Pics from the Europe trip
May 13th, 2010 nickMiraculously avoiding serious travel snafus surrounding the volcanic ash, we’ve made it back home safe and sound. Lots of good visits with friends and family in Belgium, the Netherlands, and Germany.
laughing fit
April 24th, 2010 nickone busy weekend
April 7th, 2010 nickA visit from the cousin (and parents) was followed by a visit to the White House for the Easter Egg Roll. It was a madhouse and the first brutally hot sunshine of the year, but still kind of nice to check out Chateau Obama.
And OMG Justin Bieber was so cool.
Germany
February 22nd, 2009 nickIt’s been far too long, but I guess there’s never a good a time to start blogging again as the right now.
We got back from a whirlwind five day tour of Germany on Thursday and, with the exception of me falling asleep at 11:30 on Sonja’s couch last night while everyone was trying to learn a new game of cards, we both seem to have licked the jet lag pretty good. But the game seemed kinda boring anyway, so maybe it doesn’t count. And certainly boring at least when compared with Shafkopf (a.k.a. “sheep head”) the new Bavarian card game that cousin Peter taught us and we were quickly addicted to. It’s like Euchre, only with a special deck with different-than-usual suits, 8 permanent trump cards (in addition to the “hearts” suit), and a backgammon-like betting scheme. The biggest twist on Euchre: the partners switch up and you don’t know who your partner is when each round starts. It was cool enough that we recruited Max, an environmental engineering student who was riding on the same train as us, to join us for a game on the way between Munich and Augsburg. Peter was a master of knowing all the little Bavarian lingo that goes along with the game. It appears to be an age-old cultural phenomenon in German that crosses all age-groups. Mandi played it when he was a little kid and knows all the ins and outs (although we didn’t play with him). Johanna insists she has a deck somewhere, although I haven’t seen it yet. Official rules can be found here.
We also got some good time with the grandparents (highlight for me: being able to tell Johanna’s grandfather that I liked ice skating : “Schlittschuh laufen macht mir Spaß.”), with Mandi and Hilde, Lemly and Peter. We traveled to Regensburg to hang out with Peter and he treated us right, cooking us up a traditional Bavarian breakfast: Weisswurst (white veal sausage, bought that morning), Butterbrezel (pretzels with butter, cooked in Peter’s oven that morning) and Weissbier (Erdinger wheat bear). I didn’t need to eat for the next ten hours.
a true Bavarian breakfast
We stayed up late the last night — out at the posh Capitol bar in downtown Augsburg playing Shafkopf until 1am with Peter and Lemly. Then left the house at 5am in the freezing cold to catch the street car to the train to the airport. We were pretty much in awe of the public transportation system and the bratwurst. Really, we had a brat at the cheap sausage stand right outside the Augsburg train station and it was amazing — no tough gristly pieces in the meat, subtly spiced, tender and perfect. We’re going to check out Binkert’s German Sausages just outside Baltimore to see if they can get close to replicating the true German deliciousness.
D.C. date
October 9th, 2008 nickHer cell phone was off. His laptop was tucked away. Silver was folded and hitched to a nearby meter. Off we scurried to Central (pronounced it like zee French would), a fancy schmantzy resaurant at 11th and Pennsylvania Ave, to savor a few hours of delicious togetherness! [I'm curious what kind of oil Central uses for their fries, though, because they were unusually good, as was the fried fish (guess who got the fish and chips?).] Not that we spent that much time wondering about the oil, though, because this was, in all likelihood, the last time until post-election that we get to see each other. A nice breezy walk through the National Sculpture Garden brought us back to the car where she got in her car and on her conference call (two minutes late!) and he got on Silver and pedaled off into across city, into Georgetown, across the Key Bridge, down the beautiful paved Custis bike path in Arlington to hang out with Nate, Jenny and Rowan for an evening.
