When the sun came up we were sleeping in

GWMD Year in Review

In exactly thirty hours, forty-seven minutes, and nineteen seconds, Berlin's equivalent of NYC's giant Time Square New Year's Ball will reach its final resting place at the bottom of the Brandenburg Gate (probably), and the entire CET area will welcome the dawning moments of twenty-16. Some will use these moments to longingly reflect upon the "year that was", others will be (unconsciously) thankful for the chemically-based physiologically inflicted effects of alcohol imbibement that will allow them to not reflect back on whatever ills afflicted them during the sixteenth year of the millennium, and most of the rest of us, if we take those moments to look back (all assuming that we're still awake by this point in the evening), will more than likely partake in a mixture of both: we'll smile for the good and hopefully laugh for the bad, as there was no doubt a fair share coming from both camps.

Here at GWMD, in our first annual Year in Review, would like to first apologize to the jilted reader who has been without novel content for what is now going on three months. We have our excuses, of course. The weather here in Central Europe has been like nothing we've ever seen before. Sun all the time, and hitting record highs every time we turned around. Why, one of our senior editors was out looking for a Döner shop just the other day (December 26th) in nothing more than jeans and a T-shirt. "What a time to be alive," he whispered to himself in awe (moments later he was heard cursing, however, when the fourth Döner shop that he came across was also closed for some reason). There were reports that Santa Claus was all but unrecognizable this year as well, sporting a trimmed goatee and a white tank-top. And the good weather wasn't confined only to the winter; in early November, when Helga arrived, God sent down warm healing sun rays, and set the Munich Fall air to a comfortable twenty degrees celsius. In summer, it was hot, and that's what you want in summer. So, theme number one for 2016: great weather. Let's hope this one lasts.

Theme number two: the end of youth. Well, it's been a good run hasn't it? Even just one generation ago (maybe two) we would have had to let this ship sail nearly fifteen years ago, so at least there's that. But the sad truth is that we're here now. There's no more room for spontaneity. Want to do something fun for yourself? Too bad. Fee like sleeping in one day? Ha! How about a fun vacation? Just for the weekend? Are you serious, pal? Good luck! I'm the only one home; and I really have to just go to the bathroom. That's all. No? Oh, ok. I guess I'll just hold it.

Theme number three: cycling. Notwithstanding the previous theme, that is, up until about November, it was a great cycling year over at GWMD headquarters. By late August, the strength, conditioning, weight, everything was really clicking. The Watts were being pushed out like you wouldn't believe, and the functional threshold power, just Wow! But then, disaster struck! It turns out all that cycling can be bad for your hands, wrists, fingers, and joints. Especially if there's too much pressure on the ulnar nerve due to bike setup, frame size/style, etc. Solution?

[...]

A new bike! Things aren't confirmed yet, as this sort of thing falls into the category of "major event" over here at GWMD. But as a potential preview of things that may be to come...

Pretty sweet, eh? But she comes at a price, and remember theme #2? So, we'll still have to wait and see.

Interview with the author

Q: 

A: Well I was first turned on to this bike when the Oscar Farinetti conglomerate Eataly opened their first German location in the Schranenhalle here in Munich. Within the Italian food marketplace, there is also a Bianchi bike shop. We looked around in there and I thought "wow! These are some bikes!"

Q:

A: At first I was all hot for the Oltre XR1. I would have heeded the guy's advice to simply mortgage my house and then affording one would be no problem. But, sadly, I have no house to mortgage. The Sempre Pro is like the still pretty cute friend that you at least have a chance with.

Q:

A: No I never thought about that. Good question though.

Hearts in Atlantis

Nick read Stephen King's Hearts in Atlantis at a really confusing time in his life (Nick's that is, not Stephen King's [though it could have been]). Although he probably wouldn't have admitted it at the time, and perhaps not only wouldn't have admitted it but wouldn't have even been cognizant of it, things were changing, they had to change, he didn't know what the result of the changes would be, and it was probably pretty frightening. The interesting thing about it is that it didn't feel frightening to Nick. Nick thinks that Hearts is one of the best books he's ever read and he thinks that the book probably affected his life a lot though it's not clear at all if it, say, resonated with him because of what he was going through at the time and somehow that matched what was going on, or the message that was being offered, in the book that is (even though the message was basically about the 1960's specifically in the US and how the generation that came of age, if you will, during that time kind of blew it and completely failed to live up to their stated ideals), or if any half-way decent book he might have happened to have read during that time would also have felt like it had a strong impact on him because he was vulnerable in a way to be affected by seemingly anything, or if the book is just that objectively good that entirely separate from how he was feeling or what he was going through or what state his mind was in with respect to being receptive to something in a book he would have liked it and thought about it often as the years unfolded following that time and his reading of that book. Irrespective of the priming factors that may have been at play and that someone like Daniel Kahneman might have more to say about, that latter potential reason is clearly at the very least one of the true and extant reasons for Nick having such an important connection to this book and liking it so much. Of course, there are certain works that we can even fully admit to ourselves are objectively terrible but that we continue to "like" in some way because of what they represent or make us think of. The most obvious example is an objectively bad song that, though it's bad and you know it's bad and you even experience its badness, you can do so on some separate level and still like the song because it makes you immediately think of some happy event. Like for example when Pemulis hears that ridiculous song Call me Maybe in the grocery store or whatever he thinks not about how silly it is but about how the Swedes love(d) it so much that they played it on the radio about four hundred times on the way from Gothenburg to Kalmar before Ironman Sweden and so remembers that nice time in his life. But Hearts, on the other hand, and books more generally, probably can't be compared in the same way for a handful of obvious reasons including the fact that if the book was bad in the first place then you probably wouldn't have gotten through it. With the song sure you could have changed the channel but you didn't which makes one wonder if maybe you secretly liked the song all along but that's a whole other can of warms that we won't open right now because there are bigger fish here at the front of the stove that are waiting their turn, so to speak. I know why Hearts is such a good book and I probably know why Nick liked it so much and I have a pretty good guess about why it resonated with him so much. Part of it is Stephen King's writing and how he can get you to feel such empathy with all the characters and the trick in Hearts is that everyone is good (everyone being all the characters) but everyone is also bad (I guess except Ted kind of but clearly Ted has made some mistakes in his life but seems to have worked through them and come out the other side if you want) and when the people are bad for the most part you understand why they were bad and you can see yourself being bad in that same way. But then after they're bad they feel terrible and awful regret and many of the characters' lives are kind of ruined for doing something bad that they knew was bad but did anyway normally for some very human reason like selfishness or pride or whatever and even though the person did a bad thing you really feel bad for them when they are mourning their life and the path that it has taken and the regret they feel and all that. And I'm pretty sure that Nick could see himself in many of those characters and appreciate the human emotions of those people and the sadness that they felt after they had created it. The really interesting thing is that Nick will always remember when and where he read Hearts in Atlantis. It's anchored on his brain forever. And the book becomes more than just what's contained within the front and back covers but also what he was feeling at the time, where he was, the people that were there, and all that like peripheral stuff that now is bundled all up into the memory and idea of Hearts. Heck, even playing the card game Hearts is pretty well fused to the book and the time and the memory. And one question is, does this happen for all books? Of course not. All good books? Maybe. And we're brought back to the question of why a certain book might have a strong effect on someone and how it's probably a little bit the book, a little bit the reader, and a little bit the environment of the time it was read (emotional, physical, etc.). Pemulis remembers reading The Pale King over the course of a few Saturdays on the white couch in the Grenoble apartment while Joelle taught at the bilingual Kindergarten around the corner. He remembers it was early in 2013 and the weather was cold. Pemulis also remembers reading Infinite Jest at the cottage on Baptiste Lake not that long ago actually (August 2011) (and several weeks thereafter) and man that book! You can seemingly do anything with words, it turns out.

