Creason Family

We rode about 40 miles today and beat the afternoon rain storm by about half an hour. We're in Sopello today, which is just a small city, nothing too amazing. Yesterday, we were in Asissi, which was really freaking sweet. Asissi is built on the side of a hill and is surrounded by a giant wall with a castle at the top of the hill. Cool stuff. I spent much of my time looking at things that had to do with St. Francis, like the original monestary for him and his monks, which is now easily enclosed in a chapel built many years later. Anyway, I loved it there. Tomorrow, we're off to Rome for a couple days before we fly home. Ok, that's all I have to say now. Bye.

We took one bus and four trains to get from Monaco to Florence, Italy today. We saw a lot of countryside, but it was good to get off the trains. Tomorrow, we will probably try to see a museum, maybe the one with the statue 'David'. We will probably also tour a cathedrial or two and see the other cool sites here. In a couple days, we will be in Assisi, which is the home of St. Francis of Assisi, who is one of my heroes, so I am looking forward to that. I was going to write Traci an email, but I can't seem to get my hotmail account to create a message, so I may have to wait till we find another internet cafe of some kind.

Ok, I'm going to go to bed now. Kind of sleepy from a whole day of sitting on trains.

Last night was the world cup championship game for rugby, so we went down to a local sports bar to watch the game. It was between France and Ireland, so, being in France as we are, the bar was absolutely packed with French kids cheering for their team. France won by a lot, and the whole thing was kind of interesting. Don't know what we're going to do today. I may ride over to Monaco, as it's only a few miles away. Ok, that's all. :-)

Jarett said I may have mislead you by indicating that we left Chris behind. No, he's with us, but we were about 15 minutes from leaving him in Barcelona. Oh ya, and yes, we did stop the bull. Cool, huh?

We're in Nice today. It was a really nice ride from Cannes as it was all flat with a bike lane along the French coast. Plus, the trip was short, only about 20-25 miles, so we got here by 11:00am. Now we're going to stay here tonight and take a night train tomorrow night to Florence, Italy. That will help us avoid the French/Italian Alps, which sounds good to me. Ok, that's all I really have to report for now. Talk to you later. :-)

We probably rode about 45-50 miles today. It's hard to tell because everything is in km and also the cities along the French Riveria are all about .5km wide and 15km long. It's really pretty country. The ride today was entirely along the coast. I just got done swimming in the Mediterranean and found this internet cafe with good prices and, more importantly, normal keyboards, so I figured I'd give a rundown of the highlights so far.

We were literally 5 minutes away from leaving Chris in Barcelona because we didn't know where he was and we had to get to the train station. Then there was a couple of long train rides through some pretty country all the way to Neims, France. After we got to our hostel in Neims, we decided to go into town to get some dinner. As we rounded a random corner in town, we came apon a weird sight, which turned out to be a running of the bulls festival. It was a little different than what you see on TV. They were only running one bull at a time, but anyone could get in the street and run with them. So guess what I did? That's right, I freaking ran with the bulls!!! Jeff and I watched the first one to see how it was done, then we got in the middle of the street and ran our butts off as soon as the next bull was released. The point is to actually catch the bull and stop it, so we, along with probably 20 other locals, grabbed onto the bull as it passed by and held it down. About this point, as I was tugging on the bull's tail with all my might, it occured to me how stupid this probably was. I quickly dismissed that thought and introduced a new line of thinking, which went something like this: "How cool is this?!? I'm freaking running with the bulls!!!" Anyway, all was good and we ended up ok.

The next day was our first day of riding and it was set to be a 75mile day. :-P About half an hour into it, I got my first of four flat tires that day. That was a pain, but I think I've got it worked out now so that won't happen anymore (hopefully). If it does, I've got three extra tubes now. That night, we all passed out due to exhaustion. The next day was an 80mile day, so we all decided it might be best for me to take a bus to the next city until I got my tire issue figured out. I spent most of the day in Aux en Provence waiting for the bus. I took a bus to Toulon on the coast, and then hopped on another bus to St. Tropez. From there, I rode my bike about 5 miles to the campground we were planning to stay at that night and met the other four guys there without hardly any searching at all (very lucky). We stayed there the next day and spent most of the day swimming and touring Port Guiard, which is kind of like a man-made Venice with canals and small bridges all over the place.

That brings us to today in Cannes. We left about 8:30 this morning and were here in Cannes by noon, so we're making pretty good time while biking. Cannes is the site of the most famous film festival in the world, so it's a very expensive city to stay in. Of course, tomorrow is Monaco, which will probably be even more expensive, so we eat bread and water in these cities. :-) The entire ride today was beautiful along the southern French coast. Cannes is kind of in a bay, and the entire bay is full of multi-million dollar boats, plus at least three different enormous ocean liners.

Ok, there's a quick run-down of life so far in Europe. I'll write more when internet is conveinent. :-)

It is very hard to use this keyboard... Well, on the first day of bike riding, I got 4 flat tires over the 75 mile trip. Irritating. I think I have the problem taken care of, but I will still go pick up several extra tubes before we leave here. In case you were wondering, here is a place called St. Tropez. I only have 5 more minutes, so I should stop writing now.

Barcelona is a city, much like New York is a city. Much of the time, the only indication that you may not be in a city somewhere in the U.S. is the plethora of scooters dodging and weaving through traffic and the fact that most people are speaking Spanish. Actually, the Spanish part is still similar to the U.S., just in a different way. This is a party city, for sure. Clubs, bars, and discos can be seen on every block and people start going to bed about 6:00am after a long night of drinking and dancing. Everyone except us, that is. We were all sound asleep by midnight, which is just about the time the city night life wakes up. I´m more looking forward to the Italian cities and countryside. Right now, we´re about to leave for the train station to go to Niems (sp?). Ok, bye.

Well, it´s 5:30am Sunday morning in Barcelona. I think it´s Sunday, anyway. It´s hard to type on European keyboards. Life has been good so far. We went down to the beach yesterday, saw some old buildings, and did a lot of walking. I´m having fun here so far, though we lost Chris already. We get on the train to the next city in three hours, and we don´t know where he is. Oh, well? Ok, I´m going to go get some breakfast before we leave. I´ll write later. :-)

On 8/29/07 the most rambunctious of kittens, Apollo, met a new wannabe friend - Lizzie, Allie's 4-month old Jack Russell puppy. With more time, they might have become good buddies, but neither really was ready to trust the other. They were very entertaining while watching one another, though!

I've been using MythTV for about a year and half now or so. I have to admit, it is simply amazing. MythTv is described on Wikipedia as: