To lift your spirits a little after 9/11 I’m giving you some alliteration and a chronicle of the busy but amazing day I had last week.  Only I could have bagels, bikes and Bjorn packed into a Sunday.  It was a pretty fabulous day from start to finish!

Bagels:

Since moving to Los Angeles, my family has been on the quest for a good bagel.  I’m sorry LA, you win with the weather but your bagels are just plain lousy.  Jay has been schlepping suitcases full of Brooklyn bagels to LA with every business trip (nearly tipping the scales at the over 50 lbs mark more than a few times).

After talking about it for some time, Jay finally decided to try to roll the dice and attempt make his own bagels.  The results were surprising!  If you want to find out if water really is the all important ingredient, see Jay’s blog post.

Delicious homemade bagels.

Bikes:

I haven’t been able to spin/indoor cycle since I re-injured my back in February and I’ve missed it.  A lot.  I went to my first spin class 2 weeks ago and I nearly bit my tongue off attempting to hold myself back from getting the super sweaty spin experience that I’ve been craving.  It’s nice that my instructor saw that I was struggling but she understood that I was trying not to overdo it on my first ride back.

When I heard that a local indoor cycling studio, Pedal Spin Studio, was holding a benefit class for the pediatric cancer charity, Pablove Foundation, it was a no brainer that I’d take part in any way that I could.  The owner of Pedal, Bryan, and my neighbor Jon are both participating in a 500 mile bike ride for Pablove this October.

To me, “500 miles” brings to mind The Proclaimers singing the words not riding the distance.  I’m in awe. Bryan and Jon are athletes but this is one very special event because this year Jon has been fighting a form of pediatric cancer himself.  You might know that I planned and participated in a benefit spin class during Thanksgiving in Jon’s honor last year and he is someone I stood up for on World Cancer Day.  He is a pretty inspirational guy.

For Bryan, Jon and for Danny V. (a child of friends who is currently fighting leukemia), I got on a bike.  I didn’t ride 500 miles but I rode with my heart for pediatric cancer and the class was kick-ass.  It was quite hard for me to hold back this time between the energy and the music but I did…just barely.  I had a great time, got a little sweaty and having a purpose beyond my own ego and fitness level was great motivation.

Pedal Spin Studio Pablove Ride

Bjorn:

If you’re thinking, “Bjorn?!  WTF?!” –  then we are definitely not friends on Twitter or Instagram because I was blowing up both forms of social media when I won tickets to the very kitschy #AbbaFEST at the Hollywood Bowl through a contest held by Jamie @Minnesota Girl In The World.  A chance to hear great ABBA songs at the world famous Hollywood Bowl certainly was a great way to end a pretty spectacular day!

Hollywood Bowl is an amazing venue to see a show.  The outdoor amphitheater has extremely modern amenities, fabulous food (including a full sushi and sake bar), great wine (the Cupcake Vineyard truck was there) and was easy to get to by public transportation.  I might still be at the venue if I had parked there – you Los Angelenos are crazy for driving there!!

The show began with a quick Abba acapella contest judged by Sarah Horn (who found recent fame after a recent impromptu duet of “Good” from “Wicked” with Kristin Chenoweth).

Then Abba – The Concert took the stage and it was fabulous!  At first I wasn’t sure if the band members were pretending to sound Swedish but soon realized that they actually were Swedish…and they were awesome!  This band was spot on with their costumes, music and voices! They played a bunch of the hits and the crowd loved it!  It found it neat that Abba – The Concert band always has 2 people who originally played with Abba to perform with them to make the experience a little more authentic.

I learned something at the concert too – I knew ABBA was comprised of two married couples but I didn’t know that the name ABBA was an acronym of the first letters of each of their names (Agnetha, Benny, Bjorn and Anni-Frid).

The evening was the perfect way to end a fabulous day!

This past Sunday was certainly a fun day!

Please know that I was the recipient of delicious bagels courtesy of my culinarily inclined husband, I paid for my benefit ride admission at Pedal Spin and I won the ABBAfest tickets (which means I got those babies for free) but all opinions are absolutely my own.

If you are fasting for the Yom Kippur holiday, I wish you an easy fast day!

What’s on your weekend agenda?