Just got back from a couple of days in Nice. We had to deliver some paintings to this boat. Putting expensive paintings on a boat sounds like asking for trouble to me and I'd hate to think about the insurance costs, but I guess the clients can afford that kind of this.
I helped drive the 7.5 ton truck to Nice. It's the biggest thing you can drive on an old style UK licence without having to take a further test. There's a tachometer in it to make sure that no one drives it for longer than they're supposed to. Here's my disc.



I arrived back in Paris Friday afternoon, after taking a train back from Avignon, as I was only required to drive the truck to Nice for insurance purposes and let the real truck driver bring the empty truck back to Paris. When I got back I received a text from my friend Sam. He's an Australian, been in France for couple of days and when he tried to go back to England they denied him and said that they thought he was going to try to outstay his visa in the UK! So now he's stuck in Paris for a while.

Lucy and I are off to Spain tomorrow, for a week.

I'm not so into this whole blogging thing at the moment, not sure why, but I have some photos and stuff, so thought I'd post them up.
Last Saturday was Féte National aka Bastille Day. Lucy and I cycled over to Ian and Maria's place for dinner, and then we all walked over to the Champ de Mars to watch the fireworks. Unfortunately most of Paris was there to see them too. The place was packed, so we didn't get as close as we'd liked to, but at least we managed to get out again and not get crushed. Lucy and I hid out at Ian and Maria's place for an hour or two until the crowds died down and then cycled back across town at about 2am.






The weather has really kicked in here. Lucy and I cycled down to the canal for a little picnic. The problem arose when I got my keys out of my pocket to lock up the bikes causing my penknife to fly out of my pocket as well, only to bounce on the floor and then bounce into the canal, leaving us with no way to open the bottle of wine we'd bought. We had to wait about half an hour for someone to turn up with a bottle-opener as most people were just drinking beers, champagne or twist off bottles.
The other photo here is of the new Velib' program that has been set up. Every 300m or so, throughout Paris, these bikes are available for hire, and free for the first half hour. They seem to be super popular. Everywhere we look now we see someone riding these bikes.


Newton called me up one evening after work to help him move some new plants from the courtyard of our apartment block onto his balcony. It was a bit of an adventure, and as you can see, getting this tree into his lift was pretty interesting.


Soy is back in town. Pat, Newton and I went with him to check out the new skatespot in Paris. A huge concrete wave! It's actually really good fun, but rumours are already circulating about them laying some kind of playground style soft tarmac down (so that people don't hurt themselves if they fall off) which will also render it unskateable. Genius!

A Prince amongst Men, Gorm sent me these shoes today, along with a few other little treats. That more than made my day.

Cheers Gorm.

Pat and I went skating today. It's the first time I've really been able to skate since I tweaked my foot before leaving for Canada. I set up a new board for the occasion and within 5 minutes of skating it ended up rolling into a fountain! Fortunately it didn't do the board any harm. I guess it was still new enough to not soak up the water.
We went to check out some skatespots around Pat's local area and found a couple of other interesting ones to go back to before winding our way to Bastille and meeting up with all the locals.




Here's a couple of quick camera phone lines that I filmed of Pat.


Something is up with the footage here. Not sure what it is, but you can still watch it by manually dragging the bar at the bottom.

Last weekend I finally got around to buying a new bike. I've had my old one for a year now and only paid €40 for it. It's had a puncture for the past couple of weeks which I just haven't gotten around to fixing, and then I realised that the gears are sticking, the saddle is uncomfortable, the wheels are buckled and the brakes need some work too. All of which I decided was too much and as the sales are in full swing in France it seemed like the ideal opportunity.
I took the lights off straight away, along with the reflectors and replaced all the quick-release bolts. I've added a good lock, had Newton donate me some mudguards and now just need to pick up some stronger, easier to detatch lights and I'm good to go.