Ruins, the blues, Notre Dame and Van Gogh, again

6 pack to go

I want to do some new stuff but with all the rain and my new bbq toy, I've been distracted.
 

New BBQ + new BBQ Book = Experimentation!

Beer Can Chicken

The Rub

 
Ted Reader's Bone Dust Rub with 13 spices. Doesn't the Colonel only have 11? :)

The Grub

 

The Tub

 
I bought a selection but finally decided to go with the Sleeman's Honey Brown Lager. I took a big sip and added a shot of Jack Daniel's.

On the Launch Pad

 
I didn't even think of taking a picture of the finished product! Do you believe it? I think it was because I wasn't sure how to get the thing off the grill. It was a 3lb bird and took about 50 minutes to cook. There was lots of liquid left in the can (used a Tall Boy). It tasted gooood ...

Window treatment

 

Pink light district

 
The block around our hotel had streetlights with magenta filters. Turns out it was for the Musée Réattu, accross the street from us, which was about to open a special exhibiton. It helped us get oriented the first few nights. All streets in Arles look alike!

A Relaxing Breakfast?

We noticed a lot of French woman having smokes and coffee for breakfast as a way of staying thin. There were no joggers on the streets of Paris. This was the last day in Paris and our second time at this café on the Rue Cler which offered a, "Deux pour Douze" American-style b.fast which included an egg and ham, croissant with jam, orange juice and coffee or chocolate, for two people for twelve euros, a significant discount, thanks to Rick Steves. 

Maman, Musée du Louvre, Paris

 

The Writer

 
Something a little different. I thought by now I'd have the HDRs from Provence and Paris up on Flickr, but I've been distracted by this and that.

Adventures with taps and Q

The main "this" was a leaky faucet on the kitchen sink that went from bad to worse after I 'repaired' it. It leaked more and somehow the cold and hot got mixed up. When you pushed the lever to the right, hot water came out. At the time, I had no idea how a single-lever faucet "knew" hot from cold. But I do now, and it's fixed, thanks to some research on Moen's website, a very kind fellow at Home Depot who supplied we with spare parts (I was eyeing the new faucets), and an email to Moen on Saturday. It works better than new and even the parts work better together.

The "that" was the purchase of a new BBQ ... Er, excuse me, "Gas Grill". This thing is too huge to just be called a BBQ. When you only have bicycles to transport your propane cylinder between the Q and the refill station, you eventually realize a natural gas hookup is the way to go. Appropriately, my old propane Q gave it up just as I made this decision (and I only had to beat on it a little to help it succumb!).

I did some research on gas fitters and Qs and found someone who would hook me up for half the price of my gas provider. I ended up choosing a Vermont Castings gas grill and was delighted to find Home Depot sold them. My local store only had one left and as they were having a four day weekend BBQ special. Jule, after I mentioned this to her on the phone Friday afternoon, biked over and bought the thing.

I thought we might bring it home on one of the bike trailers, which shows you my naivety regarding its size. The thing is HUGE! Even in the box. And heavy. We biked over to the HD together after work and rented their van, a beat up, scraped and dented and filled with dirt gas guzzling beast - just what was needed to haul this thing home. It took two HD guys and me to load it. Getting it out was easier, thankfully, and J and I managed to slide its butt to the ground and stand it up and then walk it back a few feet into the garage.

We spent Saturday afternoon and evening putting it together, me shaking my head the whole time wondering what had gotten into me. I swore I'd never buy anything sight unseen again. It didn't look all that big in the pictures on the Vermont Castings website. For the most part everything went well.

The instructions were reasonably clear and most stuff fit together like it was designed. I was a bit disappointed to see I didn't get the exact grill I saw on the web. I think I have a 2007 model. But that's OK. The one thing the newer model had was a lamp to see what you're doing after dark, especially useful in the spring and fall. I've been outside with a flashlight, so I know what that's like. I'll have to get a stand-alone unit, or, take Jule's suggestion and wear a headlamp. :)

I've since realized it's not THAT big and am getting used to being on the patio, which we've rearranged to help it fit in.

The photo sort is over

Except for some HDRs I'm still working on, all the Provence and Paris pics are up here on flickr. I didn't do much correcting of individual shots and so they have a real, "snap-shotty" feel to them, complete with non vertical verticals. I remember reading a headline in a photo mag several decades ago called, "The Snapshot as Art". Or something like that. I think it created a generation of sloppy photographers, each thinking that poorly composed grab shots could make it in the real world. Interestingly enough, I noticed a lot of the photography in advertising after that looked poorly made.

It might have just been a phase, though, aggravated with the advent of photo-manipulation software.

I'm still evaluating what I did on this trip. There's some stuff that pleases me and some that makes me shake my head. I was looking for pictures to take but I really didn't have a focus (pun intended!) on what I was looking for. I ended up shooting everything, like a guy with a new rifle on his first safari and scared of everything that moves, firing bullets right and left.

It was a good learning lesson, though, for the next trip.

Here's a shot of the Tour Eiffel ...

 

Amphithéâtre - the Roman Arena

 
 
 
 

La Gueule du Loup

The Loup is a a wonderful hole-in-the-wall restaurant on Rue des Arenes, 30 meters off the main pedestrian drag, Rue de l'Hotel de Ville. It's a tiny place with a chef with a big heart and the best food we had on this trip. Merveilleux!

 

Loup inside

The arrangement of the chops on the plate, creating the negative (plate) space on the lower left of the plate is not only unattractive photographically, but would flunk the plate on presentation in Algonquin's Culinary Skills program!

Aprè le Loup

 
 
 

To Arles by train

I ordered rail tickets on line at Rail Europe and they were delivered the next day by UPS. I don't know why it's not possible to just print out boarding passes, but there was no extra charge for this suprisingly quick delivery.

 
 
 
 

TGV launching pad

The TGV (train à grande vitesse) requires reservations and you have an assigned seat in a specific car. They can get you from the top to the bottom of France in under 5 hours! Oncoming trains cause a shock wave as they pass that can really wake you up. The train system is pretty amazing. They leave exactly on time and there are so many coming from so many different parts of the country, their coordination is pretty impressive. And they're all electric! They were pulling out of Gare de Lyon about every 15 minutes.