Tuesday morning it was off to the Tufte workshop on the other side of Arlington (about 5 miles) but wouldn’t'cha know it but there was another bike path (the Washington and Old Dominion trail — we’re talking scenic, along-a-river-in-the-woods most of the way) that went basically door to door. Tufte was good in the morning when he was dwelling on specific examples of good historical graphics and keeping his PowerPoint heckling down to a minimum. But the afternoon got fluffy: he started talking about his new art exhibit and showing weird artsy conceptual movies about things like “escaping flatland” and “wave fields.” As Justin says, “he’s at his best when he’s not talking about his own work.” Ate lunch with Nat, a speechwriter who works for a small (<10 employees) firm that was started by some of W.J.C.’s old writers. He has good stories about writing for famous people but can’t tell any of them b/c they sign big confidentiality agreements (no one wants a ghost writer!). He asked good questions about biostats, and was curious about the difference in our respective lenses through which we were seeing the Tufte work.
Again, it was off on a bike path (the Mount Vernon trail) back up to the Memorial bridge that brough me to the feet of Abe Lincoln. A long ride along the mall brough me back to Union Station where I met up with Buckets and Kathy for a quick Wienerschnitzel and Weiswurst (and Oktoberfest Ale!) at a nearby German beergarden.
back in the saddle
June 2nd, 2008 nickThanks to one particular faithful reader for encouraging me to continue to update this blog. This post’s for you!
We arrived back home today from a week out in California: Alex and Wendy’s wedding, followed by a few days with friends in Tahoe and then a sweet road trip–just me and my honey–down sweet sweet route 395 on the east side of the Sierra Nevada. It was awesome, if brief: a few hot springs stops followed by a visit to Death Valley. I put some photos up online.
Also, I don’t know what kind of BALCO concoction Mike and Jamie fed our tomatoes but we came back to some seriously ass-kicking tomatoes — dozens of flowers, a few tiny tomatoes, and lots of good cucumber plants starting to creep. We took down the wilting pea plants and fed them to the worms (who were running out of food and crawling on the side of the bin in the hunt for new fuel) after having a nice serving of them (the peas) for dinner. Hooray for a better crop (still not great–it gets too hot too quickly) this year than the last two! The dwarf pea variety that I ordered this year seemed to do better than the older variety. Also, next year we may grow them more for the edible shoots than the peas themselves (sorry, wrigglers!).
overdue
February 23rd, 2008 nickI arrived back from Hawaii on Tuesday and promptly came down with a cold. Ah, to be in the climate where you can sleep out under the stars there every night and walk around shirtless. I wouldn’t want it all the time, but to slurp it down for a week is just right.
Anyways, the Big Island served up the usual smorgasbord of adventure: hiking on volcanic craters and hardened lava flows, snorkeling with the turtles, getting thrashed about by waves, jumping off 40 foot cliffs into shark-infested waters, etc… If you think I’m joking about that last part, just check out the pictures. Off the edge of the cliff, we saw a large school of fish that was getting harassed by a large slender fish with black tips at the edges of its fins — Katie, the marine biologist who was with us, said it was probably a black-tip reef shark. Not dangerous to humans, so they say. Matty and others had a few whale sightings too, but I didn’t see any. Joanne and Francis put us up like kings again — they have an amazingly simple and beautiful place on the dry (south-west) side of the Big Island. Also, we got to hang out with Masulis’ Carleton friend Anna Laube (whom I didn’t know at school) who is making music as a singer-songwriter in SF right now. Her music is pretty sweet. Check out her website.
After the Big Island, it was off to Waimanalo on Oahu for Kaimana. I hadn’t played men’s ultimate in since I played at this tournament 3 years ago, I don’t think. And boy was it ever fun. Even got me thinking about training a bit and trying to play some men’s ultimate this summer/fall. Voltron was one of the three best teams there, but we managed to lose a close game in Semis. The only time the other team had the lead was when they won the game at hard cap, 12-11. That part sucked. I played solid (only 3 turnovers all weekend) and stepped it up in Semis a bit — getting a nice D in the sky on Hollywood and putting a sweet toss to “The Kid” in the back corner of our endzone after not throwing much upfield all weekend. Anyways, it felt real good to be a contributor on such a solid team. Some photos, taken by Matteo, are up online too. Best food of the weekend (why didn’t I take a picture?) was poke (pronounced poh-KAY), raw tuna with fresh onions and scallions marinated in soy sauce. Mmm hmm.
