The French Connection: views over Silicon Valley

I often wonder who reads my blog. Recently I started using StatCounter and found out that many of you stop by, from all over the world, without leaving a comment. Anonymously. Which is the beauty of the asynchronous and open model of the world wide web.

Last week I was exchanging some emails with Phil, the editor of UltraFondus, a wonderful magazine on ultra running, in French. And Phil introduced me to one of his friends, Vincent Toumazou, who was trying to reach me to see if we could meet this weekend. Vincent was coming again in California to attend the AGU Fall meeting, which has been hold for 40 years in San Francisco and gathering 15,000 geophysicists from around the globe! I saw quite a few of them on the plane on my way back from Europe last Saturday. Reading and annotating scientific publications, preparing slides, quite an unusual studious ambiance on a flight to Silicon Valley. Per their website: "AGU is a worldwide scientific community that advances, through unselfish cooperation in research, the understanding of Earth and space for the benefit of humanity." Right on for my interest in sustainability!

As a matter of fact, I had read Vincent's account of the Cannonball ultra race a few days before we connected. And Vincent knew everything about my 2007 season from my blog. Vincent has his own website too but composed of static pages, not a blog, so more maintenance work to keep it up to date. The usual saying is "small world" but I prefer the expression "connected world" to describe these coincidences and unforeseen connections.

We were both flying from France to San Francisco on Saturday (December 8), although on two different itineraries. I emailed Vincent instructions to get on the train, picked him up at the Mountain View station on Sunday morning and 2o' later we were set to go for a run in Rancho San Antonio Park.
We decided to take it easy as Vincent was still recovering from a 24-hour event (where he ran 200 km!), and I am recovering from last week's Saintélyon, and officially in an inter-season break (shh!). Well, looking for some sun and heat in this clear and cool morning, we ended up at the top of Black Mountain, while talking all the way (something I'm not used to) and stopping for some stunning views over the Bay. Up North to San Francisco (see below, over the Palo Alto and Standfor hills), Mount Tamalpais and beyond.
Mount Diablo and Hamilton on the East side, and the Pacific Ocean on the West side.
I rarely saw that far in every directions, Vincent is quite lucky.

We climbed to Black Mountain via Chamise Trail, through Rogue Valley. On the way back we used the shortcut getting us back on the Upper Meadow trail, then the Wildcat Loop down to the Farm and the parking lot (see the map). For a total of 14.8 miles (~24 km), 2,500 vertical feet (~760 m) and amazing views, perfect for this guided tour of trail running in Silicon Valley.
Shower and lunch at home, captivating discussions about our passions and projects, and it was time for Vincent to head up North to meet with his colleagues at the AGU symposium in San Francisco.

Let me know if you are interested for such a tour when visiting the Bay Area!

Au revoir!