Bike tour from Brandenburg via Nauen and Oranienburg to Bernau (116 km)

May 30th, 2011, 23:17 | 4 comments

View Karl’s bike tours in a larger map.

It was last Sunday and I had fun. More exactly, I woke up at 4:55 AM, took the Regionalbahn from Ostbahnhof at 5:59, and arrived in Brandenburg at 7 AM sharp. Yes, that was a bit early. But I wanted to get out on the roads early on a Sunday morning, so I could bike on the roads when they are the most empty.

Why Brandenburg?

Because I had checked the winds, and they would blow with a steady 3-4 meters per second from southwest. So I decided to bike from southwest to the northeast.

Why these bike tours at all?

Because I follow this advice!

The stats:

  • Distance: 116 km (72 miles)
  • Average speed: 27,3 kph (16,9 mph)
  • Max speed: 50,2 kph (31,2 mph)
  • Biking time: 4 hours, 16 minutes
  • (Total time: 7:00 – 12:40 = 5 hours, 40 minutes)

Here are some photos from the tour. I shot some of them while biking:

A boat in Brandenburg at about 7:10 AM.

Wind power!

Not much going on in Nauen at 8.15 AM.

One reason why I avoid bike paths; sooner or later they always force you to a stop.

Road 273 was dug up in Oranienburg, but I could pass with my bike. On the sign you can see that I was pretty close to the concentration camp Sachsenhausen.

The kinky stuff that people in the country fill their miserable lives with.

Happiness!

Category: Biking, English
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The Besenwagen

May 25th, 2011, 10:00 | No comments

This is how I picture it.

Category: Biking, English
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I biked the Berlin Velothon 2011

May 24th, 2011, 12:00 | 1 comment

My main goal in the Skoda Velothon Berlin 2011 was not to be picked up by the “Besenwagen”. I’m not sure what it is, but it doesn’t sound good. It’s some kind of vehicle that drives after the bicyclists and picks up those who are too slow for the race. I suspected I might be one of those. A police officer on a motorbike even asked me before the race: “Are you gonna bike on that?” Referring to my Stevens Randonneur, a touring bike. Almost all other participants had road bikes.

So I’m an amateur. But I love biking, and I love biking fast. Especially, I love biking on roads – I hate the bumpy bike paths that prevent you from using the road. In fact, only a week before the race, on my second test ride, another police officer admonished me to use the bike path. So for me, biking the Velothon was partly a way to reclaim the roads, so to speak.

I hated that second test ride, not least cause I had to take a detour through the woods which totally destroyed my bike (and my Nikes) – think wet sand, needles and leaves in all orifices. And cars everywhere – I must remember to always bike on Sundays from now on, that’s when the streets are the most empty. So the second test ride wasn’t much of a training. In general, I had trained very little, because I had so much to do in other areas of my life.

So I was very pessimistic about the race.

Remember my first test ride? It took 2:50 h in total, 2:30 when only counting the rolling time. My average speed was 26,4 kph (16,4 mph). And I was exhausted to the verge of collapse afterwards.

Ok, last Sunday was the race, Europe’s second biggest event of the kind: 15,000 bicyclists, 5,000 of whom would bike the short round (60 km/37 miles) with me.

We started out fast. I gave everything in the beginning, gazing nervously at my bicycle computer that told me we hadn’t even biked 5 kilometers yet. Would I hold out to the end? Well, I did! I used some downslopes to rest a bit, and I was careful to drink water and iso-drink every now and then. I didn’t stop a single time.

Among the 4,273 male bicyclists in my race I ended up on place 1,571. I biked the whole round in 1 hour and 50 minutes, giving me an average speed of 35 kph (22 mph). All according to the official measuring (the actual route was a bit longer than 60 km).

I’m immensely proud of those results, especially considering my bike, my condition, and the fact that it was my first race – I’m really not the sporty type.

Racing was so much fun! Imagine lots of other bicyclists riding at the same high speed as yourself. We were riding the same streets that I often ride in my everyday life, although this time there were no cars around and we didn’t have to care about traffic lights. I was filled with happiness at many points in the race. I want to do this again – as soon as possible!

