Saturday night:
Had another fun night at the youth centre. Everyone was looking a bit worse for wear after Friday night, so I took advantage of this and took a few photos:P We played several of my partially invented games including: name the simpsons character; pull out a random hair and compare (the length); and the coolman contest (aka whose saliva freezes first).
Sunday:
After a nice sleep in, I arranged to stay another two days (Friday and Saturday) in Baiersbronn. I was originally going to go back to Frankfurt and stay in the youth hostel, but I think I'll have more fun in Freudenstadt. After we'd wrapped up the negotiations, Mr Keck, my landlord, offered to wax my skis for me.
It was a lot simpler than I'd always thought it would be. This skiing book I'd once read mentioned something about having to choose the right wax for the current conditions and that if you get it wrong, then it's counter-productive (and often the conditions will change in the middle of the ski, so counter productivity would be quite likely). But most of the time you don't actually need to worry about that, because a universal wax works almost as well as the specific ones. He'd built this nifty little waxing table to hold the ski in place, while he ironed the wax across the surface. It turns out that he used to be a professional cross country skiier when he was my age, which is why he knew how to carry out the procedure so smoothly. He still skis a bit now, but he can't do more than an hour at a time because he had operations in his arms to remove a malignant tumor. It would be so heart breaking to have that kind of potential taken away by something you can do nothing against!
I took my newly waxed skis out for a spin that afternoon. It didn't make a huuge difference, but I was definitely gliding for longer without effort and this was on very soft snow. My skis definitely needed a wax in any case, because I've done several hundred kms on them already, and the synthetic undersurface needs 'nourishment' or else it gets ruined. I was starting to slow down after 30km, but then the skiiers from the Baiersbronn ski team that I saw in the first week came past and I latched on. This time, they wore out before I did, so I did the last 5k by myself, but it made it a lot easier skiing with other people. They probably hate me now though because after they stopped, I yelled out 'Thanks a lot!', which I think they interpreted as 'Sayonara suckers!', because they went out really fast and tried to catch me (but couldn't:P).
Monday:
Went for a very slow ski. Wasn't feeling very energetic.
Tuesday:
I wasn't feeling very good at all, but today I had a time trial scheduled, so I did a 5k warmup and then stopped for 10 minutes to steel myself for the effort ahead. Half way through my meditations, this old guy who I see every day on the slopes offered to put my backpack in his car. Without the extra burden, I felt a lot more ready to take on the time trial, and thrashed out the first lap like a mad thing. My technique was very inefficient, but I managed to go a bit faster than last week (8:17) on much slower snow. My first lap is always about 30 seconds slower than my average pace for the whole time trial, so I tried to maintain 8:45 laps. After 5 laps, I was well ahead of the pace, and was expecting to start slowing down, because that had happened every other time. But pleasingly, I was still feeling good and managed to extend the lead even further:) I finished in 1:09:22 (=1:16:30 HM), a 3 minute PB from last week, and I wasn't at all tired afterwards:) 30 seconds after I'd finished, my heart rate was already under 100bpm and I wasn't breathing audibly anymore:) Very good sign.
Afterwards, I was talking to Claus (the old guy) and he asked me if I was going to take part in the 'Coolman' winter triathlon (5k run, 9k mountain bike ride, 7k XC ski). Flushed from the ski, I said 'Yeah! That could be fun!'. I'd thought about doing it before today, but it's fairly expensive (75 euros) and I didn't have a mountain bike I could use (Claus offered to lend me his). He drove me back to his place, and I called the registration office. I was pretty excited about it, because the day I'd be competing in (for under 23 year olds) is run simultaneously with the world championship elite race, so I'd be in the running to be the winter triathlon world champion! Unfortunately when I spoke to the registrar, it turned out the registrations closed the week before:( We tried pulling a few strings through Claus's connections, but they couldn't do a late registration for me because I didn't have an ITU (international triathlon union) start pass, which I would've had to get in Australia. Ah well, I'm going to spectate this year and go back next year and hopefully take part:)
Claus and I were talking about other cross country skiing races (the Engadine ski marathon in Switzerland sounds really cool!), when he mentioned that Feldberg was the cross country skiing mecca in Germany. 'Feldberg..where's that?'
'It's near Freiburg, not too far away... Say, I haven't been to Feldberg in years, would you like to go tomorrow?'
Of course I did!
Wednesday:
Woke up at 6am (to my alarm) with quite a bad cold. It had shown itself on Monday, but I was hoping it would vanish before it really started, because the whole time I'd been in germany I'd only had one cold and that was because I'd drunk soy milk the day before (wreaks havoc with my immune system). Friday night probably had the same effect.
Claus picked me up at 8am, and we made the quite long journey to Feldberg. It's about 2 hours, so almost exactly the same feel as going to Lake Mountain from Melbourne hehe. We talked a bit during the journey, but I find him quite hard to understand because he's fairly sloppy with his german and he often doesn't talk very clearly.
We found a park, and as we got out, Claus remarked 'Gee we've chosen the only park, which is completely covered with ice. No wonder no-one else parked there. I think we'll probably have to push the car off the ice afterwards.'
'Oops. Oh well, maybe the sun will melt it a bit.'
Since Claus hadn't been there for 16 years, and there was no signage for how to get to the cross country trails (it's mainly a downhill resort), we asked this guy at a ski hire place for directions.
'Oh you have to walk for half an hour before you get to the trails.'
'Really? Last time, I only had to walk for about 2 minutes before I could strap on my skis.'
'Definitely!'
We didn't quite believe him, so we asked at the next place.
'The trail starts just over there, 2 minutes away.'
I like that place better:P
So we strapped on our skis and made our way up. I wasn't feeling that great, so I stayed with Claus for the first 10 minutes, even though he goes very slowly. Eventually I'd had enough and went off on my own. It was really nice being able to go for 5km and not have to repeat the same terrain a few times. We wanted to go to Herzogenhorn, which is a plateau a few hundred metres above the rest of the resort. It was very nice up there:). I didn't feel like doing serious training, so instead of tucking into an aerodynamic pose on the downhills, I practised my telemark turns and as a result, fell over quite a few times:P There was this one downhill, which was like the descent for a ski jumping contest. It was probably about 100m to the bottom, 30% grade, and I slotted into the tracks, tucked in, and whizzed down at about 60kph! Super fun:D
Claus only did about half an hour of skiing and then went to the lodge and ate lunch. I was out for maybe 2 hours, and then it started getting windy and cold, so I was glad when he emerged and waved at me. Going back down to the resort was heaps of fun. That 5km uphill became 5km of downhill. A very gentle slope, but because it was so long, you could build up heaps of speed:D Most people took off their skis and walked down (quite a few on the groomed trail, which is my pet hate!!!), but I skiied down. I took a tumble or two after going for one too many telemark turns, but picked myself up and went on. I finished ages before Claus, so I went down one of the proper downhill slopes. I always love the looks downhill skiiers give you, when you do a telemark turn and your heel rises off the ski:P
Getting out of the parking spot took a bit of time, but we didn't have to push luckily:) I was a bit worried at one point when the wheels spun for a few seconds; and at another point when Claus came 1mm close to scraping a huge gouge in a new volvo, but it worked out ok in the end. The trip back was a bit quicker because Claus took advantage of the lack of speed limits on the autobahn and pushed the speedo up to 150kph. I was more than a bit worried at this because it was raining quite heavily, and the car didn't feel like it was used to that kind of speed haha.
Claus dropped me back at my place and I quickly got changed and caught a train to Freudenstadt to catch up with some friends from the youth centre. They showed me a few of the historical monuments that I'd missed and then we went to a cafe and ordered some very opulent drinks that hardly seemed appropriate at this time of year (eg. ice coffees and milkshakes) haha. After that we went to this pub that offered 1 euro drinks of every variety on Wednesday nights.
It was allright, but I was feeling pretty tired and sick, so I didn't enjoy it as much as I wanted to.
Thursday:
Woke up feeling worse than yesterday despite all the zinc supplements I've been taking. Went for a pre-ski jog, but felt so lethargic afterwards that I decided to limit my exercise to that. I'm spending the day in Freudenstadt. Martin, Tracey (from the youth centre) and I are going to see American Gangster (in german) at this cool cinema in the Kurhaus tonight.