What books do you remember reading at certain times that had some kind of lasting effect on you or how you saw or understood the world? Maybe there's a book that you read and for some reason you remember all of these meta pieces of information like where you were and when it was but you don't know why because you think the book was actually nothing special. Maybe subconsciously it was. Maybe you just randomly remember it. So if you have a story about a book or even a song or anything that has a memory and a place and a time all tied up within it, sound off in the comments below! I can remember reading the Feynman books (there's a slew of them) in my last year of highschool in Tom's bedroom that I had usurped as my own (the bedroom I mean which was fine since he had moved away). It made me excited about physics (the Feynman books, obviously) and I remember that. I remember reading The Dancing Wu Li Masters in my Paris apartment and that made me excited enough about Physics to study it in university. I remember reading a lot of John Grisham books while in Leeds and while I don't think (I hope not anyways) that it led me to end up going to law school, I suppose one never knows do they?

Romania

We arrived in Romania -- Timișoara to be exact -- on the evening of 16 July 2015. A short, round man with a mustache was holding a sign with our names on it when we came past the gate (technically after you leave the security area, I guess). He didn't speak a word of English but claimed he could speak some German (he was Romanian, obviously). His German was somehow even worse than either of ours but we followed him as our friends told us that a short man with a mustache would be picking us up. When we got to his car I became a little concerned because his car was a yellow taxicab. We didn't have any Romanian money and it was very unclear if our friend had simply hired a taxi for us or if it were somehow a coincidence, or in any case not directly related to the monetary aspect of taxi driving, that he was bringing us to our hotel. I tried asking in that sort-of English and pointing that you end up doing when you're trying to speak to someone who doesn't understand at all and you do a lot of repeating words more slowly and more loudly even though that does nothing because it doesn't matter, for example, how slowly or how loudly you say the words "avem să vă plătească?" to me because I'm not going to understand them, if he could maybe stop at a cash machine but to no avail. I continued to feel just a little worried that, as stated just above, this was just some random guy who was still sent by our friend but that was not a family friend or what have you (remember we were being driven in a full fledged New-York-taxicab-yellow taxi) and so at the end we were going to have to pay him some fare of which we of course didn't have and don't even imagine that you could pay with card in this old thing. As I've gotten older, despite the experience that one would think I've accumulated and thus turned into some kind of currency for being able to deal with "foreign" situations I've actually become more worried when traveling and I get stressed out pretty easily always thinking that the next thing will somehow go wrong mainly because I won't understand something. Anyways, so here we are in my quintessential nightmare scenario (even though, again, now from afar it's pretty obvious that things were fine and even if it was a taxi we could have somehow sorted out the payment thing once we arrived at the hotel) and I decide I really want to make sure that this guy is connected to the whole reason that we're here and the friends and all that. And so I say in my best German "so kennst du Monica?" and he becomes quite animated all of a sudden and says like "ja! Monica und Kevin!" (who are of course the friends whose wedding we're here for) and so that at least helped a little. The other thing that helps -- and we're full-on discussing this right there in the cab because it's very clear that unless this guy is an actor with a whole lot of talent he doesn't understand word one in the English language -- is that there's no meter that's running; this isn't a slam-dunk of "you don't need money at the end" but it's arguably a positive indication. We finally arrive at the hotel and the driver walks with us down this alleyway (but it's a nice alleyway past the restaurant and towards the main hotel counter) and is carrying our bags for us. This worried me all the more because on some level you're kind of thinking, if he's just a friend doing a nice deed (or even worse the friends had maybe hired a taxi for us and paid in advance in which case things are still fine but then especially with the luggage carrying we should tip him but remember we don't even have any Romanian coins) then this is all fine but if he's a taxi guy we don't have the cash to pay for either the ride or the fact that he's carrying our luggage. But, it turns out he's come to the front desk with us simply to make sure it's the right place and that everything is fine with our booking and he kind of smiles and leaves our bags there for us, shakes both of our hands, and just like that he's gone.

It had been around 5pm when we headed up to the airport in Munich after work for a 7:30 flight that arrived in Romania around 10 for an arrival at the beautiful Casa del Sole Timișoara just before 11. So I probably don't have to spell it out all that explicitly that by this point we were fairly hungry. We asked the nice man at the front desk where we might find some food at this hour and he directed us towards the main town and along the river where we would find the outdoor bar/restaurant Rivière. The amazing (one of the amazing, rather) thing(s) about our trip to the western corner of Romania was the heat. When we arrived at the restaurant next to the river on that Thursday evening in July it was getting close to midnight. However, the outdoor temperature was still holding above thirty degrees Celsius! At this time of night, Rivière was still jumping. It wasn't strange at all that we were ordering food close to midnight and this seemed to be the standard activity at most tables; though there were many tables where people were sharing drinks or some late-night snacks with their drinks, there were many simply coming for dinner (steak, a burger, whatever) at what Germans would consider to be much closer to breakfast than to dinner time. We enjoyed our experience at Rivière so much that we would return some three additional times during our long-weekend stay in the city (there are not many nice restaurants yet in Timișoara). See how nice it is?:

