10 hour journey/ 2 hour class

a regular school day can be such an adventure in a city with over-active worker's unions!

Normally it takes about 30 minutes of train & metro to get to class. but thanks to the wonderful transportation strike, I spent 10 hours out AND came home on a seatless bicycle.

My class was to start at 10:30am. I had signed up for language lab at 9:00am, so I got up at 6am. (1 hour yoga, 1/2 hour getting ready, 1.5 hour enroute). For the first time, I rode my bike (well Sabine's bike) to the train station because I wasn't sure which train out of which station would actually function. The train delay wasn't too bad, 15-minute wait instead of the usual 5; the metro wait from Paris Montparnasse station was about 30 minutes instead of the usual 3.

...and the language lab was closed, the teacher probably didn't have any way of getting there; i got up at 6am so that I could sit and pick my nose for an hour and half.

After class, it took 1 hour for the metro to arrive, and I was starving, because of all days, this was one day I chose to forget my wallet at home. Of course I was excited to get to the train station, which would've been 20 minutes away from home (food).

...except the trains weren't going to start running for another 3 hours! so I went to fnac the bookstore and read travel books in french, while trying to not be tempted by the ubiquitous cooking books.

Back to the train station at 5pm, the 5:07 and the 5:28 trains were both canceled, so I read magazines until 5:38.

of course it was a slow train, which got to my station just after 6. I was too happy to unlock my bike; but I stopped in my tracks and stared at my bike for a second trying to figure out how to ride it--it suddenly felt all too foreign to me, like staring at that 6-inch slug in my bathroom! then I realized that all the other bikes parked next to me had a seat..........

I scooted the first half of the way home, when that got too slow, I rode the bike standing.

at least Sabine didn't go to work that day due to the strike, so the kids didn't fall out of any cribs or starve. and at least I still had some of the veal jalfrezi that I had made the night before.