Where's Munich?

As with Miller-McCune, I had never before heard of The Ecologist, "the world's leading environmental affairs magazine" according to its About Us section. Via And Dutch I just came across The Ecologist's list of "Top 10...Euro cities to cycle".

I skimmed the list, awaiting glowing praise for Munich along the lines of "flat city perfect for those of all skill levels and bike types; wide, well-kept bike paths between the street and the sidewalk on nearly every street; gorgeous scenery whether you're headed to the local bar or cruising along the river Isar on your way to a monastery or out-of-the-way Biergarten; safe, flourishing bike culture overall."

I don't see Munich. Where's Munich? Wait a second, don't tell me...

LONDON?

And no Munich? You can't be serious.

I've only lived in a few European cities and I've only visited half of the ones on this list, but four months of living in and one month of biking in London is enough for me to guarantee you it doesn't belong on this list, even less so when Munich didn't make the cut. London has a dearth of bike lanes (aside from "suggested" ones that run in the street), the ballyhooed Boris Bikes rental system is still in its infancy (it might have opened for the general public by now...), and the bike "superhighways" are about 20% complete.

Even if you've never been to London, tell me what feeling you get from reading the first few lines of its description:

Why it’s great: Cycling in London used to be pretty dreadful thanks to an unfortunate combination of rain and aggressive drivers but since the first two Barclays Cycle Superhighways launched last summer, things have become a little easier.

So in a section about why it's "great," London is hailed as having made the leap from "pretty dreadful" to..."a little easier"? Thanks for the tip, Ecologist! I can't wait to be ground into the rain-slicked pavement by aggressive drivers!

As a matter of fact, based on The Ecologist's descriptions alone, you get the sense that some of these cities are not like the others, some of these cities just don't belong. Here are some delightful excerpts from the section on Paris: "many hazards...infamously crazy drivers...vehicular terrors are best avoided...." Wow, 1 Euro for an unlimited day pass of 30 minute journeys sounds steeper if my Paris life expectancy is only 5 minutes. If I die, do they pro-rate the fee? No? Merde.

If you don't like Munich, fine, don't put it on your "Top ten favorite Euro Cities" list, but it deserves to be on a list of top Euro-cycle Cities. Otherwise maybe the list should have been called "Top 10...Euro Cities we think are neat to go sightseeing in, like that one with that big Tower and the one where they drive on the wrong side, and maybe you should try it on a bike if you can find one, 'cause we hear some people are doin' that these days, and maybe they're a little cheaper and more ubiquitous than they used to be, and we're an eco-magazine so, hey, green!"

But I guess it'd be hard to sneak that one by your editor.

Slugging and Baking

As a quick follow-up to my previous post, my mom is pretty sure that my uncle used to "slug" to work, which makes sense since he works for the government and lives just outside of DC. Plus, he's kind of a hippie once you get past that faux-conservative exterior, so I bet he was happy to undermine the auto industry's profits. My mom thinks she and my dad might have slugged with him one day to get into the city. I'd think that kind of thing would be hard to forget: standing quietly in line, getting in a random strangers car when called like some sort of prostitute, riding silently into the city for free? Guess I'll have to ask my uncle and see if he's got more to tell me about it.

And as a quick follow-up to a Facebook post from last night, the Peanut Butter-Oatmeal Chocolate Chip Cookies from the Brown Eyed Baker site were awesome. Stasia thinks raisins are wrinkly, healthy chocolate chips, but I reject that notion and demand actual chocolate in my cookies. Peanut butter always helps, too, both in flavor and shape. Not that I care much about the shape of cookies since all I really want is to under-cook them for maximum softness and gooeyness, but it can be satisfying (and easier to pick them up) when they don't end up pancake-flat every time. Handy tip. Otherwise just do what Stasia and I sometimes do: eat your fresh cookies with a spoon. Then you can sell it as "breakfast" easier. Put away the Cookie Crisp.

I didn't get any pics, but there's more dough in the fridge so maybe I will next time the cookies come out of the oven. We were going to try the technique described on the site for giving an extra-wrinkly, crispy (is wrinkly+crispy where "crinkly" comes from?) texture to the top of the cookies

To shape, basically roll the dough into ball, then pull it apart in half (so the jagged edges are facing each other), then turn those halves up (so the jagged edges are now facing up), then press them together (side by side) to make them round again, with the jagged edges on top. Hope that explanation helps!

but we didn't end up making the balls of dough as big as suggested in the recipe (believe me, I tried to make them huge but I was overruled as usual), so it was hard to pull off the proper method. Still, delicious, and I will be trying other recipes from the site for SURE. These Italian Pigu sound delicious, simple enough for me, and hilarious, which is my ideal foodstuff. Heh: Pigu.

