Silly man, you get water from dead people.

Not too long ago, I was complaining about the one downside to riding in Germany on Sunday. Everything is closed. As in, everything. About 30% of the gas stations are open. Usually a convenience store at a train station. That is about it. That means that it is crazy hard to, say, find a gas station where you can find water while on a bike, since you aren't usually on a main highway. That is important when you only have 1.5 liters of water, and you are on a 6 hour bike ride. I was complaining about this to my landlord and his wife. They are part of a triathlon club (yes, I seem to have surrounded myself with triathletes who also happen to be training for Iron Man races). After lamenting the fact that on a recent ride I got really dehydrated and almost didn't make it home because I couldn't find an open gas station where I could buy more water, my neighbor's wife looks at me and says, "we always stop at graveyards." I just looked at her quizzically. My first thought was, "OK, that's creepy." After a delayed, uncomfortable pause (during which I was reviewing my translation of the sentence), she followed up with, "There are faucets in almost all cemeteries where you can get drinking water." Who would have thought. Turns out, she's right. I was out on a 75 mile ride on Friday (we had a holiday). We had ridden about 25 miles, and we were facing about 10 miles of ugly climbing, and I had two empty bottles. We stopped at a bus stop to eat some energy gel, and I happened to notice a very manicured, vine covered stone wall across the street. Sure enough, it was a cemetery. Now, I don't know if this is an American thing or if it is a me thing, but I feel pretty weird about this kind of situation. But, I feel even worse about passing out 40 miles from home in a foreign country. And, as they say, when in Rome... Now, she also warned me that I needed to make sure it was drinking water. As a rule, when you can't drink running water that you find in Germany it is posted as such. I, personally, am not a fan of the safety concept of mark it unsafe. I think that things that aren't marked should be assumed unsafe. That way, you aren't drinking unsafe water because the sign fell off. And to make it more confusing, sometimes drinking water is explicitly marked. Anyway, I go into the cemetery, and sure enough, off to the left of the gate was a faucet with a row of watering cans. Unmarked of course. I decided that a few weeks of beaver fever would be better than dying by a ski resort in Germany, so I filled 'er up, as it were. I am still not dead. I haven't spent the whole day on the toilet. So I guess she was right.

I felt it so inspiring that I am going to follow Friday's 75 mile ride with 50 or so tomorrow. Hopefully the rule holds true in France. We'll find out.

Picture Dump Mark II

Howdy Howdy. Not too much going on here. Sarah's folks left at the beginning of the week. We were pretty busy with them. We had a lot of fun. Briana started the visit off in rare form. She was up on the landing playing while Sarah's dad was in the bathroom. He called out if it was her that he heard out there. She answered, "No, Briana's not out here. She's dead."

That's my girl.



Thanks to crazy friends who do crap like train for the Iron Man, we are always aware of local running races. The kids enjoy the kids' races. This is a shot of Briana, Aiden, and their friend Vojta at the starting line.



B took this shot of Sarah downtown in Karlsruhe while waiting for the tram.



Aiden helped me re-cable Sarah's front derailleur.



B playing at the pump at the big park behind the Karlsruhe castle.



Aiden watching the train go by at the big park behind the castle.

Scouts Honor, The Grit, Hot Water Music @ Substage in Karlsruhe

So I just got home from seeing Hot Water Music. It isn't so often that good music comes here. I braved Sarah's wrath, and told her that come Hell or high water (or a visit from her parents, as it were), I was going to see this show.

It was worth it. I got there just as Scouts Honor was starting. Good midwest hard core. I went and talked to them after their set. They were pretty surprised to hear honest to goodness, American English. Turns out their drummer is from Arkansas as well. He was pretty keen on finding another one here in Germany. They put on a good show. I am working out how I can get Sarah to go with me to see their front man, Jared Grabb, with MADSTATEWORLD at Zwiebel tomorrow night. I think it might be pretty good. The Grit followed that. Imagine a rough mash up of Rancid and Brian Setzer and the Stray Cats. It was interesting. Their bassist played an upright, and he kept standing up on it with one leg waaaaay out behind him (around head high) as he played.

