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24 October 2007
Pictures from the Fest
I've put some more pictures from Oktoberfest up on my Flickr page.
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Click on the picture below to get there...
18 October 2007
Pardon the Interruption…
Sorry for the lack of posting, but I didn’t want to give up my location due to a planned surprise of sorts.
Right now I am back in Virginia. The opportunity arose to come back for 60 to 90 days. I might have balked at it had my mother not been scheduled for a little operation around the same time. She pulled through like a champ, and although she’ll be sore for a while we’re all hoping for the best.
The blogging will probably be pretty light for the next couple of months. I’ll be traveling back to PA every other weekend and won’t have time for a lot of travel adventures (other than between the Commonwealths). I also will not have access to Blutwurst for further gastrointestinal adventures.
So until I do…
Right now I am back in Virginia. The opportunity arose to come back for 60 to 90 days. I might have balked at it had my mother not been scheduled for a little operation around the same time. She pulled through like a champ, and although she’ll be sore for a while we’re all hoping for the best.
The blogging will probably be pretty light for the next couple of months. I’ll be traveling back to PA every other weekend and won’t have time for a lot of travel adventures (other than between the Commonwealths). I also will not have access to Blutwurst for further gastrointestinal adventures.
So until I do…
p.s. I’ll get some more pictures from Oktoberfest up one of these days.
06 October 2007
02 October 2007
Bringing our A-Game…
Tomorrow morning will start with a four to five hour long drive for some guys from work and myself. We are not required to leave at dawn, but we are hoping to get an early start nonetheless. Tomorrow also happens to be German Unification Day, so we are hoping for light traffic. All we really have scheduled for Wednesday is the drive, dinner, some light training, and maybe taking in some sights.
I’m not afraid to say that each of us is a little nervous. We’ve all heard tales of misery and woe from some of those who have gone before us. The ones who made it back.
“Watch out for ‘these’ people“, some say.
Others tell us to beware of the corners, “That’s where it gets bad.”
“Just keep your wits about you!” was another bit of advice.
“Have any of you been there before?”
“No Sir, first time.”
“I can’t believe they are letting a bunch of rookies go there alone. Things are really going to hell around here! How did you get into this?”
“We volunteered, Sir. Saw the application on the internet and just signed up. We thought we were lucky to get in on it.”
“LUCKY?” he screamed. He was practically spitting in my face, he was so enraged. “Do you see this scar?”
“Uh … yes Sir.” I had seen it before, but everyone told me that he was pretty sensitive about it and I’d be better off not to bring it up.
“Guess where I got it?”
“Uh … I’m sorry Sir, I didn’t know.”
Maybe he looked at us and realized that we weren’t just some punk kids like some of the others had been. Maybe he knew it was already too late to back out. I don’t know why, but for some reason his demeanor changed. I thought maybe he was just trying to put a good face on for us. His “Game Face” is what the others called it.
“Well, you boys just be careful. Be a team. Keep your eye on your buddies, watch their backs. I’m sure you’ll all make it back fine.”
“Make it back?” I had never considered NOT making it back. It didn’t seem that dangerous on the web-page. Almost everybody in the pictures was smiling, and there are girls there, and even they’re smiling. How bad could it be?
In the weeks leading up to this, a couple of people told me that they wish they could go too. However, when I told them that there were six slots and only four of us going, the excuses would start. They suddenly seemed to have all manner of reasons why they couldn’t join us.
“Should I be doing this?” I thought. “At this stage of my life, I’m not in the greatest of shape. And what if something does happen to me? What if I go down? Will I drag the whole team with me? Is it fair to them?”
I spoke with a couple of them. They assured me that they wanted me to come. “Hell, it was YOUR dumb idea in the first place!”
“Well maybe so, but that doesn’t mean that it’s too late to back out, does it?”
“Yeah, it pretty much does” was the reply.
Well O.K. then, damn it! If that’s the way it’s going to be, I need to get ready for this thing. Luckily it was not too late to try and get my sorry ass into some sort of condition. I was determined not to be the guy who goes down. I was also going to need some extra strength and stamina, in case one of the others went down. Who would carry their loads? I looked around and didn’t see any likely volunteers.
