Victoria!

I'm at home organizing my photos, see, and I run across a couple of coincidences. See for yourselves:

weekend update

I've spent 6 of the last 7 days in DC and boy it is nice to be back in Charm City. Last week I had a meeting with three presentations for a lot of really smart M&E folks and I did ok - met a couple awesome climbers at the meeting which is definitely a plus! Our database project is moving along and there was much less politicking about it than before, so now we just have to get our butts in gear and build this thing over the summer.

We had a very nice BBQ at Jason's temporary pad (an extremely beautiful house - functional, spacious, fantastic kitchen, yet laid back in a way only 2 million dollar homes can have) and bored the non-Gabon RPCV guests with more of our stories. Oh, la nostalgie. Sunday we went for brunch at an Irish place that had too many spoiled children and slow service, but excellent food. JCo dissed the bloody marys and nearly sent a 4 year old flying over the veranda, but the conversation was lively and we even managed to escape the rain...

I've ordered a new stem and bars for my fixie to make it a little more comfortable - the reach is a bit short but maybe that's just because I've been riding the Nishiki lately. Sean seems to think the teal color scheme is uncool but he's wrong. It is the pinnacle of cool.

I almost, almost, finished this really hard climb I've been working on for a long time last night. Which is not bad for having two weeks off. Coming up - trips to W. Va and more biking.

Spontaneous Combustion

Here's the tree that burst into flames on our recent climbing trip.

It's my Birthday

It's my birthday, yay. I tried to do lots of fun things this weekend like biking 30 miles on my fixie in Eastern Maryland with friends, putting snazzy new red tires on, and my first lead climbing and rappelling on Monday. Also a tree burst into a huge pulsating lightning-style fire while we were climbing, caused by a splice in a power line. Bryan got a picture and I'll post when I get it.

Today's really busy at work (annual report shitshitshit) but tonight, more climbing and burgers at Dizzys.

Long lost bike

I'm bumming around the internet, trying to figure out why my Nishiki has no rack braze ons (just spent 30 bills on a rack and some dinky panniers, but they won't attack to either of my bikes), and I found the Nishiki!

She is from the 80s, which is earlier than I had pegged the teal color scheme. Her new wheels arrive wednesday, and then it will be Showtime! Today I even bought a 4 foot cable so that I'll never leave my wheels unlocked again.

No, really, Mt. Blanc

On Saturday I went out with Bonnie, our new teammate, Valentina from WHO and Mark from Global Fund. Mark paraglides off his mountain every day after work. It was free winetasting day in Geneva so we hit three vineyards, one of which also made absinthe. When we walked in the absinthe-maker was playing a waltz on this horn.


We had lunch and some excellent gelato in a lake town, Annecy, in France, then headed for Chamonix to see Mount Blanc. My mother doesn't believe the mountain really exists because she's never seen it and I'm sure these pictures won't convince her either.

Can you see the badass climber in the rocks in the foreground?


Betcher wondering how the heck we got all the way up there anyhow.


It was a totally awesome day and then Mark made me buy two quickdraws at the gear shop, as souvenirs. I was being practical and didn't want to pay in euros what I could get them for in dollars back home with my REI discount, but he was very convincing, I guess that's how he managed to distribute like 30 million mosquito nets in one year.

Mt. Blanc

Geneva was much better this time than before, in January, when it was cold and I didn't even get to see the lake. At a cocktail party I got a net company to get involved in Salif Keita's tour (ok, I had some help from the Handsomest RBM Board Member) and then our database project rocked out on day two of the board meeting. Before it all started I adjusted my internal clock by walking around looking for fixies and checking out bike parking.



I only found one fixie. It belonged to a giant.


The giant had a giant friend too.


There were about 9 million bikes in Geneva, ridden by young punks and guys in suits and moms whose husbands have UN jobs which means they're not allowed to work and can only produce babies to stave off the boredom. It was sunny and beautiful and people played chess in the park: