how many miles did you clock today?

Today was Million Mile Monday, the day we all get on our bikes and rack up some riding miles. I managed to put 68 miles on the clock today.

It was a perfect day for riding, couldn't ask for better weather.

My riding buddy and I headed for St. Helena, a small community in Sonoma county with some well known wineries. The town is quaint and the people friendly. We wandered around the town and got ourselves an iced coffee and spoke about how we are going to miss each other, I promised her I would have a bike ready and waiting for her when she visits me in Australia and that it would be my honor to show her my beautiful country and what better way to see it than on a motorcycle!

I am excited to see what the total number of miles ridden by everyone today was, I'm guessing it will be close to 5 million, that was the aim.

I read a really negative comment about HOG's Million Mile Monday, the writer wrote that Harley has created this day so that Harley owners increased the miles on their bikes which means they need a service/maintenance more frequently...why would someone write something like that? I guess he does have a point and maybe it is a marketing ploy for Harley, perhaps Harley should match so many miles to a dollar and donate it to charity, that way everyone benefits from the ride...the riders, Harley and the charity!

great fun had by all....

I had a great visit with my sister and my niece despite the time going by so quickly.

We booked a night at the Hyatt in San Francisco, which was beautiful, our room had a fantastic view of the city and the harbor......absolutely gorgeous, the hotel staff were wonderful and we all felt like princesses for a couple of days! We did lots of shopping, sight seeing and eating!

There is a Thai restaurant on Post Street which I have eaten at a couple of times and each time the food and service is spot on. The name of the restaurant is 'Modern Thai' and you should try it whenever you are in San Francisco.....you wont be disappointed, the crispy tofu salad is delicious!

Our tour around the wineries was very enjoyable, we picked out 5 wineries to visit in the Sonoma area. The properties are magnificent, I love the vastness of the land, the scenery over the vineyards is something I will have ingrained in my memory forever. My sister spends a lot of time in her little village home in France and commented that the area around Sonoma was very similar to that. We didn't buy any wine, we stopped tasting after the first winery as my sister had had enough! I didn't have any wine as I was driving and my niece isn't really a wine drinker, so we just wandered around the grounds of the beautiful estates.

The weather for their visit was great, we had a couple of really hot days which we all loved, spent some time by the pool and got a little bit of color and a healthy glow.

It was sad to see them go, I miss them already, I love my family and feel very blessed in having such a great family who love and accept each other.

They made the trip back to London with minimal disruptions, my sister works for the Premium Services of an airline so she flies stand by and has to wait for empty seats on a flight to get home, I don't know how she does it I have to have everything organized and confirmed, I couldn't bear not knowing when I will get home......guess you would call that control issues!!

My niece is back at work and my sister and her husband are now in France preparing their little village house for any visitors that want to rent the place over the summer.

Me? Well I'm packing, donating, cleaning, selling, working and wondering how I am going to get everything done before I leave for Australia in 17 days!

Don't go to the Cattlemans, Santa Rosa

Tonight my sister, my niece and I went out for dinner, they fancied steak so I called a few friends to find out he best place to eat around town, a place called 'The Cattlemans' was recommended to me. The restaurant is located in Santa Rosa at Maxwell Village off Farmer's Lane.

When we entered the restaurant there was a musty unpleasant smell which was a bit off putting, but as the place was recommended we seated ourselves and perused the menu. My sister ordered the sirloin steak and my niece ordered the house specialty...can't remember the name of the cut, think it was rib eye, being a vegetarian I am not too familiar with the meat cuts. We ordered appetizers and I ordered a caesar salad.

My niece and I ordered cokes and my sister ordered a mojito, several minutes later the waitress returned to inform us that they didn't have mint for the mojito so my sister ordered a red wine. It a was Kenwood old vine zinfendel....very nice.

