roughly 20% of transportation in the Netherlands is by bike

Things I have seen people doing while bicycling:

- holding hands (with another person on a bike)
- carrying a room-sized carpet, rolled up
- carrying another bike
- talking on a cell phone
- drinking beer
- having a cigarette
- carrying a cello
- carrying up to three children

In fact, I once calculated that if you combined all the methods for carting children around by bike, there'd be space for 10:

1: a baby in a babycarrier strapped to your front.
2: a baby in a babycarrier strapped to your back
3, 4: two on seats behind your seat
5: one in the seat just behind the handlebars
6, 7: in the trailer behind the bike
8, 9, 10: in the trailer in front of the bike

Of course, you'd have to have the thighs of a giant to be able to MOVE them all, but theoretically, it is possible.

All of this makes me more and more convinced that it might just be possible to get through life without ever buying a car.

vanilla ice cream with vanilla topping

When we first moved here, we had a hard time finding vanilla extract. But we WERE able to find vanilla beans, cheaply, and since we've always wanted to try making our own vanilla, we bought a bottle of vodka, a bunch of beans, and hey presto five weeks later we had our very own, even better than store bought, vanilla extract. We just finished up the first bottle on Sunday, and so we wanted to find something to do with the leftover beans. Joel chopped them up finely, and we sprinkled them over vanilla icecream. There isn't much flavor left (in fact, it's more alcohol flavor than vanilla flavor!) but there was a enough to make it a tasty addition. Next time we won't bother chopping the outer part of the bean, but just scrape out the soft inside, because that's where most of the flavor is.

population changes

In the 1292 subsidy roll of London, 804 people were taxed. In the 1582 subsidy, over 7500 were taxed.

I'm not sure what surprises me more - the nearly 10 fold increase in the number of taxable people, or the fact that there were only 800 at the end of the 13th century. That just seems so small.