Better Than Ezra, Stood up, NEW BIKE!!!!!!

Holy crap, I have alot to write about today. The short of the story is that I spent the weekend in DC with Kristen again, and it was wonderful!

Our adventure starts on Friday afternoon in Timonium, MD. I breeze through work, like usual, and meet Kristen for lunch at her house with some Andy Nelson's pulled pork (the BEST pulled pork ever!). Kristen and I discuss our plans for the evening and the weekend: we are to continue my trend of seeing popular 90's bands a decade after they release hit songs by driving to Power Plant Live to see Better Than Ezra. After the concert is over we are to make our way to College Park Maryland where we have a pretty packed weekend.

Before I go any farther, allow me to share some required background information. The few days leading up to Friday I had been busily scouring Craigslist for a new bicycle. I had expanded my search from just the Baltimore area to include Philly, Harrisburg, DC, and the Eastern Shore. The issue is that road bikes seem to be in very high demand this time of year and my options were fairly limited. However I did find one poster, whose textual skills seemed vaguely Indian to me, that had a brand new, still in box, road bike that he was willing to sell me for $350. I knew next to nothing about the bike other that it was manufactured by Fuji (which is interesting because Fuji is not an OEM) and that it was an aluminium frame with shimano comps. After calling the man, who was in fact Indian, I set up a date for saturday at noon at the Alexandria Metro stop.

Anyway, fast forward to friday once again. Around 7:30 I pick Kristen up and fight friday night traffic into the city. After promising my firstborn child for a parking space, and sharing a piece of cheesecake with her, we arrive at Power Plant Live only to come to a crushing realization: the show is 21 and over only. This would not normally be a problem except only two out of the six people in our posse were over 21. Big problem. It would seem that my first born child would be sold into pierside slavery in vain. Do not fear loyal readers, as I assure you that the night ended with us seeing the expected concert. Without going into detail about the geometry of the courtyard area where the concert was held, just know that there was more than one entrance to the gated off area (which K swears wasn't gated off a year ago). We sneakily entered through a side area that allowed access the the bars while the person that was supposed to be watching the gate was presumeably on a bathroom break. Once inside, those of us who were 21 went back outside and through the real entrance to get wristbands and rejoined our under-21 collegues in front of the stage. Better than Ezra was, like most washed up 90's alt-rock bands, alright. They seemed enthusiastic enough, and the songs that I recognized sounded similar to the way thay I remembered them. However, in what was likely a concession to thier "few hit wonder" status thier set was almost half of covers. The rest of the evening was uneventful, and we made it to College Park by 2am just in time that my bladder didnt explode.


Tony stands me up!

Taking a cue from Jeff, I will abandon attempting to tie my narrative together properly using coherent conclusion and introduction sentances and resort to the cop-out technique of using paragraph headings. Saturday was the day I was supposed to get my new bicycle and the anticipation was killing me! Like I said, I had only talked to the seller once and set up an appointment. After springing from bed earlier than I wanted to we boarded the Metro and began the hour Journey to Alexandria. It was interesting because I had never been out that far on the blue line and got to see DC from the south, as we crossed the potomac. We got to the Van Dorn station and didnt see any Indian men standing around with a large box. We waited, and called the number I was given to no avail. I asked a few people that looked confused if they were here to see someone about a bicycle, each inquiry only promted an even more confused look and a reply of simply "no." After half an hour we decided to retreat back into the metro. I was crushed, and Kristen was upset that I had wasted her precious time on this wild goose chase. We then met her sister for lunch, which brings me to my first restaurant review:


L'Madeline (Alexandria, Va)

I will keep this brief. L'Madeline is a french "bistro" in the style of Panera. They have various sorts of salads, pastries and bread items that you order in almost a cafeteria type system. I got a french "pizza" with onions, ham, bacon, swiss cheese and a glass of Lemonade. The Lemonade was by far the best part of the meal, it tasted fresh and tart. I drank two glasses. The Pizza was very good as well, though it seemed to be pre-made and frozen. The meats and swiss cheese blended together well with the onions and the onion cream soup style sauce. Kristen got a half sandwich half salad meal, the details of which I do not remember. Her sister ate tuna salad? which she seemed to enjoy. For all three of us the meal was $25. I give it 3.5 out of 5 stars.