Friday morning our first order of business (after missing breakfast which is a pretty standard/common occurrence in our family when they only run it until something ridiculously early for holidaymakers like 11) was to get a croissant and a cappuccino and go swimming! So many times in my life I have either (A) hoped to get a hotel with a pool and failed; or (B) hoped to get a hotel with a pool and succeeded but not either (i) not used the pool at all; or (ii) used it but only because psychologically I'd gone to the trouble to make sure I was at a hotel with a pool and then when it came down to it it was more like forcing myself to make sure that I used it and it wasn't necessarily worth the trouble, but this time -- WOW! Best decision ever. The Casa del Sole has a beautiful outdoor swimming pool in the middle of the hotel courtyard next to the cafe and restaurant. No word of a lie it was 38 degrees Celsius around lunch time and the pool was like a gift from the Romanian gods (of which there are four, I believe). After a long swim and a long lunch all of the sudden it was late afternoon and we were scheduled for a walking tour of Timișoara at 5 pm. Our meeting place was the grand Timișoara Orthodox Cathedral of which you can observe below beyond Sandi and a Romanian fountain (in case for whatever reason there might be any confusion what with me going on about the pool just above: that fountain has nothing to do with the pool but it does make things look a little more refreshing than they actually were).

So finally everyone showed up (everyone being just me, Sandi, Monica [the bride], her friend Noémie [who figures later in the story], and the tour guide [I don't remember her name so let's call her hmm... Anna]). Anna was an extremely boring tour guide but unlike the free taxi driver (we asked later and it was the father of one of the bride's friends who happens to be a real-live taxi driver with a real taxicab in his day job but who really was just being nice and offering to pick us up at the airport for free) she was a paid tour guide with no connection to the bride other than that she was Romanian and lived in the same city as where the bride grew up and where her wedding would take place in one day hence. The heat had not yet broken (it actually never did) and we started the tour by walking 25 silent minutes in the afternoon sun to the spot where the 1989 Romanian Revolution that led to the end of 42 years of communist rule in the country began. That spot was a church where the Hungarian pastor László Tőkés was being hidden as the government was attempting to arrest him for critical comments made against the administration. The government came to force him out and a bunch of people were there to say "no!". It was at the end of the day (in mid-December) and as the people rode home on the trams along the main avenue they saw the protest and got out to join it. The protests spread over the ensuing days and culminated in the end of communist rule. Here is what the main square in front of the opera house looked like on December 20th 1989 in the thick of the revolution: 

And here it is on July 17th 2015 in the thick of a heat wave:

Different. That night following a very long and not all that fun or informative walking tour of Timi, we returned to our very favourite Romanian restaurant Rivière with a large collection of wedding-attending partiers. Interesting dudes to say the least. Saturday was the big wedding day. We woke up and went for a swim obviously and probably watched some Tour de France if it was still going on at this point (most likely). You'll have to remember that with temperatures in the high thirties (have I mentioned that part yet?) one has very little energy to do very much beyond going swimming and laying around watching TV and drinking lots of ice coffees and beers and if you're pregnant (for example) then this must be an even more trying time because you're not exactly supposed to be drinking too many beers and even the ice coffees are somewhat off-limits but swimming is A-OK so don't start worrying too much about Sandi and her Timisoarian plight or anything. Faster than you might imagine it was all of a sudden time to leave for the wedding. And I don't want to harp too much on the heat thing especially given the fact that it's so cold here now but the attire that I had for the wedding was essentially a, well, it's not actually wool but, more or less, knitted wool suit (but I could at least take my jacket off and hold it).

Stepping out the door entailed a cartoon-like progression from fluid regular human propulsion movements of the limbs in a walking-like action with a dry suit to immediately soaking-wet comically slow-motion movement through a thickened ether of condensed hot air. We walked the 1-2 kilometer distance to the church and joined a large group of other guests similarly attired (i.e. wet suits). When we finally got to enter the church things improved somewhat because the angry sun was no longer beating down thoroughly onto our weary selves, but it was still pretty darned hot. The ceremony was entirely in Romanian so we of course understood nichts but it was orthodox and sort of cool (in the metaphorical sense).

After the ceremony we obviously went back to the hotel for our seventeenth swim of the stay. The party started later in the evening and we had a little bit of time before our now-good friend the mustache man was going to pick us up. When he did he had a young lady in the car and the entire drive (about half an hour) they argued and yelled and screamed at each other in Romanian. It was fairly obvious but upon arrival at the venue we confirmed through third-party means that yes, it was a father-daughter thing. The wedding party was at a half indoor half outdoor restaurant a little ways outside of the Timi city centre. We sat next to our new friend Noémie (I told you she would be featured later in the story but this is about it. Oh well actually you might also get to see her back in a photo below). Food was served all night. It's a great approach. Instead of having a linear progression with clear breaks in the purpose of each section of the night like "aperitif", "mingle", "dinner", "speech", "dessert", "dance", "end" it was an all-night never-ending dance- and eat-athon. Courses were delivered to your place whether you were there or not and this continued all night with what you might call (for lack of a better term) the "main" course arriving even after midnight. This keeps people going all night long (since Romanian weddings last all night long; when we headed back to the hotel around 5:00 AM upon our return the wedding that was happening at our hotel was still going strong) and you never get so full that you're really tired or don't feel like moving or whatever. Another thing was that the bartenders were I guess bored and made the drinks incredibly stiff. I mean just out-of-this-world-strong. A rye and coke, for example, (remember this was a half-Canadian wedding) -- and I hate to use this cliché but pretty much have to -- was truly and thoroughly a "coke and rye" more than the other way around and the "splash of Coke" at the end was more just for show than anything else. I'm sure it helped people have a good time though. The desserts were quite impressive:

And even Sandi participated in the dancing (luckily she had some instruction from our other good Romanian friend Anca):

As the night dragged on and Sandi heeded the doctor's advice by limiting her alcohol intake to only one drink every two hours, the pregnancy probably didn't help so much in the eventual outcome of her just getting really really tired. I can't put all the blame on her of course as the heat (remember that?) was doing a number on yours truly too and when the big clock on the wall told us that the sun would start rising any time now, we decided that we should pack it up and pack it in. Before doing so we obviously took some selfies and watched the traditional Romanian dancers but that was all we could handle for this night.

