A Little Bit of France in Dallas

I didn't get to work out on Tuesday - bad sinus day.

Wednesday, I was up at 4am to catch a 6am flight to Dallas for one day of work. You gotta love American Airlines. I think they are the only airline that still provides blankets!

I was picked up by my Dallas-based co-worker, Douglas Lovelace. We made a quick stop by Starbucks to meet yet another guy and then we went on to the customer location.

While checking in at the lobby, I noticed a large LCD TV that was displaying company

information and across the bottom, it had a ticker of National New, World News and Sports News. Just at the time that I looked up at the screen, it displayed the winner of today's Tour de France stage... Thomas Voeckler. Argh!! I was going to watch it later tonight. Oh well. At least I really, really like Thomas Voeckler from his rookie year wearing the Yellow Jersey for 10 straight days and finishing the Tour as "the best young rider".

For lunch, I was in for a very pleasant surprise. Douglas took me to a place called Le Cordon Bleu. This is the Institute of Culinary Arts (http://www.chefs.edu/dallas/). As part of their cooking school, they have a small restaurant where you can eat what they cook. You can have a 1-course meal for $7, a 2-course meal for $10, or a 3-course meal for $13. They had some interesting items that were sold out... Bacon Ice Cream! Mmmmm.

I had a Roasted Beet Salad and an entree of Pan Seared Sole with Spaghetti Squash. The tea was Basil Raspberry.

Here is Douglas enjoying his Raspberry Sorbet.

This is a view towards the kitchen.

Apparently, they have many instructors - a front chef, a back chef, bar, & service. They also have an on-site shop where I bought a book on cooking brunches.

After finishing the day in Dallas, Douglas returned me to the airport for my departure back to Tampa, which was slightly delayed by rain. I made it home around 9:15pm - one very long day.

Today - Thursday, I made it to CrossFit for a hell-of-a-workout. Today was "Badger". I think they call it "Badger" because DL had to badger me on every Squat Clean (get lower, elbows out, chest up, weight on the heels, blah, blah, blah. Although, I did tell him that he was going to have to stick with me for every lift. I even told him that he'd have to come over and push me down if he wanted me to squat lower! But I would never had made it through this in one piece if it weren't for him!!

It was only 3 rounds - but that usually spells trouble. We had 30xSquat Cleans, 65# was rx'd, I did 55#. Then 30xpull-ups (I did jumping pull-ups), then 800m run. Marc had me do a 400m row instead (since I like to run, he always has me row instead, and only 400m to reduce the fatigue on the arms).

It still took me 49:41 to finish this one. The Squat Cleans are what took me forever!!

Now, it's just another rainy (stormy) day in paradise.