Until next time!
Thursday, February 21, 2008
Saturday, February 16, 2008
Aha!
Tuesday (continued..):
Haha when I got home that night I found a cutting from the local newspaper featuring my photo and citing me as saying I dislike Valentines day because it's too commercialised (and every other voxpopee was of the opposite opinion:P). Souvenir and a half!
Wednesday:
Umm nothing particularly interesting. Went for a ski and went out after dinner and played a few games of pool..by myself hah.
Thursday:
See Wednesday minus the pool. My arms were toast from doing 30km classic. I find it so much harder than skating:O
Friday:
Big day:) I decided that since 45k was no longer a challenge, I'd try and do 60k of skating for my long ski. When I got to the loop I heard two Americans talking among themselves and struck up a conversation with them. They were very fit triathletes, who'd decided they'd give the Winter triathlon a shot. The only problem was, they didn't know how to cross country ski and the race was in 2 weeks, so they were trying to get some skating practice in. They were actually not too bad considering they'd never been coached. Although one of them did manage to break his 300 euro skis in half the last time they went out:P (they were covered by insurance, so no biggy). I took them under my wing and took them for a few laps without stocks. They were looking a lot better by the end of it. After 4 laps or so they called it quits because otherwise they were going to lose certain appendages:P I guess they'll know in the future that -10°c plus windchill calls for more than a pair of skins:P So that was 6 laps gone. It's a lot easier skiing with other people. It eases the mental burden I guess. I did another 6 laps to make 30km without stocks and then strapped them round my wrists. Reached the 45km mark without problems, still feeling strong. The next 4 were fairly tough, but after that the finish line was in sight and I got there! I actually didn't feel too bad, I could've done another 10k or so.
Had to wait ages for the stupid bus, so I sat in a cafe, ordered a tea and covertly ate my sandwiches:P
I was still feeling amazingly energetic when I got back to my room (It probably had something to do with the cup of coffee I drank before the ski and the fact that I hadn't had any caffeine for a few months:P) and really could not stand another night of falling asleep in front of the TV. I really wanted to go out, but didn't know where. Martinique was the only place I could think of, but I was quite reluctant to go there after the quick look I took with Ben two weeks ago. Apprehensively, I walked down to the train station at about 10, only to find that there were no trains going to Freudenstadt until 11pm, which would give me about 30 minutes before I had to catch the last train home again lol. There was a train coming from Freudenstadt, so I said screw it, and hopped on, prepared to launch myself into the unknown...and then it started off going back to Freudenstadt haha.
I didn't really have a clear idea of how to get to Martinique, so I just started walking in that direction. A few steps later, I heard music coming from this place opposite the station. I had a look through the window and it looked pretty good: pool table, music, people. So I went in and discovered the youth centre 'Teeny disco'. It was fantastic! I'd started to think that there was a generation issue in Freudenstadt. All the old people are really nice and outgoing, but all the young people I had met were unfriendly, and uninterested. But the people here were great! A charming young lady by the name of Martina introduced me to everyone, and we had great fun compiling a list of obscure german swear words:P In no time at all it was 12 oclock and I went to make my goodbyes, but this young guy called Freddy insisted that I come and sleep over at his girlfriend's house and try what is in his opinion, the best beer there is in Germany. 'Ummmmm'
'Be spontaneous man!' (he started speaking english in this hilarious accent as soon as he heard I was from Australia)
'Heh why not?'
So I went back with them to Charly's (his girlfriend) place, tried the bottle of 'Das Echte' beer (I think Alpirsbacher Speziell is more deserving of the accolade), translated some death metal lyrics into german for him, drank quite a lot of schnaps, and fell asleep... And then woke up about half an hour later and for the first time in my career, was forced to crawl to the bathroom and empty the contents of my stomach (amazing how you really do feel completely better afterwards..I always thought it was an exaggeration) eugh:P I think I'm going to stay away from alcohol for a while lol. It was a really fun night in spite of that. A similar thing is happening tonight, which I'm looking forward to:)
Saturday:
Woke up at 8am or so, lacking a few hours sleep. I wanted to go for a ski and I knew it wouldn't happen if I slept in until everyone else was awake, so I left a note and caught a bus back to Baiersbronn. I got to my room and ate a little breakfast, but wasn't really hungry. It was very hard to leave the room again, but I had no excuse and I had a theory that 30km of skating would be a good hangover cure. It sort of was. I was fairly unco-ordinated and went incredibly slowly at the start, but felt progressively better and by the end, I was feeling good:) But not anymore - sitting at the computer for 2 and a half hours has robbed me of energy haha. I'm going to go back to my room and recuperate for a bit before I go out again.
Haha when I got home that night I found a cutting from the local newspaper featuring my photo and citing me as saying I dislike Valentines day because it's too commercialised (and every other voxpopee was of the opposite opinion:P). Souvenir and a half!
Wednesday:
Umm nothing particularly interesting. Went for a ski and went out after dinner and played a few games of pool..by myself hah.
Thursday:
See Wednesday minus the pool. My arms were toast from doing 30km classic. I find it so much harder than skating:O
Friday:
Big day:) I decided that since 45k was no longer a challenge, I'd try and do 60k of skating for my long ski. When I got to the loop I heard two Americans talking among themselves and struck up a conversation with them. They were very fit triathletes, who'd decided they'd give the Winter triathlon a shot. The only problem was, they didn't know how to cross country ski and the race was in 2 weeks, so they were trying to get some skating practice in. They were actually not too bad considering they'd never been coached. Although one of them did manage to break his 300 euro skis in half the last time they went out:P (they were covered by insurance, so no biggy). I took them under my wing and took them for a few laps without stocks. They were looking a lot better by the end of it. After 4 laps or so they called it quits because otherwise they were going to lose certain appendages:P I guess they'll know in the future that -10°c plus windchill calls for more than a pair of skins:P So that was 6 laps gone. It's a lot easier skiing with other people. It eases the mental burden I guess. I did another 6 laps to make 30km without stocks and then strapped them round my wrists. Reached the 45km mark without problems, still feeling strong. The next 4 were fairly tough, but after that the finish line was in sight and I got there! I actually didn't feel too bad, I could've done another 10k or so.
Had to wait ages for the stupid bus, so I sat in a cafe, ordered a tea and covertly ate my sandwiches:P
I was still feeling amazingly energetic when I got back to my room (It probably had something to do with the cup of coffee I drank before the ski and the fact that I hadn't had any caffeine for a few months:P) and really could not stand another night of falling asleep in front of the TV. I really wanted to go out, but didn't know where. Martinique was the only place I could think of, but I was quite reluctant to go there after the quick look I took with Ben two weeks ago. Apprehensively, I walked down to the train station at about 10, only to find that there were no trains going to Freudenstadt until 11pm, which would give me about 30 minutes before I had to catch the last train home again lol. There was a train coming from Freudenstadt, so I said screw it, and hopped on, prepared to launch myself into the unknown...and then it started off going back to Freudenstadt haha.
I didn't really have a clear idea of how to get to Martinique, so I just started walking in that direction. A few steps later, I heard music coming from this place opposite the station. I had a look through the window and it looked pretty good: pool table, music, people. So I went in and discovered the youth centre 'Teeny disco'. It was fantastic! I'd started to think that there was a generation issue in Freudenstadt. All the old people are really nice and outgoing, but all the young people I had met were unfriendly, and uninterested. But the people here were great! A charming young lady by the name of Martina introduced me to everyone, and we had great fun compiling a list of obscure german swear words:P In no time at all it was 12 oclock and I went to make my goodbyes, but this young guy called Freddy insisted that I come and sleep over at his girlfriend's house and try what is in his opinion, the best beer there is in Germany. 'Ummmmm'
'Be spontaneous man!' (he started speaking english in this hilarious accent as soon as he heard I was from Australia)
'Heh why not?'