Back at home, things at school are heating up, as my school-wide oral exams are probably going to be scheduled in early April sometime. Writing the paper for that is going to eat up a lot of time. Also, it’s time to start planting seeds indoors. And Johanna did some sweet painting of the kitchen window while I was gone, so it’s almost time to install the bar. We’re supposed to be picking up bar stools (craigslist) this weekend. Vespa’s set-up is nearly complete. A new 500GB hard drive is on the way as a back-up disk to use in conjuntion with Time Machine, the new backup software that comes with Macs these days. More on the install process later.
puzzler?!
February 10th, 2008 nickJust downloaded the past month of Wednesday and Thursday puzzles from the NYT website, along with a token Friday, Saturday and a few Sundays. Facing a four and a eight hour flight tomorrow, I’m determined not to give SkyMall an ounce of attention. Also, loaded up on back issues of SciAm, the Atlantic, the NYer and the Economist (when did I ever think I’d have time to read them here at home?), with Skinny Legs and All by Tom Robbins and Ratner’s Star by Delillo giving me some backup fiction firepower.Three long simulations are running on the cluster at school (if anyone asks, I’ve been monitoring them closely from my beachtowel). They’ve been running for over a day and are about one-eighth complete. The Kanteen is packed.The absentee ballot is in the mail.
the eagle has landed
February 7th, 2008 nickOn Monday, my new 15″ MacBook Pro arrived. She’s replacing ‘agrippa’, my four-year-old 12″ PowerBook G4. I’ve decided to call her ‘vespa’. Something about sexy European names ending in ‘a’. Think about it.
But now I’m in this weird limbo-land. Double-fisting my two laptops, using agrippa for some stuff, vespa for others. I haven’t moved everything over to vespa yet, so I’m stuck doing most school work on agrippa but now that I’ve tasted the speed and luxury of vespa, I don’t want to work on agrippa at all! Oh, the agony. 
In any case, my main resolution is to try and use more of the native Mac applications for things (rely on Safari instead of Firefox for browsing, Mail instead of NetNewsWire for RSS feeds, Address Book instead of Palm, iCal instead of GoogleCalendar via Firefox, etc…). So far this seems feasible. Most of these applications were underdeveloped in past versions of the Mac OS but now they seem pretty well put together and evolved. When I get back from Hawaii on the 18th, I’m hoping to be on vespa full-time. Can’t wait!
Iceland by any other name would smell as sweet…
August 6th, 2005 nickInternet time has not been as commonplace as I had expected on this European tour. I find myself on the last full day in Germany sitting in front of a screen trying to catch up to all but the first days of the last three weeks.
Johanna and I left Reykjavic in a whirlwind, barely catching the once-a-day bus that would get us to our destination with enough time to do this 55km hike that is said to be one of the most diverse stretches of land in Iceland: Landmannalaugar to Porsmork (there are some weird phoentic letter things on that last place name — suffice to say it is pronounced, I think, as “THORS-murk”).
We thought Landmannalaugar was a small village in the mountains, but it turned out to be either the name of the region or just of the summer-season tourist hut and natural hot-spring that keeps folks naked enough to feed the hordes of small black flies. We didn’t dawdle at the compound (several cabins with cots, a camping ground, a parking lot and the hot pool) and instead struck out on the hike so we could eat our lunch of german flat bread, cheese and tuna fly-free.
Landmannalaugar is on the edge of a kind of glacial run-off delta. It was in a pretty flat valley that looked like it would be much more full of water when snow is melting. We hiked out of this valley and onto a plateau of lava-rocks that were old and wet enough to have a thick layer of moss growing on them. It was a cool sight, as though a thick green batter had been dribbled along the tops of this lava flow. But as soon as we had enjoyed this scenery it was gone, we had reached the edge of the lava flow and it was replaced by softly rolling sandy hills (glacier-carved? there were many times this trip where we both wished we had payed more attention to our geology teachers) with sulphur-spitting steam vents. There were several large vents, like a hole maybe 10 meters across that you could not get that close to for the smell and the heat of the steam. But the whole area was littered with small vents. When we finally found a spot at the top of a little hill with enough wind to keep those damn bugs from flying into my hair and getting stuck in the little jewcurls, the ridgerest that we put down heated like the seat of a luxury SUV, without noticing we had placed it on several mini steam vents. It was cozy. And for the rest of the day, it was more of this pattern: 100 to 200 meters of craggy black lava flow, sandy rolling hills with small hot-water streambeds building some texture, vents identified over the next hill by wisps of steam. We kept on imagining a hobbit at the base of each of these plumes, working his whisper-lite to give him some hot water for a proper cup of tea.