Edit, March 20, 2011:

The dough dries out very quickly when kept in the fridge. The cookies still turned out well the second time around, but I wouldn't recommend saving the dough for more than a night, maybe two.

Slugging and Sleeping

I don't know why I haven't heard of Miller-McCune before, but it seems like a fantastic magazine/site. The surprisingly long article on Slugging held my attention to the last. Over the past few years living in Europe I discovered the joys of ridesharing, aka carpooling, and have lamented its absence in the USA. Everyone here has a car; no one seems to want to share his car with strangers. We don't like nor trust strangers here. I'm a trustworthy, semi-likable stranger without a car, people! Stop shutting me out.

Quite different from the typically longer-distance sharing that happens in Europe, it turns out DC and San Francisco are a couple of places that have had a strange ridesharing system for over 30 years. Irked by traffic jams and HOV lanes, it is workers in and around these two major cities that have casually organized a better way. Talk about an awful name, though, "slugging." Here's the suggested origin story:

When LeBlanc moved to the area in the mid-1990s, slugging was already entrenched. It was born alongside the I-395 HOV in the 1970s. According to the slugs’ creation story, drivers quickly realized they could get people in their cars and qualify for the new lanes by poaching waiting passengers from bus stops. Bitter bus drivers are credited with coining the term “slug,” originally a derogatory reference that has been amiably reappropriated.

"Slug" doesn't sound like it refers to anything specific about the practice, and I have a hard time believing bus drivers would use such a tame insult...am I missing some historical connotation there? I'll have to ask my family and friends in DC if they've heard of this system, which sounds really cool but also so specific to the surrounding layout and circumstances that it would be impossible to try to export it. But these are the cases that give hope that even Americans can change their travel habits if under enough time or cost pressure.

After spending an inordinate amount of time reading this fascinating piece, I was drawn to A Day in the Life of a Sleepy Student, which will please Stasia, who is incensed at the early start of a high schooler's day (seriously: ask her). I haven't made it all the way through yet, since the screen is starting to make my eyes burn and I need to get the word out here before I burrow squintingly back into my mole-hole for the evening, but I like what I've read so far and I'll certainly be exploring the Miller-McCune site in more depth soon.

The articles are massive, which is sometimes a turn-off when I'm reading something on a computer (see: eyes burning), but they're interesting, well-written, and most importantly they aren't spread out across 5 or 10 pages but rather contained on a single, very tall page. Web sites aren't subject to the space restrictions of the printed page, but sites like The Washington Post and Slate insist on making me load multiple pages for each piece I try to read, which is possibly a way of suggesting more length/depth than actually exists and is certainly a way of maximizing page views (Slate even goes so far as to automatically refresh its pages every minute or so in its quest to inflate its numbers).

Slideshows and multiple-page articles are infuriating and unnecessary and should go the way of AOL's cd-mailing bombardment and other relics of an age when "the Internet" and its benefits were completely misunderstood. Make the piece as long as it takes, utilizing the magic of the web, and let me use my handy scroll wheel to read it without interruptions. I'm more likely to finish it, revisit it, and discuss it if I can easily search and access the entire piece this way. You can slap ads up and down both sides of the page, I don't care; just don't ruin my reading experience or I won't keep reading. Though it could do without the awkward, hyphenated name, Miller-McCune seems to understand what it takes to captivate a reader.

Highly Specialized

If you thought that 2001 Florida State University Bobble Head you found on eBay was cool (it's not, by the way -- bobble heads are what's wrong with today's youth, that and methamphetamines), check out what this scientist got for his obsessive bidding habits and 20 British pounds: "eBay Insect Fossil is New Species."

If you thought the weirdest part about that article was finding a new species of aphid in a fossil bought for 20 British pounds from a guy in Lithuania through eBay, you didn't read carefully enough. Allow me:

"Dr Harrington sent the specimen to Professor Ole Heie, a fossil aphid expert in Denmark."

Sometimes I feel inadequate for not having studied anything more specific than "English" and "German," but a "fossil aphid expert"? You win, Danish scientist. You win.

One Little Monkey, Fishing In A Stream

I try to find time to blog about non-monkey related issues, but ever since this threat was made clear to me, I can't help but spread the word when new secrets of the monkey revolt are uncovered.

The latest monkey business to fear? Monkey anglers: "Scientists find monkeys who know how to fish." According to a couple of scientists, "'[This behavior is] an indication of how little we know about the species'" and "'If you provide them with an opportunity to get something tasty, they will do their best to get it.'" A species, about which we know very little, willing to do whatever it takes to get something tasty? If you're still willing to give them the benefit of the doubt, maybe you'd better take a look at another skill monkeys have been cultivating in their tree houses:

I bet they're already better cooks than the British.

