John and I just celebrated our 8th Valentines Day! I must admit, after so many years together, birthdays and holidays just don’t offer the same level of excitement. I think we’re just getting old! 🙂 But we still had a great day. The weather was beautiful, so we took our new bikes out for a spin. The way we rode those things… you’d think we’d never been on a bike before! Of course we had Giant and Trek bikes in the States– rode them all about 4 times. Blame it on the hills of Virginia, okay? In Shanghai, it’s a whole new sport. The land here is so flat, riding bikes is almost as easy as breathing! Okay, not really that easy but still, not strenuous in the least and that is key for non-athletes such as ourselves.

We also get a big thrill from the dangers of biking. Here you have to basically fend for your life– against taxis, psycho drivers, not to mention oblivious pedestrians, obnoxious scooterists and other cyclists. John and I are all about riding fast. We book it full speed ahead (as fast as our single-speeds can carry us), weaving in and out, ringing our little thumb bells nonstop. Outta our way, we’re coming through! Being maniacal bikers is a total blast!

After an afternoon of tearing through town, we stopped at Simply Thai for dinner. After a series of disappointing misses at the local restaurants, we were pleasantly surprised. Despite having his mouth on fire, John was very pleased with his Thai spicy beef salad and coconut curried duck. Thank goodness– one less McD’s dinner. 🙂