Calabogie is West outside of Ottawa, and pretty much in the middle of nowhere. What they have is a private racetrack where you can learn to drive and it is busy every weekend during the summer. However, in the early spring it plays host to hundreds of cyclists. It is a great place to ride and if you are thinking of getting into racing it is a good first race. Unlike Ancaster, there is no yellow line rule in effect; so there is lots of room to move around. And because it is a race track the road is smooth, well maintained and wide. The course turns left and right and in a car would probably seem like hairpin corners but on a bike are very manageable. What makes Calabogie so good for me is there isn’t much in the way of hills. I’m not much of a climber so races like the Niagara Classic and even KW tax me severely for my love of sweets.

There were five LapDogs in the M3 category but poor race team director Roderick was on his own in M2. The five of us were Dave Chong, Colin, Mark, Wallace and I. The race started smooth enough no crashes or anything and my plan had been to just hang in the middle for most of the race. I hadn’t been on the bike for two weeks since I was away on vacation and I didn’t want to bonk or anything. The race proceeded with it’s usual ebb and flow, racers moving around jockeying for position which is really unnecessary the course is so open you can just wait until the end. In the M3 classification no one ever breaks away it just ends up being a massive sprint anyway.

The laps go by quickly, the course is only about 5.5km long so it is easy to lose track of what lap you’re on. About 8 laps in, I moved my way to the very front of the pelaton. Nose in the wind, feeling good I began to move into the big gears and start pushing a little. This only lasted for a kilometre or two because there in the middle of the road were two bodies, with one on the side! It seems the ladies race had a bad crash and the ambulance hadn’t been able to respond yet. One girl was on the side of the road crying and one was out cold. A volunteer was in the middle of the road waving at us to stop. Being the responsible racer that I am I raised my hand and slowed the pelaton down.

There isn’t much prize money in M3 racing, not a lot of glory either so there was no point in trying to race away. Plus I would be really upset if someone bombed past one of my teammates when they were injured. Now here is where the poor race management comes in. When a race is neutralized, no one is supposed to gain position, like in a neutral start no one tries to move up. I was the leader, no one was supposed to pass me. About a dozen racers came by saying “keep it easy, guys” while pedaling forward. As the guy in front, when a race is neutralized I set the pace, not them. If this was a pro-race all of them would have been called out for it, and booed should any of them get to the podium. Just think of Contador when he attacked after Schleck’s chain malfunctioned, he got booed when he put on the yellow jersey. The two incidents are not exactly comparable but there is an etiquette to cycling and as far as I am concerned, they broke that etiquette. When we came around for the 9th lap the ambulance was there so again the same slowing and jockeying.

On the 10th lap the pace really picked up, and this is where I got confused. With all the excitement I forgot what lap I was on and looking at the counter it read “2.” After we came around again it read “1″ and the pace slowed again for some reason. I took this to mean I had one more after this one, like there was one lap remaining. As a result I was hanging out near the back waiting for the last half lap to make my push again. You can imagine my disappointment when we crossed the line and everyone stopped. There is nothing worse than finishing feeling like you still had gas in the tank. At least at Ancaster I had done all I could but here I hadn’t even made my move! Thankfully Colin and Dave had good races with Colin finishing 8th and Dave finishing 19th. I ended up in 62nd, kicking myself for getting distracted. This was supposed to be my race and I blew it.

Roderick and the M2 racers had a similar situation only for them the accident was on the start of the straight-away to the finish, and the accident was on the second to last lap. When the riders came around for the last lap the ambulance was in the road, as they came into the last “S” turn before the straight away there was a commissionaire yelling that the ambulance was still there . That should have neutralized the race but when they got there the ambulance had just left and so some guys punched it and took advantage of the situation. That should have never been allowed to happen. The race should have been neutralized and then an additional “race” lap added. As it happened Roderick finished in a similar fashion with still some energy left.

Calabogie wasn’t a total loss though. I learn every time I race. I learn to handle the bike better, how to position myself better. I learn that I can hang out at the front and push the pace. The next race is Springbank, which will be my first criterium. I can’t wait to see what I learn there!