But:

Next year I’ll use a road bike. With SPD pedals. I also want another thing: A team. Stay tuned for that …

Here’s a picture that some photo company took of me (I don’t care to buy the high resolution version) – I’m the one in the green-yellow jersey:

Category: Biking, English
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The secret to a happy relationship

May 21st, 2011, 10:29 | No comments

In the movie Annie Hall from 1977, the frustrated main character Alvy (played by Woody Allen) walks down the street and asks strangers how they get their sex life and their relationships to work. The following exchange is just brilliant:

Alvy: You look like a really happy couple… Are you?

Woman: Yeah.

Alvy: So, how do you count for it?

Woman: Uhm… I’m very shallow and empty, and I have no ideas and nothing interesting to say.

Man: And I’m exactly the same way.

Category: Culture, English
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Se Bamse lacka ur på Lille Skutt!

May 19th, 2011, 21:19 | No comments

Ritad av mig för ca 17 år sedan. Inte helt inaktuell! (Se även HD och HAX.)

Category: Esoteric, Politics, Swedish
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9 months of Japanese studies

May 18th, 2011, 23:53 | No comments

Oh God, is it already that time of the month? Yes it is! Today I’ve studied Japanese for exactly 9 months. It’s been quite a lazy month though, study-wise. Cause I was busy with so much else.

I haven’t made any progress at all in my text books during the last month, but I did meet two Japanese girls for tandem training, after having advertised on a board at a German language school. First I met one with whom I spoke Japanese for half an hour, and then English (since she wanted to learn English) for the other half of the time. Then I met one who wanted to learn German, so we first spoke German and then Japanese. Of course, my German sucks, but what the heck, it worked and she got her conversation training.

As for my sensei, he’s in Japan for two weeks. So I will try to be good without him.

I still wake up to Tanabe FM every morning. I still hardly get anything. But I recognise more words, and now I’m so used to every show beginning with saying the day of the week, the time, “today’s subject”, etc, that I get much of the “frame” of the show so to speak.

That’s all for now. Here is this month’s Iknow progress so far (with the upper bar summing up the totals since January):

Category: English
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Whatever works!

May 17th, 2011, 12:08 | No comments

My life has been devoid of culture lately, as I’ve been quadruple working and having visitors. So in my first free afternoon and evening in a long time, I first biked the Velothon route again, despite I knew it would rain, and then took a hot shower, made some tea and re-watched Whatever Works.

Whatever Works is my absolute favourite among Woody Allen movies, although I haven’t seen his early ones for a while. In recent years, the main character in his movies was always played by some young and famous actor who just couldn’t master the role that Allen so obviously wrote for himself. They just said the words without understanding them. I hated it. Putting Larry David, whom I’m a big fan of since watching all seasons of Curb Your Enthusiasm, in Woody Allen’s role is just brilliant. He’s the only one so far who can pull it off!

Add a classic Woody Allen script that, as always, deals with existential questions in the ways of light comedy, and you get the ultimate feel-good movie.

In other news, Amazon has just stocked up on Gay Man’s Worst Friend – you can order it here!

Category: Culture, English
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Safari drives me mad

May 9th, 2011, 22:06 | 7 comments

I just want it to work. It doesn’t.

Safari eats memory and gets slower and slower the longer you use it and the more windows you have open. Sometimes I spend minutes (at least half minutes) waiting for a new window to appear when I toggle through windows. The only thing I see is the rainbow-coloured ball, the most consistent feature of Mac OS X.

My Imac is from 2007. I guess that’s pretty old. But still. I have maximum ram. And it’s fast enough for the graphic design I do. But to surf the web in Safari is apparently much more demanding. And yes, I have installed Click to Flash.

I’m just a human being. I just want to surf the web.

Why is this happening? Why is Safari slowing down not only my computer but *myself*, since I have to stare on the screen every time I wait, since just maybe, the wait won’t be half a minute this time. (But it always is.)

I think it’s happening for a reason. It’s telling us that we can’t rely on technology, that old values like being moral and Lutheran in your desktop hygiene wasn’t such bad ideas after all.

