Pic Spocket

My uncle Michel and his wife Hélène visited us for the weekend. We went to the 2008 North American International Auto Show in Detroit on Saturday (www.naias.com). The Detroit auto show is really something to see if you are passionate about cars. There is an incredible amount of concept cars and new model announcements during the show.

One of the highlight for me was the Audi R8 V12 TDI: a beast surprisingly powered by a 6.0L - 500 HP V12 turbo-diesel engine. The front end looks very mean, ready to swallow anything staying in its way!

Here are few more sample pictures from the show.

More pictures in the album below.

It’s confirmed: I am going to France next month for work. We have a new customer in the helicopter business that bought machines and training from us. It turns out that I am the best person to do this training in French within the company.

We are planning to stay there one week afterwards for vacation to visit Corinne’s family and perhaps pass a few days skiing in the French Alps!

I am sure I’ll have a few pictures to share upon our return…

The pictures for Maui are now up in the album. We really enjoyed our stay on the island for the diversity of things to do there. We liked the “Big Beach” not too far from our condo. One theme that followed us through our stay in Hawaii is turtles. I think we saw big sea turtles almost every day, popping their heads out of the water to breathe air.

On the left lobe of the island, we drove to Lahaina, where we could do some shopping. The sunset was very nice over there. The North East shore was also quite interesting with these fields filled with sacred stone piles.

During our 2 weeks trip, we only had one day of rain. We took this opportunity to visit the Maui Ocean Center, where we had a better chance to photograph the nice fish we saw when snorkeling. The underwater cameras we used when snorkeling just did not make any real good pictures. There was also a tunnel walkway in the aquarium: this was very cool.

The one day, we left our condo at 2h45AM to head for the Haleakala National Park to witness the sunrise at 3000m of altitude, above the clouds.

Despite a short night, we found enough energy for a relatively short hike in the park. The landscape was really out of the ordinary. It felt like a different planet.

Before the end of our trip, we took the road to Hana. This is an 84 km road with approximately 620 curves. There are 59 bridges with the majority of which are one lane only, requiring oncoming traffic to yield. Many say they get road sick during this trip, but we had no problems.

We stopped at Hookipa, renowned for world class windsurfing. Corinne also took a dip at a small natural waterfall at the end of a hiking path.

We actually went further than Hana, to the back side of the Haleakala National Park where we could see the 7 sacred pools, a series of small waterfalls flowing in the ocean below.

We really like our trip. Many more pictures in the complete album below.