Oh, and just in case Robochimps with a taste for human meat aren't enough for you, take a look at one last passage from the article: "[Fuentes] said it affirms his belief that their ability to thrive in urban and rural environments from Indonesia to northern Thailand could offer lessons for endangered species." When these lint-pickers pass on cooking lessons to other species, we will be overrun. Our bacon is literally and figuratively fried if we don't act quickly.

Monkey Defense

Recently, I blogged about the gravest yet coolest metallic threat to humanity since Mechagodzilla: Robochimps (small wonder then that "the first Mechagodzilla was created as a weapon of destruction by a race of ape-like aliens, sometimes known as Simians or the Black Hole aliens [emphasis added]"). After the horrifying video and my particularly chilling artist's rendering of the likely fate of the human race, you were all ready to swallow your cyanide pills and take your chances with an angry God.

Well, not ALL of you. Having been burned before by monkey-transmitted diseases, those troopers on the front line in Africa have turned the tables: "Humans Likely Making Chimps Sick."

As very few of you probably know, one of my dreams is to be a zeppelin pilot, which, while ridiculous, is feasible, considering they're still flown near Lake Constance in Germany. In case that isn't enough to convince you, I present another article as Exhibit B: "Could Zeppelins airships soon be gracing our skies again?" Through my staggering powers of deduction, I can tell you that the answer to that question is a resounding "YES." Rather than use my words, I will again resort to an infinitely more useful and amusing crudely drawn explanation:

Too many robochimps, not enough zeppelins?
Problem solved.

Sunny Heidelberg

I found out on Tuesday that Dave, a close friend from college, would be spending Wednesday night in Heidelberg. He's on a 25 day European tour with a busload of Americans, so I suppose Heidelberg was the perfect place for them to stop in Germany. Heidelberg is the ultimate in American, or simply English-speaking, destinations in this country. It seems like it's a beautiful city, but every time I go there it rains on my parade. It rained right as we got there for Walpuergisnacht about a month ago and it rained the entire time I was there on Wednesday.

Dave and the girls were supposed to arrive between 6 and 7 PM, so I got there at 6. I then found out that their bus driver had gotten held up in the matter of a ticket that the company had left unpaid since 1999, so they wouldn't be arriving until 10. We eventually had an awesome night, but before that...well, I did what I could to kill 4 hours alone in Heidelberg, including nursing a drink at a bar and eating dinner very slowly, but I still spent ages wandering or simply twiddling my thumbs in the drizzle.

At one point I was sitting in a square near the old town hall and the Holy Ghost Church, when some strange German man came by, asking in a slurred English, "Are you English?" I replied in the negative, which elicited a, "Oh. You look English." I repeated, "Well, I'm not," which he took as an invitation to sit near me. What he asked next was hilarious in its rudeness and absurdity. But I don't think I should write it.

Since anyone can view this, and in fact I offer it to employers as evidence of my writing skills, I still haven't quite figured out what level of language I should use on this blog. It's not even as if I'm personally using controversial language, I'm simply trying to tell a story, and stories need the facts. But when certain language is involved, people have a hard time looking past it to see the big picture.

I could pull the standard "s***," but I'm not about to censor myself with a line of asterisks because that's about as repressed and immature as it gets. Contrary to popular belief, censoring things only gives them power. You're better off trying to educate people as opposed to "protecting" them by pulling a curtain in front of everything you find morally reprehensible.

On the other hand, it's wise to pick one's battles, and while employers are hopefully impressed by independent and challenging thoughts, I'm not sure it's worth the risk right now. I suppose there's a thin line between "asset" and "liability" in this world, so for now I'll just leave the best part of the story up to your imagination. I still can't tell if this is the right decision: I'd love some feedback on if I should just go ahead and say what happened despite the inclusion of a word that has a long and unfortunate history in America. I need a different perspective on it.

Luckee Mee Follow-Up

Wayne, chief strategist, tireless organizer, and fearless leader of Mother Tongue Ultimate (new homepage eventually here), left an interesting comment on a recent post, "Luckee Me." It was refreshingly concise compared to his post-game speeches (no offense, but unless I'm caught standing between two beautiful girls, I'd rather wrap things up quickly and get a drink of water!), but I'll still cut right to the most important part, regarding Robert Pesch, whom you might remember as one of the best players in Europe:

"Sure he's good to play with; I just wish he'd smile every now and then! :-)"

This comment, combined with my second Mother Tongue tourney from this past weekend, did remind me that while playing with the Mainz experts is like attending a private, prestigious Ultimate University Grad School, playing with a motley crew of middling to excellent Mother Tongue pick-ups is like attending a public, partying Frisbee State U. And I was never one to keep my head in the books at the complete expense of my personal enjoyment.

