moving piem

Decompression

We arrived with Xavier on a Sunday afternoon, just in time to join Valérie, a friend from Barcelona, at the main stage of the Hardly Strictly Bluegrass Festival, in the middle of the Golden Gate Park. After 3 months in the middle of United States, it was quite a change to dive into a crowd of hipsters and hippies.

For one week, I was lucky to stay at the wonderful Studio G, with Valérie, Lauren, Sue, Jef, Amy, Melisa, Kaleena, Derrick... Studio G and H are located in a massive warehouse next to Mission. For the past ten years or so, they have been arranged and re-arranged as two big communities of house mates.

After a busy week in San Francisco, it was time already for Xavier to take off for Los Angeles then Hawaii. We had spent almost three amazing weeks on the road together, and I hope we will soon meet again, somewhere in South America maybe... ... more

Tom and Dora

Dora was waiting for me outside Chicago's bus station. There is no word to explain how it feels to be awaited by a friend you haven't seen in ten years, in a city you have never been to. It has been ten years already that Dora was studying in Paris, but it felt like it was yesterday.

Dora and Tom hosted me for a good week in their beautiful - and huge - flat, in the middle of sunny Chicago. For ten days it was all about great food, fun, chill, party, music, and swimming pool. We had a go at digging the record crates, went cycling around the city, played disc golf... Awesome.

Dora is a great cook, and she prepared lots of good food: her delicious pulled pork and tons of home made delicacies. In town we found great food places, from Vietnamese pho to Ethiopian injera, Pakistanese Frontier Chicken, or New York style pizzas. ... more

Blue sky at Dia:Beacon

Today with Geetika and Vasanthi, we went to Dia:Beacon. It's a one hour ride by train, North of New York. We rode from East Village to Central Station by bike and skate, and took the Metro-North train. The train follows a beautiful track along the Hudson river, before stopping next to the little town of Beacon. From there we cycled and skated down to the art Centre.

Dia:Beacon is located in a beautiful old factory, and has a lot of exhibitions going on. I especially liked the ones from John Chamberlain, Sol LeWitt, and Richard Serra. It was really hot today, and enjoying the heat and the silence in the park next to the center.

On the way back, we followed the Hudson river for a good ten kilometers, cycling and skating, all the way down to Cold Sring, before hopping into the train back to the city.

Original Pierre Allain carabiner

Yesterday we went off to grab a tandem at the train station. They have these city bikes for rent by the council for quite cheap, and one of them is a tandem bike. We packed a few clothes and a lot of water and left in the evening to go the house of Romain, who leaves 60 km from Grenoble.

The cycle track along the Isère river is really nice, and it was quite magical to cycle it until after dusk, synchronised on the tandem. We then had to climb a few kilometers of road up until the house, and finished cycling at about 9pm, after a bit more than three hours.

Romain was waiting for us with in his beautiful house, with a nice meal. His kids were already in bed, and when we woke up in the morning, they had already left for school. He prepared some gear and we drove off to the start of the Via Corda of St-Julien-en-Vercors.