For a socialist country France has some serious social problems. The first thing that strikes the visitor is the massive amount of graffiti everywhere. It lines the highways and railroad tracks. It’s on the side of houses and on the outside of trains. In fact pretty much any surface is game. Unfortunately it isn’t good graffiti. It’s tagging like dogs marking their territory. Some of it is mildly interesting. I saw a few that were takes on the Simpsons, and a few that enveloped entire structures engaging with the space around them, most were just names, “Zaga” or “Sawek” Like I am supposed to know or care who that is. Just dogs barking…

Some I thought were well done like the paint drops that ran down the side of the building like someone had poured a giant can of paint on the top, or the paintings of water droplets on a site of a smoke stack that made it look wet. My favorite though where the silly airbrushed faces that stretched around a couple of water towers. Their giant eyes looking down like something from George Orwell sans the menacing bit.

The second issue is poverty. I was shocked that in a country like France you would find such a destitute population. It seemed as though a disproportionate number of the impoverished were foreigners though. In fact I was a little shocked to see so many dark-skinned people in general. Perhaps a by-product of colonialization?

As I took the train from CDG Airport to Montparnasse I noticed many little shantytowns. The gypsies, “Romas” I think they are called living in whatever space they can eake out between the rail fence and the highway. “Pykies” as portrayed by Brad Pitt in Snatch pretty much sums it up. These people are completely transient and are totally unaccountable. As in, they do whatever they want. Unforunately for everyone else it usually stealing something.

We had our first run in with thieves getting on the Metro. Three girls, who couldn’t have been more than 12, one sporting a black eye, sort of pushed in front of Zuimei’s mother. This caught my attention as the French are not rude in general, they just get a lot closer to each other than North Americans are used to, but this was rude. As soon as we stepped onto the train two of her little entourage started asking me questions in French. At first I thought they were beggers but I noticed the zipper of Yoshiko’s bag was open. I reach across and zipped it up, saying quite clearly that I did not speak French. “Okay mister, okay..” they said as they stepped off at the sound of the door closing alarm. The girl with the black eye tossed something back onto the train as the doors snapped shut, and gave me a look as if to say “too late!”

I picked up the card holder that the girl had lifted off of Zuimei’s mom. I looked back at the girls as we pulled out of the station. The girl with the black eye, still looking at me shrugged, and then they were gone. We were lucky because they didn’t get the wallet with the money, We’d just changed thousands of dollars into Euro that morning and the card holder had contained Yoshiko’s health card which would have been a pain to replace so we were lucky they tossed it back to us.

Still I was a little dismayed that some people on the train just watched us, knowing full well what was happening. It put us all on edge and from then on I srutinized every face on the metro. I am positive I thwarted a few would be thieves by giving them a cold, hard look.

I was still shaken up by the experience when we got to Champs Elysse. I kept running it through my mind and wondering what she’d done to get the black eye. We got out at the wrong end though and started near the needle which is at one end the shops are all at the other, near the Arch de triumph. We walked along carefully clutching our bags in case more thieves attempted to separate us from our belongings.

Our goal was the flagship store for Louis Vuitton. Let me say, if you want to see a brand image done right, that is the place. All the staff are multi-lingual, impeccably dressed, well groomed and polite. Even the security is helpful. The shop is divided into multiple levels with the bags on the main floor.The shop was awash with people, milling around gazing into display cases, trying out different bags in the mirrors, paying for their puchases with the happiness that only consumerism can provide. Don’t get me wrong, I am not disparaging it; I am as guilty of it as anyone is.

While there Yoshiko purchased several wallets and we were sent upstairs to have them personalized. When you purchase an item from LV one of the services they offer is to stamp your initials or whatever into the item to mark it as yours. Not unlike the graffitti taggers, but with more taste since you own it and are not pissing like a dog on someone else’s fire hydrant. We must have spend an hour or two in Louis Vuitton because it was after lunch by the time we left.

We ate a quick bite and then went to three different Hermes shops on the hunt for the elusive “Birkin” bag, which I nicknamed, the precious. Hermes makes lots of different bags but this is the one that all the ladies want. The first shop was just one giant room with sparcely displayed items. When you are sell a scarf for 2000 euros you can afford to not worry about square footage. He was very polite, but informed us they do not hold the precious (apparently there is no wait list) and that they only get a few in each shipment so we will need to try our luck. They couldn’t check the stock in other locations, and it wouldn’t matter because they wouldn’t hold the bag for us anyway.

At the second shop the same information.

At the third, and flagship store we lucked out. A nice young man informed us that yes indeed he did have them and in red, grey and white. We asked to see the grey, which came in large. This is a ten thousand dollar purse, so they only take them out one at a time apparently, so you cannot ask to see the red one and the grey one at the same time. He also asked for my name because there is also apparently a limit on the number of the precious one can buy in a year…one. Which to me begs the question, how the Hell did Victoria Beckham get 1500 of them?