I don't think I need to describe Sunday in all that much detail because we pretty clearly just went swimming and ate some more food and in all likelihood went to Rivière but we ended the night at another downtown-Timi restaurant where we again met up with the wedding folks and had one last Romanian meal. Our friends were heading back to Montreal a few days hence and we promised them that since we'd have so much time in the summer when we came to Canada that we would pretty obviously make it to Montreal for a visit (needless to say that never happened) and we bid adieu.

The summer days and nights rolled by and we knew that one day in a not so distant future that we would find ourselves approaching the end of October 2015 and it would be cold again. And what do you know? Here we are.

Quick Election Thought

I think a Liberal-NDP coalition would have been best. When someone is looking over your shoulder and when you have to at least partially assuage someone else's views then you normally end up with the most fair outcome and the probability (though always remaining high when power is concerned) of corruption diminishes and less drastic things are able to be done (which can be bad as in the lack of action on let's say climate change but is also often good like cutting down on omnibus bills that include mandatory prison terms, and getting rid of the census, etc.). However, despite their history of stretching the truth during the campaign and then doing something completely different while in power, I think there's hope for the next four years. It's infinitely better than what we had with Harper and I really hope they take this opportunity to reverse this PMO-controlled "friendly (not so friendly when it was H) dictatorship" that's crept into the parliament system. Also, my friend and former intellectual property law professor David Lametti (graduate degrees in law from McGill, Yale, and Oxford, former clerk at the Supreme Court of Canada) won his riding in Montreal for the Liberals and you have to expect that he'll understand his portfolio at least a little bit better than let's say Bev Oda (former minister of Heritage) with her BA and teaching experience (not that there's anything wrong with teaching or BA degrees but the fact that she was in charge of the portfolio covering the government's updates to copyright law? Scary.) And no I'm not saying that all the politicians have to be lawyers who are hard-core experts with years of experience in their respective portfolio (if they happen to be in the cabinet) but it can't hurt, right?

Coping Mechanisms

It's October here in Southern Germany. Well, everywhere, actually. Unless there are still some places that use some other calendar (taking into account the translation into the local language which here incidentally basically gives you October again but spelled with a "k"). Which I don't think there are, places that use another calendar (places that are in contact with modern civilization anyways). Which is pretty crazy actually that somehow everyone everywhere could agree (explicitly or implicitly -- i.e. imposed upon) on a common calendar and breaking things up into months and all that and then there are so many other things that can't be agreed upon. The leaves have changed and it's full-on Fall. It actually even feels more like almost-Winter and like Christmas is right around the corner. This morning the present weather was reported as "light snow" in Munich (though I didn't see any). Our new German course is already half-way done. Ich konnte sogar schreibe in Deutsch, wenn ich wollte (aber ich werde nicht). The Munich Marathon (of which I participated in the "half") has come and gone, and Oktoberfest is nothing but a (fuzzy) memory.

Oktoberfest 2015 (final night)

Cycling season is over. The hardcore will still be out with their lights and long-tights but it's finished for the rest of us. Montreal starts the season with five straight wins for the first time ever. The Blue Jays win three required in a row to come from behind 2-0 and move to the ALCS in what has been called the greatest and most insane baseball game of all time. Could something special be in the cards for 2015-2016?

High above the city

Lost Diary Entry August 21 2015

Dear Diary,

The sun was shining high in the sky this afternoon when I de-camped from my Herman Miller ergonomic office chair sitting in the corner of the third floor of the Lehel Carré Office Block in Munich, carried my folded folding bicycle to the service-entrance elevator, and stepped out into the hot fresh air of the Bavarian later-summer sunshine. I wiped my brow before unfolding the racing green welded aluminum machine and looked out past the river and across the rock beach where about 200 sun worshippers, many of them completely naked, soaked in the afternoon sun that further browned their skin and blonded their hair. After waiting for seven BMWs, nine Audis, two Maseratis, thirty-four Porsches, eight Mercedes, and one Fiat 500 to pass, I crossed the Widenmayerstraße to join the shaded bike path running along the Isar river. The bike traffic flowed smoothly and soon I was on the Praterinsel, then along the Wehrsteg bridge, and finally passed the Kulturstrand urban beach on the Auf der Insel which was already filled with an eclectic band of afterwork beer drinkers and relaxation seekers, sitting by and around the Vater-Rhein-Brunner fountain. I crossed to the other side of the Ludwigsbrücke, pedalled past the Museum Lichtspiele (where I somehow know that I will watch the Everest movie in just under six weeks and be mildly disappointed despite the movie makers throwing together a rollicking good time of a cinematic adventure), and up Riggauerweg, along the Paulaner brewing canal, and up past the Audi/Porsche/VW dealership where for some reason there seemed to be a whole lot of nitrogen oxides in the air which was confusing because for that amount of NOx there must have been way more cars running than I saw because to be able to pass the emissions control limits set by the government there's no way there would have been that much NOx unless there were probably, well, I conservatively estimate about 35 times as many cars around. Weird. I continued past the Motel One, past L'Adresse 37 and the White Rabbit's Room, and along the Sieboldstraße and the Hat Trick, through the Schwester-Eubelina-Platz, before finally arriving at the monstrosity of the Welfenstraße living complex. The afternoon temperature of 30 degrees was pleasant and caused my cotton clothing to lightly cling to my skin as I rolled the final metres to our front door and re-folded the racing green machine. With just one week to go before a cross-Atlantic flight, I gathered my thoughts with respect to the vast collection of micro events that led to my just-completed journey home. I never would have even considered the joy and versatility of a Brompton folding bicycle without having met my good friend Svetlana at the XRCE in Grenoble; I never would have been at the XRCE if I hadn't randomly decided to on one day read, instead of the typical immediate deletion of one of many spam-like mailing list messages where the job had been advertised in the autumn of 2011; I probably wouldn't even have known how to operate a computer if I wasn't so fortunate as to have had access to an Amiga 500 in the 1990's. The Amiga computer was so far ahead of its time that engineers at IBM refused to believe that its functioning was physically possible. In the late 1980's, an elite IBM team of (supposedly) top engineers spent three weeks at an offsite event in upstate New York, physically closed-off from the outside world, dissecting and inspecting three Amiga 1000 computers to determine what IBM and Apple were missing. The ensuing report, entitled "The X File: Unexplained Phenomena" argued that the functioning of the Amiga computer was beyond explanation by modern understandings of physics and could not be rationally explained. Two of the three engineers ultimately tragically took their own lives and the third, a man named Chris Carter, used the title of the report, and the happenings from those three weeks in the Finger Lakes region of New York, as the basis for a popular 1990's drama aired on the Fox Network. I'll need to remember to thank my parents when I'm in Canada for getting us kids such a nice and long-term-useful gift. I hope that one day I will be able to get little Helga something that will change her life so much for the better (besides that "Ironman World Champion 2045" Onesie that we already got her) and that she will recognize and remember to thank me for when she is in her thirties and living in Sierra Leone (the equivalent of 2015's Germany in 2045).