Well then it’s got to be me. This will be my team. I will take the lead, help out the ones who fall behind. And I will make damned sure that everyone comes back! It felt pretty good when I made the decision. From that point on, whenever anyone would come to me with a warning about certain types of people, or what to look out for, I’d tell them, “We’ll be ready, and we’re all coming back!”
When we did, it would be our turn to laugh, and tell the next group of ‘boys’ what to look out for. And maybe that was all I was ever after. The feeling that I’ve done something that not everyone can claim to have done. To survive what only a comparative few have survived. To be part of a brotherhood. Something I’ve never had, growing up with only sisters. I always wanted a brother so badly, perhaps that was it all along. It was my way of coping. Is it dangerous? Sure, but what isn’t?
I’d been sore a few times since I’ve been here. I had been training a little bit while here, but nothing intensive. Now I’d have to go at my training with reckless abandon. I would allow nothing to stand in my way. I had decided to do it, and I would have experience the pain and fight my way through it.
Sometimes I trained alone, but I needed someone’s help. Someone needed to ‘spot’ me. My teammates would help me if it became too much, one of them would be there to catch me if I started to fall. I needed someone to push me past the point of failure and to keep going, and they provided that push. We pushed each other. Drove each other.
I am happy to say I think we’ve coalesced as a team. We’ve worked out together, and I feel good about us. We are still only four, and we will still need to do the work of six; however, after a solid month of training I believe that we are ready. But it’s more than that, I believe that I’m ready. I feel that I am at the top of my game right now.
It is now Tuesday night, and I will just be doing a few light reps tonight, nothing heavy. It will probably be the same tomorrow, although we will have a good meal tomorrow night so we have a strong foundation. None of that carbo-loading crap, I’m talking the necessary protein and fat to see us through the strenuous hours of what could be a long Thursday.
We’ll try to get a good night sleep Wednesday, but it’ll be tough. Everyone will be thinking about Thursday. In the morning we will enter the arena, and the noise of the crowd will be deafening. That’s alright; we’ve been training with artificial crowd noise all along. Piping it in through the loud speakers. We can’t even hear one another during these sessions, and have learned to communicate with hand signals. They’re nothing that Bill Belichick would be interested in, just simple communications among teammates.
Thursday morning I’ll turn my fellow Gladiators and say, “Gentleman, I hope you’ve brought you’re A-Game!” I feel like I’ve been training for this since the seventh grade, and in a way I guess I have. This is the day I’ve dreamed about, we’ve all been dreaming about since we were little kids. A dream that had been all but given up on, but now is about to come true.
“Eye of the Tiger”, I’ll tell them. “We’ve got to have the Eye of the Tiger”. I know we will all be humming the Theme to Rocky, when we walk into the tent for our very first Oktoberfest …
I’m not afraid to say that each of us is a little nervous. We’ve all heard tales of misery and woe from some of those who have gone before us. The ones who made it back.
“Watch out for ‘these’ people“, some say.
Others tell us to beware of the corners, “That’s where it gets bad.”
“Just keep your wits about you!” was another bit of advice.
“Have any of you been there before?”
“No Sir, first time.”
“I can’t believe they are letting a bunch of rookies go there alone. Things are really going to hell around here! How did you get into this?”
“We volunteered, Sir. Saw the application on the internet and just signed up. We thought we were lucky to get in on it.”
“LUCKY?” he screamed. He was practically spitting in my face, he was so enraged. “Do you see this scar?”
“Uh … yes Sir.” I had seen it before, but everyone told me that he was pretty sensitive about it and I’d be better off not to bring it up.
“Guess where I got it?”
“Uh … I’m sorry Sir, I didn’t know.”
Maybe he looked at us and realized that we weren’t just some punk kids like some of the others had been. Maybe he knew it was already too late to back out. I don’t know why, but for some reason his demeanor changed. I thought maybe he was just trying to put a good face on for us. His “Game Face” is what the others called it.
