The Mechanical Joy

I know, it’s been a while. I’m terrible and have been awfully antsy this week and well I’m sure I could make up millions of delightfully believable excuses as to why I haven’t written more….because it’s one of my favorite things to do. Sometimes when walking somewhere, or especially when late for something I sit and ponder excuses, which later usually get used. Though recently (in the last day or so) I’ve been pondering as to what to write about (that’s really what took me so long) and I know I mentioned a whole bunch of things I was going to write on later, and thought I would describe the characters I’m living with, but instead I had one of my disturbingly comical experiences resulting in enough pain to give me some sympathy, but still make it an entertaining story.

So it all starts with this fuzzy little something, I’m going to reserve details in case the special someone to whom I sent the special thing to ends up reading this before actually receiving it….you’ll get the dirt in a later post, don’t you worry. I’m not hiding secrets from you, I promise. I wouldn’t do that to you. Hehe. Anways, I was going to head down to the post office. There’s one relatively close so I thought I would ask about a bike, because we have ones the building owns which you can rent for about a euro a week.

One of my roommates…Tite? Tight? Teit..? It’s pronounced Tight…so for sake of humorous text, we’ll keep it that way, so Tight knows about the bike situation, so I go to him to see what the low down is with the whatnot and stuff you know? It turns out a whole bunch of the bikes need air in their tires etc, and I’ll be able to get one next week, so in the meantime he gives me the key to his bike. Sounds good right? He’s certainly not a tall guy, and well, it makes sense that his bike wouldn’t be too absurdly large for me. Wow. Wrong. The seat comes up to my ribs about. So after a few very painful hobbling attempts around the garage I decide it’s either now or never, the sun has come out (it was raining all morning) and I have to make this work one way or another.

Alright, so my feet can’t touch the pedals. Before hitting the end of the block (about 20 feet) I had lost my shoe but of course couldn’t get off the bike because my leg bairly reaches over the bar, so in a sideways one legged hobble thing, I kick it in reverse…(my one useful shoe-d leg that is) back up, get the shoe on somehow and sort of continue my wobbling venture sort of down the street. I make it to the first light and I seem to have to stand on my tip toes in front of the seat and even still, this is not a comfortable venture.

None of this is a comfortable venture. And now I have a pillow on my desk chair.

So I make it to the first light and there’s a mother and two small people (children that is) on the other side waiting to cross. So to put it short, my ship capsizes in the middle of the street trying to get back up on the pedals and I end up with them all laughing at me. Everybody rides bikes here. I’ve seen the tiniest infant children things riding bikes without training wheels, and well…here I am, some sort of half grown person unable to work this contraption. It only gets better from here.

So I get some sort of control with this machine thing and decide to go down a back street rather than ride in traffic quite yet. You’ll never guess what I found next.

Cobblestones.

Now to keep this as little detailed as possible due to the mental imagery of those persons close to me to not wish to know about the unfortunate state of some of my anatomy during this experience, I’ll just leave it to…well I was very, very uncomfortable. Cobblestones, sort of crouching on a metal bar and well, okay, you get the drift. So I have all sorts of fun with this, and actually have some sort of system worked out by the time I get to the post office, though getting off of it is a whole other story making me very thankful I’m as flexible as I am.

The people at the post office were very sweet and thinking I was a little bit of a joke, still played along with me and didn’t charge me an arm and a leg either! Just 12 something euros! I was thrilled~

When heading out this morning, before I actually got on this two wheeled torturing apparatus from hell, I was having these lovely thoughts of biking through the massive city park which is just a few blocks away from where I am, and maybe biking downtown and I even got carried away with the idea of biking somewhere in Europe (you know you always hear your parent’s adventurous friends who just came back from Tibet going off and doing a bike tour around Europe).

Okay, well I hear about it. I’m not sure about your parents. Or who is actually reading this for that matter. Alright, diverging here. I was having these lovely thoughts of having tree-trunk like thighs and seeing countryside blahhh blah blah. So instead I find myself wanting to quit this experience as quickly as possible and begin to head home. So I decide to take a different route and get lost in the biggest park in Hamburg. And then, ohh you’ll never guess! You know that point in a movie where a whole bunch of hilariously unfortunate things happen and one character says to another “Well at least it couldn’t get any worse” and it begins the torrential downpour...

I got a torrential downpour. Did I ever. I was wearing about 3 layers including a big down jacket and all of me was completely soaked, and a few cars did me the courtesy of driving into a puddle for me and completing my dampness by filling my shoes with muddy street water.

Another delightful addition to my venture was the fact that we’ve had a few big storms lately and there were branches all over the bike path, so it was sort of a maze of death and water and rain and more water and me in the middle of it trying to touch these miserable little pedals with my miserable little wet toes and a chronically uncomfortable seating situation.

I made it home (obviously) to tell the tale, and well, maybe I’ll leave the European adventures and thunder thighs for another bike…and another day. Speaking of buffness, I’ve also begun doing yoga and crunches to counter my addiction to these German pretzel things…but they’re so amazing, I can’t help it. So I eat them. Lots of them. Yumm. They’re like 30cents each too. Yumm. Okay I don’t eat THAT many…but well, we really need a new topic here. Like all my lovely photos for you! These were taken with the others, but enjoyable nonetheless….hopefully?

And you know, it never hurts to keep those comments coming….if anyone actually reads this that is, and well if you don’t…I suppose I should stop referring to you then shouldn’t I? Imaginary friends aren’t as harmful as one would think…enjoy the photos…

The street I walk down on the way to the U-Bahn with cute little European shops etc.


A doorway I enjoy in the same block as me


Artsy boat shot anyone?


Artsy train/bridge shot? I actually quite like this one...


Well...you'll never guess who this is...and yes, I've resorted to holding camera self portraitures...
(I've also begun growing trees out of my head)


One of my favorite pictures so far of famous German bobble trees and some sort of clock which has some sort of significance I'm sure, heh.