Catch up

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Yikes! A million things have happened so I'll run with images instead of words this time. Some explanatory notes:

1) "Slowups": events where they close the roads so that thousands of cyclists can use them instead. The one we went to was just north of here and the course was 22km around a little lake. Just lovely. There were literally 20,000 cyclists, and about four walkers. We were two of the walkers, and we'd invited the other two. It was terrific fun...very pretty and we feel we got real value for money by walking. The entire event was free, which is even better value.

2) The Cow Cafe: Not only was the Slowup free, but the entire course was littered with food stalls and drink stalls and even one middleaged heavy rock band. Some of the food was pay-as-you-go, but a lot was handed-out-as-you-go. We got fistfuls of free muesli bars, free juice, free bananas, free helium balloons to help with the uphill parts, and eventually, we hit the Cow Cafe, which offered free (and terrific) coffees and glasses of milk. You sat at a sushi-train style conveyorbelt, except that there was no visible belt at all. The plates were propelled along the surface by invisible magnets! Well cool! You ordered using the touch screen, and your coffee came around the table...voila! While you waited you could play cow games or cow-mail your friend at the next door touch screen. They sold shirts saying "pLAIT boy" and there were cowhide bar stools with a giant cow on the roof. What an experience.

3) The hiking trip to the southern Alps: 3 days, 56 kilometres, more than 3000m of up (closely followed by more than 3000m of down)...it was wicked fun. We just carried day packs and spent each night at a hotel, usually with a 4-course meal (on the first night we were expecting something simple, like pizza, and instead received slow-cooked veal shanks served with salad, locally baked bread, and a house specialty gnocchi gratin. Hell-lo! Bon-jour!

4) Tour de France: By incredible fluke, we finished the hike in a town which shut down the next day to let the Tour de France go through. It was wicked fun, with low-flying helicoptors and a street parade that went past before the cyclists (and thus at the speed of the cyclists, which was apparently 90kph on some of the downhills!)...We found our position early: a view right up the street and around the corner, and we waited for hours in the shade of the doorway of a house belonging to the oldest woman in the world. She was most surprised to find us when she finally opened her door halfway through the parade :-) The parade was especially exciting because they threw free stuff at the speed of the parade (see above reference to 90kph). We had to fight some small children, but eventually we came away with:
1) stuffed marmot keyring
2) silver keyring
3) awful coin purse
4) packet of odd lollies
It was a great day. The bus we were sposed to catch was cancelled, so we missed the last train home and had to crash the night in a station-side hotel. None-the-less, I made it to work in time to publish that week's thrilling edition of iSGTW, just after 10AM. What an effort!

So, all in all a fun few weeks. We also had a visit from Sarah White of the Gourmet Adventurers, went to the Montreaux Jazz Festival (didn't hear a note of jazz but had a great day), and now I have a French lesson so have to cycle halfway across campus with wet shoes (got saturated coming to work this morning!!!)

Cheers to you all
xxx
C&D

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