“Well, you boys just be careful. Be a team. Keep your eye on your buddies, watch their backs. I’m sure you’ll all make it back fine.”
“Make it back?” I had never considered NOT making it back. It didn’t seem that dangerous on the web-page. Almost everybody in the pictures was smiling, and there are girls there, and even they’re smiling. How bad could it be?
In the weeks leading up to this, a couple of people told me that they wish they could go too. However, when I told them that there were six slots and only four of us going, the excuses would start. They suddenly seemed to have all manner of reasons why they couldn’t join us.
“Should I be doing this?” I thought. “At this stage of my life, I’m not in the greatest of shape. And what if something does happen to me? What if I go down? Will I drag the whole team with me? Is it fair to them?”
I spoke with a couple of them. They assured me that they wanted me to come. “Hell, it was YOUR dumb idea in the first place!”
“Well maybe so, but that doesn’t mean that it’s too late to back out, does it?”
“Yeah, it pretty much does” was the reply.
Well O.K. then, damn it! If that’s the way it’s going to be, I need to get ready for this thing. Luckily it was not too late to try and get my sorry ass into some sort of condition. I was determined not to be the guy who goes down. I was also going to need some extra strength and stamina, in case one of the others went down. Who would carry their loads? I looked around and didn’t see any likely volunteers.
Well then it’s got to be me. This will be my team. I will take the lead, help out the ones who fall behind. And I will make damned sure that everyone comes back! It felt pretty good when I made the decision. From that point on, whenever anyone would come to me with a warning about certain types of people, or what to look out for, I’d tell them, “We’ll be ready, and we’re all coming back!”
When we did, it would be our turn to laugh, and tell the next group of ‘boys’ what to look out for. And maybe that was all I was ever after. The feeling that I’ve done something that not everyone can claim to have done. To survive what only a comparative few have survived. To be part of a brotherhood. Something I’ve never had, growing up with only sisters. I always wanted a brother so badly, perhaps that was it all along. It was my way of coping. Is it dangerous? Sure, but what isn’t?
I’d been sore a few times since I’ve been here. I had been training a little bit while here, but nothing intensive. Now I’d have to go at my training with reckless abandon. I would allow nothing to stand in my way. I had decided to do it, and I would have experience the pain and fight my way through it.
Sometimes I trained alone, but I needed someone’s help. Someone needed to ‘spot’ me. My teammates would help me if it became too much, one of them would be there to catch me if I started to fall. I needed someone to push me past the point of failure and to keep going, and they provided that push. We pushed each other. Drove each other.
I am happy to say I think we’ve coalesced as a team. We’ve worked out together, and I feel good about us. We are still only four, and we will still need to do the work of six; however, after a solid month of training I believe that we are ready. But it’s more than that, I believe that I’m ready. I feel that I am at the top of my game right now.
It is now Tuesday night, and I will just be doing a few light reps tonight, nothing heavy. It will probably be the same tomorrow, although we will have a good meal tomorrow night so we have a strong foundation. None of that carbo-loading crap, I’m talking the necessary protein and fat to see us through the strenuous hours of what could be a long Thursday.
We’ll try to get a good night sleep Wednesday, but it’ll be tough. Everyone will be thinking about Thursday. In the morning we will enter the arena, and the noise of the crowd will be deafening. That’s alright; we’ve been training with artificial crowd noise all along. Piping it in through the loud speakers. We can’t even hear one another during these sessions, and have learned to communicate with hand signals. They’re nothing that Bill Belichick would be interested in, just simple communications among teammates.
Thursday morning I’ll turn my fellow Gladiators and say, “Gentleman, I hope you’ve brought you’re A-Game!” I feel like I’ve been training for this since the seventh grade, and in a way I guess I have. This is the day I’ve dreamed about, we’ve all been dreaming about since we were little kids. A dream that had been all but given up on, but now is about to come true.
“Eye of the Tiger”, I’ll tell them. “We’ve got to have the Eye of the Tiger”. I know we will all be humming the Theme to Rocky, when we walk into the tent for our very first Oktoberfest …
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