So I went back with them to Charly's (his girlfriend) place, tried the bottle of 'Das Echte' beer (I think Alpirsbacher Speziell is more deserving of the accolade), translated some death metal lyrics into german for him, drank quite a lot of schnaps, and fell asleep... And then woke up about half an hour later and for the first time in my career, was forced to crawl to the bathroom and empty the contents of my stomach (amazing how you really do feel completely better afterwards..I always thought it was an exaggeration) eugh:P I think I'm going to stay away from alcohol for a while lol. It was a really fun night in spite of that. A similar thing is happening tonight, which I'm looking forward to:)
Saturday:
Woke up at 8am or so, lacking a few hours sleep. I wanted to go for a ski and I knew it wouldn't happen if I slept in until everyone else was awake, so I left a note and caught a bus back to Baiersbronn. I got to my room and ate a little breakfast, but wasn't really hungry. It was very hard to leave the room again, but I had no excuse and I had a theory that 30km of skating would be a good hangover cure. It sort of was. I was fairly unco-ordinated and went incredibly slowly at the start, but felt progressively better and by the end, I was feeling good:) But not anymore - sitting at the computer for 2 and a half hours has robbed me of energy haha. I'm going to go back to my room and recuperate for a bit before I go out again.
Tuesday, February 12, 2008
Saturday (continued...):
so I caught the bus up to Kniebis and sat in the sun, reading my book 'Powercourse for Beginners: French' and talking to this nice german guy, while waiting for the race to start. I've decided that I want to start learning french! It was next on my list of languages I want to learn (french, spanish, dutch, mandarin), and I think I've got a fairly good grasp of german now, so it was time to start:) This book is really quite good, I'm already up to modal verbs and perfect past. Only problem is, I have no idea how to pronounce most of the words. The book (which is in german for even more fun:P) came with an audio CD, but I don't have a CD player with me, so I'm going to start with grammar and correct my mangled pronounciation (I tend to make the unfamiliar words sound italian:P) later:P
It kicked off at about 3:30. The competitors had already done a ski jumping contest in the morning and their strength in that discipline decided how long they had to wait after the first guy started before they could start. The guy who won the ski jumping (I think they said he's a national champ in his age group) was so far in front that he didn't have to ski hard at all to win. I thought he was retiring because of injury or something like that because he was going so slowly and no-one clapped for him lol. The younger kids did 5k to the accompaniment of much 'Hop!Hop!Hop!Hop!Hop!'ing as they passed the spectators, while the 16-19 year olds did 10k. Man they're fast! I timed one of them, and he did a 2.4km lap in 6.5 minutes, which is incredible!
I stayed just long enough that I screwed up the bus connection and would have had to wait 2 hours for the next one. It was getting dark and cold, and I really didn't feel like waiting, so I hitchhiked again. The first car I thumbed pulled over. Imagine my surprise when I heard 'I'm just going to Freudenstadt' (in english). My saviour was a 50ish year old Scottish woman with an amazing story. She was once a Rocket Scientist, working for NASA, until one day she had a Damascus Road Moment. She came into her house to discover a 1m wide rainbow reflected on her ceiling with no plausible explanation for its presence. That experience completely changed her life, and she travelled to Germany to study at this bible school in Kniebis, which her twin sister had recommended. It sounds a bit flimsy hearing it second hand, but believe me, she was absolutely rivetting. She's quite anti-clerical, but despite this, she's studying to become a woman pastor (which I thought was an excellent idea). She drove me all the way to Baiersbronn so we could continue the conversation, and we ended up sitting in the car outside a supermarket for about 20 minutes. It was truly an amazing experience, she would make such a good pastor! I'm glad to have met her, but I don't think I'm going to take her up on her invitation to come with her to Strassburg to this weekly bible study evening.
That night I went to Baiersbronn dance party venue: Bar Astoria. It was terrible. I got there at 9.15 or so, and apart from the barkeeper's girlfriend, who I followed in, there was no-one. Things didn't improve as the night went on. About 15 guys rocked up at about 10, drank red bull and vodkas and sheepishly danced with one another. I tried talking to a few of them, but they just weren't interested. I ended up leaving before 11 and swore I'd never go back. An expensive (3 euro entry, 2.50 per pot) yet lame night.
Sunday:
My knee was feeling better, so I went to Kniebis and did 45km. My calves were very sore for some reason, but after 7.5km they loosened up. It was a lot easier than last time, I wasn't tired afterwards and it took me over an hour less:) Marathon time was about 3:20.
Monday:
I got up earlyish and set off on a very slow jog. So slow that this old lady opened her window and asked me what was wrong:P After half an hour of that, I had breakfast, then lazed around for a while. I knew I should get moving if I wanted to go skiing, but I couldn't summon the effort. The reward for my laziness was getting to Freudenstadt at 2pm to discover that the next bus wasn't til 4pm haha. I decided to kill the time by going to Experimenta, Freudenstadt's equivalent of ScienceWorks. After about half an hour I finally found it, only to discover that it was closed on Mondays haha. So I ended up sitting in the sun, reading the french book. This very nervous german girl interrupted me at one point to give me a Valentines day survey and take my photo lol.
I finally got to Kniebis at about 4:30 and did 30km classic. I wasn't feeling very energetic, I'd double pole quite quickly on the flat bits, but as soon as I got to a hill, I'd revert to a plodding hairy leg because I couldn't be bothered diagonal striding properly. The Baiersbronn Ski Team had another of their practices at about 5:30. They did one lap extreeemely quickly, then did a little bit of technique drills and went home. It didn't seem like a very good training session to me. They were out there for less than an hour and didn't do anything that looked like it would build endurance. Oh well, it must work for them because I saw a few guys with jackets from the national team.
Caught the last bus home and got lectured by the bus driver for putting myself in danger for staying out that late and not having a girlfriend who would care if something did happen:P
Ate waaaaay too much for dinner and was in serious pain from my bloated stomach haha. I couldn't even watch TV because having my head in an upright position made it worse:P
Tuesday:
Very happy with today's results:) I went to Kniebis for a time trial and managed to do the 8 laps (which adds up to 19.2km not 20km as I once thought) in 1:12:34, a 17 minute PB from last week! Last week I started off with my fastest lap of 10:30, and today I managed to do every lap at least a minute faster than that! I'm chalking it up to improved fitness, but mainly to better technique. I've started using my arms a lot more effectively and the power from that means I go a lot faster with hardly any more effort. I think there are still a lot more gains to make from improved technique. My left ski still drags a bit and that must add up. I'm going to buy some rollerblades when I get back and go for a spin once a week to keep my technique in good shape.
so I caught the bus up to Kniebis and sat in the sun, reading my book 'Powercourse for Beginners: French' and talking to this nice german guy, while waiting for the race to start. I've decided that I want to start learning french! It was next on my list of languages I want to learn (french, spanish, dutch, mandarin), and I think I've got a fairly good grasp of german now, so it was time to start:) This book is really quite good, I'm already up to modal verbs and perfect past. Only problem is, I have no idea how to pronounce most of the words. The book (which is in german for even more fun:P) came with an audio CD, but I don't have a CD player with me, so I'm going to start with grammar and correct my mangled pronounciation (I tend to make the unfamiliar words sound italian:P) later:P
It kicked off at about 3:30. The competitors had already done a ski jumping contest in the morning and their strength in that discipline decided how long they had to wait after the first guy started before they could start. The guy who won the ski jumping (I think they said he's a national champ in his age group) was so far in front that he didn't have to ski hard at all to win. I thought he was retiring because of injury or something like that because he was going so slowly and no-one clapped for him lol. The younger kids did 5k to the accompaniment of much 'Hop!Hop!Hop!Hop!Hop!'ing as they passed the spectators, while the 16-19 year olds did 10k. Man they're fast! I timed one of them, and he did a 2.4km lap in 6.5 minutes, which is incredible!
I stayed just long enough that I screwed up the bus connection and would have had to wait 2 hours for the next one. It was getting dark and cold, and I really didn't feel like waiting, so I hitchhiked again. The first car I thumbed pulled over. Imagine my surprise when I heard 'I'm just going to Freudenstadt' (in english). My saviour was a 50ish year old Scottish woman with an amazing story. She was once a Rocket Scientist, working for NASA, until one day she had a Damascus Road Moment. She came into her house to discover a 1m wide rainbow reflected on her ceiling with no plausible explanation for its presence. That experience completely changed her life, and she travelled to Germany to study at this bible school in Kniebis, which her twin sister had recommended. It sounds a bit flimsy hearing it second hand, but believe me, she was absolutely rivetting. She's quite anti-clerical, but despite this, she's studying to become a woman pastor (which I thought was an excellent idea). She drove me all the way to Baiersbronn so we could continue the conversation, and we ended up sitting in the car outside a supermarket for about 20 minutes. It was truly an amazing experience, she would make such a good pastor! I'm glad to have met her, but I don't think I'm going to take her up on her invitation to come with her to Strassburg to this weekly bible study evening.