Case in point: another triumph for personal enjoyment.

Maybe it's my skill level, maybe it's that my last couple unfortunate years of track gave me an aversion to strictly organized team sports (or maybe it's my injured foot right now), but whatever it is, I get more kicks playing in tourneys in the more relaxed MT atmosphere than I do playing in tourneys with the highly focused Mainzers.

That's not to say I don't try to win when I'm with MT or that I don't have fun when I'm with Mainz. But when it comes to certain things, especially leisure time activities, I'm less competitive by nature than some people. And Frisbee is a strange mix of intense training/competition and casual socializing where I lean toward the casual aspect. If it involves throwing a disc around and it happens on a weekend, it still feels like having a picnic or hanging out with friends at the beach.

Maybe I'll get to the point where I'm completely focused on training and winning, but it's more likely I'll continue in this vein, similar to my sister with her various weekend sports, playing as much as I can but more for the camaraderie and cocktails. As I said, I enjoy a fierce struggle and a well-earned win, but it doesn't kill me to lose on the field as long as I'm enjoying the whole experience, which is easier with some groups than with others.

Win The Party

I was at an Ultimate Frisbee tournament in Duesseldorf this weekend with Mother Tongue, the native English-speaking team. The tourney was called either "Splatsch" or "Splash" depending on which sign you walked past, but either way the location was appropriately placed next to a large indoor and outdoor swimming pool.

The weather was terrible on Saturday, but we won a few games and held our own against some high level opponents, including the eventual tournament winners, the German Masters. "Masters" in this case means they're all over 30 years old, which means they might have some aches and pains but they also have a boatload of experience. We, on the other hand, have mostly students, and at this tourney we even had Louis, the 11-and-a-half year old son of another member, Ian, playing. He scored his only point of the tourney against the German Masters, which seemed appropriate. After our 7-4 loss, we asked the Masters to add up their years of experience: 196. In comparison, our team had 70 at most. What can ya do?

Saturday night, after dinner at perhaps the only tasty Mexican restaurant in Germany, a bunch of the team gathered to sample some liquid wares. Some of the Duesseldorf team members were still up since they were hosting the tourney, but most everyone else had gone to bed by midnight for some reason. We had beaten the hosts that morning, but our first game on Sunday at 9:30 was scheduled to be a rematch, which explains why they were so generous when we started calling for free shots. Of course a plan like "let's make them useless for the game tomorrow" isn't hard to pull off when the "victims" are the ones who start demanding unlimited free shots. The best drink of the night was a Jaegermeister-style liquor called "Killepitsch," which as you might notice lends itself to a couple of crude mispronunciations, which as you have already surmised we exploited to the fullest.

As the night continued, Ben, Garrett, and I were the ones from our team clearly enjoying ourselves the most, and eventually were the only ones left. We noticed that there was only one other group of non-hosts still up. It was maddening because couldn't they see that WE were going to win this party? They were sitting around playing some strange card game and not even drinking, yet preventing us from being the last men standing. So we told our host/enabler, Nico, to bring a bottle over there and make them indulge. Allegedly they took a shot each and then accused us of not having done so, and things were just pretty strange, and at some point they left. Awesome, right? No, because then three more guys showed up.

Kyle, an American from Oregon who had played one game with us before some of our other teammates arrived, and two of his regular teammates had been swimming and now they were back, claiming that WE couldn't win the party because THEY were still at the party. After an extended standoff, we got the Duesseldorf hosts to declare us the winners for sticking with it the whole time. But to quell the protests of the other three, we magnanimously offered a final challenge: arm wrestling.

It was agreed, and we faced off at a picnic table. Let's put it this way: they had one guy who was either Danish or Dutch, I forget now although maybe Dutch since Ben kept calling him the Flying Dutchman, and he was the individual champion. He put down all three of us like infants. Unfortunately for him, his two buddies were featherweights even compared to us, and we ended up winning 6-3. PARTY WINNERS.

Our carousing and celebratory dip in the pool was enough to wake the dead, or at least every person camped out in a tent, each of whom knew at 5 AM that we three had won the party. Obviously they were delighted for us.

Then the next day we got destroyed by Duesseldorf. Before you say it, this actually had little to do with their plan of exhausting us since most of the team hadn't fallen for it/embraced it the way Garrett, Ben, and I did. We had plenty of subs and fresh legs and eager beavers. We just couldn't beat the same team twice. Nico spent almost the entire game just slumped in a lawn chair on the sidelines, engaging in some serious schadenfreude, until Ben roared across the field for him to get up and play a freaking point, which he sheepishly did.

