wow, check out this link. I would absolutely love to ride the great divide trail. I think my ideal vehicle for that trip would be something like this.



This bike is a Patria Terra, and as far as I know, it's only available here in Germany. It has a lugged steel frame that's made in Germany, and comes fully equipped with a Rohloff 14 speed internal gear drivetrain, hydraulic rim brakes, a full set of Tubus racks, and the fantastic Schmidt dynohub. This is basically a long wheelbase, fully rigid mountain bike. It has clearance for huge tires, and is built for off-road touring. Also, check out my buddy Ross's blog about his adventures as a long term bike tourist in Australia here.
Here is a picture that I took less than a week ago, and you can see that the weather was amazing. I like this picture of the farmhouse in the countryside, with the jet-trails streaking across the sky. This was on the last day that all of my scandanavian friends were still here. Marie is now back in Denmark, and Otto will be going back to Finnland in a couple of weeks as well.

I see you! :-)

It's stopped snowing for now, but here's a look at my balcony. Yep, that's about 30cm of virgin snow piled up there (Metric system for life, Right Jim?).

And here's a great reason not to leave your bicycle parked outside long-term. This bike is still parked right around the corner from my house. There are many others that share the same fate. I have ridden my bike to school twice now, and with the Schwalbe Marathon xr tires, the grip really isn't the greatest. I definitely wore my helmet! I am not going to buy studded tires for now, because I have a strong feeling that the snow will be gone in a week. Right now the streets are just a brown slushy mess, but at least cars aren't sliding around as much as they did on the first day.

I've been checking out my sitemeter recently, and it's pretty interesting to see the pattern of visitors. I can see how many hits I'm getting, how long people stay on my site, and where they are from. It seems that I have a couple regulars in San Francisco ( eine grosse Tasse Cafe!) and the bay area as well as in Minnesota and here in Germany. Perhaps my writing isn't exciting enough for everybody to leave comments, but please do!

I had two tests this morning, both of the German language. I've been pretty stressed out the last couple of weeks due to those and other reasons, but I only have one more test left on Tuesday. Then it's 6 weeks of relaxation, adventure and some soul searching. My life has changed in dramatic ways since I've been here, more than the last time I lived in Germany. On a positive note, my parents are coming to visit me from March 1 until the 10th or so. I am so excited about this, because I haven't seen them for almost 6 months, and because my dad will be turning 50 during the trip. He lived in Germany during highschool, and we're going to visit his old house, as well as various other places in Germany, Austria, and perhaps Switzerland.

snowy day at last!

Today it finally started snowing. It dumped 10cm over the course of the day, and it's still coming down. I couldn't resist going on my first snowy bicycle ride, after reading about so many cool people in Minnesota doing it. Here's my bike after my first ride.
I'm really glad I got the full size front rack. I can mount my new 6 euro basket on top, and there's still space to attach my panniers! The Atlantis is going to be a great winter bike, because I'll be able to fit huge studded tires if I need them. Lucky for me utilitarian cycling is huge here in Germany, so the local shop here has a great selection of high quality practical gear including schwalbe and nokian studded tires. Riding in the snow is pretty much what I expected. Just go slower than you normally would, and turn nice and slow. It's pretty annoying to have the snow flying in my eyes though. I'll try riding to school tomorrow and see if I can avoid crashing. I need to figure out what kind of pants to wear. My thighs got pretty wet on my first ride.

This picture looks like the snow is coming down pretty hard, but it just looks like that because of the slow shutter speed on the camera. The snow's been pretty slow and steady all day.

Mutscheltag

Well, my department at school recently celebrated a local tradition here in Reutlingen, which is the Mutscheltag. A Mutschel is the bread pictured here. It has 8 points on it, representing 8 different traditional jobs. Every year on Mutscheltag, people get together and play a special series of dice games to see who wins Mutschels.

And since this is a Schwabisch tradition, we drank Schwabenbrau beer. It's delicious. I didn't win anything until the end, but I walked away with 3 of the second biggest Mutschels!

Otto looks like he had a good time as well.