Holy crap is it hard to sleep here

It is mid-June. We've been lucky, and it has been mild, so the lack of A/C hasn't been too much of a liability for sleep. The sun, however, is killing me. Briana got up this morning to go to the bathroom around 5:45. It was full daylight outside. Turns out, the sun had been up for about 20 minutes or so. That is pretty typical, though. It is only about 15 minutes earlier than in St. Louis this time of year. The end of the day, however, is much later. The sun is setting around 9:34 right now. St. Louis says the sun is sinking around 8:28. That's right. That comes to almost an hour and a half more daylight. It doesn't really sound like much, but it is a pain in the ass to get wound down and fall asleep when it is still light enough to read by sunlight at 10:00 PM. In a month or so it will be light late enough that Sarah and I will be able to each separately do our training after I get off of work. We'll have enough light that I can ride my bike until 10:15 or 10:30 without lights and not have to worry about getting hit or pulled over by the police. I can't imagine how people survive any further north.

Wow. One whole year.

Well, as of today, we've been in Germany for a year now. It sure doesn't feel like it. Not like the last time, at least. I think we owe a lot of that to the kids. They make time here a lot easier. We also have a lot more to do. We are always going to play somewhere or going to someone's house to visit. We have also picked up some personal goals for ourselves that make the time go by. We are working our way back towards financial freedom, so each huge payment comes way too quickly. Sarah has been busting ass learning a new language. She has spent a lot of time towards that goal. I have been training so I can keep up with a friend who is competing in the Iron Man this year. That makes weeks whiz by for sure.

So what else has this year seen? Aiden can pretty much speak German without any issues. I would say his German is about 70 to 80% as good as his English. He is managing complex sentences and expressions now, but his verb conjugation still suffers. Of course, it's the same with his English. He has gotten good enough that I have started picking up how to say things from him. He has also gotten to the point where he A) doesn't get upset when people come over that he might have to speak German to and B) he readily switches to German with bilingual kids who don't want to speak English. Briana has finally begun to speak German to a point. That was quite a hurdle. She is using German about 10 to 15% of the time at home, I would say, and almost all of the time in Kindergarten. Around us, she is still just inserting German words into her English for the most part, but she has begun to throw simple German sentences in as well. Her comprehension is just about 100%. She has finally quit getting angry with me when I speak German to her. And she will respond (albeit in English) or act accordingly to boot. There is a rumor floating around that Sarah can speak German, too. I actually witnessed it last week. I was quite impressed. I figure that she is just a couple of months of practice away from being fairly comfortable. Now all she has to do is find someone who will quit switching immediately to English when she speaks (I am just as guilty simply because I forget to keep speaking German when I am at home).

Both kids have been growing like weeds. I am expecting another growth spurt soon. They have begun eating as much as I eat during a day. That is pretty impressive for their little tummies. Aiden has gotten pretty soild on his bike. His stamina and enjoyment skyrocketed once he got stable enough for me to raise the seat up and get his form a little better. It makes me cringe to watch kids learning to ride with their knees all up their noses. We are going to start working on bike handling skills once I get a new seat post for my single speed. We have done some test rides with B on Aiden's bike (before I raised the seat), and she's close. She rode a block or two before finally veering into some bushes as she realized that I was actually lying to her and not really holding on any more. So we are looking to make that happen in the near future. I have also seen some really cool "hang your kid's bike on yours" solution here. I bought a cheap one as a test. The device sucks, but the concept is sound. Aiden and I can really move along and we can go a lot further. More importantly, when we need to maneuver through or around people on the bike paths, I just let him pedal so we don't move too fast. It's sneaky yet surprisingly effective.

Other than that, things are pretty routine. It is amazing how quickly you adapt to a foreign place. Outside of all of the walking and biking and the foreigners ;), it's a hell of a lot like living at home...