He must have been a new employeed because when he brought us the bag he looked not unlike a scolded schooboy and was accomanied by a Korean woman. She seemed quite disturbed to see Zuimei and Yoshiko because apparently they do not like selling these to anyone Chinese. I guess the Chinese counter-fitters will take the bag apart and figure out the pattern then produce copies. France takes this very seriously with many signs to that effect in the airport. Something like a 150,000 euro fine and three years in jail for carrying a fake LV bag. To me that seems a bit excessive but clearly I am not French.

The young man produced the bag with great production carefully removing it from it’s protective trappings. In fact the Korean women seemed to be instructing him on how to remove the bag so that the front was always facing the customer, and that the tissue used to wrap the precious was not crinkled. It was a grey hand bag. I am not sure what I expected but given the amount of effort we went through to find this thing I had hoped for something a little more…flashy. After some discussion we asked to see the red bag which came in a smaller size. They said they would go check. In the meantime they asked a guard to come and stand next to the bag and watch us, so we didn’t steal it. Who did they thing we were? Romas?

They came back to inform us that unfortunately in the five minutes since we first asked, all other bags had been sold. I seriously doubted that, but I think the Korean woman was concerned that we might each walk out of there with a precious Birkin bag. The reason why Zuimei even wanted one in the first place is because he can go back to Japan and sell it for twice the money. Seriously…Twenty grand for a purse. Ahh…fashion, you silly thing you. So we bought the one we could and left with me carrying a ridiculously large orange bag. As we walked down Concorde back to the Metro you could see all the women looking enviously at my large package. They all wanted the precious.

We went back to the hotel at this point. There was no point in walking around with that ridiculous bag and I am sure it is like a magnet for the thieves. Once we dropped Yoshiko and the bag off at the hotel we went to a little place down the road for dinner. I forget the name of it exactly but it was literally a block away from the hotel. We didn’t have a reservation so we would need to wait for a table, along with the dozen of so other people crammed a the bar. There were so many people showing up the filed out the door. The bartender made sure that everyone had a drink in their hand and sliced sausage was provided as an amuse bouche. Even for the folk standing outside and waiting. Keep in mind this is at 9pm. We didn’t get seated until 9:30 and Zuimei and I felt obligated to eat quickly so others could take our seat. When we left at 10:15 there was still a lineup!

It was sort of like walking into a house party where you do not know anyone. People were chatting (in French) and laughing (in French as well I suppose) but we were outsiders looking in.

The dinner was very French and luckily for us the waiter spoke English. He made some recommendations and we agrred, not really sure what we were going to get but trusting that he wasn’t going to serve us anything too strange. It started with white asparagus salad with prociutto cooked egg and thinly sliced cheese. It tasted like summer. We also had a little sparrrib with fried fois gras and sun driedc tomatoes. It was okay. The fois gras sauce was actually better than the rib was. Zuimei also ordered a bowl of the soupe de jour which came as two parts. First was the fried onion and jambon, and then there was a tureen with the actual soup in it. It was very creamy and not unlike soup my father makes.

I had a glass of Merlot of course, my first wine in France and it was lovely. For the mains we had steak frites, but I have to say the steak was tough. Plus the knives we were given were so dull you would have had better luck with a spoon! The frites were excellent though, very hot and hand cut with cracked salt and pepper. For dessert I had the tiramisu. Mine is better…just saying.

The problem with the M3 class is that you get a real mish-mash of skill levels and bike handling. If you look at the M1 class, most of the riders are svelte, and have excellent handling skills. They don’t get excited or make sudden, rash movements. With M3 you have beginning racers (everyone has to start somewhere) as well as experienced riders who don’t have the legs to advance to the upper levels or are just not interested in those longer, faster races. The combination makes for a fast, sketchy ride.

This was my second Good Friday race and considering the Hamilton Cycling Club had moved the race from Flamborough to Ancaster, I thought I would have a good shot at finishing with the peloton. The new course was flatter, very little in the way of inclines and the rollers weren’t anything to be concerned about. What I hadn’t counted on was the number of riders. The M3 class had something like 107 people in it. With the yellow line rule in effect it meant that you only had one country lane within which to maneuver. The road was only wide enough to fit 3 people shoulder to shoulder meaning you could effectively have one rider break away and three teammates shut down the peloton.

