My family and I arrived in Montpellier, France last Thursday evening by train from Paris after flying in from Detroit and Denver. Everything went pretty much as planned and we arrived at Montpellier's Gare Saint-Roch on time. We're here to hang out with friends on vacation and are staying in a rental house at our old tram stop.

The green door is open!

The first thing I did Friday morning was put on my running shoes and run through Parc Méric to the gate at the Réserve Naturelle de Lunaret. In 2016 the gate was closed from July until early October, but it's open now. I've done two runs on the singletrack between the Zoo and the Lez River already!

Our friends are doing well here and we're enjoying long lunches with them. My French is a little rusty, but I'm getting up to speed pretty quickly. The only bad experience so far is that I'm missing a canoe trip on the Hérault River because of gastroenteritis. A virus, I guess, because Ruth and Arabelle had the same symptoms last week. I hope I won't be out of action for too long – I didn't come all the way here to fast and nap. If you're really into photos of croissants and bottles of wine, you can find them on my Instagram.

On my way home from Gould yesterday morning, I pulled off of CO-14 at the Zimmerman Lake parking lot, changed into running gear, and trotted west up to the Medicine Bow Range's Montgomery Pass. I hit the trail just after 7:00 a.m.

Montgomery Pass trail below treeline.

I've been up this trail 20 times or more, but mostly in the snow, and very rarely in the last decade. I can't remember ever going up alone or trying to run it. I made it to the Montgomery Pass signpost in just under 35 minutes. I ran some stretches, but mostly hiked it. The trail grade averages just over 10%.

Looking south to the Diamond Peaks, Nokhu Crags, and Rocky Mountain National Park.

On the ridge at the south end of the Medicine Bow Range it is easy cruising. The third high point (3524 meters or 11,560 feet above sea level) north of Montgomery Pass has a solar-powered antenna installation and nice views of North Park, the higher Medicine Bow peaks, the Mummy Range, and the Never Summer Range.

Pseudo-black-and-white photo from the radio tower.

Near the end of my run, I started to see hikers heading up the trail. One of them was a backcountry skiing buddy from twenty years ago who I rarely bump into in Fort Collins. On the drive home, I thought a lot about how much I've changed in that time, and how these mountains remaining so compelling to many of us.

I was back at my car in an hour and 45 minutes, not a long excursion at all, but felt energized from it all day long today. I really need to find the time to get on some more summits again this summer.

From Rasterio's new discussion group/email list, here's the 1.0.0 announcement.

Hi, all.

We, the authors of Rasterio, are pleased to announce the release of Rasterio 1.0.0.

What is the significance of 1.0.0? Stability. After more than a year of changes, there is at last a stable base for applications. You can pin rasterio ~= 1.0 in your project’s requirements and enjoy nothing but bug fixes for as long as the project supplies them.

On my family's hut-to-hut trip in the Alpes a year ago we went from soggy and cold condtions – here are my kids drinking tea and eating blackberry tarts at the Refuge Alfred Wills to deal with the inclement weather on July 2 –

to bright, sunny, and warm conditions on July 3.

We even got peeks at Mont Blanc through the clouds from the Col d'Anterne.

So much fun. We'll remember this trip forever.

Rasterio 1.0 release candidates two and three are out, the latter is on PyPI today: https://pypi.org/project/rasterio/1.0rc3/.

The project also has brand-new, old-fashioned users and developers discussion groups. Please subscribe to one or both of these if you'd like to receive announcements, help your fellow Rasterio users, or contribute to the further development of the package. Thanks!

A year ago my oldest kid finished 6th grade at Collège Jeu de Mail in Montpellier, France and I went to the pâtisserie Palais Saint Lazare for a dark chocolate and white chocolate and red fruit cake to celebrate the occasion. It's a great bakery that I discovered almost too late in our séjour and I remember the cake being perfectly delicious.

Graduation from 6ème!

A post shared by Sean Gillies (@sean.gillies) on Jun 27, 2017 at 10:51am PDT

In the U.S. kids are assigned to school classes based on how their birth date compares to the start of the school year. In August of 2016 my daughter would have entered 5th grade in the U.S. because her 11th birthday falls before the end of the school year, and she would have been one of the oldest kids in her class. In France, however, kids born in 2005 were entering 6th grade and she would be one of the youngest kids in her class. In a scrappy school serving less-privileged Montpellerians, with no other Anglophone kids around.

From 4th grade straight to 6th, in a city she barely remembered, and in a second language. It was a huge challenge and she rocked it. Her courage inspires me all the time.

The first 1.0 release candidate is on PyPI now: https://pypi.org/project/rasterio/1.0rc1/. I've scheduled another for Friday, which will remove a deprecated module and deprecated methods of dataset classes. I feel great about reaching this goal. I hope you'll give the release candidate a try!

We will not be having an extended release candidate phase. A final 1.0 release could come as soon as next week. Until then, I expect to be mostly busy with documentation, blog post and announcement drafting, and project wrap-up.