A Day in DC

After lunch we metro'd it back into the city where we played tourist for a while. We attempted to visit the Museum of Natural History but found it over-run by children (see my last post) and retreated after a brief visit to the Africa and prehistoric mammals exhibits. We made our way to through the castle and hung out in the garden directly behind it for a while after reading a sign that claimed the unique nature of the garden resulted in a milder climate than the surrounding areas. Continuing our tour we walked up and touched the Washington Monument, something we both had curiously never done before and eventually made our way over the the World War 2 memorial and reflecting pool. I am begining to realize how grogeous of a city Washington DC really is. The World War 2 memorial is relatively new and is a beautiful mixture of granite and fountains, where people could be found dipping thier feet in to cool off. Furthermore, the entire mall area is rife with early colonial architecture that is well preserved and laid out in a very pedestrian friendly setting. Moving on from the mall over the white house (where they now have armed gaurds with large guns sitting on the roof) many of the buildings look more modern, but there still seems to be a focus on preservation of landmarks and an attempt to keep the city pedestrian friendly. At this point it was dinner time and we walked about 15 blocks to China Town where we engaged in non-chinese feeding.


Matchbox (Washington DC)

The Matchbox restaurant is your classic, chique urbanite pizza bistro oddly located right on the fringe of Chinatown. Kristen and I have a habit of patronizing restaurants that we cannot afford and eating as cheeply as possible; the Matchbox was no exception. Entree's range from $15 to well over $30 for a steak dinner. Fortunately for me, neither of us were in the mood for steak. What this place is famous for is it's 3-6-9 burgers (sliders to the rest of us), and that is exactly what we ordered. We ordered a plate of 6 mini-burgers, which was served with a side of delicious onion crisps topped with parmesean cheese. We also got an order of "mozzi carrozzi" which was breaded...errr..bread fried and stuffed with fresh mozzerella, tomatoes and basil served with a zesty marinara sauce. The burgers were delicious; juicy Angus beef sandwitched between a fresh mini bun served with your choice of cheese (we got gorgonzola). The mozzi carrozzi was good as well, as it reminded us both of a large mozzerela stick. The beer menu was top notch as well (if not over-priced) with a good variety of micro-brew and classic american selection. I got a Dogfish Head 60 minute IPA which complimented my meal very well.
I give the matchbox 4 out of 5 stars.

My new bike

We didn't get home until around 9pm and I emailed the guy that stood me up earlier in the day. While looking on craigslist for his address I noticed a new listing for a bike that was a better deal. I emailed the guy, and got a response almost immediatly: he informed me that there were several people interested and that I should call him at 11:30am tommorow to see if it was still available. Long story short: the person that was supposed to get the bike Sunday morning never showed, and I got called and informed that I should come to dude-man's house in Frederick. One hour and $400 later I was the proud owner of a like-new bicycle. For those interested the frame is by a company called Mercier, which is a direct marketing company (similar to Ibex) that sells over the internet. These companies tend to use the same OEM frames as Trek, Fuji, and Specialized and brand them for thier own use. the bike came equipped with full Shimano 105 comps, Alexrims (lol!) DA-22's, an Ourza comp carbon fiber fork and Look clipless pedals (dude-man wears the same size shoe as me, so he threw them in as well). The 56cm frame is steel, though the bike is only slightly heavier than the aluminium frames I have felt recently. The bike looks like it has been barely ridden, with no obvious scratches anywhere, a well greased chain and shiny, like-new comps. New, a 105 equipped bike would be approaching $1000, so I am happy.

sorry i wrote so much, but that is all for now. LATER!

note: this, kids, is why we proofread our work before publishing it. Ignore the obvious voice errors and typos as i do not feel like correcting them. I wrote this at work in several sittings.