After crossing a lava field dotted with beautiful mirror-quality chunks of obsidian, we climbed up a snow-covered hill where a memorial to a 24-year-old man who had died in a late-June blizzard in 2004 sobered our approach to the first of several strategically placed huts (this one 12km from Lmnlgr.). We pitched our tent, made a tasty dinner (Johanna, I think on a tip from Taus, had brought along some kale and potatoes — it was a welcome addition to add some durable greens to our cooking mix. We ate and fell asleep early.
Despite this whole ‘always light’ thing, we didn’t take much advantage of the extra daylight until the last day of hiking, when we pulled into base camp at 10PM or so. But I’m getting ahead of myself here…
The next day started with a long and frustrating hike across these soft gravelly hills which, every 50 meters or so would dive into a 10 meter high stream-bed that had been carved out by snow runoff. our elevation did not change significantly in our first hour or two of hiking, but we went up and down countless times. Big time frustrating. We were soon rewarded with a nice uphill climb and one of the best views of the trip. We could see that we were headed towards a greener valley, away from the blacks and greys, the oranges and sulphuric reds of the lava fields and soft hills and into a lush valley bordered by two huge glaciers. Seeing steam vents and lava fields next to glaciers made us wonder who would win if lava flow met a glacier…what would happen? A good argument for an anything-anything-anything match (akin to a roshambo match, just without the rock, paper or scissors), if nothing else.
We had reached the highest point of the trip (about 1200 meters, I think) and could almost see our destination, now a mere 40km away. On our slow descent into the green valley (few trees, mostly just grass and sheep keeping it short), we forded a frigid glacial river (knee-deep, rushing), tried to go swimming in a gorgeous mountain lake (knee-deep, placid), chatted up a German couple whom we leap-frogged with on the trail a bit as we each stopped for snack breaks and a few other small river fordings. The second night was spent in a campsite that was divided into loose sites by old stone farmhouse ruins.
Our last day of hiking was a the longest, about 25km total. We started out across more rocky valley terrain (lava rocks and small lava sand/pebbles? again, no technical terms here) and wound our way between some mountains that jutted up out of the valley. In some places it was like southwestern desert landscapes, small flowering plants and larger-sized rocks dotting the black-sand expanses between the mountains evenly, as if planted or laid there on purpose. Apparantly on foggy days this area is dangerous because it is really easy to lose your way without any clear landmarks around. The weather was gorgeous throughout the whole trip, though. We lucked out on that front. In the afternoon, we walked along and over (thank you, footbridge) some deep canyons with fast-moving glacial run-off, a nice reminder that the glaciers in front of us and to the left (south and east, respectively) were getting closer. Finally, we crossed a riverbed that was probably 100 meters wide but only had shin-deep water rivulets coursing through it now. On the other side was a birch and poplar forest, thick with tall grasses and small versions of these beautiful trees (stunted growth from the cold climes?). We stopped and had dinner next to a small brook and found our way to the Porsmork camping ground and bus pick-up at 7AM the next morning.
Basically, there was never a dull moment on this entire hike. The landscape changed every few kilometers (if not more often) to something completely new and different than before. There were beautiful wilderness extremes (craggy mountaintops, boiling hot water coming out of the ground, ice caps sulking in the distance, desert flats) and more civilized wilderness (sheep bleating from soft grassy knolls, farmhouse ruins, the quaint huts and their facilities — each one had a person or a family, in one case, who lived there and looked after the hut and the campground). We lucked out with weather, didn’t take good advantage of being able to hike at 1AM without a flashlight, appreciated not having to worry about bears snatching our food away, and loved the fact that the bussed allow for nice long one-way trips (even if they are damn expensive).
Our last day in Reykjavic we enjoyed the public baths one more time, ate some real food (non-re-hydrated bean mixes) and watched a local youth soccer game at a field near the campground. Early the next morning, Sunday July 25th, we hopped on a plane for Munich.
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