We must impose window hygiene. Close a window after you’ve opened it. Don’t let it linger in the background cause you want to “read it later”. Not only does it slow down Safari, it also adds to my bad consciousness over not getting things done. So I must be moral and get it done immediately instead. Read that article. Act upon that window that is open only as a kind of reminder of something you need to do.

Then I must impose the shutting down rule. Remember when computers were shut down at the end of the day? Maybe that wasn’t such a bad idea. It’s the digital equivalent of cleaning your desk when you leave work. Maybe that’s what Safari is telling me I should go back to.

I tried Chrome. It wasn’t as slow as Safari, but had other problems, the main one being a total anarchy when toggling through windows. It was usually impossible to get to the window you wanted through toggling; you had to use the mouse – I hate the mouse! – to go to the MENUUUUUUUU and choose the window you wanted.

And Chrome also slowed down after a while, when you had many windows open, despite Google’s fancy cartoon (I read all of it) said each window would sort of run on its own motor. What happened when Chrome slowed down was … nothing! You entered the address and pressed enter and Chrome wouldn’t register it. You had to be SLOW with Chrome. I learned to type the address, then wait 2-3 seconds, and then press enter. What’s the point with a browser that renders the pages fast if you have to wait for several seconds before the page starts rendering? The whole thing reminded me of the old times with Quark Xpress, where you couldn’t work too fast, since you knew the program would crash then. (Why don’t Adobe make a web browser btw? I’m usually no fan of monopolism, but when the alternatives are Safari and Chrome – be my guest!)

Another problem with Chrome was the URL auto-fill function. It became increasingly slow, and it was often faster just to type the URL by hand instead of typing f, waiting 5, 10, 15 seconds, and then seeing Facebook come up as the suggestion.

Or aren’t you supposed to have 50 windows open at the same time? You should see my desk – my real one I mean. I have my own kind of order. Apple and Google obviously don’t approve. They say: Clean up your desk!

So now I’ll try to start living by those standards. I will close down windows that I don’t need (despite I use them every day), and I will quit the browsers at the end of the day. In short, I will be moral. And I hate it.

Footnote: This post was written quickly and in anger! I have not edited my lousy English and I have not even read it through. Why should I? I don’t have any ambitions with this blog anyway. That’s the spirit!

 

Category: English, Esoteric
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Hur smakar en Eric Saade-kyss?

May 4th, 2011, 13:35 | 5 comments

Enligt Danny Saucedo så här:

Ljummen och pojkig, men lekfullt nyfiken.

Category: Swedish
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Anime: 放浪息子

May 2nd, 2011, 12:18 | No comments

I just finished watching 放浪息子 (Hourou Musuko; Wandering Son), a Japanese anime based on a manga. As always, Wikipedia sums it up:

The story depicts a young boy named Shuichi Nitori who wants to be a girl, and his friend Yoshino Takatsuki, a girl who wants to be a boy. The series deals with issues such as transsexuality, gender identity, and the beginning of puberty.

It’s a beautiful anime, not only because of the sensitive way it deals with the issues mentioned above, but also because it’s painted in water colours. It’s also a kind of slow anime, perfect to spend time together with on a mellow afternoon. But most of all, I found 放浪息子 convincing and touching. I scored it 8 out of 10 at MyAnimeList, where I’ve started to document my anime adventure. (I haven’t really watched much anime until recently.)

Here is a trailer:

 

An extra quality to 放浪息子 is added by the voice actors, and especially 畠山航輔 (Hatakeyama Kousuke – written with his family name first as the Japanese do it), who does the protagonist. Often in anime, young males’ voices are done by women. Such is the case in Loveless for example. Or, if the boy is past puberty, their voices are done by older male actors, as is the case in Junjou Romantica, where the 18 and 29 year olds’ voices are done by 35 and 50 year old actors. But in 放浪息子, the main character’s voice is done by a real and very talented 14-year-old boy. That makes a difference to me. Especially since he even looks like Nitorin:

Category: English, Japan
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