Jan 26 - no selfie

I forgot.  How could I forget.  We had dinner with Alnasir and Nimet and I forgot to take an obligatory selfie. 

We met at The Butterfly ... ok, Le Papillon ... we chatted until my bedtime and then we walked back to the Harbour Castle while they walked back to their car.  Le Papillon has gone through at least three iterations of which I'm aware, getting larger each time and broadening their menu beyond its roots of Crepes-only.  It was good but the best thing was seeing old friends (yes, we're all getting older !).  We're hoping that we can convince them to visit Florida but we've tried that before without any luck.

Apparently Sikin, who is Jeffrey's age, lives fairly close by in downtown Toronto.  Nasrin, the younger daughter, is at Mac, doing a fellowship.  She has more degrees than you can shake a stick at, all in medicine.  Sikin has a partner, a fellow in the construction industry building condos; Nasrin doesn't have time for that :).  Nimet is still working part-time; Alnasir has mostly retired other than a couple of board positions.  His Mom is still going strong at 95.  I always hesitate to ask ... 

Rob Ruppel and Sham, Alnasir's sister, are mostly together, living and working in New Hampshire during the ski season at his house, living in Boston at her house during the summer.  It's taken a long time for that to become "official". 

The trip down from the cottage went smoothly.  Sandy and I lugged the cordless lawnmower up to the car and left it with Aaron and Stef, its new home.  Hopefully that will work out well. That was their major Christmas gift and no-one had room for it at Christmas. 

After leaving Stef, we made a quick stop at Panera for a salad (me), sandwich (Sandy) and just made it to Sandy's 3pm appointment with Al.  She sported that fresh haircut at dinner last night.  Her hair gets shorter every time ... a little spiky from the fresh cut. 

I checked into the hotel and looked in detail at the Brazil route, making reservations along the route.  Zooming into the hotels and pictures thereof, the scenery is fantastic ... which means a lot of climbing, of course.  Will this be an "oh wow" as I ride or "oh damn" as I grind up hills ?  1300k with 20k meters of climbing ... when does it become "too much fun" ?  Sandy exchanged messages with Kim Davies and now she's getting interested in Brazil :).

However, that's in the future.  The next ride is 300k on Tuesday with a high in the mid 50's and 17mph winds.  The toughest ride is always the one that you're on ...

Onward !