New Bike

Good news mom, I'm selling my SV650 motorcycle.




And I bought a different bike


It's a Suzuki V-Strom. For a while now, I've been wanting to give my SV a more upright position because I've had problems with my hands falling asleep because of the laid out riding position. Earlier this year I even bought some parts to convert the handlebars into something that would be more upright, but I haven't installed them yet. The V-Strom is more upright, and it also gives me the flexibility to ride on the dirt roads around here. It's the touring version of my SV.

I bought it in Lyons on Friday night and drove it up. Already I love it. I can't wait to take some trips on it. It came with a couple huge side cases too, so I'm ready to go for some touring.

The Daily Show

Sometimes The Daily Show makes my day. They love to play video clips that show someone contradicting themselves and the other night they had some great ones. I imagine the clip will be pulled from YouTube eventually, but you can also go watch it on Comedy Central's site. (On Comedy Central, the clip is labeled "Sarah Palin Gender Card".) Check out the second segment of the 9/3 show and watch Karl Rove and Bill O'Reilly look like dopes. I'd like to see those clips in their full context, but it's still pretty damn funny.


(The second segment of the 9/4 show is pretty good too, where Samantha B tries to get people at the RNC to say "choice".)

I need recipes

I need some recipe help.

Our zucchini plant has slowed down, but I still have plenty of it left. So far I've fried it, grilled it, and put it in pesto pasta dish. I've tried a couple zucchini bread recipes, but neither have been too stellar. I'm also thinking I could maybe make a veggie lasagna and possibly use slices of squash instead of noodles.

Next up is beef. We still have a lot of beef left from our cow, and I'm just not sure what I want to do with the remaining cuts. I'm looking for your favorite (hopefully easy) recipes for the following:

• cube steaks


• heel of round roast


• chuck roast


• soup bones


• stew meat

Misc Paris pictures

These are the Velib bikes that are all around Paris. It's a pretty cool system. There are bike stations about every 300 meters throughout the city where you can rent one of these bikes. When you're done, you drop it off at any location. I really wanted to try it out, but the system won't work with American credit cards. (The French hate our freedom too I guess.) French cards, and most European cards have a special chip that hardly any US cards have. I need to work on getting an EMV chipped card for my next Paris trip.




Pain au Chocolat from the local bakery. That place made some tasty stuff.


Oink, oink. More gelato.


Row row row your boat...


Christines first outdoor bike ride in a long time.

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Versailles

Christine and I spent Sunday afternoon at Versailles. We decided to skip the crowds of the palace and instead went straight to the gardens. Some day we'll go to the palace, hopefully on a weekday. (By the way, the fountains, which Rick Steves called a "spectacle", were underwhelming.)

The gardens are nice but they were blairing classical music. Strange and annoying. We found the public park on the other side to be much more appealing.

We rented a rowboat and paddled around The Grand Canal. Before we left Paris we bought some bread, cheese, and cherry tomatoes from an great huge market near the apartment. We enjoyed a nice little picnic on the water while we took turns rowing around. After we got off the water, we rented cruiser bikes and rode around the park. It was great. Christine hadn't been on a bike outside in a really long time. Riding around the park beats the he'll out of doing PT inside on a stationary trainer.

After dinner we had beers, mussels and frites at Au Trappiste with Livia. We ate "light" then went to Le Sarrasin et le Froment Creperie for crêpes. Then Christine and Livia had gelato and I later stopped for another crêpe. Yeah, we pigged out. :) I'm going to have to do some serious road miles this week.

Back to The States

Christine took the morning off from work to ride with me to the airport and we arrived at the British Air counter to find out that my flight had been cancelled. I'm really glad Christine is with me for moments like these so I don't have to struggle with the language barrier. Christine's French has gotten really good.

BA booked me on an Air France flight to London where I would connect with my original flight to Denver. The new flight left an hour later but I still has lots of time to make my connection.

With my rebooking came the status to go to the Air France lounge. Pretty nice. Free food and drink while I waited for my flight. I snagged some cookies for later.

I went to the gate 10 minutes before the boarding time and everything appeared to be on schedule. But in my experience with the French, they're not known for punctuality and our wheels left the tarmac almost an hour late.

Suddenly my connection cushion time was rapidly shrinking. By the time we got to the gate in Heathrow I had about an hour to get to through the passport check, to another terminal (via bus), to the BA counter to check in, through security and to my gate. There was some running and some luck, and I made it in about 40 minutes. I thought for sure I was going to have to get a new flight.

Now I'm typing away on my iPhone over the Atlantic wondering if my luggage made it too. There's nothing too important in there so I really don't care.