An example of a typical ride on the S Bahn.

New Year's Eve

Uhh... what am I gonna do?

Probably gonna stay in, watch TV, surf the world wide web, eat junk food, veg out. I'm looking forward to seeing the Germans get uncharacteristically crazy this evening by going out into the streets and lighting off fireworks. I don't even have to leave the comfort of my own apartment.

Grrr...

I'm disgusted.

That is all.

Bottom brackets, making sense of it all.

Here's a really good article about all the different bicycle bottom bracket "standards"

http://blog.treefortbikes.com/index.php/posts/1473#more-1473

LA the armpit of civilization?

So surfing the inner webs I spy a pretty cool vid on another blog (chuckibis) and wanted to share.

Who'd ever thought Ice Cube was into architecture?

It's Chrismas bitches!

It's Christmas morning! Yay!

Another day of the year. At least we get Monday off. Like we need to recover from another day. I bought myself some tires. From tirerack.com because I need new tires for my truck that are snow rated (we will see how they perform). Damn, my writing sucks but this is a blog not an english class for school so Fuck it!

It's cold and dreary outside. What am I gonna do today and tomorrow? Why veg out! What else? I may feel saucy and decide to give the house a cleaning and do a load of wash. maybe...

Homesick

Lately, I've been feeling a bit homesick. Could be the winter weather that's keeping me indoors and the fact that I go into work and its dark. And I leave when it's dark. Not seeing the sun and being on the bike eats at the soul.

I like living here. I like living in Schoenaich. Access to the woods and trails is awesome. Commuting through the woods is awesome. German beer is ok. I just prefer the micro brews back home, much more variety and flavor (more on this in another future post).

I think the time has come to cut loose and head back home - the US. Besides the awesome riding and cultural opportunities here, I've got no stake here. Family and friends are back home. Familiar things are back home.

Another reason for going back home is to go back to school on the GI Bill. Perhaps a career change is needed.

Daydreaming...

Well, not really daydreaming with my head in the clouds. More like thinking of cool unique bikes I could build with stuff I see on the inner webs. So what piqued my interest?

http://www.parafork.com/ & http://www.ewrbikes.com/

The last one.

I bought *another* bike frame. On ebay. Seems like ebay has been a den of sin (gluttony) for one such as me. Me being a nut about bikes. Mountain bikes. I see bikes or frames and think about how I'd build it. I need a nice bike. A "halo" bike as it were. I have quite a few bikes and each has their charm and features I like about them. Carbon comes to mind. Big wheels is another but 650b or 29er? I just had to wait for a good opportunity to come up. Which leads us back to ebay. I've been trolling ebay for just the right bike.

Then the other day, one came up. It was a Breezer Cloud 9 carbon HT frame. In a sweet looking black/white/green scheme and, more importantly, my size. The seller listed it with a reserve and it ended at around $700. The last bid didn't meet the reserve and didn't sell. A couple days later he re-listed it. This time without a reserve and he had it with a BIN option for $899. The retail is around $1800. It was a no brainer. Click-ity click on the "BIN" button and I done sinned again. But I'm happy. Now I can start thinking about how I'll build it. Hells to the yeah bitches!!!

Yet another check up.

So yesterday I took my little friend into see the doctor for a check up. Little bastard is still dead and shrinking (even though they previously told me that it can't physically shrink just stop growing). Whatever. Bottom line is that the remaining tumor is pretty much a dead mass. No longer growing or doing anything. Which is a good thing.

The doctor there said I need to get another check up in nine months and asked if I wanted to do it closer to my home. Of course bitch! I enjoy traveling by train but its a bit of a chore when appointments are early in the morning. Waking up at O'dark thirty sucks. She referred me to a doctor at Katerinen Hospital here in Stuttgart to see and the admins gave me CDs that had my records on them to hand over.

Been working lates this past week. Pretty uneventfull as things go. Except that I had a sit down with John and basically told him "WTF"! With all the drama going on in the office I'm seriously considering not re-upping. Bitches!!! or rather "BITCH!"