Scooter'n

Beth and I have a very open, honest relationship with each other. It’s a "you only live once" type of agreement that works really well between us. Gotta dream? Go for it! Got an idea? Explore it! However, there is one, hard and fast constraint that she has set out for me. No motorcycles!  I initially thought about challenging this rule until we took a road trip to the mountains of Quebec shortly after our marriage.  It was a beautiful, clear blue day when we rounded a sharp curve and found ourselves the first on the scene of a brutal motorcycle accident (too gruesome to describe in this light-hearted blog entry).  As we drove away after the ambulance arrived, I knew that my motorcycle days were over. It was a tough pill to swallow for someone who grew up on dirt bikes, but it’s all about give and take, right?

However, it didn’t take much convincing to get Beth onto these scooters for a weekend ride through the polders north of Amsterdam. Quiet, clean, and only able to obtain 25KM/hour, this was a great compromise!

These were brand new, state-of-the-art electric scooters.   They were whisper quiet, could go 70-90 kilometers between charges, and were well equipped with horns, turn signals, and really nice headlights.

We hit many small villages in the polder, but Broek en Waterland was our favorite.  It was crisscrossed with little canals lined with beautiful old wooden buildings.

This was a great terrace to sit on for lunch and look out over the polder.   You can see the dyke beyond the house in the distance.  Without the dyke, we’d be under a meter of water!

A typical view from my scooter…Beth eating dust!

Cosmic Relaxation Center

We had the rare opportunity a few weeks back to witness an early performance of a rising star - Caro Emerald.   She’s got a very unique style of sultry voice overlaying a hopped up 1930’s rhythm.  It’s great music that seems to work for almost any occasion, from an afternoon basking on sunny terrace with a cool glass of wine to a hot blurry night in an underground urban club.  Two songs that will probably start getting airtime outside of NL - Back it up (great example of a Dutch "brown cafe" in the video) and A night like this.

But what made the evening really special was the venue in which we saw her – Paradiso.  This is the place of legend – a converted church in the heart of Amsterdam with a standing room capacity of only 1500 people.  With the stained glass windows behind the stage, excellent acoustics designed for the pulpit, and ornate woodwork of the two-tiered balconies, it offers an intimacy that I’ve never experienced anywhere else, including the famous back alley clubs of lower Manhattan.  Paradiso tends to cater to new talent, but it also attracts huge bands like The Rolling Stones, U2, and The Police because of the unique atmosphere it offers.

If you are ever in A’dam and have any affinity for music, this is a must-do evening, regardless of what band is playing.