That night I went to Baiersbronn dance party venue: Bar Astoria. It was terrible. I got there at 9.15 or so, and apart from the barkeeper's girlfriend, who I followed in, there was no-one. Things didn't improve as the night went on. About 15 guys rocked up at about 10, drank red bull and vodkas and sheepishly danced with one another. I tried talking to a few of them, but they just weren't interested. I ended up leaving before 11 and swore I'd never go back. An expensive (3 euro entry, 2.50 per pot) yet lame night.
Sunday:
My knee was feeling better, so I went to Kniebis and did 45km. My calves were very sore for some reason, but after 7.5km they loosened up. It was a lot easier than last time, I wasn't tired afterwards and it took me over an hour less:) Marathon time was about 3:20.
Monday:
I got up earlyish and set off on a very slow jog. So slow that this old lady opened her window and asked me what was wrong:P After half an hour of that, I had breakfast, then lazed around for a while. I knew I should get moving if I wanted to go skiing, but I couldn't summon the effort. The reward for my laziness was getting to Freudenstadt at 2pm to discover that the next bus wasn't til 4pm haha. I decided to kill the time by going to Experimenta, Freudenstadt's equivalent of ScienceWorks. After about half an hour I finally found it, only to discover that it was closed on Mondays haha. So I ended up sitting in the sun, reading the french book. This very nervous german girl interrupted me at one point to give me a Valentines day survey and take my photo lol.
I finally got to Kniebis at about 4:30 and did 30km classic. I wasn't feeling very energetic, I'd double pole quite quickly on the flat bits, but as soon as I got to a hill, I'd revert to a plodding hairy leg because I couldn't be bothered diagonal striding properly. The Baiersbronn Ski Team had another of their practices at about 5:30. They did one lap extreeemely quickly, then did a little bit of technique drills and went home. It didn't seem like a very good training session to me. They were out there for less than an hour and didn't do anything that looked like it would build endurance. Oh well, it must work for them because I saw a few guys with jackets from the national team.
Caught the last bus home and got lectured by the bus driver for putting myself in danger for staying out that late and not having a girlfriend who would care if something did happen:P
Ate waaaaay too much for dinner and was in serious pain from my bloated stomach haha. I couldn't even watch TV because having my head in an upright position made it worse:P
Tuesday:
Very happy with today's results:) I went to Kniebis for a time trial and managed to do the 8 laps (which adds up to 19.2km not 20km as I once thought) in 1:12:34, a 17 minute PB from last week! Last week I started off with my fastest lap of 10:30, and today I managed to do every lap at least a minute faster than that! I'm chalking it up to improved fitness, but mainly to better technique. I've started using my arms a lot more effectively and the power from that means I go a lot faster with hardly any more effort. I think there are still a lot more gains to make from improved technique. My left ski still drags a bit and that must add up. I'm going to buy some rollerblades when I get back and go for a spin once a week to keep my technique in good shape.
Saturday, February 9, 2008
Thursday (continued..):
Yeah there's no snow, but it was an amazingly nice day anyway:) 10 degrees, sunny, all in all very pleasant:) I finished off a 150km week with an enjoyable 2.5 hour run up to Kniebis. When I turned back, I forgot which way I'd came and went down another trail downhill. I ended up in a completely unfamiliar location and was convinced I'd already run past Baiersbronn and would have to run at least another 10km to get back. I was quite looking forward to the prospect for some reason and was slightly disappointed when I found a sign for Nordic Walkers telling me that Baiersbronn was 1.5km in front of me:P Finished off the run feeling very strong and not at all tired. It's an excellent sign because only a few weeks ago I was struggling to finish the distance:)
I went out to the sports bar that night and had a good conversation with the barman over a few beers. Afterwards I got destroyed in a game of darts, but had a lot of fun:)
Friday:
Rather sluggish day. I went for a morning run, ate breakfast, and then went back to bed with my book...which is where Frau Keck, my hostess, found me a few hours later when she came to bring my washing up, surrounded by junk. She nearly had a heart attack:P
'Jeremy, how can you sleep in this mess!?'
'Oh, gee it is a bit messy. I didn't really notice it.'
'Tsk tsk tsk.'
So I helped her clean it up and promised I'd keep it that way. Which may or may not be a non-core promise:P
Three quarters of the way through my evening run, my right knee started giving me some grief, so I walked it in the rest of the way. I think it's because of the running in snow I did the day before. Not a good sign.
Saturday:
Got up early because there's a XC skiing competition this afternoon at Kniebis. I wasn't going to enter it, but I was hoping to take advantage of the groomed trail (I have no idea how they managed to get enough snow together to cover the loop) before it started. As I walked downstairs, my knee twinged a little, so I decided to take a rest day. Probably a good idea in any case after 20 days straight.
Time to catch the bus up to the ski stadium! Tschus!
Yeah there's no snow, but it was an amazingly nice day anyway:) 10 degrees, sunny, all in all very pleasant:) I finished off a 150km week with an enjoyable 2.5 hour run up to Kniebis. When I turned back, I forgot which way I'd came and went down another trail downhill. I ended up in a completely unfamiliar location and was convinced I'd already run past Baiersbronn and would have to run at least another 10km to get back. I was quite looking forward to the prospect for some reason and was slightly disappointed when I found a sign for Nordic Walkers telling me that Baiersbronn was 1.5km in front of me:P Finished off the run feeling very strong and not at all tired. It's an excellent sign because only a few weeks ago I was struggling to finish the distance:)
I went out to the sports bar that night and had a good conversation with the barman over a few beers. Afterwards I got destroyed in a game of darts, but had a lot of fun:)
Friday:
Rather sluggish day. I went for a morning run, ate breakfast, and then went back to bed with my book...which is where Frau Keck, my hostess, found me a few hours later when she came to bring my washing up, surrounded by junk. She nearly had a heart attack:P
'Jeremy, how can you sleep in this mess!?'
'Oh, gee it is a bit messy. I didn't really notice it.'
'Tsk tsk tsk.'
So I helped her clean it up and promised I'd keep it that way. Which may or may not be a non-core promise:P
Three quarters of the way through my evening run, my right knee started giving me some grief, so I walked it in the rest of the way. I think it's because of the running in snow I did the day before. Not a good sign.
Saturday:
Got up early because there's a XC skiing competition this afternoon at Kniebis. I wasn't going to enter it, but I was hoping to take advantage of the groomed trail (I have no idea how they managed to get enough snow together to cover the loop) before it started. As I walked downstairs, my knee twinged a little, so I decided to take a rest day. Probably a good idea in any case after 20 days straight.
Time to catch the bus up to the ski stadium! Tschus!
Thursday, February 7, 2008
(continued...)
Ahem, sorry about that.
Saturday:
So yeah, I managed to finish off the 45k, didn't really feel tired, just cold and blistered from where my boots had pinched my feet. It was now 9:00 PM, pitch black, -10°c and the buses had stopped running 3 and a half hours ago. I walked down to the Kniebis village to keep from freezing and stuck my thumb out at the passing 'traffic' (read, 1 car every 5 minutes.) The first 4 cars sped past me, but a friendly innkeeper and a young waitress from the hotel were willing to help me out. It was so nice to get into the car! He even put on some rap in english to make me feel more comfortable hahaha:| He dropped us off at his house in the depths of Freudenstadt. Luckily she knew her way around because I really didn't want to spend half an hour trying to work out where the train station was! In the end I still had to spend half an hour in the cold because the trains are fairly infrequent especially at that time of night:(. It was still well below 0 in Baiersbronn and I didn't feel like going home straight away to an empty larder, so I stopped off at the sports bar (don't really recommend it lol) and had a beer and a few games of pool (was beaten soundly by a turkish guy).