The kids are becoming more German

Well, it is starting to happen. The kids are becoming more German by the day. We went to a restaurant last night to have dinner and some beers with some friends (one of them had a birthday Wednesday). The plan was to sit outside in the Biergarten and let the kids play at the park across the bike path. Unfortunately, we have a weather front tormenting us, and it started storming like crazy right before we left. We got to the restaurant (after arguing with Briana about whether or not the last tram we were on, which was one of the really old ones, was actually a bus. She wouldn't buy in to it being a tram). We were trying to decide what to get the kids to eat. We were talking to Aiden about getting him some fish sticks. He said yes, and then looked at me quizzically and asked me what fish sticks were. So I said "Fischstäbchen". Which brought an obvious look of comprehension and an, "Oh, I love fish sticks." That is really weird.

It quit raining by the time we had finished dinner, but the restaurant didn't want to start service outside, so we paid up and took the rest of our beer out with us to chit chat where it was much cooler (gotta love a country without A/C) and we could keep an eye on the kids. My friend Michael had brought his son (who is about to be 10, but is pretty small for his age) with him. Now that Aiden is speaking German, they get along quite well. We were able to have a pretty relaxing end to the day. We are planning on meeting them there again on Sunday afternoon. It is supposed to be dry tomorrow, so it should make for a nice afternoon/evening.

I went and got a haircut today. My hair is finally long enough that Sarah couldn't really tell it had been cut. I can. The back grows pretty fast. Or at least, the back is the most noticeably in need of cutting first. I had gone to a cheap place the last couple of times, but they just weren't quite cutting it. Pun intended. I paid a little over twice as much today, but she seems to have done exactly what I wanted. Which is pretty impressive considering my pathetic command of hair cutting German. The most important part was keeping everything long while trying to make it look like the back half of my head was part of the rest of my head. I was getting powerful close to looking like I had a mullet while having long hair all over. That is quite a feat, I admit, but not really one I want to be known for. We'll see how it turns out over the next few days. Hopefully it is good enough. I only get my hair cut once every few months, so I am hoping I have found someone who has done a good enough job that I can go even longer.

To continue on the hair cut front, I bought some clippers today. Sarah has been using my beard trimmer to cut Aiden's hair. My beard trimmer sucks. So I got something that is better designed for it. Aiden was pretty insistent that we cut his hair like his friend Patrice's. We can't go quite that short (he apparently has none), but I did go over it enough to get him into the army at the least. He is pretty stoked.

OK, to finish this off, here are some pictures. Enjoy it, Mom.



Here's Aiden jumping on a trampoline at a festival.



This is another one from our visit to the castle park while Sarah's folks were in town. This is the water feature the kids can play with.



This is another one of the visit to the castle park. These ping pong tables are all over Karlsruhe. They are at enough of the parks that we go to that I broke down and bought some paddles and balls. We have actually had quite a lot of fun playing.



This is a shot of the kids with their friends Vojta (behind B) and Michelle, Vojta's little peanut of a sister.



Here's a shot of us sitting around the table after the races. That's Vojta, the guy who makes me ride so much, in the white Iron Man cap.

Didn't need the dead people today...

We went for our ride. We rode about 50 miles. I got a flat. I haven't flatted in 6 years. Fortunately, I had a new tube and a quickflate cartridge. That is a really good thing, because we were somewhere in France, and I don't speak me a lot of French anymore. I mean, I can conjugate when I need to, but I'm not real good at building sentences, and I recently discovered that whenever I get hung up in French, I tend to inadvertently substitute German. Sometimes that works in Alsace, but you can't count on it. The new tube lasted until I got home. So did the water bottles I took with me. I'll have to hunt for deadpeoplewater next time.

Aiden helps me compose songs. I was wandering around singing a song about going poop yesterday. I got hung up at one point, and he suggested using the words "plop plop." Yes indeed. I mean, you know he's got to be awesome. He's got half of my genetic material. He and B are shaping up nicely. I am very proud of myself and my übergenes.

And lastly, here some pics from my cell phone.

These are of the wild poppies that are in bloom.




Here's a shot of the kids watching some people play bocce by the castle. Notice that B has her elbows propped on her bars like a pro.



Here's a shot of Sarah and the kids walking along a river in Strasbourg, France.

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.