Hero!

Hi Kelly, my LHT was about the same vintage.

Jacinto’s Surly is a 2008. It’s been a good bike all of these years. Typically a tune up does the trick for any issues. This is confounding. I will ask Jacinto where he is on the cassette when he changes the front. That might be a way to get around his problem. Thank you for pointing the solution out.

I had a Surly LHT. There was a knack in changing to the granny ring. AFAICR you need to be half way across the cassette when changing, almost impossible to change when on the largest sprocket. I sold the Surly when I bought my Rohloff equipped bike and in the unlikely event that I get a new bike at age 83 it will have a Rohloff.

The hotdog photo didn't load. We had terrible internet last night.

That's definitely a true statement. Look at how red my face is in that photo with the hot dog. Jacinto says I was reflecting the color of my orange shirt, but I was really, really hot.

See - I knew you would know all of the details! Your memory for this sort of thing is amazing.

I think I might have photographed a borie today. This building looks to be maybe 3-4 feet in circumference, and 4-5 feet tall. It would have to be a very small person to fit inside. I was wondering if it had something to do with the lavender fields. But, what?

Here I thought we were wandering all over the place! I'm definitely interested in Rich's beau villages route. He has some beauties.

You're missing the small, colorful, beautiful villages as a result of your arrow-like route choices. They're are all around you, but mostly tucked away hidden from view or perched up on top of hills. You'd have to slow down and do considerably more climbing to make it up to most of them, but then you'd never make it to Venice and Munich in time.

It's a borie: "A Borie is a dry-stone structure, generally a one-room cabin. The smallest can be a single, low room where a shepherd could weather out a storm or a cold night. More typically, the single room borie is big enough to stand upright in, with space for a fire and often a shelf or two built into the thick stone walls."

Oh, wow. You're there at the right time, although you're paying for it with the heat.

Oh, good! I was hoping you'd come this way. You're right that it's an old bridge, but not just any old old bridge. This one's famous. It's Pont Julian, a bridge on the Via Domitia, the road the Romans built to connect Italy to Spain. Built in the 3rd century BC, it's been in continuous use for over 2000 years. The newer bridge just next to it was built about 20 years ago to keep the cars off and hopefully keep it around longer.

Very dry. It was pre bunned with the thinnest drizzle of ketchup and mustard. They warmed it up in the microwave. I could
Hear the ding all the way out on the patio. No, it wasn’t tasty. But that didn’t keep me from eating two! My standards are much lower when I’m hungry.

I have to laugh at the idea of a place in France--home of some of the finest and snootiest cuisine in the world--offering the official dish of baseball parks all over America. I like hotdogs. How was the French version.