German Photo Diary - Part 2

This is a shot of Schneeburg- Snow Mountain in German- where Anke grew up and we spend several days.

Oma Renate and Tante Ursel with a napping Corwin.
Corwin's little path.
Water Lillies.
Anouk's Racer.
If you'll look closely you'll notice that the little square bale of hay is flying through the air. That's right, the red thing forms the bale of hay then flings in into the following cart. While we've been fighting a war in Iraq our great country has taken the eye off of the ball and been surpassed in the ever important field of hay-baling technology.
A lake where we spent the afternoon hiking.
Some evil genious devised this pool and placed it along a hiking trail to lure in unsuspecting Americans and tourture them. You see, they place a sign there that says walking through fucking cold water on rocks is somehow good for you. He probally also believed that leaches were good for removing the bad humours from the blood. The only refreshing thing about it was how amazing it felt to no longer be in the torture chamber. I did two circuits of the pool. Crazy Inga did five.

Family.
Punk toddler flies through the air.
I just like this picure. I does a good job of showing the constant motion that Corwin is in.
Samurai Andre duels with Corwin.
This could maybe be Iowa. It isn't.
Touring the church.
Corwins discovers the beauty of puddles.
Mushrooms.
Pond of the Dead. Really that's what it's called.

More photos still to come.

German Photo Diary - Part 1

We made it back from Germany safe and sound. Corwin was really great on the plane. He cried and screamed a couple of times, but not for long and very few times. I'm really proud of how he did traveling. This photo diary of the trip are in mostly chronological order.

Corwin Plays with a toy truck from Anke's childhood. I thought this little wooden truck was the coolest.
Corwin bangs the bongo at Tante Sabina's house.Who can resist a day old lamb.Anke and Corwin walk through the court yard at Tante Sabina's. One of them wishes to chase the kitties some more.Anke's father, Lutz, and I try to teach Corwin to ride a tricycle. His little legs are still a bit short though.These little toads were common every where. Anke kindly rescued a couple that were slow crossing the road, that may have been hit by cars. Slugs were also common. We encourage cars to hit them.Ina, Anke's step mom, pushes Corwin in the off-road buggy that was borrowed by Lutz. Thanks to whom ever it was that Lutz borrowed the stoller from.I read a book and drink a beer in the evening. Life isn't so bad.Corwin freeloading once again.I'm to entertain Corwin by blowing soap bubbles.People are small in the big forest.Corwin has studied all of the dance moves from Pulp Fiction.
Butterflies love me.My niece, Anouk, and her mommy Inga.This picture of Corwin with a flower is for you, Mom.

And with that, I'm going to bed now. Jet lag sucks, more pictures later. Thanks to Anke for taking most of these. She is more diligent taking photos than I, therefore I show up in pictures more than she. Some were also taken by Lutz, Inga, and even me.

Germany

Anke, Corwin and I are leaving for Germany in a few hours. We return on Saturday the 26th. The total commute between Omaha and Dresden should be around 18 hours give or take an hour. The transatlantic flight between Detroit and Frankfurt is around 8 hours, give or take depending on winds. I'm excited to be going, but this is Corwin's first trip in an airplane. I hope all goes smoothly.

On the bright side, I thought I was getting sick on Wednesday with the same thing that knocked Anke down for 4 days last week. But I was feeling much better by yesterday afternoon, and today I feel normal. I feared that I would be flying ill.

Transmission In

Last Saturday I finally got my new transmission installed in the Cutlass. Doing a project on a car is not unlike an IT project. You have management (Anke) asking for a timeline of when said project will be done. And you really have no idea so you make up a number, multiply it by 1.5 and say that is how long it will take. And it still takes longer. This should have been a 4 - 6 hour job if everything had fallen into place. We started around 9:30am Saturday and I left for home around 1:30am Sunday.

The guys who worked on my car were really great guys. And they knew what they were doing. They had to do some custom fabrication for a couple of mounting brackets. The bracket for the kick down cable will be redone, because we aren't really happy with it but at one in the morning you're willing to say we can live with this for now. I also didn't get my Hurst rachet shifter installed. This is the last time I order car parts from Ebay. It was missing a couple of small, yet key, parts that I didn't know were missing until we started taking apart the interior of my car to install the new shifter. So I'll be ordering a new shifter from Summit Racing. Paying full price, but knowing exactly what I'll get.

A happy note is that my old transmission will still have a life post Scotty's Cutlass. Chris- who did most of the work on my car- has a 1968 Pontiac LeMans that only has an old two speed turbo-glide transmission. Oldsmobile, Pontiac, and Buick all have the same engine/transmission bolt pattern so Chris will be able to bolt my old Turbo-350 transmission right up to his Pontiac motor, giving him three gears now instead of two.

A project that I found infinitely cool that the other Chris (whose shop we used) is in the process of putting a small block 383 Chevy engine into an 89 (I think) BMW 3-series.

Lake of the Ozarks

I went to the Lake of the Ozarks a couple of weeks ago for the Mid Life Crisis tour 2006. I was joined at condo del Fleishman by Flash (a special thanks go out to Flash and his folks for letting us sleep in their condo, use their really nice boat and the jet skis), Tony, Kham Sai, Ben, Billy, and Eric. Special guest appearances were also make by Hobie, Keebler, and Bill's friends Dave and Jen.

It was very much fun and relaxing. The weekend consisted of drinking lots of beer and a little vodka. And a couple of gin & tonics. Lots of boating. I was the only one to ride the big tube like thing. See the pic at left. For the record Flash was unable to shake me off of the tube. I would have liked to have done some water skiing, but we didn't make the time and really I didn't see any coves that would be match the skiing that Rathbun has to offer. Lake of the Ozarks is simply too big and busy for good water skiing. We did a little jet skiing, which was more fun than I anticipated it would be. We took Flash's boat to party cove, which consists of lots of boats tied together, people drinking beer and generally having fun. Oh, yeah. And of course topless girls.