another tiki bar day?? that could be dangerous in the heat.. you should be sure to have a pint or two to help with the hydration.. 

keep @James on a short leash!!

and play The Cure loudly.. lol

Oooh @john.desborough, that's beautiful! Have you had some glasses of wine? 

I'm in Seville suffering with the heat wave. However, the city is pretty cool! Last week and this week, they were having the Triana Festival in Triana neighborhood (where I'm living). The bridge was decorated with lights and there were food and drinks! Pretty cool! 

What about you? Anywhere interesting? @Darnell @Michaela @Mikkel @Grace 

We did a little brewery-crawling a few weekends ago and this one had live music, ha!

Hello all! Been a bit quiet over here trying to get as much work done as I can since, starting tomorrow, I’ll be on holiday for a few weeks. 

Right now, I’m in Valencia for a few days until I head to Barcelona for a BBQ (sorry, you’re all not invited this time, @Gabi Amaral @Grace @James muhahaha!) (just kidding, you can come if you want to) and then heading up the coast of Spain and France with a friend of mine. 

@Darnell That brew crawl looks so fun! How many breweries did you go to? And did you have a full beer at each? I have one craft beer in America, and I feel like I’ve eaten a whole meal. 

@Gabi Amaral How have you been surviving the heat out there? It sounds like it’s super warm, even with a million fans ha!

Have a great holiday @Liz - we’ll try to hold the fort down for you lol.. 

Valencia is one of my fave cities in Spain… this was from a visit in 2014… can you guess what happened shortly after this pic was taken?? lol

@john.desborough either there was a storm or you had too many glasses of agua de valencia!  (or both!)

@Liz  That was at about 3pm in the afternoon and it came down in buckets.. you could not see across the ‘pool’ to the other side … and then 20 minutes later the sun was shining… 

@Darnell brewery crawling sounds like great fun, I think I’d be on the floor at the end of that!

@john.desborough what an awesome photo! I do love it when there’s a huge storm and then next minute the suns shining again 

Here’s a shot of @James putting together the panels for the bar yesterday, we got the base finished and next week we’ll be adding the roof and finishing touches! 

@Liz So we only hit 2 breweries that but that’s because I enjoyed what I was having at each so much that I didn’t want to leave, ha! Yes, we had full beers, which are pints (16 oz) IMO but maybe I’m wrong and a *full* beer is actually a pitcher?? When was the last time you had one here in the States?

@Grace definitely fun, although it was totally a mini crawl since we only hit a grand total of two breweries, lol.

@Darnell - that’s just a ‘good start’ to a crawl lol.. i agree.. but sounds like you had a great time.. 

@James - nice use of pallets there to get the base of the bar going.. though i don’t see the carpenter’s belt with an open beer sitting in the ‘holder’ on the belt.. lol.. carpentry is such thirsty work.. lol

@Grace - i think you will need to hunt up a plastic palm tree, child’s wading pool and some sand to put around the base of the bar to finish it off.. 

looking forward to finding my way over there and joining you lot around the bar

Haha @john.desborough . Luckily we were blessed with a cloudy/rainy day for once so we could make some proper progress – as you can see from @Grace ‘s snap. Hopefully we’ll be done next next time and can invite you for a virtual cold one! Tragically we didn’t put on The Cure. In fact, thinking about it we’re gonna have to invest in some kind of sound system/disco lights for the bar. 

@James - lol.. fun project that goes well with tequila: take old cd’s or dvds that don’t play any more or those old ones on the shelf for the recording of playlists for the cd player in the dashboard (yes i am pre-streaming lol) and break them into pieces. Go to the craft shop and get some styrofoam ‘balls’ (or old worn out footie balls will do too but are heavier)  and glue the bits of cd to them.. hang then around and shine a spotlight or flashlight on them as they spin.. creates a neat magical effect… 

i did that on a camping trip years ago to keep my spawn entertained and we hung about 30 of them that we made on a rainy day in the tent, around the campfire and had ‘dancing lights’ all through the campsite.. 

it also clears off the shelves of old piles of cds lol

what’s outside my door today.. 

@john.desborough wow! Something about a blanket of snow makes me want to dive into it and mess it up 

@Grace - there were more than a few ‘angels’ made in the yard over the weekend.. lol

i can’t believe the last post in this thread was a year ago.. 

here’s the view for this week… and i am sneaking in here while the ladies are at the spa and day camp and enjoying the view and a pint. 

@James @Grace @Liz - what’s your view like today??

Woah! Where are you @john.desborough?? My view is a wall 

I haven’t been working anywhere fun lately, need to change that! 

You lucky boy @john.desborough that view is deserving of more than the one pint I’d say :P
 

@Grace no such exciting views for me either today. Still can’t get those horrible weekend images out of my head. Like this one:
 

@James - there about 500 people here in the resort’s theatre cheering on both sides.. tho i will say there were more Spain supporters in the crowd… penalties would not have been pretty.. 

i was not actually working at the time of this photo - 11 years ago - i was taking an extended vacation to ride my bicycle across the country from Vancouver to Halifax.. 

This is one of the most accurate, up to the minute, weather stations across Canada: 

to give you an idea of where this is located, the red ‘pin’ on the map below shows where in Canada.. and in case you are interested, Vancouver is way over on the left hand side of the map - 3,700 km in the rear view helmet mirror. 

Wow @john.desborough how long did it take you to cycle across the country? 

And was the rock bouncing?! 

rock was warm. it was  about 30C that day.. 55 days but split over 3 tries lol - on the 39th day of the trip in 2013, i was pushed off the road by a camper van who couldn’t wait 20 secs for cars coming in the other direction to pass, resulting in a torn meniscus in my knee (could not pedal and had to get a ride from 125 km east of Toronto to home in Ottawa).in 2014 i managed to go back to the point where i got injured and continue the ride east for about 650 km until another driver forced me off the road and i separated my shoulder and was unable to ride (another ride back to Ottawa lol) ..then i snuck out in 2015 and got a lift to the place i finished in 2014 and managed to finish the last 1100 km for a grand total of 6,450 km across Canada from Vancouver to Halifax. 

snail-paced if you consider the Guinness World Record for getting around the planet on a bike, held by an acquaintance of mine Mark Beaumont from Scotland, is under 80 days. 

we can .. and should… dream

des

Woah and you never stopped trying! Sounds incredible and scary, glad you made it back safely each time even if it was a little worse for wear! 

We need more of these adventure stories!