Wednesday, July 27, 2005

Looking Forward to Visiting Home

I was reading the news from my home town today and found one reason why my upcoming trip home will be a pleasant visit:

"About 400 new statutes passed by the 2005 Legislature go into effect Monday. Most notable is the smoking ban. It prohibits smoking in public areas and places of employment, with a few exceptions for bars, designated hotel rooms, private homes, rented party rooms, tobacco stores and a few other circumstances. Bars inside restaurants must be smoke free unless the bar is in a separately enclosed area."

Right underneath that story was a reason why it may be a scary place to visit… mosquitoes!!

"N.D. reports two human cases of West Nile virus. Twenty human West Nile cases were confirmed in the state last year, and the mosquito-borne virus was blamed for two deaths."

Monday, July 18, 2005

Cycling is an Adventure

Gary and I were off to Paris, TX this weekend for the Tour de Paris bike rally and we ended up having quite an adventure.

Our adventure began Friday afternoon with trying to find a place to stay in or near Paris. (It’s a 2-hour drive from Dallas). Gary was nice enough to call around. All the hotels in Paris were full, so we decided to check out campsites. Gary talked to the nice owner of an RV Park Campsite… asking her if she had any spaces for tents. She was nice enough to offer to “mow a spot” for us or to let us stay in the office which “has a futon and a refrigerator”. Gary very politely told her we’d keep looking. :-)

We ended up booking a spot at Cooper State Park. They said that they were only a quarter full so there was no need for a reservation. They also warned him that it was raining “like cats and dogs”. Once we finally found the road to the campsite and started down the extremely wet, muddy road (it had stopped raining by then), we quickly figured out why they were only a quarter full. No one could get there!! The road was getting worse and worse, so we decided to turn back. Of course, we got a little stuck trying to turn around and Gary got to push us out while I drove. Thankfully we made it back to pavement without too much trouble. (I think Gary was disappointed to find out the Jeep he was driving did not actually have 4 wheel drive to help us out of the situation). :-)

Unfortunately, with no way to get to the campsite, we decided to drive back to the closest town – Commerce. We were lucky enough to find a hotel there, although it was considerably more expensive than the campsite would have been.

The Tour de Paris was a good rally. We managed to start on time and not get any flat tires. Yay! There were lots of rest stops, which I really enjoyed. It’s nice to stop every 4-5 miles instead of every 10 miles. This one was 24 miles. The fire department was nice enough to open up their showers to the public after the rally, so that was a bit of an adventure too. Overall, it was a fun rally. I know I saw a photographer take our picture this time, so I’ll look for that and post if I find it. (Yes, I was actually riding my bike this time).

Friday, July 01, 2005

Tour d'Italy Photo


Tour d'Italy
Originally uploaded by rkbk03.

I just found this photo online. Apparently there was a photographer at the Tour d'Italy and he was nice enough to take a photo of me *walking* up a hill (not my shining moment). :-)