Adventure

Roads less traveled, new-ish spots, or at least getting to them new ways. A little hardship (temps, headwinds), some reward (bald eagle swooping by, hot mirco wave pizza sub). 7h of adventure, 7h not under fluorescent lights at 21C.

South Calgary

I had an early Easter dinner date, but got out for a few hours riding south of Calgary, went on a nice gravel township road connector I hadn't been on in quite a while. Saw a side tangent for future exploration, shade had it looking rather glaze snow and icy still.

Celtic Crossroads

Se started this weekend with a BD&P World Music concert at the Epcor center - Celtic Crossroads.  That kind of music is always quite uplifting and was fun way to kick off the weekend.  When the Irish left home, they brough music, beer and fun!

Dinner and fun

Tonight we did our client group dinner in NY. Gustavino's under the 59th street/Queensboro bridge. Cool spot. Bridge was built right when cars were invented, so they had to guess at future sizes and volumes of traffic, and as such it is impressively over engineered.  After, we start an email thread of where we're taking clients who still want to party. A guy says with conviction a particular bar... And as it happens, the 6 people I'm with end up there first. Rarely can I lead a peloton... but maybe here it works. Two couples, couple of us. For clarity this group strictly adheres to the middle aged oil and gas office people in suits look.

We get to the place, and the bouncers are all big brothers. We have a quick look and wonder if this is right - "I'm not really sure if this is our thing". Guy replies come on in and have a drink, and if it ain't yo thing, you can leave, but it's totally fine. Client guy says yeah let's go.

So we walk downstairs, it's jam packed with 400 homies in hip hop glory party, and us. I start a tab at the bar and get our group some drinks. Girl says "we only do the tab for you" implying I have to be the one coming back to order (this is great so it doesn't get abused) but I say "we've got clients so let anyone order". She says "ok, so who's on your tab". I kind of pause, point my thumb over my shoulder, and say "umm, the white people...".

The vodka sodas they poured for the ladies weren't inclusive of much soda... more the NY pour.

There's two girls at the bar next to me, they're nice. They ask "what up with you guys" - I just say we're down with clients from Canada and got recommended to come here. She loosens up my tie for me. There weren't a lot of ties... one was from Buffalo and asked if I'd been to Missisauga (yes, briefly, and Buffalo). Ice broken...

I email the rest (we have like 15 partners and 200 people in total here) and advise that this might not be the place to bring everyone... then fast forward an hour: my email never went out, as we're in a basement with no service. Another 50 show up. The wives start shaking booty (or what 40 year old white girls have anyway, which isn't really booty on the standard in this place) on the dance floor. Everyone warms up, great times had. I settle a pretty inexpensive tab. Everyone was nice. So funny overall.

The attached photo is from another place, which someone wanted to go to on last minute. Ingenuity trumped the giant lineup as someone contacted "their guy" in Vegas who contacted "their guy" here, so in turn it was walk up to the front door and in. It's like a boat - I don't need one (or one of these networks), I just want to know people that have them!

Financiers for dessert?

Odd menu item. I'm missing if there's a typo, a translation I'm missing, or if this is just humor that's beyond me.



Secondly, after 10,000 layoffs, UBS offices don't seem to hum late into the night.

Lincoln tunnel torture

I spent some time yesterday craving a bike, fresh air, and nature. After waking up at 4 to start a two flight journey to NY, we arrived. Almost.



We arrived in Newark, and did what we shouldn't have done: 3 of us got into the back of an overused, bordering on derelict taxi that needed the entire trunk, front seat, and 3 of us squeezed like sardines in the back to make it work.



That's tolerable... until we came to a halt at the Lincoln tunnel. It was so slow, the taxi driver would intermittently shut off the car. So we spent 70 minutes crawling through a tunnel, with busses and fumes and two tight lanes and noise of idling bouncing off tiled walls.



I felt gross after - no space to move, no quiet, no clean air, and no choice. I tried so hard to keep my mind in a zen place. One companion actually was near a claustrophobia phase.



Wide open nature to bike through - I will always love you.

Surf and Turf

When the lobster is 5.5lbs, the turf doesn't have much time on the palate. I've never seen a lobster like that before!