am i dead?

It has been a really long time. Three weeks, as a matter of fact. What can I say? I've been busy.

Last weekend, I went to my old boss's house (the guy who brought me to Germany) for a little BBQ. He just bought a Weber grill. Which cost about three times what it should have. It is a nice one, though. It cooked well. He and I have been discussing grilling for a few weeks, and I pointed out some pros and cons of the ones he was looking at. Once he got it, he decided he wanted to see how it was really done. So we went out and spent about a billion dollars on groceries on Friday night, and made arrangements for him to come get us Saturday morning.



Dieter has an old lab that wasn't sure what to think of us. He spent about the first five minutes we were there with B's house shoe in his mouth. He was pretty sure it was his, and he had no intention of giving it up. After Dieter made a brilliant recovery, the dog decided to go outside and relax where there weren't so many new people. Of course, right after that, we headed out ourselves, kids in tow.



With the kids distracted by the dog, Dieter and I got down to business. Dieter bought everything at the store the night before. We had chicken quarters, a whole chicken, a handful of what actually would pass as a pork steak (we thought it would be more bacony), some brats, some hotdogs, taters, some Roma tomatoes, onions, and GIGANTIC strip steaks. I found a site that translates cuts of meat into German. I click on a part of a cow, select the cut from the listed pictures, and it tells me what to order. It was awesome. I went back and forth with the lady cutting the meat. They had cleaned all of the fat off of the good end, so the edge wouldn't have the good old char I wanted. So we were debating the thickness of the cut. I asked for around 2 cm (yeah, I was having to do the conversions in my head, for some reason I hadn't thought about how thick I wanted them). 2 cm is about 3/4 inch. The lady realized that Dieter was going for an original American cut. She added about 1/2 an inch to them. They were monstrous. They grilled up great, though.



This was the view for the afternoon. We spent most of our time talking about grilling tips. I felt a lot like I was at home. It was healing. I have heard that there is actually a law in Germany that limits how many times a month one can grill. I think it is once a month. You can do it more if no one complains, but as soon as the neighbors complain, you don't have a leg to stand on.



Here we have some chicken quarters and potato packets. It was so yummy.

So, while we were there, Briana apparently kept everyone entertained. She kept talking about going upstairs to wash one of her toys upstairs in the bathroom. Finally, Sarah asked her why she had to go upstairs. She said she wanted to use the little sink. At this point, Dieter's family blew up. They all started hooting and hollering and laughing. Sarah went up with B, and found that she had the soap and a little workstation for cleaning all set up. On their bidet (or the back washer, as she calls it).



Today I went on a ride. It was sunny, there was no wind, and the temperature hit about 62°. We rode 50 hilly ass miles. The plot up there shows the profile of the ride, courtesy of my riding partners heart rate monitor with altimeter. It was pretty brutal. I felt like hell. The kids have been sick, and I haven't slept in about a week. I was dead about a quarter of the way in. I decided that I couldn't give up though, and I stuck it out. I know I held him back a bit, but my training partner is a good man, and didn't complain. It was pretty rewarding. Painful, but rewarding.