Sunday:
Sunday was a lovely day:) The sun was shining and fasching was in full swing. I went up to Kniebis, where the loop was absolutely packed. After 2 laps I got bored of having to constantly overtake people and ventured out onto an ungroomed trail. It was really fantastic:) I'm glad I bought classics now. It seemed like a frivolous purchase at the time since I usually concentrate on skating, but it's good cross training and there are a lot of trails in the Baiersbronn area that are only open for classic. I soon found myself absolutely alone, with amazing views of the Black Forest looking absolutely gorgeous with its blanket of snow:) Ended up doing about 4 hours, at which point my knee started to complain and the pain from my constricted toes was starting to become uncomfortable, so I was glad to stop.
Monday:
On Monday I took my skaters up for a 20km time trial. Did a quick 5km warmup without stocks and then it was on! I gave that hill everything I had. I'd go completely anaerobic for the last km of every lap and didn't really recover until the downhill section gave me a chance to catch my breath. I was aiming for 88 minutes and until the 6th lap, I was on target, but after that I started to slow down. The 7th lap was pretty bad, I was really struggling and dropped at least 40 seconds off the pace. Then serendipitously, the Baiersbronn Ski team showed up for the last lap. They were all standing at the start of the loop blocking the way, and I didn't really have the brainpower to work out how to say 'Get out of my way!' in german, so I just blasted through a small gap in their ranks, breathing like a steam train. I think they took that as a challenge. This girl from the team was onto me within a minute and I paced off her for a while until her superior downhill technique prevailed. The rest of the team caught up with me too and I skiied the rest of the lap with them. I was digging deep trying to keep up while they joked around going at their easy pace lol. It was a good workout, I was pleased with how it went, especially since it was a 6 minute PB on a much harder course (~8km uphill versus ~4km on the kangaroo hoppet course) than the August 07 Kangaroo Hoppet course. I definitely needed a break after that, a chocolate break to be more precise, mmm:)
After the ski, I ate some junk food from my favourite Döner outlet in Freudenstadt and then went and spent quite a bit of money at Müller. I went in because Alice had asked me to get her some Stabilo markers (done and done), but pretty much everything in the store caught my eye and I ended up spending about 60 euros on DVDs, vegan waffles, vocab notebooks and other pretty things lol.
Tuesday:
Miserable weather. I was hoping that what was rain in Freudenstadt would be snow in Mini Siberia (aka Kniebis), but sadly it wasn't the case. I did 27km classic in snow that got a little worse every lap. Had a nice chat with the bus driver on the way back.
Wednesday:
More rain:( It actually started snowing after a while, but 30 minutes later the clouds parted a little and it reverted to rain. Most of the snow in Baiersbronn was washed away. I walked down to the tourist office, skis in hand, hoping that Kniebis was having better luck, but I was soon robbed of that illusion. Went for my second run and got a bit lost and very wet. Stayed up til 5am reading. It's a lot more fun now that I barely have to consult the dictionary anymore:)
Thursday:
There's no snow anywhere:(. And to think I just bought a season pass for Kniebis lol.
Saturday:
So yeah, I managed to finish off the 45k, didn't really feel tired, just cold and blistered from where my boots had pinched my feet. It was now 9:00 PM, pitch black, -10°c and the buses had stopped running 3 and a half hours ago. I walked down to the Kniebis village to keep from freezing and stuck my thumb out at the passing 'traffic' (read, 1 car every 5 minutes.) The first 4 cars sped past me, but a friendly innkeeper and a young waitress from the hotel were willing to help me out. It was so nice to get into the car! He even put on some rap in english to make me feel more comfortable hahaha:| He dropped us off at his house in the depths of Freudenstadt. Luckily she knew her way around because I really didn't want to spend half an hour trying to work out where the train station was! In the end I still had to spend half an hour in the cold because the trains are fairly infrequent especially at that time of night:(. It was still well below 0 in Baiersbronn and I didn't feel like going home straight away to an empty larder, so I stopped off at the sports bar (don't really recommend it lol) and had a beer and a few games of pool (was beaten soundly by a turkish guy).
Sunday:
Sunday was a lovely day:) The sun was shining and fasching was in full swing. I went up to Kniebis, where the loop was absolutely packed. After 2 laps I got bored of having to constantly overtake people and ventured out onto an ungroomed trail. It was really fantastic:) I'm glad I bought classics now. It seemed like a frivolous purchase at the time since I usually concentrate on skating, but it's good cross training and there are a lot of trails in the Baiersbronn area that are only open for classic. I soon found myself absolutely alone, with amazing views of the Black Forest looking absolutely gorgeous with its blanket of snow:) Ended up doing about 4 hours, at which point my knee started to complain and the pain from my constricted toes was starting to become uncomfortable, so I was glad to stop.
Monday:
On Monday I took my skaters up for a 20km time trial. Did a quick 5km warmup without stocks and then it was on! I gave that hill everything I had. I'd go completely anaerobic for the last km of every lap and didn't really recover until the downhill section gave me a chance to catch my breath. I was aiming for 88 minutes and until the 6th lap, I was on target, but after that I started to slow down. The 7th lap was pretty bad, I was really struggling and dropped at least 40 seconds off the pace. Then serendipitously, the Baiersbronn Ski team showed up for the last lap. They were all standing at the start of the loop blocking the way, and I didn't really have the brainpower to work out how to say 'Get out of my way!' in german, so I just blasted through a small gap in their ranks, breathing like a steam train. I think they took that as a challenge. This girl from the team was onto me within a minute and I paced off her for a while until her superior downhill technique prevailed. The rest of the team caught up with me too and I skiied the rest of the lap with them. I was digging deep trying to keep up while they joked around going at their easy pace lol. It was a good workout, I was pleased with how it went, especially since it was a 6 minute PB on a much harder course (~8km uphill versus ~4km on the kangaroo hoppet course) than the August 07 Kangaroo Hoppet course. I definitely needed a break after that, a chocolate break to be more precise, mmm:)
After the ski, I ate some junk food from my favourite Döner outlet in Freudenstadt and then went and spent quite a bit of money at Müller. I went in because Alice had asked me to get her some Stabilo markers (done and done), but pretty much everything in the store caught my eye and I ended up spending about 60 euros on DVDs, vegan waffles, vocab notebooks and other pretty things lol.
Tuesday:
Miserable weather. I was hoping that what was rain in Freudenstadt would be snow in Mini Siberia (aka Kniebis), but sadly it wasn't the case. I did 27km classic in snow that got a little worse every lap. Had a nice chat with the bus driver on the way back.
Wednesday:
More rain:( It actually started snowing after a while, but 30 minutes later the clouds parted a little and it reverted to rain. Most of the snow in Baiersbronn was washed away. I walked down to the tourist office, skis in hand, hoping that Kniebis was having better luck, but I was soon robbed of that illusion. Went for my second run and got a bit lost and very wet. Stayed up til 5am reading. It's a lot more fun now that I barely have to consult the dictionary anymore:)
Thursday:
There's no snow anywhere:(. And to think I just bought a season pass for Kniebis lol.
Monday, February 4, 2008
Hullo all.
I finished WWOOFing a few days ago. It was a bit sad to leave, I had a really good time there. The family were all so nice and I couldn't have felt more at home (except maybe at home:P). I won't bore you with a day by day account (and I can't remember it well enough to do so in any case:P), but I will recount a few of the memorable moments:
A physics experiment:
Martin was home one of the days, so instead of going out to the horses, I helped him out. He wanted to move some timber from behind the barn, because at some stage, he was going to get rid of the sheep, knock down the wall and rebuild it as a stall for the horses. So together we moved the planks one by one (which was bloody hard work - some of the planks must've weighed over 100kg) and piled them up in the tray of his truck. We needed a break to recover from this, so we went inside and had a bit of lunch. While munching on peanut butter and rye bread, I asked Martin what was going to happen with the timber.
'Oh I'll drive the truck round to the other side of the barn and we'll stack it under the roof.'
'How do we get it from the truck up there?'
'I've got a pulley and rope in the attic, we'll get Opa to help us pull it up.'
He went silent for a few moments and then said abruptly 'It won't work.'
'How come?'
