Dijon France Trip! And, things learned while traveling with a 20 month old.

August28

We spent a month in Dijon France in the Burgundy region this summer and it was a good trip. Not quite as magical as our stay in Strasbourg last year but a much-needed change of pace. We had a great time with family as my mom and step-dad visited for about 10 days and my brother and his girlfriend Isadora visited for a long weekend :). Fun times!

We had so many amazing meals, ate some amazing desserts, and drank a lot of good wine (plus sent some home)! I forgot how nice it is to have a slow 2 to 3-hour lunch with family. Calico even managed to sit through a few of those lunches…

Calico is such a blast! Even over the course of this trip, it is crazy how much more he can do and say. His first word after mama/dada was “ball” and he is a nut for any type of ball. Anytime he sees kids playing with a ball he just watches and wants to run over and try to play. It is so much fun to have this time with him in a new place.

What changed this year?

Calico is older! When he was 5 months old he was barely crawling and we could take him everywhere and he just sat and watched :). Now we have to hand him back and forth during a meal or try to keep him occupied at the table. Plus he doesn’t like to sit in his stroller for long periods and needs to get out and run and jump. We wonder if he will be the type of kid who is going to sit and color while we eat in a year :). We did not know quite what to expect at this age with his personality and that definitely adjusted what we thought we could do. I think in the future we will make sure we are really close to pedestrian areas or big parks that he can play at. And, probably smaller towns as well.

The weather was too hot! We did not realize that this region is the hottest in France in the summer and we need to check that better next time (94 degrees plus for the first 2 to 3 weeks before it dropped to the 80s). Our apartment did not have AC and the main living room got hit by morning to afternoon sun every day. We slept fine with fans, but we plan to move our yearly trip to winter/early-spring going forward. That way we get to enjoy the amazing Colorado summer and escape the cold of late winter.

Calico was sick the first week and his energy was low and he was extra clingy. That was a bummer as it lined up with when my mom and step-dad visited so we did not get to do as much with them or take them up on their offer to watch him for a few date nights.

What did we learn? What would we change going forward?

Lindsey did a 3-week trip back to Arkansas prior to France and she had a great time but was also exhausted going into our family trip. That is not something we will do next time as it is just too much go-go-go. She needed more solo time once she was here and we should have planned that better. Towards the end of the trip, we got that sorted out better.

Lindsey and I get in this rut where we forget to take time for ourselves that we desperately need. We are trying to do better at this both in Colorado and when we travel. We just get stuck where we are both watching Calico halfway while trying to do something and both of us get frustrated. We both need breaks where we eat a long meal alone or read or workout or do a wine/cheese tasting or something. I was especially bad where I would put off a workout and then get frustrated as I really needed one.

We need to make more plans and schedule things we want to do. Not a crazy amount, but just more planned trips via the train, or car, to eat a special meal, or do a wine tasting, or see some history. It is too easy to get stuck in a loop where we are tired and we don’t do something special or adventures. We had such great memories of driving to the lake to swim or doing a wine tasting and that is fun for Calico too.

If it is going to be hot we need to get AC. When it was just us we could go out during the day, or hang out at a park or cafe, but with a little one, it is nice to have a room with AC for him to play in during peak heat.

I worked a little bit on this trip and with that about to switch to full time as I start a new business, we are going to try to find a temporary babysitter to help when we travel next time. That way the babysitter can watch Calico while I am home working in the morning and Lindsey can go explore and have a break. Or, Lindsey has help when she takes Calico with her to explore a new city. It would be really nice if we trust them to have a lunch just me and Lindsey too :). I think in general we are going to try to get some more help here and there, as it really helps out.

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Happiness is…

April25

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The “Modern Art” Of Wine: Familia Zuccardi Innovacion: Touriga Nacional

April29

Take a hard look at this wine. A hard look.

Got it?

This wine is fucked up.

It created about a 1.5 to 2 hour conversation. First we thought the wine had gone bad, then we just thought it was bad wine, then we realized it smelled like Tequila, then we thought it was bad wine, then we though it had gone bad. Repeat.

It did test like Tequila. It might have been tequila and cranberry juice. We ordered shots of tequila and confirmed it tasted/smelled like tequila. Theories of plants mating between fields emerged, genetic science, nano technology, it’s hard to say what “man” did to this poor wine.

A small 33.3% of the crowed surveyed indicated it tasted like cigarettes.

Then Joel detected a faint port taste, which was confirmed. It was still bad wine, which smelled like tequila, and for the first 10 mili seconds tasted like port.