The race started from the Ancaster fairgrounds with a neutral start. Despite this a rider crashed right in front of me within the first minute of the race. Not a good way to start. The issue was the first stretch of road was gravel. So now we have mixed skills, first race, and dodgy roads. Once we got onto the main road it was clear this race was going to go quickly. I was riding with race team director Dave Chong, as well as Wallace and Tim, and while we started together we were soon separated. Dave had moved somewhere towards the front and Tim and Wallace were behind me.

There is a phenomenon in a peloton where it moves like an elastic band. It stretches out and then snaps back together. This is caused by the riders at the front encountering something, like a hill, which causes them to slow down and the riders behind them bunch up. The leaders then accelerate when the reach the crest of the hill and the group stretches out again. This effect gets worse the farther back in the peloton you go, so it pays to be near the front. Every time the group bunches up however it is accompanied by shouting, squealing rubber and the smell of burning carbon. I guess some guys with new wheels didn’t realize you shouldn’t lock up your carbon rims.

As we rounded the corner to go back towards the fairground the commissaries brought the group to a standstill. As we slowly navigated into the oncoming lane I could see a guy lying in the middle of the road, wrapped in a yellow emergency blanket in obvious pain. A sobering reminder what can happen if you let your attention slip. Lap 2 saw us also slowly navigate around the fallen rider who by this point had been accompanied by an ambulance. This scene was still present as we started the third lap; a testament to how severe the crash must have been.

By the third lap things had begun to pick up; it always does by this point. Another crash (again right in front of me), more snaps of the elastic peloton, a few flats… Anticipating the stretch and snap of the group I was able to slowly make my way up the peloton towards Dave who I could see about 10 guys in front of me. The peloton is probably moving around 40kms an hour which is fast, but not anything unusual. If you are on the leeward side from the wind it is actually not that much effort. If you’re the poor sap upfront however, you’re working like a dog.

One of the problems with the course this year was the gravel section I mentioned in the beginning every time we came around to the finish line there was a mad sprint as riders jockeyed for position (since this was really the only time to move up) followed by a 90 degree left onto gravel. Forty kilometres an hour on gravel is not laughing matter when you have two inches of rubber as the contact between you and the ground and that ground isn’t exactly stable.

Once we got on the road again for the last lap things really exploded. The leaders had really put down the hurt and anyone who wasn’t with the main group would struggle to bridge the gap or get left behind. I was one of those strugglers, luckily for me Tim came riding up from out of nowhere. It was a small relief to see the flash of the orange and green Lapdogs kit. I was able to catch his back wheel and let him pull me back towards the main group. With the help of another rider from Dark Horse I was able to get back into the peloton, but the speed was now in the upper 40′s so there wasn’t much in the way of recovery. Glancing at my Garmin I could see my heart rate was maxed out. I reminded myself that in boot camp we did a 20 minute all-out and I only had about 10 minutes left in this race, so I could hang on.

At this point I saw Dave sliding back from the group. I shouted something encouraging like “Keep going Dave!” But it probably just sounded incoherent. When it is all you can do to stay upright and moving you don’t really have much time or breath for chit-chat.

One of the issues I have with races like Good Friday is that they’re not closed course. First the yellow line rule makes it hard to move around but also cars get in the way. On the second to last turn towards the finish, police has stopped three motorists from proceeding. As a result the peloton had to slow down to pick it’s way around them and then start up again. This gave the leaders another opportunity to snap that elastic band and despite my best efforts I was not able to close the gap a second time.

It is bitter sweet to finish like that. I had nothing left, there was nothing else I could have done in terms of effort, I was spent. But if I had been smarter, more aggressive earlier in the race I might have been in a better position to finish. As it stands I ended the race in 50th place, half a wheel in front of Tim who had saved my goose earlier in the race, and just 28 seconds off the leader.

I learn something new every time I race. I learn about where to position myself, which riders to follow (and which to avoid), how the peloton is going to move…most importantly I learn to push myself. All in all I can’t complain too much. None of us crashed, none of us got hurt and this is after all only the first race. Just wait until Calabogie!

This is one of those.  It’s Baths version of LCD’s “All My Friends”.  Unlike the original, this is almost mournful.

For comparison here is the original with LCD’s drums and organ setting a frenetic pace which hurls the listen along.

