justintime

Today is a very important day here in Arkansas. The Razorbacks team plays his first game of the season in Little Rock against Chattanooga, TN (tiens tiens un air de déjà entendu quelque part). American football is the most popular sport here in Arkansas and maybe in USA. Razorback only plays four games in Little Rock, so each time they are playing here it's like a huge event. Everything starts after noon a lot of american bring they truck on the golf fields around the stadium and start a huge barbecue.

fabian

Then around 4pm, everybody go to the stadium and the show starts with fanfare cheerleader (=majorette), and of course the national hymn before the beginning of the game. After one or two "God bless America", the game lastly starts. It's a very uncontinous sport, action are very very short, and every two minutes you have 4 minutes of break to allow people to buy news food or soda. The week before I've the Razorbacks on TV, it was quite interresting. But here in the stadium, usually you just see nothing, you never know where is the ball (because players always try to hide what they want to do), futhermore the actions often look the same. Except two or three good actions with a very touch down for Arkansas, the game was a bit boring and worse is that the game lasts very long time, almost 4hours. At the last quarter everybody knew that Razorbacks will win, so they all start to leave the Stadium an hour before the end. Here some pictures:

Horseshoe canyon is a ranch in North West of Arkansas, 3 driving hours for from Little Rock. the 24 hours is a yearly event, the goal is very simple climbing during 24 hours non stop with at least one route each hour (and all the routes have to be lead climbing (= grimper en tête)). Everything starts on Friday afternoon, just after work we are all leaving Little Rock to Horseshoe. The night has already fallen when we arrived just the time to set up the tent, eat and fall asleep to save as much energy as possible. Saturday 10am, beginning of the race from now on by team of two we will have to climb during 24 hours without no rest. We have two teams the first one is Jérome and Micka (an american guy from the Climbing center) and the second one called the "just in time" with Guillaume and me. We were the last registered for the contest. Then Cynthia was also here as a volunteer.



We decided to start slowly with some easy routes 5.7 5.8, like everybody, the first 3 hours were pretty busy and we were waiting around twenty minutes before each route. After 3 hours serious started with a very nice edge 5.10a. Around 4pm (only 6 hours), we crossed the valley to go the west side. 6pm I failed for the first time on a route a 5.10a. After several try  I decided to renounce because my hands were blooding and we still had 14 hours to do. At that time Micka, Next 3 hours I have just climb easy route while the other were working on tougher routes. Micka and Jérome manage to pass a 5.11a. Then with the night I started to feel better, not tired at all (but the redbull helps a lot) and climbing with a headlamp is actually fun. The beginning of the night was hard for Guillaume because of some cramps. After midnight, we both felt better and better to reach our best level at 5am with a very nice 5.10b. Then at the sunrise I got tired on a 5.9+ where I failed with a big fall over 8 meters. All the morning till 10pm was a kind of hell, I didn't feel my arms and my hands anymore. I only managed to get one route an hour. At the end Guillaume reach a total of 36 routes and me 30. It's time to take a rest now boys ....


                                  Micka on the 5.11a                                                          Guillaume looking at a 5.10a

Thursday
That's it, the second time is the good one, I have taken my Friday off and I am ready to go to Nashville to see my friend Mathieu for a 3 days weekend. Thursday 3.5 pm, it's time to leave work and take the freeway direction Nashville. 350 miles and 7 hours of roadtrip with my dogde intrepid. Half way Memphis, welcome in Tennessee and a wonderful view when you cross the bridge under the Mississippi (Sorry I didn't have time to take a picture). 11pm arrival in Nashville, a fisherman (Mathieu nickname) on a bike crossing the road, "Hep Mathieu what's going on !!". Then a great meal and a little beer in Nashville downtown, the best way to finish the day.

Friday
Visit of Vanderbilt University where my friend is doing a research internship. It's one of the most famous here in America and also one of the most expensive (smth like 35000$ a year). Here even poor students are rich.

 

"The Brain is wider than the sky" ...

Then visit of Nashville downtown, 

        
                         Batman tower                                                                   Tennessee Sky

Mathieu and I

And to finish concert in the university following by a brotherhood party. Here students (not all of them but the richest) live in group. Each group live in a quite big house, they call it brotherhood (=confréries). And during the weekend they make big open party in their brotherhood with lots of non-alcohol beers (I have tried it for you, that's really disgusting), rock or rap live concerts and they are all playing bad boys. I didn't really enjoy it.

 

brotherhood house

 
Saturday, the fateful day

After a lazy morning, we decided to go to Chattanooga, a city on the border between Tennessee and Georgia. 120 miles away from Nashville, we reached Rockcity after 2 hours of driving. It's a rocky cliff called Lover's Leap because the legend tells us that a long time ago two young indians falled in a truly and strong love. But they belonged to two different tribes so, because their love was impossible, they both decided to commit suicide by jumping from the top of this cliff. Anyway, the place is stil pretty nice and from that point you can see 7 different states (Tennessee, Alabama, Georgia, South Carolina, North Carolina, Kentucky and Virginia).


