Water in Various Forms.

It continues to rain here, but not as much as before. Instead of it raining all day, we get scattered rain showers. Shortly after I left work this afternoon, the sky opened up in a veritable deluge. Before I was out of the security gates, I was soaked and getting pelted with what felt like hail. (It probably was not hail, but there was a very, very heavy head wind, driving the rain into face.) If you remember from three sentences ago, I said that these where scattered showers, so, as I was being drowned, I also had sun glaring in my eyes. This made me think: sun, rain… rainbow? So, I stopped my bike and turned around. And, lo and behold, there was one of the most gorgeous full-arc, double rainbows that I have ever seen; a brilliant double rainbow against a dark cloudy sky. I wish that I had had my camera. But I did not. So you, and I, will have to do with my description of it.

And that was just the beginning of my adventure. I found out that the crew team here gets together a couple times a week for strength training and a little water time on the weekend. Strength training happens on Tuesdays, so I decided that I would check out the way to the boathouse. The greater Braunschweig area is laid out like a wheel (the main city of Braunschweig) with a bunch of spokes (the main roads) ending in, or following along, little Stadtteils (which the dictionary defines as quarters, like the French quarter of New Orleans, but I would say that they are more like satellites). Basically, they are little towns that function inside the city of Braunschweig. I live along one of the spokes, the airport is at the end of that spoke, and the boathouse, which is in Thune, is at the end of the next spoke counter-clockwise around the city centre. I thought that I had figured out a way to get from work to the boathouse, using one of the outer ring connexion roads. Unfortunately, the way I chose did not have a bike line, and I was not about to ride my bike on the edge of a narrow two lane road. So, I decided to turn around, and go the way I might take if I were coming from home, which cuts through some farm land/ wildlife preserve to the next spoke. I was able to find my way through a neighbourhood to the spoke, and started following it out of town. Unfortunately, at one point I continued following the main route (which curved to the port on the Kanal), instead of going straight, like I was supposed to. This was not a huge problem, I made it to my goal (after going quite out of my way—think taking one leg and the hypotenuse of a triangle, instead of taking the other leg—and heading through industrial/car sales area of the Hafen). From there (it has been an hour since I left work) I made my way home in less than thirty minutes, along the way I was supposed to have come in the first place. After all of this excitement, I decided that I will take the bus, at least in the evening, when it is likely to be dark, since the lamp on my bike has broken, again. The reason I did not just decide to take the bus in the first point is that the bus takes even longer to get from one point to the other, because you have to take one spoke down, take the street car, then get on another bus up the other spoke. But, since bus and streetcar riding is free, I will take that route when I go out there in the evening.

If you happened to miss the basic message in that long paragraph, I do not blame you. Here it is: CREW!! WATER!!

In case you really would like to know what I am doing around here, other than taking long bicycle tours of the northern section of the city and breaking electrical equipment, I will let you know that I went downtown on Saturday and bought some books. (I am quite excited: The Last Templar by Raymond Khoury, as you can probably tell, it is a Dan-Brown-esque religous-y thriller. Dublin by Edward Rutherford, when I got it, I thought that I had only read part of one of his other books (The Princes of Ireland), but, evidently this is actually the book of which I read the first couple chapters—same book, different name? Needles to say, I hope that I get a little farther this time. And, last but not least, Watching the English by Kate Fox. This is a book that I am very excited about, it is an amusing recount of a modern day anthropologic study on the English people—what make the English different from other groups of people.) I looked at some posters and decided that I was really not into any more Lord of the Rings poster, or any Pirates poster, and especially not any posters of nearly (mostly) naked women (if you have been into the room of any college aged male, you know what kind of poster I mean). That prompted me to go online that evening and find some quite excellent (and quite cheap for being shipped from Raleigh, North Carolina) posters of football players. With the help of the Once and Future Flatmate, I was able to pare it down to three posters: The Pride of England, depicting six of England’s best footballers; a poster of Michael Ballack, a German national who plays for Chelsea; and, an excellent poster comprising mostly of the bare torso of David Beckham. You did not seriously think that I would buy football posters with out getting one of Becks did you? Well, I almost did not, but, for nefarious purposes of our own, we decided that this one had to be purchased—it was also cheaper than a picture of Andy Roddick, Roger Federer, Tim Henman, or any of the rowing related posters. The online store (which touts itself as the largest poster store in the world) actually had a few Twins posters: of Corey Koskie, Joe Mays and A. J. Pierzynski—none of which actually played for the Twins for at least two or three seasons. No wonder they were on sale for about five bucks. (They also had a poster of Doug Mientkiewicz, but it was after he caught the last out of the winning game of the World Series for the Red Sox.) With all of this online ordering, I will let you know that both the posters and my new computer should be here by the end of the week, or early next week at the very latest.