After having affected my global level of energy and motivation, the continuous rain over the past week has gotten to my nerves lately. To be honest though, when I look at the latest news, I feel I can’t complain: many parts of New England are experiencing flooding and people are being evacuated from their homes. I suppose living on a hill has its advantages?

My current theory about all this rain, is that it is payback for all the snow we did not get over the winter. I am not sure how ski-resorts deal with this payback, nor if I should continue to claim that prefer snow over rain any day, but I guess Mother Nature is taking care of trees, plants and water tables for us so who cares about the ski-resorts? Maybe their mountain-biking season will be better?

I also have to be fair: I did manage to escape the rain yesterday by going to New York City! I left a pouring Boston at 6:30am on a Chinatown bus and arrived in a cloudy but dry New York some 4 hours later. Having been severely rained on between home and South Station, my legs were drenched from my knees down to my toes by the time I climbed on the bus and I had a really tough time staying warm. Would I have stayed dryer if I had left my bike at home and taken the T? Possibly, but I would almost certainly have missed that bus, so as usual, I don’t regret taking the bike. At any rate, I had some sleep to catch up on and managed to steal the only 3-seat row on the bus so the cold didn’t matter for long. I suppose the other 7 passengers were not awake - or tired - enough to notice that only row.

The Chinatown bus is amazing, no matter how the traffic is, it always seems to manage to travel the 200 and some miles under 4 hours! When I got to Chinatown by the Big Apple, I went for some hot chocolate (I was still cold), Chinese lotus pastry and an umbrella. Ridden of my bike, it seemed like I had forgotten a key item to staying dry for the rest of day. The entire day remained cloudy with maybe 5 minutes of patches of blue sky peeping through, but not a single raindrop. I firmly believe that the day would have turned out otherwise if I had omitted the umbrella purchase upon my arrival. I suppose I will find some future use to my 4th umbrella!

The day in New York was extremely nice: in addition to being a good escape to the rain, I got to hang out with my cousin, her boyfriend and his family. This is her first time in the US and we all got to tour around Soho, the financial district, eat at McDonald’s and take the round-trip ferry to Staten Island. When we got off the ferry, it seemed that everybody else had done the same as us: taken the ferry there, just to take it back and get a closer view of the Statue of Liberty and a further view of Manhattan!

We had dinner together at their place and food surely felt good! Time just flew and it was soon time for me to catch the Chinatown bus back to a rainy Boston. Did it even stop raining while I was gone?

Hello folks!

Thanks to all who rode with us last Sunday: you know who you are! To all who refused to come or found lame excuses, you can find out here and here what you missed out on!

Have you ever been to New York City? If so, have you ever dreamt of seeing a New York City void of cars? Well, then, the next 5 boro bike ride in 2007 may be your chance. This is the only event I know of for which they close down all traffic for over 5 hours so that cyclists can take over the road! Imagine the FDR Expressway, the Varrazano bridge and other bridges invaded by more than 20,000 cyclists? You can’t? You may just have to join the 5 Boro Bike Tour next year and pray for the weather we had this year. The weather was absolutely perfect and I suspect that is why they ran out of vests for participants a few days before the ride. Rumors had it that more than 34,000 cyclists registered last Sunday.

PS. A little note to all you crazy nuts out there: this is a bike RIDE, NOT a RACE so please respect other riders!

Here is a country I know probably more than my own for having traveled so many miles by bus on week-ends and tried so many youth-hostels… Every single week-end during 3 months, I went someplace new, on a shoe string budget, camera in hand. I had a blast and found that Spain is just unbelievably beautiful, but maybe you can check for yourself.

My favorite ones are here, in particular the ones of the Alhambra in Granada but they are all worth a look - in my opinion at least

Happy virtual traveling.

Howdy!

In case you were getting bored with the lack of updates lately, you will be glad to hear that I have FINALLY scanned a bunch of prints and uploaded them. These prints include pictures from Africa (Mauritania and Cameroon); Washington DC - admittedly a few from Virginia slipped in here - and New York City.

I am actually pretty proud of the New York City shots. If you look at them carefully, you can see that the skyline dates back to pre-2001. It’s a piece of history and nostalgia that is in no way meant to be disrespectful.
Up for an update and expansion soon are the shots from Spain, which will include additional cities and beauties of architecture and culture. Stay tuned!

Enjoy