We went to Nostrana for the second time the other night. No, we didn't ride our bikes there. We drove Lindi's car. It was dark, it was cold, it was raining, and I wanted to wear my long wool coat and nice leather shoes and not have helmet hair. So sue me.
This is exactly why a lot of women don't ride their bikes ever. They don't want to look like they just got dragged in by the cat -- which is what I usually look like, but luckily I don't mind. Usually.

On this particular evening I minded. So I dressed in my real clothes and we went to this great restaurant, on about 12th & Hawthorne. This is the kind of food that when you take a bite you are stunned into silence and you just sit there with the food in your mouth and you want to postpone swallowing it so you can feel the sensation of it for longer. And then you want to wait until the taste has subsided before you take the next bite, so you can maximize the ingoing and outgoing experience of every morsel as it enters, resides in, and eventually leaves your mouth, and the ghost of it that hangs around a little after it goes down your throat.

It is ab.solutely. un.believable.

And the same goes for dessert, so don't skip it.

We met my mother and sister there and then to top it off the waiter brings this fantastic bottle of wine and says it's a gift, which at first is a total mystery and we're thinking Right, this is some kind of ploy to get us to spend a ton of money, but it turns out to have been sent by a very good friend of ours, who (I should've known) seemed to be asking very specific questions when I mentioned to him that we were going to Nostrana.

One thing I would change about this restaurant is that the tables are of that large square kind that puts you too far away from the people you're with. I feel like I have to stretch way forward the whole time, trying througout the meal to get closer to them, partly because I like them but also to hear what they're saying. It doesn't help matters that it gets pretty loud in there, so it really can be hard to hear each other. I didn't have this problem the first time I went because we went a little outside normal eating hours. So that's what I'd recommend. Call and ask what times and days would be relatively uncrowded. On the other hand, if you're one of those people who bellow all the time, it won't be an issue for you.

I have more to say about the effect of cycling on appearance, but that'll have to be later. Bye.