Signed,

Diary Writer

Acta est fabula plaudite

Joelle van Dyne (no relation to Joelle of this blog other than the latter taking the former's first name), member of the UHID (Union of the Hideously and Improbably Deformed) wears a veil to hide her face. While it isn't clear if Joelle is deformed in the traditional sense of what we think of being deformed as being (it may be -- as she states -- that she wears the veil because she is deformed more in a metaphysical way that she is too attractive to be able to properly function in society; her beauty has plagued her throughout her entire life because people can't properly relate to her or function is a normal way when in her general vicinity without acting all strangely affected in some improbable way by the overwhelming beauty), it is clear that she wears the veil to hide her face.

Andreas Ludwig received another e-mail. "Andreas! People are looking at your LinkedIn profile! Click here to improve it." Andreas clicked and followed each of the suggestions. Add some volunteer activities; ask for a recommendation; add the skill "conflict resolution"; choose a background image for your profile. After completing these steps, Andreas checked his gmail to see if he'd heard from any of his co-organizers for the upcoming White Lives Matter Too protest that would form a blockade at mile 25 of the München Marathon, preventing runners from finishing the race, hoping that the runners would unite and join with his cause. "My hope is that the runners, after 40 km of running, will be in a state such that rationally realizing that there's no hope to finish the race that instead of being angry or complaining or violence breaking out or anything like that, that they will instead join in our protest and basically stand in solidarity because we're not asking them to not finish the race, what we're asking them to do is stand for justice which is all we're asking for, and that's a reasonable thing to be asking because our lives are just as hard, if not harder, than refugees because haven't you seen them taking selfies!?". Andreas was happy with how he came across in the Süddeutsche article and added a link to it on his LinkedIn profile page. He then made some soup, read some more e-mails, and rolled his eyes at some comments below his latest Instagram post which showed a Syrian refugee holding a Dolce & Gabbana handbag with the hashtag #gohome underneath.

Later, while skimming the e-mails sent to him from other like-minded white-skinned pure-bred Europeans who were tired of coming 2nd, he smiled as he came across a write-up of the current president (he assumed) of Canada. He liked the sound of the straight-talk and laughed to himself that some people out there actually thought it might be a good idea for the government to setup a place where junkies could get high with drugs bought by the state! What kind of people did this Harper guy have to deal with over there?! Much more important than that, though, was the pressing issue of forcing Muslim women who wear a niqāb to remove it during the Canadian citizenship ceremony (you know those two women who wanted to do that? It is so effing important. It affects all of us! It's so important, in fact, that it is the factor highlighted by most news outlets as the reason that the NDP's support has dropped by more than 4 points in the days following the foreign policy debate where this ridiculous non-issue was raised by those lying fear-mongering pompous sociopathic Conservatives -- "Forum Research president Lorne Bozinoff attributes the latest bump in Tory fortunes to the party scoring points amid the recent flare-up in the controversy over the niqab, the face veil some Muslim womenswear". Four points! That, for the uninitiated, is representative of 0.04 x 35,000,000 = one and a half million people. What the hell is wrong with you people? You wouldn't even have known about this if the Conservatives weren't using it to get racist rednecks to get interested in an election. How stupid and gullible and weak minded can you be [just curious -- maybe actually this is a social experiment and you're trying to figure out the maximum of human stupidity and weak mindedness]? I imagine someone's thoughts working somewhere along these lines: well, I don't agree with all these ideology-based policy decisions and ignoring science and actually outright full-on attacking it and building super prisons that we don't need and war mongering and jingoism and Canada's reduced influence in the world and scandal and lying and still promoting out-dated ineffective -- and in fact opposite of effective as they lead to increased gang violence and addiction problems -- drug war and de-funding women's rights groups and spy bills and ridiculous fear mongering with respect to anything different and claiming to be sober economic stewards but actually adding more debt to the country than any other party in history and all this other stuff but man at the same time somebody that I've never met and that I will never see and I didn't even know there was such a thing as a citizenship ceremony if they're allowed to wear some kind of head scarf Muslim terrorist thingy during that ceremony? NO thanks! That is just so different from what I would do in a citizenship ceremony. That is much more important to me than all those other things and I'm just going to change my vote right here and right now thank you very much).

Andreas smiled as he read that some million and a half people had changed their vote from a party that would allow these people to wear something that was part of their cultural or religious tradition and moved it to a party that would ban it outright because obviously allowing that would most likely promote terrorism and is just another example of the once-strong Christian culture being dismantled by outsiders and he thought hey, this Canada place sounds pretty great.

Life in the Tropics

August 15, 1944; seventy-one years ago today Operation Dragoon -- the Allied invasion of Southern France -- saw a joint force of Americans, French, British, and Canadians land all along the Côte d'Azur from Le Lavandou, through Cavalaire-sur-Mer, and St. Tropez, all the way to Saint-Raphaël and beyond, and ultimately cause the Germany Army to abandon Southern France. It may not be plausible, but let's say that the reason it took me this long to write about our June trip to Nice/Antibes and Ironman France is that I was waiting for a day as meaningful as today for without this brave landing there may not have been an Ironman France to visit. If it were today Stephen Harper would most likely try to put Canada on the other side but I digress...

Nice and Antibes seemed hot. It was late June and the mercury was rising well into the 28's and 29's*. In a welcome as fitting as it was frustrating, our Thursday evening arrival coincided with the nation-wide taxi strike and demonstration against Uber Pop, the private Internet-backed taxi service upsetting taxi rackets and syndicates worldwide. In fact, it really made me want to take a dirty expensive taxi driven by an angry old fat guy. I wanted to uninstall Uber from my phone, stop paying those low prices, wait on a corner for twenty minutes hoping that I had cash on me, but the problem was that they were on strike so I couldn't do any of that. The other problem is that it caused all of the buses to be completely full and since the taxis weren't simply not working but actively blocking traffic lanes -- which everyone loved and immediately therefore started sympathizing with the taxi drivers -- the buses weren't just overfull, they were also late or not coming at all.