It came down to the whistle for the last point, and when Duesseldorf got the frisbee on a turnover, Wayne called an audible, which resulted in everyone on our defense tackling Nico off the field. Annabelle, Ian's 8 year old daughter who was in since we were down 12-2 anyway, stayed on the field, apparently frightening the Duesseldorf team, beause they managed to drop the frisbee even with a seven against one tiny girl situation. We scored the final point, which felt like a victory after our satisfying tactic.

We ended up 13th out of 23 teams, and the announcer graciously reminded those gathered that although we hadn't won the tournament, we had won the party. Sometimes the highlights happen off the field.

Robochimp

You have to see this, if only to prepare for the worst: Monkey's Brain Controls Robot Arm.

The phrase, "Monkeys have been able to control robotic limbs using only their thoughts, scientists report," is simultaneously the RADDEST and most FRIGHTENING thing I've ever heard (and subsequently seen: for some reason I couldn't view the video on the BBC site, so I googled one and believe you me, it will blow your feeble human mind).

If Cyborg Monkeys don't upset and/or excite you, you have no soul. While I support the concept of Cyborg Monkeys with every ounce of my being in theory, this is absolutely not the way to retain our spot at the top of the food chain. Sure, right now maybe they're only "able to use the robot arm to feed themselves treats," but what about when they crave more? What about when one "marshmallow" or a couple of "chunks of fruit" every 20 seconds no longer satisfies them? WHAT THEN?

Oh, I think you know what then:

Then they build little flying saucers and rocket launchers and ENSLAVE us. I always wanted to deliver giant bananas at rocket-point, wearing nothing but chains, to Cyborg Monkeys. Yeah, thanks a lot, science.

Funny Business

There's a clown school in Mainz.

Judging by the home page, they have plans to translate the site into English and some other silly language I've never heard of, "Français," but unfortunately for those of you who can't read German and really want to know more, you'll have to wait until they get their act in gear. Maybe I should offer my translating services.

But if you click around in there, you'll at least get to see some, uh, nice, artsy pictures of, well, clowns. Like so:

I know we've all seen The Simpsons' classic interpretation of clown school, but what do you think clown school is really like? Do they wear the whole outfit every day? If everyone's a class clown, how do you act up and disrupt class: comb your hair, wash your face, and sit quietly with your hand in the air until the teacher calls on you? Do you give your teacher cream pies instead of apples? Does everyone carpool to class? I just can't imagine what kind of atmosphere you'd find at a clown school, but I bet the tests are a joke.

As many of you know from my screennames/email addresses over the years, clowns fascinate me. In theory, clowns, and their predecessors, jesters, are like noble stand-up comedians. All they want to do is make people laugh without hurting anybody except themselves in a Three Stooges kind of way. And yet I'd venture to say that clowns are some of the most feared and hated creatures in our culture today. Think of examples such as Stephen King's It or The Joker. Heck, just think of the mass of bawling kids at a circus if a clown waddles up and makes with the slapstick. You were probably one of those bawling kids; for all I know, you might still be, with your Coulrophobia and "Can't sleep, clown will eat me" protestations.

Clowns can't win. I mean, you try to do somethin' nice for people...what a world, huh? I guess what I'm sayin' is, don't be a fool, don't go to clown school.

No Closure For Young Men

As you may have already gleaned from the bitter title, I watched No Country for Old Men today. Great movie, but man, I thought I was watching the first of a summer blockbuster trilogy the way it ended. At least if this had starred some bulked up bonehead you could to expect a second movie to heighten the agony while boring the crap out of you and a third movie to tie off loose ends, albeit unsatisfactorily. This must be what it felt like when that one playoff game was interrupted by Heidi, assuming the teams in that particular playoff game were literally slaughtering each other.

Which one's creepy and which one's a movie villain?

I suppose that's a mark of great literature, though. There's nothing we intellectual types love more than stories that are wiiide open to interpretation. Gives us plenty of room to force our crackpot theories on people. Stories that end unsatisfactorily are a lot like life, too. Nothing ever gets wrapped up in a neat little package, you never really know the full story because it's ongoing, and

Not Again...

Didn't get to Stockholm this weekend. Not going to say anything more about it for now except to extend my apologies once more to Sam.

I would have had the perfect book for the plane trip though: Bringing Down the House by Ben Mezrich. I distinctly remember my parents buying me this book in an airport convenience store in Boston back in August 2005. I was preparing to depart for my semester abroad in Freiburg, Germany, and they didn't feel I had enough to read.

This non-fiction book, with the extended title "The Story of Six M.I.T. Students Who Took Vegas for Millions," started off great, diving right into a gripping true story of one Kevin Lewis, an M.I.T. student-cum-card counter. The first few chapters made the first leg of my trip, from Boston to Philadelphia, whiz by, and I was looking forward to finishing during the eight hour slog from Philly to Frankfurt.