This is the modern art of wine. It challenges what you think “good” wine is. And as Joel said, “this is the wine that will bring you back to when you first tasted wine as a kid”. Because it is fracking gross. And challenging? The thing is they make good wine, so are they purposefully making bad wine? What is good wine? What is bad wine? Where am i?

RATING: NEARLY UNDRINKABLE
*I didn’t think such a thing was possible.

Mendoza and Argentina Wine Country!

March3

I spent a week in Mendoza with Rose and Steve and had a blast! Mendoza is in the largest wine growing region of Argentina and next to a lot of mountains (which you can see the snow capped peaks in the below pictures). We drank a lot of wine, went on a day long biking tour of vineyards, and ended up at a small beer garden. We were there the week before the massive wine festival, glad we missed that as prices for a place to stay doubled and looked like it was going to be crazy. Great running too, they have a fantastic huge park with trails in Mendoza.

It takes 14 to 16 hours on a bus to get to Mendoza from Argentina, basically going width wise across the entire country.

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Catalpa – Malbec

February13

A delicious Malbec that I really enjoyed! This one is located near Mendoza (Uco Valley) and hoping to visit it later this month maybe. Learn more about this one here.

Familia Gascon – Malbec

February11

Another Malbec, and yet another bottle where I can barely read who made it. What is with all the fancy writing people? Ya ya it’s cool. This wine was ok, but a bit acidic or something I couldn’t put my taste buds on. And not as smooth as the last one, maybe a bit too fruity and acidic. I think that was it.

That said, I drank it.

Vina el Gerno – Malbec

February8

This was a delicious wine from a small vineyard, I don’t understand how people describe wines as it always seems odd. Basically it was really smooth, tasted great, and I drank it. There is some additional info here about them too.

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Plans For The Next 18 Months…

December24

So, in short here are my plans for the next 18 months:

Jan – Month in Cusco, Peru (at 11,000+ feet)
Feb, March, April – Buenos Aires, Argentina.
May – Santiago, Chile.

I scored apartments with internet in each place and hopefully going to visit Brazil from Argentina quite a few times. I’ve got plenty of space at most places so hopefully some friends will come visit!

Still working down ideas of what I’ll do while I’m in each place, but the general idea is Mayan ruins, old churches, museums, food, steak, wine, vineyards, lots of fun work (webpub/wwwh), wine, beach, patagonia, etc. May 30th I fly off to Australia, still waiting to figure out that stuff, but I’ll be there for a year! And hopefully quite a few trips to Asia and surrounding regions.

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Book Review: Sixty Million Frenchmen Can’t Be Wrong…

October13

I don’t often post book recommendations on the blog, in fact I’ve only written two full blog posts on books this year, the rest just get a small blurb on the big list. So keep that in mind as the title of this book I’m about to recommend should scare you away, the title is Sixty Million Frenchmen Can’t Be Wrong: Why We Love France but Not the French.

So the title sounds a bit weird but the book is absolutely amazing! I’ve visited France three or four times over the last couple years and I’ve been trying to learn more about french culture and history and this book is the answer, it is as if someone forced a book on french history, french politics, and french business outlook to have menage a trois and this book is the baby. The book is well written, well researched, and well laid out.

And a quick example, I’ve been involved with computers for a long time and I’ve never heard of the Minitel yet after a chapter of reading about it in this book I was stunned. This was basically a very successful precursor to the internet that launched in 1982, a mere year after I was born. This little networked device could do online dating, message boards, buy airline or train tickets, order stuff, porn, etc. Crazy that I’ve never heard of it.

So go buy this book if you want to learn how France works. It is great to learn more about another democracy that continually chooses a different path then the USA. And hopefully we can pull some ways to change our system out of the mistakes they have made, and the things they are doing very well.

And…

The other book I strongly recommended this year is War (Click Here to learn more about it). A documentary is also going to come out about the author and the soldiers he wrote about.

Good Spanish Wine = Condado De Haza

September6

I really liked this wine and highly recommend you drink it.

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This is bwb’s personal blog, so he can share his thoughts with the world, however scary or silly they might be. Plus family and friends can track what I am up to, and where I am in the world.

I am pretty simple. I love Mangos. I love the ocean (although mostly at sunset, as I’m a ginger). I love to travel, eat exotic food, do long bike rides, read, and use my imagination. At some point, I decided it was better to be a pirate captain than an admiral. I am a globalist and see the entire world as my responsibility and playground. And I am married to an amazing woman who makes life even more fun :)! And we are now the proud parents of Calico Jack :).


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