'Opa only weighs 80kg. If he tries to pull those really heavy planks up, he'll be lifted into the air!'
We both laughed as we tried to imagine the scene. I wasn't convinced by his reasoning though.
'Aren't you forgetting that Opa can use his muscles to exert force? Won't the work that he performs mean that he really weighs more than 80kg?'
'I don't think that would matter.'
'Hmmph, I guess we'll have to get Opa to take part in an experiment and see who's right.'
So we did the experiment and the results were quite surprising. Can you guess the outcome? Did Opa rise into the air, or was he able to lift the 100kg plank into the loft?
German recycling plant:
Another day (possibly the day after), Martin asked me if I'd be interested in coming to the recycling plant to drop off a few things. Of course I was interested! We put everything in the jeep (which incidentally, along with all of their other vehicles, is powered by salad oil, which means it smells fantastic when you get out!) and drove to the plant, which was close to the town Martin inherited: Martinsmoos (just kidding, he doesn't really own it:P). The germans have a very intricate recycling system. Pretty much everything is recycled in some way. It wasn't always like this. In the old days, everything would go to landfill, but some time ago, all the land that could be filled was filled and so now they have no choice but to recycle everything. As a result, they have about 6 different bins.
This is pretty confusing for someone not accustomed to it. Sigrid (I only realised 2 days before I left that I'd been saying her name wrong the whole time! It's Sigrid, not Sigfried:P) told me at some stage that when the vacuum cleaner was full, I should empty the contents into the black bin. So after dropping the vacuum cleaner and spilling the nearly full container on the stairs, I sucked it up again and then took the container to what I thought was the black bin. Martin had just pulled up in his car as I went to pour the contents into the bin and beeped at me. I thought he was just saying hello, so I waved at him while I finished what I'd started. What followed was like one of those 'Noooooooooooooooooooooooooooo!' slow motion clips from cheesy movies (but he didn't make it in time to knock the container out of my hands:P). Turns out that this bin, which had a black body, but a yellow lid, was for plastic not for 'Sperrmull' (anything that can't be recycled). So we had to fish the dust out of the bin (which thankfully wasn't at all yucky) and take it to the _real_ black bin next to the barn.
So back to the recycling plant. It was basically the german equivalent of a tip. Which means that it was highly organised and very efficient:P If you thought 6 different bins was bad, the recycling plant would send you screaming into the night. There was a shipping container for every conceivable category of objects. Paper, hard plastic, soft plastic, polstyrene, scrap iron, electronics, electronics with screens, mattresses, used fats, big trees, small trees, food scraps, and many more. And even though this plant was massive (at least 2 square km), it was tiny compared to the real recycling plants. The aforementioned containers are trucked to the large recycling plants, where they're further processed. Most of the stuff that can't really be usefully recycled gets burnt. I was a bit shocked when I first heard this because it's not just paper and banana skins that we're talking about here, pretty much all the plastic refuse goes to the same place. Plastic and burning spells black acrid smoke to me, which then in the confused neural network of my brain, leads to sulfur dioxide and acid rain and the death of the black forest! But the truth is a lot more attractive. The burning plants are very clean, they have very fine filters so that not much gets out of there besides Carbon Dioxide (oh well, you can't have it all) and it's not just like they burn it and that's it. The heat from the burning as well as the methane from the decomposing organic matter is used to generate electricity, which is quite an amazing concept to me. I recently read an article in an Australian science magazine, which had a letter to the editor, saying something like 'It's amazing that humans haven't come up with the idea of burning our rubbish to generate electricity. Most of the things we throw out are extremely flammable and would generate a large amount of heat and therefore electricity. Our ancestors will come across our huge landfill sites and wonder where our brains were that we didn't utilise this rather obvious resource.' Haha it's not just our ancestors that will be thinking that, our coeval european cousins must have the same thoughts when they make the journey over the pond.
Who let the (horses) out?
Fast forward to the day of my departure. I was sitting on the computer, not doing very much, while Sigrid was busy on the phone taking care of some kind of business. She asked me (yelling through the door, while I was on the toilet, so I didn't take as much attention as I should have) to go out to the foals (who were being housed in the barn because it had snowed the previous night!) and give them hay and clean up the under surface and provided some additional advice, which I promptly forgot. So I went out to their stall and started chucking the horse apples out the little door that leads to the compost heap. They were being very nosy and kept trying to grab the pitchfork off me. At this point I should've realised that Sigrid had probably said that I should give them something to eat first so that I could get on with the my work without them interrupting me. But I didn't realise, or maybe she hadn't said that at all. So they stayed at my side peskily nudging me. I was in the process of chucking a load of apples out through the door, when they nudged me aside and went through the door into the compost heap. At first it was slightly amusing because they kept trying to eat the sheep poop infested straw, but then they started walking on a plank and slipping and I started to worry that they might hurt themselves. I called for Opa, but he didn't hear me. I called again and while my attention was diverted, they went past me into the yard. As soon as they sniffed freedom, they went wild and galloped down the cobblestones down to the grass at the end of the yard. Really worried, I yelled at the top of my lungs for Opa and he finally came out. He appraised the situation and told me to try and round them up while he erected a fence so they couldn't go past the barn on to the road. I grabbed one of them by the mane and tried to lead it up to the barn, but it wasn't going to happen. They'd struck the jackpot with the fresh grass they were munching on and weren't going to leave it without some serious convincing. Opa came down and tried to help me but all we succeeded in doing was scaring them enough that they galloped up through the garden beds and into the grape vines, damaging the fence quite badly in the process. Opa cringed and I felt terrible because Oma was going to be quite angry if she found out. At this point (actually as soon as we had the fence erected), I should have gone to fetch Sigrid, but for some reason my brain decided that the phone calls she was waiting on were more important than this situation. Opa found some rope and tied a harness (or whatever the bit that goes around their head is called) onto one of them, and I tried to lead it up to the stall. Another stampede through the garden beds. Opa was looking really upset and for the first time in my stay, his age started to show. Finally I thought rationally enough to decide that Sigrid was needed, and went inside to fetch her. 'The horses got out!' and so was she, leaving the ringing phone behind her. She had the situation under control in no time, all she had to do was stand up at the barn and calmly say 'Come here' and they did.
I felt decidedly sheepish and began to wonder whether there was a leaving curse that meant some misfortune would befall me on the morning of the day of departure (precedents: ski shop in Frankfurt, twisted ankle in Baiersbronn):P They weren't at all angry at me, because, well how could they be? That afternoon one of the foals got out while Marie was cleaning out the stall, so I felt quite a bit better about it after that:P
Back in Baiersbronn:
I got to Baiersbronn without incident and after a quick run, soon had myself nicely snuggled up in front of the TV. At about 8.00, Ben (from the hostel) called and told me he was about to leave Frankfurt and drive down to Baiersbronn, so we could catch up (he was working in the area that weekend). 'Yeah awesome, let's go and celebrate Fasching!' I said, hung up, and promptly fell asleep. At about 10 he called again and told me he was going to be even longer because all the snow on the road was slowing things down. 'What snow on the road?'
'Look outside man, it's snowing like anything!'
And indeed it was. It was pretty much a whiteout outside:) I looked out through the window, hugely pleased and snug in my nicely heated room.
He called me at about 11:30 while driving past my place (it was snowing too much to see the street numbers lol) in his rented merc (he'd reserved a golf, but they ran out, so they gave him a MB for the same price lol). I dashed out, grabbing every item of warm clothing I had, hoping I hadn't forgotten the front door key and jumped in. We drove round Baiersbronn, trying to find a place that was still open, but ended up going to Freudenstadt because Baiersbronn was completely dead at 11.30 on a Friday night during Fasching: It was snowing even harder in Freudenstadt, it looked so cool! We stopped at the Market place to interrogate a 'victim', who cheerily informed us that Martinique was the best place to go at this time of night. A quick trip to McDonalds (where Ben mercilessly teased an employee who was wearing what Ben termed a 'titty twister headset':P) later and we drove to Martinique's carpark and sat in the car for a while munching fries. The place turned out to be a bit of a non event. They were asking for a 4- euro cover charge, and it really didn't seem worth it, so we went to a petrol station instead. In Germany, every petrol station is a 24 hour Bottleo. I grabbed two bottles of Klosterbrau (best beer ever), and while I was blocking the attendant's view (not on purpose!), Ben pulled out two bottles of tequila laced beer and stuck them down his pants (he'd spent the last of his money at Maccers). Then he had the nerve to clumsily walk (the bottles made it hard going) up to the counter and ask for a discount on the filled bread rolls, seeing as they'd been out for so long. The guy ended up giving him one for free lol.