2. Marketing people know how to party.  Maybe it’s the nature of their business; connections and networking are everything, but I couldn’t help but feel a little like a wallflower.  Drinks were supplied and every evening there was a party at one venue or another; some hosted by Adobe, some hosted by vendors.  At the Summit Bash they had acrobats, chefs making hors d’oeuvres, lots of booze, and the grammy award winners Black Keys.  I lucked out and happened to make it to the front row just before the band started hence the amazing photo.

3. Big data means big troubles. You want everyone to use the data, but you don’t scale and more and more data is being produced everyday.  And while often hear “big data” being thrown around, but what you don’t hear is “big analytic team” or “big analytic budgets”.   I heard many people at the conference complain that they spend so much time collecting information they don’t have time to analyse anything. Adobe is working on helping analysts collaborate with other people in the corporation through the use of the Marketing Cloud. Essentially this allows analysts to share data quickly by adding it to a feed which sends the information out to every one on a project. I suppose it is the old line about breaking down silos but the new Marketing Suite seems to do exactly that.

4. Processing rules are crazy powerful.  As an implementer I am always interested in tools that can make my job easier.  Processing rules do just that.  They are similar to VISTA rules but are created by administrators, not just Client Care.  For example, you could create a processing rule that identifies branded and non-branded keywords for search traffic.  You could create a processing rule which identifies based on IP address and allows you to tag traffic as internal.  Processing rules can be used in a variety of ways, but one has to be very careful because you can screw up your implementation (See point #1).

5. Contextual data variables are going to make life easier.  One of the challenges when we faced our implementation was mapping out all the s.props and eVars.   I maintain a giant spreadsheet which I occasionally print out of all the variables across all of our report suites.  With 150 variables across 12 report suites it becomes a fair amount of effort.  Contextual variables allow you to call things what they are and then map them to the appropriate variables.  For example:

• s.contextData['author']=”JK Rowlings”
• s.contextData['section']=”books”
• s.contextData['genre']=”fantasy”

The processing rules can take this information and slot them into whatever s.props and eVars you want and in whatever fashion you want to processing rules could concatenate or separate values.

6. We are a varied group of people.  There was something like 5,000 people at the conference, from 27 countries with over 1,800 different job titles.  One person even had the word “tzar” in their title; “content tzar” or something like that. I mingled and talked to some very interesting people: a guy from Costco who helped run their billion dollar website with a team of two, a woman who worked for SouthWest airline and utilized test and target, a couple of Brits who worked for Hotel.com who were involved in some of the beta tests for new Adobe products.  Everyone I met was intelligent, friendly and optimistic for the future.  Adobe threw a great party, but more importantly to me, passed on some great information.

The modern games started in Athens, in 1896. Spyros Louis was the first winner of the marathon.

“The Games had the largest international participation of any sporting event to that date, including competitors from fourteen nations. The Panathinaiko Stadium – the only ancient Olympic stadium used in the 19th century – overflowed with the largest ever crowd to watch a sporting event, amounting to more than 80,000 spectators. The highlight for the host nation, Greece was the final race of the Games – the marathon victory by their compatriot Spyros Louis.” ~ run247.com

Since that time the Olympic games has been the pinnacle of amateur sports and the one event where the world got to witness sports which were not commercially viable.  Sports like discus, high-jump, and wrestling.

These sports required dedication like none other. As non-professional sports these events required special devotion since the athletes were not doing it for the money, there was no money; they were doing it because they loved the sport.

For example, someone who is a professional cyclist might expect to make $100K a year.  That means they can devote all their time and effort to their sport; it pays the bill. They can then go and compete for a gold medal in the Olympics. An athlete specializing in javelin toss however needs to have a regular job. Most nations don’t really support their amateur athletes.  There are some exceptions, like China for example which devote large amounts of resources to their athletes but here in Canada, most amateurs are on their own.

That has changed with the increase of profession athletes in the Games.  Basketball, for example, was added in 1936, the year before the NBL (National Basketball League) was founded. However, the NBL was originally the Midwest basketball conference and was founded by GE, Firestone and Goodyear in 1935.  Meaning in the US, basketball was a professional sport before it was added to the Olympics.  Professional athletes began to be officially allowed to play in 1986 and since then the Olympics had really been about the money.

In fact it is so much about the money that in 1998 it was uncovered that several IOC members were bribed to have the Winter Olympics hosted at Salt Lake City.  Bribery allegations have plagued the games every time since. This is in part due to the fact hosting the games marks an increase in trade for the host nation.  Hosting the games is big money.

