What is the French phrase for 'banged-up knee'?
Week 1, Day 7 of NYC Marathon Training: 4.28 miles, 30 minutes on the Peloton, and a Bastille Day celebration!
There are certain festivals and events I like to go to every year. One of them, which hasn’t been held since 2019 due to COVID-19, is the French Institute Alliance Francaise (FIAF) Bastille Day festival on the Upper East Side of Manhattan.
I was so looking forward to this event that I literally arranged this weekend’s marathon training around it, moving my long run to Saturday so I could attend this Sunday afternoon.
So was it worth it?
The answer is, not really. I go to FIAF events a few times a year and they are usually pretty great. (My recent fave was seeing three episodes of a French TV show called Valide, about a Paris rapper. Still trying to find the rest of the episodes of the series!)
But this year's festival was pretty meh.
Squawker Jon and I were expecting merguez and can-can dancers and mimes and classic French cars. What we got were a slew of pastry stands, some higher-end shopping places, and not much else. (Still annoyed about the lack of merguez!)
I went to the South of France wine tasting and it was a bit of a ripoff. For $35, you got a punch card for six items. Three were for really good, albeit small, wine samples, one was for a gazpacho tasting, one was for a small cheese plate and one for a rosé wine with no alcohol in it. What? Non-alcoholic rosé? No way!
But the worst thing about the day was this: at this very crowded event, some moron decided to bring her Razor-type scooter and have it trailing behind her like a snail. I didn't see the scooter in the crowd. Of course I tripped on it, and banged up my right knee, just a few days after my left knee had finally fully healed from a fall! This idiot didn’t even say she was sorry over her causing my fall. Grrrrr.
I was able to run a bit when I got home, and ride my Peloton, but the knee is definitely aching. Oy.
Speaking of the Peloton, I used to go to classes in person back in the day before the pandemic, but the class last night was the first one I had done since the pandemic that had other riders in it. It was wild to see people again in the classes!