More On the Trip

Okay, continuing on the earlier thread.

Crazy Transformer sculpture in the middle of Rotterdam:

After Rotterdam, I also got to see The Hague (or, Den Hague as its known in the Netherlands). The best part of The Hague is that it is the seat of the government and a major tourist town. There's this incredible old building where the Dutch congress meets right next a street mall. You can see where the Queen sleeps, then go get Subway, all in a few minutes. Cracks me up to see that sort of thing. Makes me wonder if people could even fathon this 500 years ago when they were building these palaces.

I had all these great pictures from The Hague, and none of them turned out because of the weather (rainy, overcast). For whatever reason all the pictures came out with a blue tint.

Okay, quick trip to Nerefco, then it was off to France. We went to Nancy first for two nights. Nancy is the capital of the Alsace-Lorraine region and very pretty. It strikes me as being very much the heart of wine country, although I'm starting to think that all of France is the "heart of wine county." We traveled to Lucey, Bruley and a few other towns in search of a vineyard. Turns out, we were actually looking for a vineyard, and we should have been looking for a house. We found two different wine-tasting places that were very much held in someone's living room. So random! Good wine though, but we only brought back half a dozen bottles. Better memories of trying to pretend we understood French while these people were babbling to us about how their wine was made - or so we assume. Again, Blogger is doing weird things with my pictures, so I'll post those separately.

From Nancy, we were off to Lyon. I was not such a big fan of Lyon - mostly because we got lost each and everytime we drove in or around the city. But, it was close to the French Alps and since we were there to go hiking, I could forgive a city for being hopelessly confusing. So, every day we were there we drove out to the Alps for hiking. There were some truly incredible sights (and all of them on Ryan's camera), but the French need to learn how to label trails. In addition to being lost while we were driving, we got lost a whole bunch of times on every trail. There were no trail markers! Or, worse, if there were trail markers they would just sort of die out and we'd be lost again.

One really cool thing we got to see was this monastery that was built in 1050 and is still operating. We were hiking past as the bells rang out through the forest, it was eerie. If I think hard enough, I'm sure I'll remember the name of the monastery, but I'm drawing a blank at this point.

It was really good to get away for a while. Only two days at work, then it was vacation time again!

I'm going to skip over most of the Christmas update. It was fun to see the family and really good to get away.

Okay, New Year's. I generally make some sort of "resolution" around New Year's. This year, I had already accomplished the big one in December. I wanted to get rid of my caffeine addiction. This was actually a Diet Coke addiction, but I hate the way that sounds. So, I quit (mostly) cold-turkey. I cut out the Diet Coke cold-turkey, but the caffeine found its way into my diet by way of Chai. I'm slowly getting rid of that, but I figure Chai has to be better for you than pop.

My next big resolution is to learn how to build a bike. I'm working with Paul on that one soon. I have the frame picked out, the saddle is ordered, wheels are on order soon. I'm going to see what I can buy off of Paul before I purchase anything else. Anyone who does that much wrenching has to have pieces that they want to get rid of.

And the last resolution is to do a better job of keeping track of my workouts. Ryan got me a workout diary that has been a big help. I never realized how many daily hours are actually involved in 10+ hours/week in the gym. It also helps to keep me honest. So, for the first week of training I got in 9:10. Not too shabby. The breakdown looks like this . . .

Swim: 1:10/2 miles
Bike: 5:30/105 miles
Run: 1:00/7.25 miles
Strength: 1:00
Other: 0:30

Okay, random thoughts for the night. First off, at the pool there was the dad coaching his two kids and he was riding them like crazy! The kids were maybe 8 and 10 and he was making them do sprints on no rest interval, then yelling when they missed out. The 10 year-old was training with paddles (my pet peeve!), and being made to do excessive amounts of fly. The little girl couldn't get her backstroke technically correct, so dad made her stand on the deck while he yelled at her about the correct form. I wanted to scream! It was like soccer parents, only worse. Athletics are supposed to be fun when you're that young. The dad should have just been happy that his kids were out and moving. They probably aren't going to make the Olympics anyways, so why get them bummed out on the sport?!? Ugh.

I had my Michigan swim suit on in the pool, and this guy came up to me and said "go bucks." I smiled and said something about liking to see the Big 10 do well in post-season play. Then the guy starts making fun of me for going to Michigan. So I asked him where he went, and he said "Ohio." I HATE it when people do this. You can't pretend to have a rivalry with my school when you didn't go the school you're a fan of! Go ahead, be a fan, but shut up about beating Michigan. If you're going to rub it in you better have the degree on your wall! I swear, no fan from Ohio State actually went to the school. Okay, done with that rant.