HWM came on to a full house. I was pretty sure that it was going to be a good set because I got kicked in the face and lost my beer about 45 seconds into the second song. I own a lot of HWM discs. I do not, however, own a lot of recent ones. Those would be the ones that comprised most of the set. So it was a lot of new music with some classics thrown in. I got to hear Radio Free Gainesville, and they ended with 220 Years. I was happy enough.

All in all, and very good night.

The Devil's in the...Wait, what did you just say?

Sarah's folks were just here. They arrived on Thursday and left again on Monday. They will be back in about a week to visit with us some more. We didn't do too much while they were here. I had to work at first, and we stuck around Karlsruhe to see some of the local sites.



Popop immediately got on the zipline at the park down the road.



Momma even got in on the fun.



Here we are at the local tennis club's Italian restaurant. They have awesome pizza and calzones. And really good hefeweizen.



We finally went to the top of the Durlach Turmberg. It's an old watch tower up on a big hill. We've lived here almost two years in total, and this is the first time we managed to do this. It is a couple of stops past a restaurant we like. It only costs a few bucks to ride up. There are steps. You can even ride you bike up there, if you are a masochist. Yep, we suck.



Here we are in front of the "most unimpressive castle ever" as Sarah puts it. The children are in there usual poses. We call it grubbing around.

One last little cultural update. The Germans don't say that the Devil is in the details. They say that the Devil is in the squirrels. Now I know why squirrels freak me out.

A few quick notes

I don't have much time, but I want to post these little bits before I forget.

I got some new boxer shorts for my birthday. One pair has sock monkeys on it. They look like they are celebrating New Year's or something. One of them has a top hat and cane and is holding a glass of champagne. B pointed to him and asked me why he was a politician. OK, she said "ol-itician", but it was close.

A couple of days later, Sarah was holding her in the kitchen, and I was acting like I was going to scold Sarah for not giving the kids a treat. Briana holds out her hand to me and says, "Daddy, let me handle this." Then she proceeded to scold Sarah, and how.

Aiden went on his first big bike ride without his training wheels. We rode to this really cool park that is viking themed. It has a big, carved viking guarding the entrance and the main piece of playground equipment is a viking ship. He did pretty good. He is a little sketchy, and he believes that anything on the side of the walk (say a lamp post) is dangerous. This on German sidewalks that are 6 to 8 feet wide. But he made it. I had predicted some potential drama, so I brought along his tag along bar. I hooked him up to my bike for the ride home. He loved it. I will upload some pictures soon. Yeah, we forgot to take the camera with us. Which is too bad, because I saw an Audi R8 by the park. It's like a TT that is a little bit longer and meaner looking with a V8 jammed into the back. Sweet.

On a final note. I went on a ride this weekend. I did my first metric century (100 km). Which is a good start for getting me to a normal century (161 km). We did a hell of a lot of climbing, though. I am pretty sure that I could knock out a good 20 or 30 km more if it was flat. I have a picture of the altitude profile from the ride. I had to quit 14 km before the we got back home. My left knee couldn't take the abuse of constantly going uphill. I had to stop at a train station in Ettlingen to catch a tram back. We started out from Neureut and headed across Karlsruhe to Durlach. Then we headed up into Waldbronn. From there I think we went through Karlsbad to Spielberg. We picked up a friend there and headed up to Dobel. That was a massive climb. We dropped down a massive hill into Bad Herrenalb and then climbed up towards Loffenau. But before we got to Loffenau, we took a little left. And climbed straight up for 5 km. It was unreal. After an age of just staring at my front tire and trying to turn my cranks and walking a little bit and then riding some more, I reached Teufelsmühle. It was insane. Then we turned around and headed back to Bad Herrenalb and along the Alb through Ettlingen to Karlsruhe (or in my case to Ettlingen). It was pretty fun.

Holy crap it's been a long time.

For some reason, the Easter Bunny has the Claws of Death.


For both kids.



Here we are set up for coloring.



Okeedokee.

It's going to be a mad dash through the great things that have happened this week.

The kids and Sarah have been out of school this week. She and the kids came to the office to meet me for lunch at the cafeteria on Wednesday. While Sarah was trying to get the kids ready she told B she wanted a kiss. B told her no. The conversation went a lot like this:

Sarah: Give me a kiss.
B: No. I already gave you one today.
Sarah: Really. Give me a kiss.
B: No. I gave you one when you were in bed this morning.
Sarah: If you don't give me a kiss, I will leave you here when we go eat lunch with Daddy.
B: If you leave me here alone, I'll break all of your glasses.
Sarah: For that, I might just leave you here for real.
B: You can't. It's against the law.

