140 in the Slow Lane

... You don't really fall asleep on the Autobahn... what you do is... you cover the spedometer with you hand and then you have your passenger try to guess how fast you're going. And then your passenger gets really ridiculous and annoyed and says you're stupid and that she doesn't want to play anymore... and then you tell her that she doesn't know how to have fun... and then she says whatever... and then you say WHATEVER whatever..
So why Germany? My buddy plays for Beitigheim and is in playoffs and I haven't seen him in forever and he promised us a free meal... and I never pass up free meals... Beitigheim, which everyone knows is sponsored by Porsche, but to my great chagrin after I got there does not give it's players Porsches to drive... they used to... but it came out that a player got up to 305 KPH on the primest stretch of road in Germany (a 5 km downhill straightaway in between Stuttgart and Frankfurt) and now they don't anymore.
First day we got there they were fighting for their playoff lives down 3-0 in a series against Landschut. We wore red, similar to how Tiger wears red on Sundays and it works because psychologists say that the color red makes a person think of winning... Or at least I say that I heard it somewhere. Needless to say they won... you figure it out.

2nd day was ????.

3rd day was a huge dilemma between going to his road game and waiting around for 6 hours doing nothing while they get ready for the game, or going with the girls to the spa and possibly getting sucked unwittingly into tremendous amounts of girl talk. Spa won out on the off-chance I could get a massage and the intriguing possibility that it could be a Roman style spa. The spa was actually pretty amazing... waterfall... statues... aroma room... steam room... different temperatures of water ranging from scalding hot all the way to ice cold... and lots of different styles of jets designed to massage any part of your body that needs massaging. I literally stayed 20 minutes solid on the neck massage waterfall dealy... And yes, there was a Roman style part... and yes... I had to... all the time in a towel... but I had to. And no... no pictures... for some unknown reason they don't allow cameras into the spa... And sidenote... everyone here says how Europeans are so much skinnier and in better shape than Americans... and I just don't think that's the case...

So other cool parts about the trip?
1) Worms... as in the Diet of Worms... as in either a really bad joke an old person might tell a kid (or I might have told Danelle) about the rare eating habits of preists playing on the pun... but more importantly as in the place where Martin Luther refused to go against his conscience and renounce his 95 Thesis.

2) The Reine River... as in I have no idea why it's important but Dave always talked about it and I think said that he lived near it

3) Exit (In German) is Ausfahrt. I would tell you that the first time I saw this sign was just after we passed through Cologne... and I have to tell you saying that we took an Ausfahrt after passing through Cologne is funny... crudely funny... but funny. Is this word for exit most likely the origin of its close resembling English counterpart?

4) These windmills are huge.. The huge tree that doesn't even go 1/8th of the way up this sucker hopefully gives somewhat of an impression. You could probably charge a whole amish village with one of these things. Don Quixote definitely would have met his match with these suckers. Interesting sidenote: "fighting windmills" has become an expression to describe the behavior of people who, often stubbornly refusing to acknowledge reality, pour their hearts into campaigns that have nothing to do with their actual interests or are dead-end roads on their path to redemption. Used in a sentence... I was fighting windmills all senior year trying to write a thesis that in the end said more of what my prof told me to write than what I actually wanted to write...

5) Embarrassing moments - Anyone aware of 'The Secret' knows that you bring an idea up and suddenly it starts popping up in all these places where you least expect it. I don't know if your brain is more wired to look for it or if it really has something to do with the way the universe is set up... all I know is that we started talking about embarrassing moments in our lives over dinner and then everything started to hit the fan...
Embarrassing dinner happenings included (1) a Death Spider crawling past the face of unsuspecting girl in our party... aftermath included 4 chairs tipped back on the floor... Girl running down the restaurant hiding behind the bar... Donny and me ready to brawl like a couple of spider monkeys crouched in attack position... and Danelle nonchalantly telling us how it didn't scare her at all because they used to have a pet Tarantula when she was younger (2) a flaming B-52 friendly fire straw incident which will stay untyped on account of past history with me and eating and fire and of blackmail possibilities and (3) a broken chair that almost sent me sprawling onto the table behind us...

Non-embarrassing food incidents included the most amazing White Hot Chocolate I've ever had... My first time having Sushi all winter at an all-you-can-eat Sushi place...

And a culinary maserpiece of breaded honey mustard chicken made by Donny G and yours truly. Below you can see the head chef instructing the sous-chef on creating scrumptiousness.

Lastly me getting my fill of German hospitality. Spaetzle (egg pasta), Frankfurter Sausage (a thin boiled sausage made of pure pork in a sheep gut), lentils, and extremely dark beer... the definition of Succulence

The golden boot is given out to the soccer player that scores the most goals in whatever tournament is being played and all the top European divisions. If it didn't weigh 15 lbs and I didn't strongly oppose alcoholism I would probably have brough this back for a gift to somebody.

This grocery store was 3 walmart-sized floors high of any kind of food you could possibly imagine... and they still didn't have Mini-Wheats...

This is the closest I got to touring an old-school castle... one of my only regrets of the year...

And because the year is over I have to leave you with this... it was amazing to watch a hockey game that my heart and soul wasn't involved in every second of every period... where I could actually watch without holding my breath the whole time... where I could just sit back and enjoy myself. The best way I know how to describe it is Saving Private Ryan when they're walking along the ridge at night and it's quiet all around them, but in the background you see artillery fire going off all over the ground... or watching a thunderstorm from a distance... OR in Gladiator when he's on the brink of death and you get a small glimpse into a peaceful warm wind in trees in Elysium.