           Rock City (Chattanooga in the background)                                       The Seven States View

In the way back to Nashville, my engine started to make a weird noise with the "check engine" light blinking. I told Mathieu, it's maybe better to take the next exit to have a look to the engine. One mile further the noise was horrible and the car was going very slow, hopefully it was the exit. We finally managed to reach a Walmart garage (only for tires) with difficulty (the engine shuted down several times). The walmart guy called several garage owners, only one accepted to tow the car at this time (Saturday evening) and promised to have look at the engine on Sunday morning. Then at the gas station, we found a guy who agreed to bring us back to Nashville. He was a nice guy, a judge who was going back to Colorado and what's funny that's forbidden here to hitch a ride. Arrived in Nashville, we offered him the restaurant. 


Sunday

I called the garage owner, who has a very strong southern accent, and he answered me "I am closed today I cannot have a look at your car" before hanging up .... ok ... So I called my boss to warn him I will miss some days of work. The good point of this situation (because in every situation there are always positive things), we went to a pub to listen The group. Since the begining Mathieu was always talking about the Jypsi a local music band (Nashville is very famous for the music it's known as the Music City) and on Sunday evening we went to a pub to see them, it was really great a mix of jazz, swing, rock and country music. Here is a sample of what they were playing :

 

 

Monday Tuesday

Monday morning 8am my cellphone rang, it's the garage owner who is calling for actually saying nothing except that I can call him back on the afternoon he will be able to give a price for fixing the car. Monday afternoon : 
" I am sorry but I can't give you a price because I need to call a guy to know how much cost the price of the part to change call me back tomorrow." "- but I need to come back in Little Rock so I really ... bip bip bip ..." ok cool ... thank you for hanging up ... (no comment). So one more day in Nashville here is the house where mathieu was living :

He had two laid-back roommates. They were very cool and incredibly messy. It was really funny to live there a couple of days.














Tuesday morning 8am phone call, the garage owner again just to say the same thing than the previous day. So I told him I will come to the garage on the afternoon to find a solution to this issue, he agreed before hanging up (it might be his way to say good bye). So I rent a car to go back to Little Rock (first bad surprise rent a car for a one way is ridiculously expensive). then direction Chattanooga again one hundred miles later I am in front of the garage but nobody is there, so I called the guy who told me "I am at home I have finished my day work I won't come back" ... at that time I started to feel very crazy and I suddenly a desire of murder. after calling him 10 times, he send me his employee (a poor 82 year old guy who was working like a slave for his employer for almost nothing), he tried to call his boss but wasn't more successful than I was the boss hanging up the phone each you try to discuss with. Then two policemen came (I think it was the garage owner who asked then to come). I explained then the situation and they were very sorry but they told me that they could do nothing to help me. In parallel I called in Falcon Jet to know if some americans knew what to do in this kind of situation. So I left the garage totally disappointed and start the road back to arkansas 450 miles and 7 hours of driving to finally arrive at 1am in Little Rock.

The site
As you may know, I working here in Dassault FalconJet (DFJ), this company builds private jet planes for businessman or very rich people. Here in Little Rock, the company is in charge of the completion of the aircraft that's mean the design, the construction and the installation of each cabinets in the aircraft. When the aircraft leaves Little Rock it is ready to be delivered to the custumer. This is the good point of this site, you can see all the planes finished and you can also go inside to have a look and work (officially).

Laurent and I (oui oui la choucroute sur la tête est obligatoire pour monter dans l'avion ...)

The team
Actually I don't spend that much time in the aircraft. Most of the time i am in my office, a room with two other french guys Fabian a VIE and Guillaume (alias Guitou) a trainee like me and two american guys Warren and Randy. They are both very friendly guys and there is usually a very good mood in our cupboard (we use to call our office like this because the door is always closed and the only windows we've got gives onto a wall : we cannot see the light of the day). We often have fun together (especially the two americans who love making fun of Fabian, and he never understands because he doesn't speak a very good english). We also bring food from time to time like very spicy salsa (they love it here), crepes or donets.

 

Process&Support Team
From left to right : Guillaume (Trainee), Alexandre (expat), Fabian (VIE), myself, Laurent (Trainee), Randy (DFJ employee) 

 

 My work
To make it simple, I have basically two main occupations. First I am in charge of the S3D generation tool (tool which generates a 3D model of all the cabinets by aircraft), that's mean I have to choose which aircraft to launch and to find why there are some issues sometimes, that's the interresting part of my job. The other one is more boring, but it's the main one, I have to check the install part of all the CATProducts (3D model of the cabinet) and then send it to the production when they are conform. The main drawback of DFJ is due to the number of french people, half of engeeniring is composed by French or Canadian people and the other half by American (and also some Indian people). Personnally, 80% of the persons I am working with are french.

For the last weekend of Laurent in Arkansas, Warren (an american who works with us) and his wife invited all of us (Laurent of course, Guillaume, Jérome and Fabian a new VIE arrived just one week after me) on their boat to do some wakeboard and kneeboard. We have spent a wonderful weekend on the lake Hamilton. Here is the boat of Warren :

 

I have tried wakeboard for the first time of my life, it was pretty tough at the beginning (the first day I didn't manage to go out of water). Then on sunday it was much better, and wakeboarding on the morning smooth water is something magic.

 

Stop talking some picture of this weekend :