Friday, August 7, 2009

The Farm Report

But perhaps not the one you're used to.

In local news, the farmers around here are just now taking in their second crop of hay, and with a number of them already making a cut in the last week of July, it's a given that they'll get three crops this season. No wonder they have so many cows.

Throughout the countryside in France, as we were on our way from Bonn to Paris, this was the recurring theme....Anywhere there was a cloud of dust, grain was being harvested.
Seems there's a need for some bread to go with that wine and cheese....

I caught this activity since we had to briefly stop so Gabe could be on a conference call. It's typically best to be stationary for these things, since signals can come and go when underway.

It was a good chance for me to get out and stretch my legs anyway, since it's just under five hours to get to Paris from Bonn.

See, this is now a perfect segue back to the travelogue.

And here you actually thought this was a real "Farm Report"?
I ain't gonna be takin' no hogs to market any time soon, so not too concerned about their price.
At least not right now.

That reminds me. I forgot to pick up bacon this morning. Ru-roh.



In a nutshell, our visit to Paris once again consisted of eating..
seeing the sights....
and generally walking our feet off....

That last one is from the top of the Arc de Triomphe. Even though I lived in Paris for three months in the fall of 1978, I never ever did get to the top of the Arc. Just one of those things I guess, and so now, with this being the fourth trip back in what? 31 years? I decided it was about time.
I lost track of the number of steps after around the hundred mark...(shoulda done it 31 years ago)
My ticker didn't give out, nor did my knees, but it did get a little dicey there towards the end of the assent.

Now that I think on it, I never did see anyone up there who was carrying any extra pounds....
....but we'd best not go there. Yesterday's diatribe was as controversial as I'd like to get for a little while.
It was a little toasty up there, but certainly worth the climb for the view.


This other arc....which is the
"Grande Arche de la Défense" ,has unfortunately been outgrown by the surrounding "gratte-ciels" (sky scrapers).
It would seem that the rules that had dictated the architecture around Paris for let's say, the last 400 years? ended up going out the window when the planners got to the 'burbs.

This little poignant snippet becomes a relative aspect of the visit when travelling with an Architect.

Personally, I probably would have never noticed. Also, he knew enough to not clog up my pea brain with each and every detail of all the buildings we stopped to gawk at.

I'll not bore you with gobs of pics from around Paris. You can go to facebook for that. Providing of course there's not another outage again today. Somebody in the former USSR? We'll see if they can track anyone down.

Meanwhile our guests are headed back to the Netherlands and should be on our doorstep once again some time this evening.
What this means is, I need to pedal my arse into Hengelo to pick up a birthday present.

Best put me hat on. Don't need a repeat of a couple weeks ago.






................................/..................a little later....



Rather than do a new post, and have it screw up the order, I'm just going to add a
couple things.
Instead of coming straight back from Hengelo, I took a slight detour to do a little exploring.
By the way, this is what happens when work is being done to a bike path around here. I can't think of any other place where they'd bother to give you a hard detour like this...
In most places in Canada, not only would you be "on yer own", but they wouldn't even bother to put up a sign to let you know.

I didn't actually take that one today, since today it's quite warm and sunny. Which would bring me to a second observation:

After spending roughly an hour and a half on the bike, and coming in the door slightly sweaty, I discovered that I've shed the five pounds or so that had been creeping up on me over the last couple weeks. Just like that. An hour and a half of "spinning class" will do that for you.

If there's too much sitting in the car, and all that extra beer when there's company, I'm in trouble.

I'm just saying.



As I mentioned earlier, the hay is indeed getting scooped up.


...and under the category of things you see that makes you say, "wuh?", I've noticed this little display many, many times, but today was passing by with a camera.
This place does not look like it sells McCain french fries.



and yes.....this is on Bornsestraat in Hengelo. No photoshopping here folks.

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Well, I've been getting too many spam comments showing up. Just a drag, so we'll go another route and hope that helps. So, we won't be hearing anything more from Mr. Nony Moose.
I guess I'll just have to do without that Gucci purse.