Aaaaaaaaaaarg!

Atlanta - Paris roundtrip in August for $1400! You must be kidding me!!! They mix kerosene with gold now or what?

A new licence plate

Who thought that one day I would have my car registered in Georgia? Certainly not me... Tonight I finally unscrewed my Michigan plate which now sits next to my Oregon one. I wonder what the next State is going to be... Getting your car registered in a new State is a real pain and is freaking expensive. The first step consists in getting a new driving licence, then taking your car to emission testing (which basically consists in downloading data from your car on-board computer (really cool!) and yes, I harassed the guy with tons of questions...) and finally you have to spend a significant amount of time at the DMV (being very patient - you can feel my pain). And if you don't want to experience traffic in downtown Atlanta (next to the Underground and Georgia State University) I highly recommend you avoid the DMV facing the Courthouse... So to conclude, I'm glad this is done. And no I don't have "Frenchy" printed on my plate. I thought about it but I was told it's not a good idea...

Understanding the French Election

I have been reading quite a bit about the coming elections in France and I recently came across this blog "The French Election from an American Perspective" which I found to be pretty fair and complete. Politics is a huge deal in France and we get very passionnate when it comes to this topic. If you want to understand and follow what's going on over there, I suggest you read the blog mentioned above.

Mr Spreadsheet ;)

I drove a lot of people around but I never had a guy computing my speed profile for 5 hours!!!! You should see the spreasheet Cyril came up with... So here the speed profile from Sugar Mountain, NC to Atlanta, GA: the first 80 miles were roads with a speed limit of 45-55mph. Then you have about 200 miles on the I-85 where the speed limit is 60-65mph in South Carolina and reaches 70mph once you enter Georgia. The average speed with and without stops was 56mph and 64mph respectively.


So to conclude, there is some good snowboarding (assuming it's cold enough) 5 hours away from home (and I need a radar detector and a GPS)...

There is cold and coooooooooold!!!

Here are the very first pics of the week-end. We had an awesome time and the snow, even fake, was good. We have some great videos (thank you Cyril) but you'll have to wait a bit : bed time here ;)

with my Afghan refugee and his Colgate smile

on MY board (no renting anymore, youhooo!!!)

at the top (5700 ft or so)

Welcome in redneck country! Please leave your gun outside the ski/snowboard rental area...

Another week-end, another state

Leaving Friday after my Propulsion class for some snowboarding in North Carolina. Time to see what the mountains there (and the fake snow) have to offer.
Featuring Livia, Cyril and Danny.

Week-end in frozen Alabama with Robbie

Since I know that I have some ISU readers (Hi Norway, Germany, Netherlands and India!) I thought you would like to see some pics of Rob wearing something else than a spacesuit. The guy is doing great. He is covered with NASA badges (which makes it a lot easier to enter the Space Museum for free), still has telecons on sunday mornings and wears his St Louis Cardinals cap with the stickers still on it!
We took off Saturday afternoon for the Jack Daniel's Distillery in Lynchburg, TN, which is the America's oldest registered distillery. Hassan, you would have loved that place!

We learnt about the whole process of making great wiskey and we each bought a bottle of their Gold Medal series ('54 and '81) which we tried right away in our coffee.

We then went for some elbow lifting exercise in Huntsville, AL. They have some amazing redneck places over there ;) We started with a Jazz bar, then we moved on to the most redneck place I've ever been and eventually ended up in a small bar with a very cool band playing old rock songs. For information, Robbie had his shoes on all night ;)

Waking-up sunday morning was a bit tough... We spent sunday afternoon at the Space Museum, playing with big toys and landing space shuttles and finally went back to the hotel to watch the Super Bowl with one of Rob's colleague.

(That one is for you Rocky!)

Watching the Super Bowl basically consists in watching 3 hours of commercials interrupted by some Amercian Football. To be honest I think I crashed some time during the 2nd quarter and woke up in the middle of the third one. Robbie was asleep by the end of the third one...

Me watching American Football (that pic is worth millions!!!)

I then drove back the 250 miles between Huntsville and Atlanta, holding my coffe mug the all time, and made it to Atlanta by 2:30 am that morning. I don't know for Rob but I really had a great time ;) I'll post pics as soon as Rob send me his.