*several weeks later in Timisoara and Munich we would be dreaming about a cool day way down in the high-20's

But, some good did come of all this because our friends whose house we were to stay at (context: same friends whose wedding we attended in Lyon and the mountains surrounding Grenoble last summer) then came to get us. But, since the dude just had his work car, which only has two seats, both dude and dudette came and since Sandi is frightened of motorcycles and also, for a double-wammy, is pregnant too, she rode in the two-seater and I got to go on dudette's motorcycle with her which was pretty darn awesome (additional context: dudette is actually Lithuanian Svetlana who also appears in the original Brompton folding bicycle story from approximately two years ago on GWMD).

Yup, that's me there cruising along the beaches on the Côte d'Azur. Some day Helga will look at that picture and I'll say something like "See!? You're Dad was pretty cool back in his day!" and she'll roll her eyes and say something like "Du bist so peinlich Dad!".

So Nice and Antibes were as hot as we could imagine things getting after having spent the last nearly two years living in Oberbayern where the only time you feel uncomfortably hot is when you're wearing your full-length Lederhosen and you mistakenly leave the heat on in your BMW 7-series on the hottest day in July. I can't exactly remember what we got up to on Friday and Saturday which is one good reason why I should have written about this a month ago but on the Friday we saw Thony and extended family, got some lunch together, visited their ritzy rented condo, and drank some tiny cute little French beers which reminded me of Grenoble.

Oh! I remember what we did on Saturday! We drove to Cannes to go to a beach that is supposed to be like the current "it" beach. It seemed pretty similar to most of the other beaches that we'd seen, but we were the guests and all so we just smiled and enjoyed and lay on the beach and even, after approximately seven hundred thousand minutes of Sandi getting her courage up (because there were two itsy-bitsy-teeny-weeny cute little jellyfish in the water), we even, even, went for a dip. Oh and here we are selfie-ing it up in the sunshine:

And some rich people enjoying their hard-earned euros in the form of yachts followed by some fine looking people strolling along what is clearly the "it" beach promenade!

Saturday night our hosts' housemate decided to have a party. It was a beautiful hot summer's eve and the house has a great "garden" as the Europeans say but what it actually is is a backyard. Interestingly, Fernando, the housemate, knows every single person that lives in, around, and seemingly anywhere near Antibes. 

The "Garden" (the backyard)

Since Sandi and I were the official videographers of Thony's race, and these Ironman things start at 6:30 AM, we were ready to hit the old hay around 11:00 PM. Unfortunately for us, however, no one at this party was anywhere near ready for hitting any hay. They were hitting the impromptu backyard bar just below the window to our bedroom! We "went to bed" around midnight and may have fallen asleep for a few minutes when the heavy bass finally was shut off around 4:45 AM. Our alarms then promptly woke us up fifteen minutes later at 5:00 AM, we took Van's work car that he had graciously lent us ("don't worry.. if you crash it it's just my work's car"), and we began the twenty-five minute drive into downtown Nice. Upon arrival, we thought we'd found a great parking spot right by the beach, right by the start! Turns out the beach is a little longer than we thought and so we had a bit of a walk to get there. No matter.. it was a great morning to watch the sunrise.


Sandi walking from Will Darling on Vimeo.

The race itself was a lot of fun. Despite getting essentially zero sleep, and in fact one could characterize what we got as actually negative sleep because if we'd just lay in bed listening to birds sing and waves break then we'd probably feel better than if we'd had a set of 2 meter-tall speakers belting out overly-bassified hiphop just below our bedroom all night (which we had), and so let's revert that and say despite having negative sleep, we enjoyed the whole day and cheered on our buddy Thony and even filmed the whole thing. We had some beers with his parents (well, I did.. Sandi had an ice cream cone), we did some shopping for Helga, and we even got some pictures of us rocking the aero position (although it says "je suis FINISHER" we actually were not FINISHER because we didn't do the race).

Even throughout all that excitement, we -- as I said -- filmed a bunch of goings-on of the race. Editing the whole thing and turning it into a full feature-length film will take some time and it's taken me over a month just to write about the actual filming of it, so people (namely Thony) will have some time to kill before they can kick back with a bag of popcorn and watch this thing, but in the meantime, here is a trailer that you can enjoy:


Two Swedes On the Côte d’Azur from Will Darling on Vimeo.

So that's the trailer. Yes, Thony finished the race and he even got a medal. I tested the gold for purity:

And though Sandi and I had been up since 5 AM cheering everyone on and filming and all that stuff, Svetlana and Van did finally make it at the end of the day to help cheer on the final finishers:

So that's it! That was Nice. On Monday we walked around Antibes and ate some bio ("organic") lunches and (Mom will love this) bought and wrote some postcards!

Stay tuned for the Romania wedding post hopefully coming soon... Here's a preview:

Tegernsee

Tegernsee from Will Darling on Vimeo.

