Fastest ride ever

Ya know, that drafting thing I'm always hearing about really works. Tonight on my bike I tucked in behind a tractor towing a hay baler. It was pretty easy pedaling for a couple of kilometers. In fact, as I was coming back on the same road, without a baler to help, I realized that I was riding about 3 kph slower, headed slightly downhill, than I had been uphill--but behind my baler. Of course, going out I was fresher--and a little more motivated by the second tractor towing a second baler riding right behind me.

Or maybe he was drafting off me.

Road Trip to Poland

Armed with hand-drawn maps, information from the internet, and recommendations from experienced shoppers, Sarah and I drove to Boleslawiec, Poland to buy pottery. As many of you know, I already had a growing collection of items in various patterns. But I wanted to get enough pieces to feed a crowd with this sturdy-enough-for-everyday-use-but-still-pretty pottery, so we headed for the mother lode. And we found it. It's amazing we managed to buy as much as we did because it's simply overwhelming when you first get there - it seems there are stores everywhere.

Having left at 0130 Friday morning, we arrived at 1230 (every Autobahn in Germany is under construction), had a quick lunch at the hotel, and ventured out. Our first stop was Zaklady, which proved in the end to be our favorite. We also did a lot of damage (to my credit card) at Cer-Far. I ended up with 4 complementary patterns, one of which I already had several pieces of. See my four patterns below.

I also splurged on quite a few serving pieces in some of these same patterns but in others as well.

Of course we had no sooner left when I realized I should have gotten a teapot. And now that I've gone through it all at home I wish I had gotten some extra pieces of some of the patterns to make up for the inevitable breakage. Maybe there'll be another trip in the future...

Rome

The reason they couldn't get it built in a day is that the whole danged thing is made of brick! I always assumed Rome would be marble or some some such thing. But no, it's bricks. Bazillions of 'em.

I'm posting backwards. We went to Rome in late May, then Tuscany in June. (I actually started this post 6 weeks ago.) It looks like we're crazy mad about Italy all of a sudden, but it just kinda happened. We had already planned the Tuscany trip when one of Rita's brothers wrote to say he had business in Rome and asked if we'd like to meet him there, so we went to Italy twice in 3 weeks.

If you're interested in seeing Roman bricks and some other stuff, you can click on our Roman holiday picture book.

Good Belgian music

Dani Klein. Take a listen to this from Vaya Con Dios, which was her main vehicle for a decade or so. One morning going to work, we heard "He's Just a Friend of Mine," and I was instantly hooked.

And remember: stealing music is a crime.

I may never eat feta again

As regular readers will know, one of our favorite things about being in an international community is the different foods you can get. Today Sarah and I found another: manouri. It's a Greek cheese, packaged in a block like feta. Like feta, it's a sheep's milk cheese; and like feta, it's crumbly (at least I guess that's the way your supposed to eat it). It's also got its own protected appellation like feta…and champagne. The taste, though, is subtly but distinctly different. Think of sweet, less salty feta and you're about there.

We also found a frying cheese, like that stuff that's all the rage in certain NPR-listening circles in the US.

Italy pix

It's kinda weird that we wound up going to Italy twice in less than a month, since it took us so long to get around to going the first time. If you're interested in seeing pictures of our trip to Tuscany, they're here.

Pessimists aren't always wrong

As someone who's basically pretty optimistic, I often find it hard to understand pessimists. This helps. It's an excerpt from a June 2009 Atlantic Monthly article by Joshua Wolf Shenk entitled "What Makes Us Happy?"

"For 30 years, Denmark has topped international happiness surveys. But Danes are hardly a sanguine bunch. Ask an American how it’s going, and you will usually hear 'Really good.' Ask a Dane, and you will hear 'Det kunne være værre (It could be worse).' 'Danes have consistently low (and indubitably realistic) expectations for the year to come,' a team of Danish scholars concluded. 'Year after year they are pleasantly surprised to find that not everything is getting more rotten in the state of Denmark.'”