Charlie's Page

Well, the weather has finally warmed up here. It's back to normal and it is very nice - though it is a bit windy but that is normal for the spring here also.

After having a very slow winter at the hostel, yesterday business finally picked up and there a lot of people staying here which means I am working more and earning more money - yeah.

The weather has continued to be unusually cold here for this time of the year. It normally is a few degrees warmer than this.

I woke up this morning with an unusually stiff neck and shoulder muscles. Why? I don't know. There is no stress in my life.

Watching the TV news is getting tiring. Each day, every week it just seems to be the same thing all the time - the Democratic primaries, the Martha Stewart and Kobe Bryant trials. One station seems to be proud of their 80 second around-the-world-news segment, complete with a clock that counts down the seconds showing about five or six stories - half of which are fluff stories. This morning two news anchors were speaking a mile a minute - very stressful.

----------From March 2001 Bicycling magazine

Q. I drink a lot of water on rides but hate the expense of bottled water. Am I okay drinking ordinary tap water?

A. Yes, you might be better off than Evian-toting chemicalphobes. Bottled water doesn't have to come from some pristine glacier mountain spring. In fact, some brands bottle their H2O straight from the municipal tap (it will say something like "municipal reservoir" on the label). What's more: Bottled water may have as much, if not more, bacteria than what flows from your home spigot. Researchers in Ohio recently compared Cleveland tap water from four urban treatment plants with 57 brands of bottled water. Though the majority of bottled waters were slightly more bacteria-pure than water from the tap, 15 of those samples contained more bacteria than water from the kitchen sink-up to 2,000 times as much. None would make you sick, but they're not exactly a bargain in the purity department.

What was I saying about nothing new happening around here? Last week, someone sold me a bike for five dollars (the first thing that I have bought except food since mid-January) - the rear wheel was seriously bent and it had no rear derailleur. I got a r.d. for free from someone and I put a rear wheel from the other not-so-good bike that I have on it and so now I have a much better bike to ride into town. Yeah! I'd like to bring it with me to Paris but where would I keep the bike?