The appetizers arrived, we ordered an onion nest which was lightly battered fried onions, when the waitress placed it on our table it was falling all over the side of the small pan they had brought it to the table in, before long the table was covered in battered onion. We also ordered the artichoke and cheese dip, this arrived with broken pieces of dried up bread around the edge of the bowl that held the dip. Both dishes were distasteful and tasted as though they had been cooked in old fat, the dip was floating in grease from the cheese and the bread was inedible.

The steaks and the salad arrived......were shall I start....my caesar salad was made with clumps of old cheddar cheese instead of shaved parmesan, the cheese tasted as if it had been sweating somewhere before being thrown onto the salad, I'm not quite sure what kind of lettuce it was but it was not romaine.....how can you mess up a caesar salad? Oh I know...by not putting any of the ingredients in the bowl that are supposed to be in there!

My sister's steak was satisfactory to her, however the mashed potato and baked beans that came with it left a lot to be desired. My niece's steak was the place's special, she asked for it well done and it initially arrived raw...literally raw so she asked if they could cook it and make it well done, the poor girl waited about 15 mins for her steak and we were joking that they were going to burn it to a crisp because she sent it back! Well it arrived....exactly the same as how she sent it back except this time it was cold! We sent back the steak and the caesar salad and let the waitress know how we felt, she was very gracious. Our evening out to dinner was spoiled by the horridness of the food and the environment of The Cattlemans.

My recommendation to my friends, visitors and anyone I know coming to this area will be to STAY AWAY FROM THE CATTLEMANS in Santa Rosa CA, it is disgusting!

Big sister is coming for a visit!

My sister and niece arrive from overseas in a couple of days for a week or so, I am really looking foward to spending time with them, it's going to be a 'girlie' week. The weather should be good enough for us to spend some time enjoying the countryside, beach and pool.....oh yeah, and Walmart! Neither my sister nor my niece have been to this part of the country before and I am excited to show them around. I have to research some of the wineries so we can do some tasting, I'll organise to do some things in the city and I'll get some fresh ingredients from the farmer's market so I can cook some fabulous meals to go with our newly discovered wines!

Today I went to the store to stock up on things I know they like, my sister drinks instant coffee and loves cashews and my niece loves junk food, so I am stocked up on all that. Last week I also did a bit of stocking up on those things and ended up eating the junk food which I regret big time....my metabolism is not like my niece's 29 year old system! My advice is if you are trying to lose weight, or don't want to put on any weight, don't have ANY junk food in the house, having it easily accessible is too tempting! The stuff I bought today for the girls is stashed waaaaaaay back in the cupboard.....I hope it doesn't start knocking on the door to get out!!!!

I had a great clean up the last couple of days, it feels so good to get rid of stuff, don't know why I collect so much rubbish! I seem to accumulate a ton of paper despite most of my business, social, work and photographic dealings are done on the computer..I just don't get it!

With lots of the stuff I had now gone I can feel the 'Chi' flowing a bit better through the place, it feels lighter and cleaner. I will not accumulate so much stuff in my next home, it is totally unnecessary.

My sister visiting has given me a head start on organizing for my relocation back to Australia, the cleaning and packing will be less now and I wont feel so rushed next month when it is time to go! Can you believe it is only a month away? I am getting very nervous about it, but I don't know why, I've been planning to return home for years but 'something' always came up which made me postpone my trip......now it's time.

Can you hear something? KNOCK, KNOCK....who's there?....JUNK FOOD!

H.O.G Million Mile Monday

Remember June 29th!

Click on the title to get details of the Million Mile Monday!

Vegas

Well I just got back from Las Vegas, we had a great time.

My first stop in Vegas is always the New York New York hotel where I get myself a slice..or 2...of the best pizza with a beer and start to chill out and get ready for Vegas! I can't remember the name of the pizza place but it is just opposite the Times Square pub, its good pizza.

We went to see 'Zumanity' at the New York New York Hotel, it's a Cirque Du Soleil production with fantastic acrobats, and yummy bodies, that was the 2nd time I had seen it and I enjoyed it just as much. The show prompted me to go to the gym the next morning!