We drove off and while we were in motion, Ben grabbed one of my beers and started opening it. I snatched it back, 'Drive the car you idiot!' lol. We ended up pulling into an alley and talked for about half an hour before Ben fell asleep. I was quite content watching the snow fall and the plough trucks go about their work. At about 3, I tried waking him up. 'Oh sorry, did I fall asleep?' 'Yes'
'Oops'
And then he fell asleep again haha.
I spent the next hour trying to open the other bottle using the other bottle, a key, and my hands. Eventually I succeeded, but not before cutting my fingers in several places lol. I drank the beer (which I didn't really want, but I had nothing else to do) and fell asleep.
At 5am, I was awakened by the sound of a truck load of snow plough workers starting to clear the snow away from the car. 'Ben!' He woke up properly this time and we drove off after telling the guys they were 'geil' (cool) and that they were doing a good job:P Ben ended up sleeping on the floor in my room (I think the merc would've been more comfortable). I woke up at 9, still feeling tired.
It was so beautiful outside. Baiersbronn is a pretty little town whatever the weather, but with a blanket of snow over it and a lovely sunrise, the vista was breathtaking:) I spent the next three hours watching TV, while I waited for Ben to wake up. I was desperate to get up to the slopes, but didn't end up leaving til 3 because he went for a smoke and talked to Tina (who presumably told Peter Keck - the owner of the guesthouse - because he told me off for letting Ben in the next time I saw him) and showered and talked to his girlfriend on the phone and that kind of stuff. Ah well, I enjoyed his company. He gave me a lift to the bus stop in Freudenstadt and went off to another town, where he was serving at a Faschings feast.
So eventually at 4:30ish I got to the loop and started skiing. I did 20km without stocks, feeling pretty sluggish because of the lack of sleep and possibly the alcohol. Blisters didn't take long to form, but I pushed on, enjoying it a lot more after stocks came into the equation. The loop is flood lit, so even though it got dark about 90 minutes after I started, I could still keep going. It was kind of surreal, a monochrome world composed only of the white snow and the pitch black night. Each lap felt a bit harder, and I was tempted to stop, but I had told Ben I was going to do 45km, and for some reason I felt bound to fulfil that quasi-promise. I take back my comment about it being a nice loop. It's horrible!:P There's no chance to get into a rhythm because the terrain constantly changes. I don't mind the first 1km or so because it's a gentle uphill followed by a prolonged downhill, but at the bottom there's a really nasty hill. It's about 400m long and the last 100m is roughly 40% grade. You really have to power up it or else you can't maintain proper skating form, so as you get more tired, you become less efficient and waste more energy and get even more tired. It's a vicious cycle. After 40km, I was starving and feeling a bit glycogen depleted, so I stopped and ate two Laugenbrötchen (yummy bread rolls). It was probably a 2 minute break, but I became incredibly cold even in that short time. It was about -10°c and I was only wearing two layers (I hadn't noticed the cold until that time, even though my top was covered in ice from frozen sweat and artificial snow from the snow cannons). I quickly put on my jacket and managed to squeeze out my 17th and 18th lap.
I'm gonna go now, I reaaaally need to go to the toilet. Will finish it off at some point. Ciao
I finished WWOOFing a few days ago. It was a bit sad to leave, I had a really good time there. The family were all so nice and I couldn't have felt more at home (except maybe at home:P). I won't bore you with a day by day account (and I can't remember it well enough to do so in any case:P), but I will recount a few of the memorable moments:
A physics experiment:
Martin was home one of the days, so instead of going out to the horses, I helped him out. He wanted to move some timber from behind the barn, because at some stage, he was going to get rid of the sheep, knock down the wall and rebuild it as a stall for the horses. So together we moved the planks one by one (which was bloody hard work - some of the planks must've weighed over 100kg) and piled them up in the tray of his truck. We needed a break to recover from this, so we went inside and had a bit of lunch. While munching on peanut butter and rye bread, I asked Martin what was going to happen with the timber.
'Oh I'll drive the truck round to the other side of the barn and we'll stack it under the roof.'
'How do we get it from the truck up there?'
'I've got a pulley and rope in the attic, we'll get Opa to help us pull it up.'
He went silent for a few moments and then said abruptly 'It won't work.'
'How come?'
'Opa only weighs 80kg. If he tries to pull those really heavy planks up, he'll be lifted into the air!'
We both laughed as we tried to imagine the scene. I wasn't convinced by his reasoning though.
'Aren't you forgetting that Opa can use his muscles to exert force? Won't the work that he performs mean that he really weighs more than 80kg?'
'I don't think that would matter.'
'Hmmph, I guess we'll have to get Opa to take part in an experiment and see who's right.'
So we did the experiment and the results were quite surprising. Can you guess the outcome? Did Opa rise into the air, or was he able to lift the 100kg plank into the loft?
German recycling plant:
Another day (possibly the day after), Martin asked me if I'd be interested in coming to the recycling plant to drop off a few things. Of course I was interested! We put everything in the jeep (which incidentally, along with all of their other vehicles, is powered by salad oil, which means it smells fantastic when you get out!) and drove to the plant, which was close to the town Martin inherited: Martinsmoos (just kidding, he doesn't really own it:P). The germans have a very intricate recycling system. Pretty much everything is recycled in some way. It wasn't always like this. In the old days, everything would go to landfill, but some time ago, all the land that could be filled was filled and so now they have no choice but to recycle everything. As a result, they have about 6 different bins.
This is pretty confusing for someone not accustomed to it. Sigrid (I only realised 2 days before I left that I'd been saying her name wrong the whole time! It's Sigrid, not Sigfried:P) told me at some stage that when the vacuum cleaner was full, I should empty the contents into the black bin. So after dropping the vacuum cleaner and spilling the nearly full container on the stairs, I sucked it up again and then took the container to what I thought was the black bin. Martin had just pulled up in his car as I went to pour the contents into the bin and beeped at me. I thought he was just saying hello, so I waved at him while I finished what I'd started. What followed was like one of those 'Noooooooooooooooooooooooooooo!' slow motion clips from cheesy movies (but he didn't make it in time to knock the container out of my hands:P). Turns out that this bin, which had a black body, but a yellow lid, was for plastic not for 'Sperrmull' (anything that can't be recycled). So we had to fish the dust out of the bin (which thankfully wasn't at all yucky) and take it to the _real_ black bin next to the barn.
So back to the recycling plant. It was basically the german equivalent of a tip. Which means that it was highly organised and very efficient:P If you thought 6 different bins was bad, the recycling plant would send you screaming into the night. There was a shipping container for every conceivable category of objects. Paper, hard plastic, soft plastic, polstyrene, scrap iron, electronics, electronics with screens, mattresses, used fats, big trees, small trees, food scraps, and many more. And even though this plant was massive (at least 2 square km), it was tiny compared to the real recycling plants. The aforementioned containers are trucked to the large recycling plants, where they're further processed. Most of the stuff that can't really be usefully recycled gets burnt. I was a bit shocked when I first heard this because it's not just paper and banana skins that we're talking about here, pretty much all the plastic refuse goes to the same place. Plastic and burning spells black acrid smoke to me, which then in the confused neural network of my brain, leads to sulfur dioxide and acid rain and the death of the black forest! But the truth is a lot more attractive. The burning plants are very clean, they have very fine filters so that not much gets out of there besides Carbon Dioxide (oh well, you can't have it all) and it's not just like they burn it and that's it. The heat from the burning as well as the methane from the decomposing organic matter is used to generate electricity, which is quite an amazing concept to me. I recently read an article in an Australian science magazine, which had a letter to the editor, saying something like 'It's amazing that humans haven't come up with the idea of burning our rubbish to generate electricity. Most of the things we throw out are extremely flammable and would generate a large amount of heat and therefore electricity. Our ancestors will come across our huge landfill sites and wonder where our brains were that we didn't utilise this rather obvious resource.' Haha it's not just our ancestors that will be thinking that, our coeval european cousins must have the same thoughts when they make the journey over the pond.
