À la recherche d'une aventure

The beautiful thing about living in a new and foreign place is the daily discovery and adventure hidden in every wrong turn, the occasional disaster, and the generally mundane quotidian details. Especially with such a talented gourmet chef as Lauren, every meal is a "chef d'oeuvre." However, Friday, after a long day of work, we decided to forego cooking for a culinary experience at the Afro-Antillais restaurant. We raced through the busy streets, crossed the town square plaza, followed a few windy backroads, and poof! We were in Senegal!

I loved the familiar sight of the African décor, le boubou(traditional African dress), and most of all the idea of once again being able to eat Yassa au poulet. However, as we were sitting there chatting, a young 20 something guy rushes in and shouts: "Are those your bikes?" "Euh, yes, why?" "One of them just took off with two guys!"

With Liam Neeson like reflexes, I demanded the keys for Lauren's bike. I raced out the door and frankly rather clumsily tried to detach her klunky 30 thirty year old "classic." When I finally liberated it, I raced down the streets with a thirst for revenge. With its less than adequate breaks and the bike lock in my hand, I narrowly avoided several accidents as I coasted through stop lights and angrily bounced off curbs. "Je vais les poursuivre! Je vais les astiquer!"(I'll find them! I'll beat them to a pulp!") I kept repeating to myself the violent mantra until I gave up and realized I might not remember how to get to the restaurant anymore.

After a much longer time than it should've taken, I made my way back defeated to eat. Thankfully, the food was already ready, but I wasn't seeing la vie en rose too well. In fact, I felt slightly disillusionned with what I had considered our perfectly quaint little Northern town where nothign goes wrong...arrivée! Nevertheless, I have a plan to recover Mary's bike(the lady who loaned it to me). I'm going to haunt leboncoin, the French equivalent of craigslist, until the culprit tries to sale my bike. Then, I'll catch him! That's plan A. Plan B is to knock over anybody on a bicycle that resembles the MKB that I had. Plan C is to just buy her a new bike. Naturally, I'm not a entirely excited about that idea, mais voilà, c'est la vie.

I'm hoping to question this fellow for further details. Undoubtedly, he sees a majority of the bikes in the area; so, I'm going to employ him and his dogs as scouts...solving French unemployment, cleaning up the streets, and restoring justice...please call me Jean Val Jean.