Adventures in Paris

For those of you who have travelled often you know that some crazy stuff is bound to happen. If only we had known what great adventures lay before us. This is us trapped in an elevator. We were stranded for about 45 minutes. I was loving of it, but some people weren't so much. Greg was definitely not worried, but you wouldn't know it from this picture. And just a word of warning, when a French elevator says weight limit 7 people, 8 people will definitely break it.
This is us (L to R: Jeremy, me, Kelly, Dan) getting ready for a nice leisurely bike ride. On Friday nights in Paris there is a huge bike ride where people meet at this famous hotel and all ride together and police block of all the traffic in all the intersections. The group rides to the Eiffel Tower, takes a 15 minute snack break then comes back to the hotel. Only we were about 3 minutes late for the meeting.......

I've got to be honest I was kinda anxious about not being able to stay with the group. I really didn't want to be riding through the streets without the police escort, especially the way many people drive in Europe. But since the 10 of us from our group were late we didn't really have a choice. Fortunately we had a local worker with us who knew the side streets and could help us catch up the group......
Well believe it or not, we never saw the main group again, but the ride to try to catch them was definitely the funnest bike ride of my life. In trying to catch up with the group we had to take a bunch of sidestreets, but as we got close to the Eiffel Tower then the fun began. The only way to cut across to the Eiffel Tower was to weave between oncoming traffic through 5-6 lines of traffic to cross four or five different streets. So we're crossing the streets and all the girls are screaming bloody murder and I'm laughing my head off cause I've never had so much fun. It was definitely like the old school Nintendo game Paperboy except in the game if you got hit by a car you just had to start over. Unfortunately no one was able to take any pictures while we were dodging cars, but here is a picture of me and Kelly after we crossed one of the streets. And can my boy Greg overexaggerate an injury or what. Dude stepped in this little 4 inch hole and started rolling on the ground like he just got shot in the face. A lot of people actually thought he was playing charades. This is a picture of some volunteer paramedics strapping him into a collapse-able wheelchair. I think he was just faking it to get out of housework once we got home, but he definitely had to play up it to keep the fib going.

Ok, the truth is he already had a sprained ankle and the injury was pretty minor. But because he was rolling on the ground due to the intial pain some people overreacted and got to the paramedics. Then he had to spend the next 5-6 hours getting his ankle poked at by everyone in Paris would had ever considered being a doctor, nurse, EMT, trainer, bank teller, etc. Needless to say, it was a pretty funny situation considering he was only mildly injured.

Cool Stuff around Paris

This is a picture of the guys on our team. Front row (L to R): Jeremy, Greg, David. Back Row (L to R): Dan, Jay, CJ, Dr. Williams.

Here we are playing taboo in the Detriot airport. My team won, of course.

This is the lower-floor cave of this cool French restaurant. The food was great and the atmosphere was obviously pretty cool.
This is apparently Dr. William's favorite pastime because he was asleep probably 3x as much as he was awake.
Here is me and David playing soccer with some kids. Guess which two look like they are playing the hardest (clue: they're tall, white, and American).

I could really get used to some moving sidewalks.
Here are some of us eating sandwiches near the Eiffel Tower. Clockwise from front: Jay, Jeremy, Kelly, Rachel, Dan, Greg, and CJ.


Here is Dan "drinking" from St. Michel's fountain. This trip was definitely all about some weird poses with the local architecture.

Fun in Paris

Here is some of the cool stuff you can do around Paris.
Near the Louvre is a large pool of water. Kids can rent these miniature sailboats that they can push out and watch the wind carry them across to the other side. It was especially cool when two boats would crash into each other!

If you can't read the sign: in Paris gas is 1.589 euros/liter which comes out to about $8/gal so stop complaining.

Every year Paris has a music festival where there are large concerts in places like the Eiffel Tower, but all around the city at various street corners smaller bands would be playing and people would stand around and sing or dance. It was pretty cool. This band specialized in such French classics like "Sweet Home Alabama."
I mean it's not a vacation if you don't eat McDonald's!

These are the coolest port-a-potties on the planet. The doors are machine operated. You press the button to go in and press the handle to come out. If you don't come out in 15 minutes the doors open automatically. And the coolest part, when the door closes after you leave, it isn't just the toilet that flushes, the whole room does!


This was right next to the band in the picture above. Some of us guys were more into this than the singing. I mean it is incredibly breath-taking to see such a sweet ride just sitting there on a random corner unattended. Some of us even discussed stealing it, but we didn't think that would be a good idea on a missions trip. But I think one thing we can all agree on, it is one sweet bike.