If only I had put the book back in my backpack. Instead, I had stored it neatly in the pouch attached to the seat in front of me, and conveniently forgotten it. The plane ate my book. That was nearly three years and a thousand tears ago.

Wednesday, May 21, 2008: Helping Michaela lighten her immense load in preparation for her return to the States, the rest of us were accepting whatever castoffs she pulled out of her bag of tricks. She pulled out a book and declared that it was a gift for me. As I took the light green paperback from her, the bright yellow lettering of the title stirred something in my mind.

Bringing Down the House? I thought. Where have I seen this before?

No way!

For the second time, I tore eagerly into the pages, and just a few minutes ago finished for the first time. It's a great read, even for someone like me who isn't at all interested in gambling or casinos. Now that I've finally closed that cliffhanger in my life, I'll be passing it along to the next unsuspecting soul, and hopefully it won't take them as long as it took me to get through this enjoyable story.

Luckee Me

Having played Ultimate Frisbee since October now, I'm slowly realizing what it means to play here in Mainz. It helps to be talking to Alex about it -- he's been immersed in the Ultimate culture in America for a couple of years, so he knows a lot more about the sport than I do, and that kind of outside experience is useful for seeing how amazing the guys around this area are.

Feldrenner, the top Mainz team, is certainly one of the top teams in Europe, and they've done well when they've played at Worlds too. This is a team that used to run itself ragged on the field, giving everything but never making it to the championships. So they sat back, invented the Isolation strategy to truly minimize their running on offense, and then went on to win about seven of the last ten outdoor German Championships.

Alright, you don't play Ultimate in these parts without hearing some hushed whispers about their achievements. And I had practiced with some of them at the advanced training even though I'm far from advanced. But before yesterday, I had never seen so many of them, nearly all of them, in one place. Hustling around the field or watching from the sidelines, I finally got a real sense of how fortunate I am to even be watching these guys, let alone practicing with them.

Robert Pesch, for example, is arguably the top player in Europe, and he can play with any team in the world if he wants. And I got to scrimmage on his team. When you start playing a new sport, you never expect that during your formative first year you'll be getting training time with some of the best players in the world. That's one of the coolest things I've seen about Ultimate: it's such a fluid, generally informal system that anyone can potentially play with anyone.

Of course it's unlikely these guys were quite as happy to be playing with me as I was to be playing with them -- I had my moments, but I had many more mistakes. Heck, I dropped multiple passes from arguably the top player in Europe. But that's the other coolest thing I've seen about Ultimate: these are genuinely good, supportive people. Am I ready to practice with them? Maybe not. Do they whine and moan and get angry about it? Not at all.

It's really about improving, which means getting as much disc time as possible and with the best people you can, and it's about having fun. I don't try to intrude on their tournaments and there aren't many others at my lower level who go to the advanced training, which means they still get to have their fun and I get the best learning experience I could hope for. Hopefully by the next time I'm in Germany, I'll have gotten my skills up to the point where I can actually join them on the field of organized competition.

One Small Step

My right foot has hurt since frisbee practice almost a month ago. It wasn't completely better by the time I ran the marathon, but I didn't notice my foot hurting during that (well, not hurting in this specific way...marathons hurt in general). Of course the marathon couldn't have helped it anyway. Last week I was reduced to limping around Budapest and Slovakia, trying to compensate for the pain which had returned with a vengeance. This limping only led to the rest of my leg hurting too.

But I went to frisbee Wednesday and Thursday and I was able to practice. I was in pain, especially when trying to switch directions quickly off that foot, but it wasn't as bad as I would have expected, given how it was last week. Then I went to a party with Alex, an Iowan here for three weeks near Wiesbaden. He plays Ultimate and has been coming to the Mainz practices, so we talked to one of the Germans on the team and met up with him at a university party after practice last night. I ended up walking home since I missed my bus by about three minutes, and that 40 minute walk had me cringing again.

I can run and play frisbee at fairly high speed but walking at regular speed kills me. How does that make sense? I feel like I'm stuck in the movie Speed III: Run, Don't Walk.

Eastern Europe...

...is now on display. Go check out pictures from Budapest and then a bunch from Slovakia and Poland. Again, no comprehensive captioning, but some choice commentary here and there, along with the fairly informative album summaries.

If you're a fan, send me a fan, I'm begging you. My room is sweltering facing the afternoon sun in these temperatures. I don't have an oven; the only baking being done in my room is my brain baking in my skull. I can no longer hear myself think, I can only hear my brain brownies reaching the burning point.

