Eats, bikes, and leaves

It certainly seems that every 30-40 year old women has by now read the book Eat Pray Love. I have just now cracked the cover, and yet I must confess, I have read the grammatical book Eats, Shoots & Leaves, as I am sure you all have. Mine was a gift from my Mother. I am sure she gave you all a copy. Through blending these two book titles, I thought Eats, Bikes, and Leaves might be a fitting title for my first blog post. Primarily because I do plan to eat, bike, and somehow pull myself away from the best place to ride a bike ever, which is France. Secondly because the whole grammar thing involved in writing a blog, has me a bit intimidated.

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I am mainly intimidated because I expect my Mother will be spell-checking my blog posts. You see, my Mother has an enormous vocabulary culled from a voracious book reading habit throughout my childhood. I recall her giddy excitement when an Author would use an unfamiliar word. She would pencil it onto the inside tab of the book, and later look up each and every word in a dictionary. I am also a bit intimidated because I grew up with southern California beach lingo, further refined by using extremely primary English, with an emphasis on hand language, while living in SE Asia in the 1980's. It doesn't help that my love of cycling has resulted in me answering every question put to me in a phrase that can be sputtered out between two breaths. This adds up for some very colorful word selection and interesting sentence structure.

Rising above this intimidation is my inspiration. I am inspired by the foods of France, and the efforts of seeing where my legs can take me on a bike. I am inspired by making my way solo through France for weeks. I am inspired by the challenge of spell-checking and editing on an iPhone while reporting from the Tour de France.

Wish me luck! I go forth to eat, bike, and leave.