Who let the (horses) out?
Fast forward to the day of my departure. I was sitting on the computer, not doing very much, while Sigrid was busy on the phone taking care of some kind of business. She asked me (yelling through the door, while I was on the toilet, so I didn't take as much attention as I should have) to go out to the foals (who were being housed in the barn because it had snowed the previous night!) and give them hay and clean up the under surface and provided some additional advice, which I promptly forgot. So I went out to their stall and started chucking the horse apples out the little door that leads to the compost heap. They were being very nosy and kept trying to grab the pitchfork off me. At this point I should've realised that Sigrid had probably said that I should give them something to eat first so that I could get on with the my work without them interrupting me. But I didn't realise, or maybe she hadn't said that at all. So they stayed at my side peskily nudging me. I was in the process of chucking a load of apples out through the door, when they nudged me aside and went through the door into the compost heap. At first it was slightly amusing because they kept trying to eat the sheep poop infested straw, but then they started walking on a plank and slipping and I started to worry that they might hurt themselves. I called for Opa, but he didn't hear me. I called again and while my attention was diverted, they went past me into the yard. As soon as they sniffed freedom, they went wild and galloped down the cobblestones down to the grass at the end of the yard. Really worried, I yelled at the top of my lungs for Opa and he finally came out. He appraised the situation and told me to try and round them up while he erected a fence so they couldn't go past the barn on to the road. I grabbed one of them by the mane and tried to lead it up to the barn, but it wasn't going to happen. They'd struck the jackpot with the fresh grass they were munching on and weren't going to leave it without some serious convincing. Opa came down and tried to help me but all we succeeded in doing was scaring them enough that they galloped up through the garden beds and into the grape vines, damaging the fence quite badly in the process. Opa cringed and I felt terrible because Oma was going to be quite angry if she found out. At this point (actually as soon as we had the fence erected), I should have gone to fetch Sigrid, but for some reason my brain decided that the phone calls she was waiting on were more important than this situation. Opa found some rope and tied a harness (or whatever the bit that goes around their head is called) onto one of them, and I tried to lead it up to the stall. Another stampede through the garden beds. Opa was looking really upset and for the first time in my stay, his age started to show. Finally I thought rationally enough to decide that Sigrid was needed, and went inside to fetch her. 'The horses got out!' and so was she, leaving the ringing phone behind her. She had the situation under control in no time, all she had to do was stand up at the barn and calmly say 'Come here' and they did.
I felt decidedly sheepish and began to wonder whether there was a leaving curse that meant some misfortune would befall me on the morning of the day of departure (precedents: ski shop in Frankfurt, twisted ankle in Baiersbronn):P They weren't at all angry at me, because, well how could they be? That afternoon one of the foals got out while Marie was cleaning out the stall, so I felt quite a bit better about it after that:P
Back in Baiersbronn:
I got to Baiersbronn without incident and after a quick run, soon had myself nicely snuggled up in front of the TV. At about 8.00, Ben (from the hostel) called and told me he was about to leave Frankfurt and drive down to Baiersbronn, so we could catch up (he was working in the area that weekend). 'Yeah awesome, let's go and celebrate Fasching!' I said, hung up, and promptly fell asleep. At about 10 he called again and told me he was going to be even longer because all the snow on the road was slowing things down. 'What snow on the road?'
'Look outside man, it's snowing like anything!'
And indeed it was. It was pretty much a whiteout outside:) I looked out through the window, hugely pleased and snug in my nicely heated room.
He called me at about 11:30 while driving past my place (it was snowing too much to see the street numbers lol) in his rented merc (he'd reserved a golf, but they ran out, so they gave him a MB for the same price lol). I dashed out, grabbing every item of warm clothing I had, hoping I hadn't forgotten the front door key and jumped in. We drove round Baiersbronn, trying to find a place that was still open, but ended up going to Freudenstadt because Baiersbronn was completely dead at 11.30 on a Friday night during Fasching: It was snowing even harder in Freudenstadt, it looked so cool! We stopped at the Market place to interrogate a 'victim', who cheerily informed us that Martinique was the best place to go at this time of night. A quick trip to McDonalds (where Ben mercilessly teased an employee who was wearing what Ben termed a 'titty twister headset':P) later and we drove to Martinique's carpark and sat in the car for a while munching fries. The place turned out to be a bit of a non event. They were asking for a 4- euro cover charge, and it really didn't seem worth it, so we went to a petrol station instead. In Germany, every petrol station is a 24 hour Bottleo. I grabbed two bottles of Klosterbrau (best beer ever), and while I was blocking the attendant's view (not on purpose!), Ben pulled out two bottles of tequila laced beer and stuck them down his pants (he'd spent the last of his money at Maccers). Then he had the nerve to clumsily walk (the bottles made it hard going) up to the counter and ask for a discount on the filled bread rolls, seeing as they'd been out for so long. The guy ended up giving him one for free lol.
We drove off and while we were in motion, Ben grabbed one of my beers and started opening it. I snatched it back, 'Drive the car you idiot!' lol. We ended up pulling into an alley and talked for about half an hour before Ben fell asleep. I was quite content watching the snow fall and the plough trucks go about their work. At about 3, I tried waking him up. 'Oh sorry, did I fall asleep?' 'Yes'
'Oops'
And then he fell asleep again haha.
I spent the next hour trying to open the other bottle using the other bottle, a key, and my hands. Eventually I succeeded, but not before cutting my fingers in several places lol. I drank the beer (which I didn't really want, but I had nothing else to do) and fell asleep.
At 5am, I was awakened by the sound of a truck load of snow plough workers starting to clear the snow away from the car. 'Ben!' He woke up properly this time and we drove off after telling the guys they were 'geil' (cool) and that they were doing a good job:P Ben ended up sleeping on the floor in my room (I think the merc would've been more comfortable). I woke up at 9, still feeling tired.
It was so beautiful outside. Baiersbronn is a pretty little town whatever the weather, but with a blanket of snow over it and a lovely sunrise, the vista was breathtaking:) I spent the next three hours watching TV, while I waited for Ben to wake up. I was desperate to get up to the slopes, but didn't end up leaving til 3 because he went for a smoke and talked to Tina (who presumably told Peter Keck - the owner of the guesthouse - because he told me off for letting Ben in the next time I saw him) and showered and talked to his girlfriend on the phone and that kind of stuff. Ah well, I enjoyed his company. He gave me a lift to the bus stop in Freudenstadt and went off to another town, where he was serving at a Faschings feast.
So eventually at 4:30ish I got to the loop and started skiing. I did 20km without stocks, feeling pretty sluggish because of the lack of sleep and possibly the alcohol. Blisters didn't take long to form, but I pushed on, enjoying it a lot more after stocks came into the equation. The loop is flood lit, so even though it got dark about 90 minutes after I started, I could still keep going. It was kind of surreal, a monochrome world composed only of the white snow and the pitch black night. Each lap felt a bit harder, and I was tempted to stop, but I had told Ben I was going to do 45km, and for some reason I felt bound to fulfil that quasi-promise. I take back my comment about it being a nice loop. It's horrible!:P There's no chance to get into a rhythm because the terrain constantly changes. I don't mind the first 1km or so because it's a gentle uphill followed by a prolonged downhill, but at the bottom there's a really nasty hill. It's about 400m long and the last 100m is roughly 40% grade. You really have to power up it or else you can't maintain proper skating form, so as you get more tired, you become less efficient and waste more energy and get even more tired. It's a vicious cycle. After 40km, I was starving and feeling a bit glycogen depleted, so I stopped and ate two Laugenbrötchen (yummy bread rolls). It was probably a 2 minute break, but I became incredibly cold even in that short time. It was about -10°c and I was only wearing two layers (I hadn't noticed the cold until that time, even though my top was covered in ice from frozen sweat and artificial snow from the snow cannons). I quickly put on my jacket and managed to squeeze out my 17th and 18th lap.
I'm gonna go now, I reaaaally need to go to the toilet. Will finish it off at some point. Ciao
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