IOC also began the commercialization of the games in 1972 seeing their revenue swell from $2 million in 1972 to over $225 million just 12 years later.  This is explained by the fact IOC incurs none of the costs of hosting the games (host countries do) and yet controls all of the rights and profits from the Olympic symbols. They also take a percentage of all the sponsorship and broadcast income. (wikipedia)  So where does that money go?

To give you an idea of how ridiculous it is, while the games are on non-official broadcasters are not allowed to call it “the Olympic games”. They will have to refer to them as “the Sochi games”.  And even the word “games” has been contested.

To further exemplify the shift the IOC has taken, wrestling has been removed from the Olympics.  Wrestling was one of the sports in which no professional athletes participated. Mainly because professional wrestling or “wrassling” as it is know is more about showmanship than athletic endeavour. Greco-roman wrestling has been in the modern Olympics since it began!

It will not be long before MMA is entered along with bowling and golf as Olympic sports. Not because it deserves to be, but because it is more financially viable.

In truth, given the motto “Faster, Higher, Stronger” no judged sport belongs in the Olympics.  No gymnastics, no figure skating, no diving, nothing were a judge can be bribed and the score is subjective.  If you look at the list of controversies for the Olympic games, there is not a single games without incident most of them for this very reason.

The beauty of the faster, higher, farther motto is that it doesn’t matter how you do it, simply that you do.  For example, the Germans experimented with raising the arms above the head in ski jumping believing the added surface area would help them fly farther. Perhaps it did, perhaps it didn’t what mattered is that the athletes were not scored on artistic impression and nonsense like that, simply on how far they flew.  Even ski jumping however is now infected by the subjective judgements of spectators.

The Olympics needs to return to it’s roots. It needs to be for amateurs only. It needs to lose the judged sports and it needs to be non-profit.  The Olympic games belong to everyone. They’re the world’s showcase of athletic endevour and if it means getting rid of the IOC to achieve this so be it.

This: http://www.radiolab.org/

Got me to this: http://www.npr.org/blogs/money/

which lead me to this: http://www.npr.org/blogs/money/2013/02/08/171476473/the-real-story-of-how-macklemore-got-thrift-shop-to-number-one

which lead me to this:

Anyway, the ramen itself was lovely, but I have some criticisms.  The first is that the egg and the cha-shu were cold.  It would have taken all of 20 seconds to warm up the pork on a frying pan. I am not sure about the egg but it should be easy to drop in a pot of water.  As a result I had to wait for the soup to warm up the meat before I could eat it.

Also, the soup only has a few toppings.  Cha-shu, egg, sprouts, chopped green onions… I want more toppings!  I want a flavour medley in my mouth. I want nori, I want wood ears and pickles and I want sesame seeds. I have no idea why no one has sesame seeds but this is really getting me down.  Also, one of the ramen on the menu is ramen with garlic oil.  I wish they just put the garlic oil on the table and let me add itself. When I was in Japan many of the toppings are there on the table for you to add yourself. Perhaps it is not the Okinawa way.

There was also a lack of appetizers on the lunch menu.  There was nothing there that piqued my interest.  Given my propensity for enjoying food, it should have been pretty easy to put something on there for me. There was several items on the dinner menu, which they were not serving at the time, which did look like something I would like.

Another complaint I have is the size of the soup.  It is small!  I was still hungry afterwards.  For 13 dollars I want to feel satisfied. There was still a lot of room in that bowl, and it wouldn’t hurt to add more noodles. You cannot even see the noodles in my photo, that’s how small the portion is.

But now the positive. The soup is de-lic-ious!  With the tonkotsu, the fat floating in the soup was perfect flavour and the noodles were fantastic – cooked to perfection. The slender noodle help the soup cling to it and they are easier to maneuver onto the spoon.  The cha-shu while cold, was very soft and melted in your mouth.  Once it warmed up the  flavour of it was excellent as well.  Miho thought the soup was salty, but I enjoyed it all the same.

The service was good, and the decor was pleasant so all in all it was a nice lunch.  It apparently becomes more of a bar in the evenings, but I would recommend you go for the soup.

Time trials will be new for me this year but with the Slice and the HED wheels I think I will be okay.  I really need to check my times against some other in my category.  I found out that I will be classified as Masters B, which at the Ride with Rendall had an average speed of 44.9 km/hr.  That is sort of nuts since it’s a 40km course! I seriously need to up my threshhold training!