Backed Up

So I planned to post the Budapest and Slovakia pictures today, but then I stumbled upon a backlog of pics that needed taking care of. Budapest and Slovakia will have to wait until tomorrow. For now, enjoy pics from my trip to Barcelona with Ben, Sam, Sarah, Rachel, and Taylor (only three months late, it's all goooood) and some pics from Ben's and my jaunt on May 3, up to a couple of towns along the Rhine River, Bacharach and Sankt Goar (pics taken by Ben but on my camera so I did the honors). Because of the sheer numbers, I only put two or three captions in each batch, so the pics will have to speak for themselves. I always forget what stuff actually is anyway, so you'd only end up with more of my insane ramblings.

Speaking of insane ramblings, I have to mention a little incident from my flight home yesterday, before I forget that too. Even though RyanAir flies to and from the tiniest, most out-of-the-way little airports in Europe, I've come to enjoy their flights for a couple of reasons. Due to the hop, skip, and a jump nature, they're always pretty short, and the two Exit rows have a ton of legroom. Despite the free-for-all atmosphere of waiting in line to board and then choosing whatever seats you want, there's always at least one spot left in these rows by the time I get there.

Normally I go directly for an aisle seat on the left on any public transportation, because at least I can periodically stretch my bum right leg out -- also, you're guaranteed one uncontested armrest with an aisle seat, which is worth the occasional thwacking from a drink cart. But in the Exit row I don't even need the aisle because I can stretch both legs out anywhere. I don't know why people haven't caught on to this, but I hope they never do, because these seats are pure gold for a guy my size. As an added bonus, kids aren't allowed to sit in them, so you're guaranteed not to have to deal with any little brats.

You might, however, have to deal with some big brats. An Exit row seat doesn't have the tray table that folds down from the back of the seat in front of it. Instead, the rubber part of the armrest flips open to the left and you pull the tray table out of its little hidey hole. Ain't technology grand?

Well picture my situation: I'm in the middle of three seats, the seat to my left is empty for unknown technical reasons, and there's a German guy sitting in the window seat to my right. Not too bad, at least I've still got one free armrest on my left and he's got one on his right.

I'm ready to exercise the unspoken diplomacy of adjacent seats, trading off control of the middle armrest throughout the flight, when things take a turn for the weird. He's erected the Berlin Wall of Exit row seats: he's flipped up the rubber part of the armrest!

Because the rubber part flips up to the left, he's still able to put his arm on the inner workings while effectively shutting down any access I might have had. For the security of an entire-flight stranglehold on the armrest, this diabolical fiend was willing to sacrifice the shared comfort of the flat, rubber surface.

Well played, stranger. I'm already looking forward to trying it out myself.

See Adam. See Adam Run. Run, Adam, Run.

Got back earlier today from a great trip to Budapest and Slovakia. Still need to get my pics on the comp and post those and give you some highlights, but that should get done tomorrow since I have no school. It's some sort of holiday called "Pfingsten," and while I don't know what on earth it means, I know I like a day off. Cuz I work hard for the money. So hard for it, honey.

But for now, photographic evidence that I competed in the Gutenberg Marathon I bragged about. In fact, this might even be evidence that I completed the half-marathon, since I think these pictures were taken near the finish line: I swear I wasn't making that face until the end when I broke into a dead sprint (it's just an expression -- I was dead, but there was very little recognizable sprinting involved). At least I hope I wasn't making that face for two and a half hours...it would explain why I swallowed so many bugs. Maybe I should just get a pic on here of my bling-bling medal so you know I finished.
But until then, there are a couple more little images if you go to this page and then type my number, 6841, into the field at the top right where it says "Startnummer:" and click "Suche starten." And hey, if you're so inclined, you can order your own prints and place my green, white, and blue, knock-kneed, poofy-haired, gasping exertion on the mantel over the fireplace. Impress your guests with this abstract art.

9th Annual Gutenberg (Half-)Marathon

Let me set the scene:

After a long, fun, tiring weekend, Ben and I meet up with Flo on Saturday night for a drink at Schroeder's, a bar in Mainz. One drink magically, inevitably, turns into more drinks. Like a college boy at a frat party, Flo assesses our susceptibility and, sensing weakness, springs the question:

I have to leave for a class trip tomorrow -- you want to take my place in the Gutenberg Marathon?

Do fish want to hike mountains? Do bunnies want to play cards with lions? Do monkeys want to perform dental work on sharks? Do girls want to cuddle with spiders? Anyone who knows me knows what my answer to such a ridiculous question would be.

As someone who despises running, I'm not suited for a marathon. I had told Flo as much when he asked me the same question about a month ago. I told him the same thing Saturday night. Unfortunately, there was an X-factor: Ben.

Ben's an enabler.