We went to Fremont Street for the 'Summer of 69' festival where some really nice restored vintage cars were on show with fabulous music being played by some talented bands, the crowd was enjoying themselves and everyone was chillin' and making new friends. The cars were beautiful, the owners spoke about them with so much pride, telling the story of how they happened to come in possession of them. There was this really nice old Ford Poplar which reminded me of the days when I was child and my family were living in England. We would drive down to Brighton beach in that old jalopy with our sandwiches and flask of tea that mum had prepared. We looked out the window at the cows in the fields and hoped they were standing up, which our dad told us meant it wasn't going to rain. If it rained by the time we got to Brighton dad would park the car facing the ocean and we would eat our sandwiches and drink our tea with the windshield wipers going so we could see the ocean through the rain......how British is that! What I would do now to get my hands on that car!

While in Vegas we also visited Freezone, one of the gay bars off Paradise Road, the barman was a cute Aussie guy now living in Vegas, we had fun talking to him and hearing his story, everyone has a story of how they ended up in Vegas....some funny, some sad. We went back there on Saturday night to see the drag show, it wasn't too bad, it was a pity the audience were so loud talking amongst themselves and some not paying any attention to the Queens, they did a good job despite the fact that the MC made some derogatory remarks about lesbians....well, women in general, really.......she was trying to be funny I guess, but it didn't go down too well with myself and a few of the lesbians in the house!

I didn't get much pool time in which is unusual for me as I love lying by the pool burning to a crisp! We did a lot of walking up and down the strip, there is a ton of construction visible and we were told that the construction has been halted due to the economy so there is a lot of unfinished buildings along the strip....unsightly.

The big luxurious hotels are still a delight to visit and walk around, some of the lobbies are beautiful. The Bellagio still has it's lobby decorated with Dale Chihuly glass works, great big poppies tower over you as you walk through....did you know that the Bellagio has 3933 rooms which is more than the number of residents living in Bellagio, Italy?

I always enjoy visiting the Paris hotel, its quaint and has a personal feel to it, I love the little bakeries, their nic nac shops and everything written in French along the cobble stoned roads.

The Luxor hotel has a great display of Chris Angel's motorbikes, I am not sure if they are his personal collection but they are absolutely gorgeous. I tried to get some photos but they were encased in glass causing alot of reflections on the photos. There is a light beam shooting up into the sky from the top of the Luxor which can be seen for 250 miles from an aeroplane on a clear night....don't know much about Egyptian history so I don't know if that beam is just a Vegas thing or something to do with Egypt....don't know why I was compelled to write that little fact about the beam!!??

We stayed in one of the older hotels, Excalibur, because we got a great deal and it was a spur of the moment decision to go on the trip. I had never stayed there before and I would not recommend staying in an older hotel, which the Excalibur is, if you get irritated by the smell of smoke, the older ventilation systems can't keep up with the amount of circulating smoke from the 'smoking' rooms and casino. By the end of our trip my chest hurt, my eyes were puffy and irritated and I just needed to be on top of a mountain somewhere breathing in fresh air! One of my friends, who is a smoker, also commented on the smoke, so it must have been bad 'cos he smokes like a trooper!....well I guess that is what Vegas is all about...smoke, booze and gambling....and you can't forget 'girls direct to your door'! Yes, they are still 'flicking' those cards of semi naked women and shoving them in your face as you walk by! The streets are paved with buxom blondes staring up at you as you walk along the strip!

While we were in Vegas Mike Tyson got married at the Hilton Wedding Chapel, we didn't see him but heard about it when we returned home. We were told that there is 361 marriage licenses issued in Vegas daily!!!!!!!!! I can't believe that......well maybe I can, there were so many drunks proposing to each other and falling in love!

Anyway, its good to be back home...sober, unmarried and broke....no matter where you live or where you go...there's no place like home and home is where you make it aint that right Toto?