I met another man who was wounded in hatred

"Will the father also be joining you for this appointment? In Bavaria in particular it's very important for the entire family to be fully involved in every step of the birth. As much as possible, that is."
"This is the father, he's right beside me."
"No, dear. I don't mean your father -- though I'm surprised that he made it all the way here from [...] was it Canada you said you were from? -- I mean the, well, it's a little bit uncomfortable to say directly, you see-"
"But you're a Doctor.."
"Correct. And that's why my opinion is so important in what concerns this matter, and I think it's more than important, well, I might venture to say of the utmost importance that the father does what he can to make it to appointments such as this one."
"Right. And that's why he's here, right beside me."
"Again, I'm sorry. Perhaps it's a translation issue as I only speak a very small amount of English-"
[???]
"-but what I'm saying is that the father of the baby-to-be -- the one in your stomach"
"Is it really in my stomach, though?"
"Well let's not get too technical. I am the doctor here. But as I was saying the father of your baby, he should be here."
"This is him. This is the father of the baby, and he is my husband."
"Him???"
"Yes. We filled out the forms in the waiting room together. His name is the same name as that on the form. We were holding hands when we walked in. He's thirty-four years ol-"
"Thirty four??? ... Surely that's a German-English translation issue. You speak some German, yes?"
"Sure, a little bit."
"Er ist vierunddreißig? Oder eher wie dreiundvierzig?"
"Thirty four. Just like me."
"Good lord. And we don't take the lord's name in vain lightly here. We're all catholics, you see."
"Yes, you explained that to me in the waiting room, for some reason."
"It's just that, well, I suppose it's not so important what I think with respect to this matter. But, sir, Pemulis, is it? Are you sure you have the energy to raise a baby? You just look so frail and lacking of energy to me, is all. And the balding, of course. Hell, I would have been less surprised if she'd said you were her grandfather!"
"Are you really a doctor?"
"Of course. Check the license plate of my car, the tag beside my doorbell, and the name I used to sign up for my last marathon. Being a doctor is very important in Bavarian, and even German, society."
"..."
"So, let's get back to business, as you Americans say. I see here you plan to name the baby Helga?"
"That's right."
"Right that Americans say that or the name?"
"Well I can't be sure about the former. I mentioned a couple of times already that we're not-"
"-That is an incredibly apt name for a Bavarian-born baby. Which saint will you use for her middle name?"
"..."
"That's fine. Some people like to keep it a surprise. Would you like a coffee?"
"Is it safe to drink coffee right now?"
"In here? We normally ask people not to smoke, but drinking coffee should be fine."
"I mean since I'm pregnant..."
"Oh right. Well that's a good point and I didn't think of it so thank you for reminding me. It's not necessarily the best thing. But you should definitely quit smoking. Have you done that?"
"I've been pregnant for more than six months now."
"So, you're just weaning yourself then?"
"No I never smoked in the first place."
"You Americans..."
"..."
"Any problems so far?"
"Yes. Remember why we came in here to see you? I seem to be growing wings. Like in that Black Swan movie..."
"Movie? In my time that was a ballet."
"Ok, but even Germans nowadays probably are more familiar with the Hollywood dark thriller starring Natalie Portman."
"You keep telling yourself that American"
"<sigh>"
"But, right, the wings. I'd better have a look. Is it OK if I ask you to take your top off? Do you want me to ask your father to leave?"
"It's my husband."
"Right..."
"No he can stay."
"..."
"..."
"I see. Yes, this is very common in Bavaria."
"What is it?"
"It appears to be a form of HWG -- human wing growth"
"Is it common?"
"Lord no! I've never come across it before. May I take a picture?"
"I thought Germans were known as being extremely concerned with privacy."
"We are. But you're American aren't you?"
"No. And didn't you just say it's very common in Bavaria?"
"We're taught to say that about anything abnormal to help put the patient at ease."
"Do you think the baby is OK?"
"I would certainly doubt it. But right now I'm more concerned with you. I've never seen anything like this before."
"You haven't seen the Black Swan?"
"I've seen the Nutcracker. Well, the first act anyways."
"What about my wing problem?"
"That should just take care of itself. But it really is cool. May I take a picture?"
"No."

Pemulis and Joelle visit the German doctor to ask about Helga's Mom's HWG problem. Unfortunately the doctor is difficult to deal with.

Trail Running

Race Report: Tegernsee Olympic Triathlon 2015

Special bulletin: it finally happened. Thirty-five months following the momentous and earth-shattering occasion of the inaugural edition of Ironman Kalmar, Pemulis has participated in another triathlon. (Aside: we are jumping around chronologically a little here on the GWMD blog so try not to fear that the Nice/Ironman France post has not yet appeared even though this post covers an event that transpired following that one in time). Fifty-five kilometers south of Munich, this was the Tegernsee Triathlon in the picturesque Bavarian town of Gmund. And it was hot (our special correspondent on scene was on record as calling it "a scorcher"): a high of 34 degrees Celsius with the thermometer already reading 28 by the 9:00 AM race start time. Tegernsee is a small and beautiful lake surrounded by mountains of the Bavarian alps. Pemulis and Joelle have in fact gone hiking in these very mountains, and related escapades have been chronicled at various occasions on this blog (here, for example). Tegernsee is the small lake in the middle at the bottom, left (west) of the Schliersee (in the aforementioned blog post the protagonists make a hike from one lake to the other):

We decided to make a weekend vacation of the trip down south and so took the BOB (Bayerische Oberlandbahn -- Bavarian train) down to Tegernsee on Saturday morning. We stayed in an amazing renovated farmhouse 2 km from the lake. The farmhouse (found on AirBnB) was on a country road hidden from the road by big leafy trees on a big property. It had a cottage feel with smells of wood and clean air, featured views of the Alps, was very comfortable, and was just a five minute walk from the nearby town.

Sandi/Joelle (who knows anymore) brought her Brompton folding bicycle (seen above, and see here for some background on this particular brand of bicycle) to be able to easily get around while in the Tegernsee area and while spectating the race, and I of course had my racing bike for the race itself. We arrived at the Gmund train station before noon and biked the one and a half kilometers to the house and met our host before walking the five minutes into town for lunch. Besides the standard Bavarian beer gardens and beer halls, Gmund is also home to a small Italian restaurant where we ate (of course) pasta and I sampled the local brew (note there is in fact a very specific, and very good, local brew called Tegernseer Hell [Tegernsee Light] but they don't make a weißbier). We then visited the local Tengelmann grocery store to stock up on supplies for dinner and the race day breakfast.

Like the race day that would follow, Saturday was also incredibly hot. We arrived back at the cool farm house and spent the afternoon watching the Tour de France's opening stage, reading, and generally relaxing and hiding away from the record-breaking outdoor temperatures and burning mid-day sun. At 17h, we headed down to the beach to check out the water and so that I could pick up my race kit. The Tegernsee Triathlon is a "minimalist" race in that unlike a Subaru Series or Ironman event, for example, you don't get a huge bag full of free samples and advertising, you don't get a t-shirt, you don't get a race-branded swim cap, you don't get much. What you go get is a set of stickers for your helmet and your bike (which you should definitely make use of -- see here for a cautionary tale), and your ankle-bracelet containing the timing chip for the race. We sat around the lake for a bit, had some watermelon Popsicles, and checked out the transition zone and swim course to be prepared for the following day. Sandi tested the water and she gave it the OK.