Ben is extremely competitive, especially under the influence. When he found out we had the chance to run a half-marathon, you could practically hear the little bookies in his head start figuring the odds on their adding machines. All of a sudden it was two against one, as Ben was now completely on board with Flo's idea of us doing this.

Well, I hate running, but I hate missing out on new experiences too, and I'm the highly suggestible type, so you can imagine my protestations were as effective as an umbrella against a tsunami.

Once I had caved and we started considering our emergency options such as walking or simply giving up, Ben came up with an even better idea of how we could destroy our bodies: betting that we could beat Flo's time from last year. At stake was a case of beer, and all we had to do was run faster then 2 hours, 45 minutes. So much for emergency options.

So it was decided: I would run as Florian Kaerger while Ben would try to run as Flo's girlfriend, Sandra. I had no problem passing as Flo, but the officials weren't buying Ben's eyelash-fluttering and flirtatious giggling, so he had to run unattached. It wasn't a problem anyway -- that only meant he wouldn't get an official printout of his time at the end.

We got to bed at 3 AM, and all too soon it was 6:30 AM and the alarm clocks were blaring. We slowly got our stuff together and walked sleepily through the city to the Rheingoldhalle, where the whole thing was starting. I checked in, we stretched for five minutes, and eventually we found the starting area. Through it all I was asking myself, "What am I doing?" a question that I couldn't shake even 10 minutes, 20 minutes, 30 minutes into the race.

But a strange thing happened. I considered the crowds lining the streets, cheering us on; the picturesque Rhine running alongside us; the gorgeous weather; and the thousands of other fools trying to conquer the same 21 kilometer (13.1 mile) half-marathon, just like me. Slowly, as slowly as our pace, but surely, I found myself enjoying the experience. It hurt and there were boring stretches, but it was incredible. I guess that's what they call the Runner's High. I always assumed that was a reference to the drugs someone had to be on to think it's a good idea to run a marathon -- I mean, some people think they can fly, some people think they can run 42 kilometers (26.2 miles) without stopping. But apparently I can run a half-marathon.

And I must say, the banana slices they gave out at water checkpoints along the way were the best bananas I've ever eaten in my life. Best. Bananas. Ever. Seriously, those became my life support, and every time I got to grab a glass of ice cold water and a half a banana, everything was right with the world. Same with the free food they passed out at the end: pretzels, energy bars, and apple slices have never tasted as delicious as they did right then.

Oh, right, I guess I gave away the ending: I finished. 2 hours, 25 minutes, and 24 seconds, baby, good enough to get me...uh, well, 6707th place. But all things considered, I'm more than satisfied. Ben had a little trouble at one point late in the race, stopped, and almost gave up, but he realized how far we'd come and got his ass back in the race and finished too, with a time of about 2 hours, 45 minutes. To his immense credit, he was running in the world's WORST sneakers, completely falling apart, and I have no idea how he did it. He'd have been better off running barefoot.

We got medals for finishing the half-marathon, we'll be getting a case of beer from Flo, we got a magnificent feeling of accomplishment, and we got one majorly strange story out of the deal. And now I can retire from the marathon scene. As one clever soul remarked, there's got to be a better way to get a case of beer.

(We didn't get any pictures unfortunately, but see a bunch here)

Long Weekend

Long weekends are bad for my health.

Wednesday night I went to Heidelberg with some friends to celebrate Walpurgisnacht, which is always the night of April 30 into the next morning, welcoming the month of May. Many countries have some form of Walpurgisnacht, also known as Hexennacht, or Witches' Night, in Germany. Heidelberg is known for its student celebrations, which are on top of a little mountain there, with people filling the rows of an amphitheater and playing with fire, basically -- a huge bonfire, fire breathers, jugglers, dancers, etc.

Hiking up this little mountain is one thing, but we had started our festivities already, and it had rained already, and it was dark already...let's just say it was tricky getting up there, and we're lucky our only real problem was extremely muddy shoes instead of bodies tumbling back down. But after that harrowing experience it was a lot of fun. We stayed all night and left by train at around 7 AM, so when I got back to my apartment at 9 I slept until 5. Gotta put a full work day in, you know.

Then Ben came on Friday evening and we had a late night out at some bars and then a party at the Fachhochschule, sort of a community college. Naturally we slept in on Saturday, almost missing a gorgeous day. But we eventually dragged ourselves out of bed and hopped on a train to Bacharach, where we wandered, played some frisbee, ate, and basically enjoyed the sunshine. After that we continued to St. Goar, where we climbed up to the castle and explored for a while.

Heading home, we met up with Flo at a bar, had a few drinks, stayed up too late again, and soon enough made a momentous, and some would say stupid, decision. I'll get to that next time.