Travels with Gosh Gee Golly!
I'm so excited to be featured as a guest blogger for Smarter Travel! I wrote about how I used the Vélib' system during my trip to Paris this spring, and you can check out the post here! Thank you so much to my good friend and travel editor extraordinaire, Caroline, for the opportunity. This girl travels more than anyone, she just got back from an incredible trip to Australia!
If you are visiting from the Smarter Travel site, here are some of my travel adventures. I promise you that each action-packed link will contain travel tips learned the hard way, some pretty pictures, some misadventures, and let's be real, some photos of stuffed animal souvenirs. So here are some of the amazing places I've visited in the past few years:
- Iceland — we petted wild ponies and went dogsledding!
- France — where I visited the French Open and got my lost camera back in a boozy twist of fate
- Peru — check out my hostel accommodations, just missing part of the hotel room door
- San Francisco — including our terrifying GoCar ride
- NYC
- Los Angeles
I hope you take a minute to peruse, find your next vacation stop, or leave me a comment with your favorite travel memories! Thanks so much for checking out my blog!
Busy Weekend: H Street Festival and Cyclocross
I'd never been able to go to the H Street Festival, much to my chagrin, but the dates aligned this year and I made it out this Saturday. I always get so excited for festivals, but when I get there and people are shoving past me and I'm waiting 20 minutes for a crappy gyro, I wonder why I was so excited for this. Is this really a good time?
Nah, it was. Perhaps the fact that the H Street Festival was so crowded means it is victim of its own success. Even though I only lasted with the crowds for a few hours, I'm glad I went out and saw what there is to see.
Click the link for more H Street Festival pictures and Joe's new biking adventure!
Namely, art cars. Peace.
Could it be? I think it is! We meet again, weird car.
The Taylor Gourmet sub-eating contest was by far my favorite part of the afternoon (second favorite: snagging a table outside at Granville Moore's). Can you guess the who tied for the win? Hint, it's the men who look like they are really and truly going for this, personal health be damned. Props to you, gentlemen! A Black Eyed Peas album provided the soundtrack for the contest, strangely enough. "Can you meet me halfway....Dirty bit...I wanna rock right now."
Another exciting part of the contest: the emcees hurled Taylor's subs into the crowd, each with a $5 gift card attached. They made excellent projectiles. Everyone could not have been more excited about this development, and with my hands outstretched to the heavens, I tried to lock eyes with the sub thrower and will him to toss a breaded chicken sub my way. It would've made up for the crappy gyro and everything would've been right with the universe. We almost got one, but almost ain't good enough.
And the next day, I woke up before 6 a.m. to drive with Joe and our friend Alex to their very first cyclo-cross competition ever. "Woke up" might be an overstatement. I stumbled into the backseat and fell back asleep, only to wake up in a field on the PA/MD border.
Have you heard of cyclo-cross? I hadn't. It's almost like a steeplechase. As you can see here, there's a twisty course set up in the grass that includes barriers that riders have to hop or carry their bikes over, and hills they may have to carry their bikes up. Joe can explain more, I'm sure.
One day I hope to have a dog I can bring to these events. I could play with the dog instead of sitting in a chair reading the Blake Lively/Ryan Reynolds issue of People magazine.
Alex said I was the worst spectator ever. I did cheer. On occasion. No one else was cheering and I felt weird. Next time I will bring a cowbell and ring it victoriously. Even this baby being toted around by his armpits had a cowbell.
Kids get in on the cyclo-cross action too! Their race is called the "Lil' Belgians" race. Love those lil' Belgians! Drinking beer is another big cyclo-cross tradition, but we wondered if we could in good conscience drink our beer while watching the kids' races.
Here's part of the hills on the course.
Another big hill that was impossible to ride up. We watched two riders crash hard on this hill. One was splayed out on the ground, laying still for a moment. He must've gotten the wind knocked out of him. Thank goodness, he seemed ok.
As a spectator, this sport looked really tough. I'm so proud of Joe and Alex for finishing their first race, they were awesome! Everyone finished and no broken bones, and that's what I was rooting for the whole time. Silently, and without a cowbell. Next time, I will make this right — I'm pricing them right now on Amazon. Stay tuned!
Links I Like Friday
Girls on Bikes :30 HD from Loeffler Randall on Vimeo.
If you've ever dreamed of riding a vintage bike with a designer purse in the basket, this video is for you. Maybe my bike needs a basket, and then if I do that, the designer purse will follow.
I've been riding my bike more lately. We have a love/hate relationship. I love the idea of the bike but I feel like it is the wrong bike for me. It has the boy-style cross bar and I feel like I may tip over every time I try to get started after a stop. It's because I'm so uncoordinated and I need to start pedaling before my butt is on the seat but I can't do it. My bike bell used to say "I ♥ My Bike" but the ♥ faded away, which is very apropos. Joe says I should write "I Ehh My Bike."
This week, I chatted with "Bachelor Pad" stars and the front of the house team at Elisir in Penn Quarter for Eater. And I ate jambalaya at Georgia Brown's and name-dropped Beyonce for a Scoutmob deal.
The rest of the Internet:
I always love Lauren Moffatt's fashion lines, and of course, her home is gorgeous as well and so unique. Lots of painted white brick! I had a painted white brick wall in my bedroom in my last apartment and hope to have that again in some future home. Also, Lauren's beautiful bubble chandelier is available at an (almost) reasonable price here. I sent the home post to Joe, because well, Debie wasn't online yet. He said, "He needs to chill with his collection of sneeks." [DesignSponge]
More Lauren Moffatt here, talking about being a mom. [The Glow]
OK, so this girl wasn't exactly working in the coal mines, but just because unpaid fashion/media internships are the way its always been doesn't mean it's the way it should be. [NY Mag]
Richard Cohen thinks politicians' "I was poor once" stories are out of touch: "Michelle Obama recalled that Barack used to pick her up 'in a car that was so rusted out, I could actually see the pavement going by in a hole in the passenger-side door.' Of course, the couple in that car had both graduated from Harvard Law..." [WaPo]
I visited the lovely new Mount Pleasant library yesterday, which just opened on Wednesday after a renovation. It's so pleasant! I randomly spent five minutes reading a Kirsten Dunst profile in a January edition of Lucky on a library shelf, and I'm recommending it for Kirsten fans. The author writes a nice little take-down of celebrity profiles, and Kirsten genuinely seems like a cool girl. [Lucky]
Aidan's Swing