When we got back to the house, we made our pre-race dinner: egg salad sandwiches (isn't all this extraneous information exciting!?), caprese and corn-carrot salads, and grapes; so healthy! We sat outside on the picnic table, exactly like at a cottage, and enjoyed the peace, quiet, and fresh mountain air.

After a goodnight's sleep, we awoke just before seven to begin the morning race preparations. I was again practicing a health-conscious diet with a menu of white bread and jam, salted peanuts, and orange-mango juice (sorry, no pictures). I baby-powdered my wetsuit (no pictures, but there is video coming!), got in my race get-up, prepped all my stuff in a backpack, and was ready to go. Sandi had her own pre-spectating breakfast, loaded up the video camera (remember: race video is forthcoming!), liberally applied SPF-5000 sunscreen, and she, too, was ready to go.

The generally acknowledged, widely held belief amongst the multi-sport community is that the worst part about triathlon is the few moments before the race begins. You feel nervous, you're waiting, you're surrounded by tons of people, and you ask yourself why in the world you would be here doing this when you could, for example, be at home in bed. I've felt this very feeling in many races before and trust me when I say that it's not exactly pleasant. The feeling quickly disappears the moment the gun goes off and you begin happily swimming along, but those moments really are terrible. Except this time. The several minutes leading up to the start of the race were surprisingly pleasant. The Tegernsee itself is a lake fed from mountain water runoff and as such is exceedingly cold. The weather, as mentioned, had been downright tropical as of late, and sitting in a neoprene floating in the cold mountain water with the sun beating down felt glorious. Instead of wishing that moment to end I felt like I would be happy to hold on to it for much longer than I could. The standard race event dance music pulsated out of the speakers surrounding the lake and I really felt quite happy. I halfheartedly warmed-up my arms by lightly spinning them to and fro, and pulled my goggles down over my eyes.

And we were off! It was a very low-key start. No gun, no nothing from what I could tell. There was some guy yammering away over the loud speaker talking about who knows what, and then out of nowhere everyone started swimming. I figured I had better do the same and so off I went. Unfortunately I did a poor job at lining myself up. I was immediately stuck behind some of the worst swimmers on this side of Germany. I'm certainly nowhere near being God's gift to swimming, but I'm not lining up for an Olympic triathlon with a plan to start swimming breast stroke! For the first almost half of the swim I used most of my energy trying to get around, over, under, and generally through this bunch of jokers. Once we hit the turn-around, however, I was cruising. It was my second wetsuit swim in three years (as mentioned in the previous blog), but it went really well. I was catching up to people quickly (who I should have been with from the start!), drafting for a bit, getting bored, and moving on to the next pair of feet. I finally found a good match to give me some motivation and we raced to the shore. My final time for the 1500m clocked in at 27m35s, including a ~250m run from the water to the transition zone timing mat. That gives a pace of 1:50/100m; since the first at least half of the swim I was basically stopping every few strokes to hit the water in frustration and try to spot a way around some breast-stroke or elementary backstroke swimmer, I conservatively estimate that my second-half pace must have been around 1:30/100m to make up for the first half :)

And then I was on to the bike. I felt strong and not too tired, having taken the swim fairly easily. It was hot, however, and the course was tough. It's a nice bike course which makes its way along decent hills through small Bavarian towns, and which is made up of two loops of twenty kilometres each. It's difficult to get into a "groove" as the terrain demands "climb climb climb", then fast descent; "climb climb climb", then fast descent; etc. Near the beginning of my second loop, I saw quite the site; something you're not seeing everyday on the Subaru Series bike course, for instance. Below us, along a footpath, were perhaps a hundred hardcore Bavarian churchgoers. Each of them in their Sunday-best Lederhosen or Dirndl, accompanied by a full marching brass band and singing, marching in the morning heat towards the small Catholic church on the hill. As I gazed in wonderment, a fellow competitor passed me on the uphill climb and said some German phrase that I imagined to be "there's something you don't see everyday" but could just as easily have been "keep your eyes on the road foreigner!". When I rolled into transition, one hour, seventeen minutes, and forty-seven seconds had passed, for an average speed of about 32 km/h. Not my best, and nothing to write home about (despite the fact that I'm essentially doing that right now), but I'll take it.

Finally, the run. I'll first reiterate again that it was hot: up to 34 celsius by this point. Second, I would like to highlight the geography of this particular run course: up. There are hundreds of metres of climbing and you go up, up, up, up, higher, higher, higher, until you reach -- around the six kilometre mark -- a golf course that overlooks the Tegernsee lake with its majestic background of mountains, and then you have a nice four kilometre downhill sprint to bring things home. A really nice feature that the run course boasted was lawn sprinklers set up like ice-cold showers. When you're that hot the vision of an ice-cold shower in the distance feels surreal at first, and as you get closer in the hazy, blinding sun, you actually somehow become less convinced of its dreamy existence. Nevertheless, when you arrive they are in fact there, in the flesh so to speak, and the dream becomes a reality. However, your body is so hot, and the water (feels) so cold that going through the shower is only pleasurable for about one one-zillionth of a second. After that sudden shock to your system, the cold water is painful, you lose your breath, you start gasping for air -- or something -- and then you keep running but now you feel just a little bit more heavy and just as hot as before. Oh well.

It was a tough run, as outlined above, but I'm glad to say that I improved my positioning on the run despite knowing that I could do a lot better with some proper training and less of an "I'm a big wimp" approach to the whole thing which included silly worrying about heat stroke and death by dehydration and other nonsensical things like that. I passed about twenty people and so I can be happy about that. Final tally for the ten K came in at a not-great for me fifty two minutes and thirty nine seconds. Whatevs.

So the final tally for my first triathlon in a few years? 1500m swim = 27:35; 40km bike = 1:17:47; 10km run = 52:39. Total Olympic time = 2:38:01. Meh. I at least didn't finish near the back of the pack as I did in the Kraillinger Duathlon quite recently: a respectable MOP (middle-of-the-pack) placing of 116 of 298. Again, I'll take it!

Following the race we spent a little relaxing at our Bavarian farmhouse, ate a little more food, and packed up for the train ride home. Coincidentally, on the ride home I happened to sit beside someone who had also done the race and who started chatting with me. It turns out that he's the head of the Computer Science department at LMU (a major Munich university). How about that?

That evening we met friends at die Goldene Bar, an outdoor summer-time bar behind Haus der Kunst, the Munich art gallery. Vive la summer!