Magali Ghiglione, Severine Fromentin and Sandra Tiberi. If anyone out there remembers who else should be mentioned, please comment!

Finding a good pair of sandals is not as easy as I thought. I wanted to find sandals that I could walk in for a long time, that could go in the water, that didn’t hurt my feet or needed long breaking-in time, and that were somewhat fashionable. I know, it’s a lot to ask! But my feet knew they could find a match to their sensitive and temperamental moods. I think I tried all the sandals there are to find in all stores. Well, maybe not, but I did try the major sporty/casual brands out there.

I started with the Chacos ZX/2® in black thinking they are sturdy, waterproof and look fairly cute. Granted we (Justin got a similar pair) put them through a 7 mile flat hike the first day, the result wasn’t too positive. The toe loop wouldn’t stay loose, bits of gravel kept getting stuck and the shoe ribbing was sanding my precious little body carriers raw. Ouch. I did take advantage of REI’s awesome return policy.

At that point I had exhausted all of REI‘s sandal offerings as well as Sports Basement, who offered pretty much the same options. So, after the sports stores, what was next? DSW! They actually have a surprising number of “sports” and “comfortable” shoes. There again, I tried everything on. The only pair that had somewhat a potential were the Teva Tirra, which I had tried at REI already and didn’t quite win me over. The second try at DSW had more positive aspects, but I read that Tevas sometimes fall apart when they get wet, which makes me nervous… uh yeah, I think I want to go rafting again sometime! I left DSW empty “footed”… mwah-ha-ha.

Gosh, when DSW has nothing to offer where do you go? I went to Macy’s. I remembered they had brands that were targeted to hard core travelers, so I thought hard core traveler = comfort + style + function. They indeed had quite a bit of options. The pair that came really close to winning were the Privo® Seabreeze sandals. The only thing that kept me from buying them is the fact that they didn’t have brown (only crazy blue) and that they were super duper sporty looking. I thought, no problem, I’ll look them up online and order them or something. Couldn’t get myself to do it.

No sandals found yet. I think my intention was to go back to Macy’s on a weeknight when there would be less tourists and give it another round. Saturday morning we went to the Farmer’s Market at the Ferry Building to get a few fruits and veggies. On our way back, we walked a stretch of Market Street that we normally pass. At some point on Market between Pine and Bush, there was a little shoe repair shop with some shoes inside. The shoes looked exactly the type that would carry the sandals I’m looking for. After some browsing and getting advice from the shop owner (one of those guys who has been in the shoe repair business for a long time, carrying the pride of being a cobbler) I found this pair:

They are Clarks Unstructured sandals made out of waterproof leather and a breathable sole. Yep, my feet chose them almost immediately. They are comfortable, sturdy, ultra-light, pretty cute and colorful. Sold! I was super happy to finally find the pair of sandals I’ll probably hang onto for a while in a small local store who cared about what they sold. I mean, the guy sprayed an extra waterproofing layer for free just because I mentioned they may be used around water. Pretty sweet, don’t you think?

I wore them for the first time today to walk to work. I’ll be honest and say that I did feel a couple of tender spots after two miles, but nothing that can’t be overcome by wearing them a couple more times. I love them. I’ll stick with them.