Bonjour, its a nice to day to be OOTside

Through every possible form of transportation, I finally made it across international borders to Vancouver on Thursday night. I flew into Seattle and met up with old school great bud Anders for a little hippie veggie cafe action. It was f-word GREAT to see you. She is an old friend from the boulderland with whom I enjoyed much snow and laughingtimes with back in the day. We hadn't seen each other in almost 10 years. She's a mom now and is totally into it. Kind of crazy because I never pegged her for that. But what do I know about that sort of thing. She is one of my faves and is a one-of-a-kind goofball. She kept telling me that I looked so much older but somehow she tried to explain it was a compliment. I suppose a person does do a lot of growing up from age 24-34. I think in my case I've probably just spent too much time in the sun.

After a kitchen sink cookie and a doppio espresso, I hit the road to drive up to Vancouver. After making 50 million wrong turns in the trendy but confusing Seattle neighborhood, I finally found the highway. I started fading fast with about 100 miles to go. Not good. Found a DMD (diet mountain dew--the nuke-ular option if you will) and was able to make it to Mel and Seth's place in Vancouver. I passed out in one of the most comfortable beds I've ever slept in--thanks easter bunny! Thursday morning, Seth made us coffee and then Mel and I got to hang out for a while. It was super super great to catch up with her in her SICK pad. Mel is one of my closest gf's and it sucks that she lives far away now. We walked to a local market where I had a succession of heart attacks at how expensive everything was. Did it in any way shape my purchase choices? Hell no.

I finally got my bike put together in the afternoon and headed out for a spin. I'm TOTALLY inspired by how awesome it is to non-vehicularly ambulate around Vancouver. It is a FULL ON city but there are bike lanes, bike paths and custom bike light-changer-buttons everywhere. It is so awesome.

Everyone rides bikes here--even the homeless. I saw a dude riding a bike and pushing his grocery cart full of stuff all at the same time. There are funny dynamics happening too. On today's spin, a girl sprinted by me at an intersection I had slowed down for. She jack-hammered ahead of me till I rolled up to her at a light. Just as I rolled up to her, another (presumably homeless guy) got the hole shot as the light changed and he was really able to hold onto his position with the 2 large trash bags of glass bottles he was carrying in both hands. There was an island to cross in the middle of the street so he was really able to gutter this girl in between his large bag of bottles and the curb. She had to slam on her breaks and as we all made it across the intersection, she really had to give'er (b/c that's what they do here) to chase this guy down. It was awesome. I had to give the guy some props as I passed him. He didn't hear me though because he was wearing a walkman.

The Tour de Delta prologue is tonight. I have no idea to what expect this weekend. I have not been feeling too great lately for some reason--so I'm not having amazing expectations for myself. And I know negativity breeds bad outcomes--I'm just sayin. I've been feeling pretty good lately so if I may be entering into a little slump--well, we'll just have to deal with that. You're never as good as your best day or as bad as your worst day after all. I'm actually most nervous about being able to get my car out of the maximum security prison that is Mel's parking garage. My second most nervous thing is not getting lost and being stuck in heinous traffic. Oh and how the hell do I race a 5k prologue? It should be interesting.