That's my girl.

Then, they went to an English playgroup on Thursday. Briana played by herself the whole time. When they got home, I asked her if she had fun. It went like this:

Daddy: Did you have fun playing today?
B: No. Nobody played with me.
Daddy: Really? Why not?
B: They don't like me.
Daddy: Did mommy try to get you to play with the other kids?
B: Yes.
Daddy: Did you play with them?
B: Nope.
Daddy: Why not?
B: I wanted to play by myself.

Sometimes it really is painful.

Here's a shot of the kids playing after going to the park today.




But here's the big news this week:

AIDEN CAN RIDE A BIKE!

We have been having him ride on B's coaster bike lately. He has been pretty good with it. He can coast forever. So I explained to him that the plan was to get him to do the same thing on his bike without his training wheels. Then, once he was comfortable we would work on pedaling. So today, we went out for a big ride to a new park. Sarah and I rode, and I pulled the kids in the trailer. It was about half an hour to the park. The kids played for a couple of hours. Another family showed up. There was a boy that was 6 or 8 months older than Aiden, a girl that was about 4 months older than B, and a little 18 month old boy. The parents could speak English, so we chatted with them for a while. Once we were done, we headed back home on a new route. I had decided to try to make a loop. It didn't work. So we added about half an hour to the trip home. Into a headwind. It was quite a workout. Once we got home, I decided to take advantage of the warm weather and wash the winter crud off of our bikes while the kids rolled around in the driveway. As I was wrapping things up, Aiden comes up (after riding up and down the driveway on B's bike) and asks me to take the training wheels off of his bike. I told him it was late, that we'd have to do it later. He responds with, "Dad, I'm begging you." There's no way I could refuse that. I pulled the wheels off. He hopped on the bike, and I pushed him up the driveway. After about ten feet, he was pedaling along and seated squarely. I let go, and off he went. He turned around without stopping at the back of the drive, rode up to me, and then stopped without any issues. He then turned the bike around and started off by himself. I didn't have to interact again. I am so proud of him. He fought tooth and nail before this. It just took him setting his mind to it.



Okay. It is late, and I want to go to bed.

Oh, so that's panic...

Monday morning I learned what panic looks like. Aiden is always cold. Always. He wears flannel footy-pajamas as much as possible. I mean always. He's wearing them in the pictures from B's birthday party. So Monday morning he came into our room and crawled into bed with us around 6AM. He laid there for about 15 minutes dozing, and then he leaped out of bed loosing this creepy, low pitched keen and ran into the bathroom. Once in the bathroom, he began to turn in tight little circles, stamping his feet so fast you could barely see them, while frantically tugging at his zipper. Every revolution made his pitch step up a notch as he yanked at the zipper that ran from his neck to his right ankle. He managed to get out of his jammies mere seconds before he assploded. Poor little man. It was brutal. Almost ruined the toilet.



B got a package from Gramma Jeanne today. She got some long john jammies...



a cute little shirt and some pants. The shirt is a 6T. We have finally found something that is long enough to cover her little alien belly (as she has named it). The pants have little buttons to make them into capri's. With them up, they are short enough for her to wear as pants. She should grow enough by the time it is warm for them to be capri's.



Aiden was so worn out from a week and a half of coughing and being sick that he finally gave up the ghost and fell asleep on the sofa today. He looks pretty rough, eh?



Here's the poor guy getting a breathing treatment to open up his lungs and clean out the bronchitis. If you look closely, you will notice that his ear is all wadded up under the strap. Now, I'm not sure how uncomfortable the face mask is, but he refused to let us move it. Whatever we try, he gets all bowed up and moves it back so that it slides down and wads up his ear.

He is doing better, though. The kids will be going back to school tomorrow. That means that I have to work a full day for the first time in a week. Yeah, that sucks. I have been staying home until lunch while Sarah goes to German lessons while the kids have been sick. It is awesome.

Okeedokee. It is late. I am tired.

Auf Wiedersehen!