first of all, mollie is in heaven. well, at the moment she\u2019s sitting on the couch next to me, looking imploringly into my eyes, hoping for some treats. but last night it was mollie nirvana around here.<\/p>\n
we had the family and randy, bev and erica over for dinner last night and showed them the first video of our trip. mollie was first very excited because of the nonstop barking opportunities as people showed up.<\/p>\n
then, when she realized that food was forthcoming, she was even more excited, and got to run from person to person, looking up at each one with that very sad look of hers and of course people gave her food.<\/p>\n
after they left i was putting away a leftover container of rice and it spilled all over the kitchen floor. all over the place, a huge mess. mollie leapt into gear, feverishly gobbling up each and every last little grain. incredible, she\u2019s better than a vacuum.<\/p>\n
we left the kitchen and when we returned a little while later, a bag of buns was lying on the kitchen floor. empty bag of buns. that had been half-full. mollie was furiously wagging her tail…and standing by the pantry door, begging for a treat.<\/p>\n
because she was still hungry.<\/p>\n
always has been, always will be.<\/p>\n
ok, so the surgery part…before we went on vacation, kevin had a painful bump on his ear and the doctor wanted to operate on it right away, but couldn\u2019t because we were going on vacation. “it could be cancer,” kevin informed me.<\/p>\n
i did a good job of not thinking about this because of all the biking. but when we got back, it was suddenly surgery time.<\/p>\n
we thought he was supposed to be at the hospital today at 10, and the surgery was going to be at 11:30. but no, the surgery was at 1. we spent a lot of time hanging out there at the hospital.<\/p>\n
as the nurse wheeled him off to surgery, another woman – who was she, anyway? – told me that it would probably only take a half hour.<\/p>\n
1:30 arrived. then 2. then 2:30, and i was worrying full-steam. i finally asked the lady at the desk to check on him and somebody on the phone told her that he was still in surgery. jesus, what were they doing, cutting the ear off altogether?<\/p>\n
but no, she was wrong, he had just gotten out of surgery. all went well.<\/p>\n
whew. another woman had been waiting there since 10. her husband was in surgery all that time. now she looked stressed out.<\/p>\n
kevin looked good, he was perfectly lucid even though he\u2019d been unconscious for a couple of hours.<\/p>\n
he\u2019s sleeping peacefully now, and i resisted the temptation to go to sleep at eight o\u2019clock along with him.<\/p>\n
here\u2019s a photo of our first day of biking. this was wednesday the 12th, passau germany. We\u2019d flown to frankfurt, then took another flight to vienna, then took the train to passau. we\u2019d ride from passau to vienna and fly out of vienna.<\/p>\n
the day started out rainy and cold, but we didn\u2019t actually get on the bikes till 11:30 because one of kevin\u2019s tires was soft, and when he tried to pump it up it deflated. the pump that came with the bike was very poor.<\/p>\n
<\/p>\n
so when we finally started, the rain had stopped. we rode down the hill from our hotel to the path and saw the river for the first time. a woman was there taking a photo of her child, and we got her to take our picture. she said she\u2019d spent time in the US, in houston. “hot, huh?” i asked her. i didn\u2019t try to tell her about my friend christine who grew up in a little town called liberty, just outside of houston, because we needed to GET GOING.<\/p>\n
here\u2019s a good photo of the beginning of the river (the beginning of it for us, that is).<\/p>\n
<\/p>\n
we crossed the bridge, which wasn\u2019t so bad, but on the other side things were a little sketchy. we realized we had to go down a pretty steep hill, and we walked out bikes down. here\u2019s me, saying, “what on earth am i doing here?”<\/p>\n
<\/p>\n
the route out of passau was a little odd, as we went past people\u2019s backyard gardens and on little bitty paths. but we kept seeing these green bike path signs and we followed them and eventually ended up out of town.<\/p>\n
i can\u2019t think of a time during the ride that the route wasn\u2019t clearly marked. they have a great system there, and for most of the trip, we were on a dedicated bike path with no cars. except getting into bigger towns, we didn\u2019t really see many cars, and not many bikes, either. i had bet that the huge amount of bikers that are on the trail in the summer would have dwindled, and i was right.<\/p>\n
i have about 295 more pictures, but i probably won\u2019t put each and every one of them up here. it\u2019s after nine now, i\u2019m going to wait until 10 and then go to sleep.<\/p>\n
is it still jet lag?<\/p>\n
ok then,<\/p>\n
wednesday grace<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
first of all, mollie is in heaven. well, at the moment she\u2019s sitting on the couch next to me, looking imploringly into my eyes, hoping for some treats. but last night it was mollie nirvana around here. we had the family and randy, bev and erica over for dinner last night and showed them the […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_et_pb_use_builder":"","_et_pb_old_content":"","_et_gb_content_width":"","_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_hide_featured_image":false,"_jetpack_featured_image_duplicate_dismissed":0,"_jetpack_feature_clip_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":true,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","default_image_id":0,"font":"","enabled":false},"version":2},"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false},"categories":[1],"tags":[5],"class_list":["post-939","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-uncategorized","tag-austria"],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/p6JLYy-f9","jetpack_likes_enabled":true,"jetpack-related-posts":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/graceuncensored.com\/WordPress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/939","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/graceuncensored.com\/WordPress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/graceuncensored.com\/WordPress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/graceuncensored.com\/WordPress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/graceuncensored.com\/WordPress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=939"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/graceuncensored.com\/WordPress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/939\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/graceuncensored.com\/WordPress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=939"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/graceuncensored.com\/WordPress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=939"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/graceuncensored.com\/WordPress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=939"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}