Auf nach Deutschland!

After just two weeks of classes at AUC the holiday of Eid al-Fitr (marking the end of Ramadan fasting) provided a long weekend. As soon as I learned of this, I seized the opportunity and booked a ticket to Germany. I suppose I could have gone somewhere more novel, but I wanted to save that sort of adventure for a time when Jaehee could accompany me. Besides, I had recently been made aware of an awesome bike park in Westphalia outside of Dortmund and it was calling my name.

I flew in to Frankfurt and spent the first day feeling extremely sick (thank you Cairo). I roamed the town, basically going from one bathroom to another and stopping here and there to view the sites. Frankfurt is actually one of my least favorite German cities, so I wasn’t too devastated that I didn’t get a full day of sight-seeing. Besides, I had another reason for spending the first day in the city. My friend Joe had recently disputed one of the entries in my list of life goals, arguing that Ocean City, MD wasn’t a major enough city to cite under my “Sleep bum-style in 10 major cities around the world” goal. Removing Ocean City from that list dropped me down to seven cities to date, so I figured I could make up that loss in Frankfurt. I am happy to say that after an uncomfortable night on a bench near some drunks, I am back to eight cities of “bumming it” down and just two to go!

The next morning I caught an early train and headed north into the rolling hills of Hochsauerland. I arrived at the resort town of Winterberg around noon and spent the first day getting set up at a Dutch-run campground and then just enjoying the fresh air, clean streets and delicious ice cream.

I ended up spending two full days at the bike park. I had hoped for three, but it was getting pretty expensive to rent the gear and I was slowly getting too beat up to ride aggressively. The park was everything I expected. I hit most of the features I wanted to, with the exception of a road gap, one 20’ drop, and a couple north shore runs. Usually I would be pretty bummed about not pushing myself harder, but I wasn’t too disappointed. It wasn’t that I chickened out, but rather that I had no peer pressure, no photographer, and no insurance. All three of those are important factors for me when I am considering doing something that scares me. Next time, though...

All in all, it was a really satisfying trip. I came away with some good memories and a couple of injuries (a really sore, somewhat bloody left shoulder and another shirt ripped because of a bike crash, a couple cuts on the ridge of my nose, and some bruising and cuts on my right side and hip - really, not bad at all for two days of freeride and downhill riding!). I got to try out some new bikes, a Nicolai Ion St the first day and then a Rock Mountain Flatline Pro, definitely improved my berm handling on the free cross run, got a couple new video clips and learned some important German bike scene jargon.

I threw together a compilation of some of the riding clips I had on the hard drive along with the new ones from this trip. I usually don’t pull the camera out too often when biking, because I'm just too busy loving the ride to interrupt it. What I have isn’t anything too crazy, but it is enough to get an idea.

Summer '09 Slideshow

This summer Jaehee and I slacked off a little as far as photos went, despite the fact that we were all over the east coast and Utah doing crazy things. I've scraped together what I could find.
As always, follow this link to the album, click "view slideshow" and hit F11 to toggle full screen. If you are trying to read the commentary, click "pause" and advance through the photos at your leisure with the arrow keys. Enjoy!

Back to School

Arriving in Cairo for this second round of school was much less eventful than arriving for the first time, just half a year ago. Last time we dealt with everything from altered itineraries mid-trip to being lost downtown at 2am to, well everything that could possibly go wrong. This time, I simply disembarked from the plane into the ramshackle international arrivals hall at CAI. I ignored all the swarming cabbies and found the man with my name on a sign, and I headed off with him to the Bedouin Hostel just off Qasr el-Nil in downtown. The most pleasant aspect of my arrival was not that it went off more or less without a hitch or that I actually had money and a reserved taxi, but that everything bore an air of familiarity. I wasn’t embarking on a great (and stressful) adventure this time; I was just coming back to school. It has been a lot of fun for me to feel so comfortable so quickly in a place that is so different from my quiet, green, bucolic home town in PA.

Ramadan is in full swing now here in the Muslim World and I am toying around with the thought of participating in the fasting for the next two weeks. I’ve been here three days now, and the only real problem has been with the drinking. I like liquids a lot, so I might just do a modified fast that allows me to drink, and maybe eat some candy, throughout the day.

Yesterday as the sun set I was invited to join three natives, friends from the hostel, for iftaar, the fast breaking meal. We sat on the floor eating a very reasonable dish of bread and fish with tamarind juice. Spending time with natives during Ramadan is definitely giving me a somewhat more sober perspective of the month. There is a tendency to believe that that everyone gorges themselves at sundown and parties all through the night. While that is true of some cases (like all the people outside my window who keep me up until 6am), my friends and many others seem to observe the month much more sensibly.