Thigmotaxis

Thigmotaxis is when an organism moves towards physical contact. Many simple organisms have evolved this behavior for protection and it is commonly called crevice-seeking. Sometimes if you are small and tasty, your little brain tells you that feeling pressure from all sides is good and safe. Cockroaches are the most famously thigmotactic thing around, but my nemesis, Forficula auricularia or the common earwig, causes me the most grief.

This fellow was enjoying the physical contact of,, you guessed it,, contacts! Electrical contacts that are needed for us to enjoy having water. This is not the safest crevice to seek and not one I would advise for anyone conductive. This kind of trouble usually doesn't get really going until fall when the little bastards are trying to find a crevice to overwinter, but this year, they are getting an early start. Two fried wigs so far. This one was just so photogenic I couldn't resist taking his picture. His little charcoaled head was enough to keep the contact from closing.

NOW it feels like home

Getting up at first light to dig a hole at a wet spot is the epitomy of home. I can't remember a summer out here without a leak and a hole.


This one isn't much to complain about, should be an easy fix, but it made me realize that I didn't have to do any maintenance as an apartment dweller in Europe. Pretty cush life, really.


I did dig a hole in Jonathan's garden while we were there,, and that sucked. Really hard clay and lots of rocks. I'll take a rock free moist palouse silty loam any day over that tough Jena soil. This is the best soil in the world for digging a big hole, and at this ol' place that opportunity seems to arise frequently!

HSH

We got up at 4am, got home at 1am and the day was 9 hours longer than a regular earth day. It was preceded by an 8 day road-trip taking the extra, extra, long way from Jena to the Frankfurt airport. We hopped from town to town taking in medieval villages, Playmobil FunPark (only 8 bucks!!) Bavaria, luge courses, playgrounds, gondolas, castles, the Black Forest, and some fantastic rock skipping on the Rhine. Along the way we had another 4-country day without really trying; once we woke up in Austria, got coffee in Lichtenstein, then drove through countless Swiss tunnels on our way back into Germany. Whew. These kids are TROOPERS!


Ben and Claire are now rediscovering their toys.

Kristi is rediscovering her own bed.

I'm just soaking it all in.

My first impression of the whole six month adventure?? WOW, that was a change of pace for some quiet mostly monolingual country folk.

We lived in a two bedroom apartment, where we could walk to work, or school, or the park, or shopping. If you wanted to go to Paris, it was a ten minute walk to a train station. There were neighbors, new friends and old friends. It was never quiet, but always calm. I haven't seen stars like we have here tonight in six months, but I have never got to walk in a deep dark beech forest watching fire flies here either. It was all so wonderfully new and fun and exciting.

I am incredibly grateful to the folks on both sides who made it possible. Rod, Jonothan, Laura-n-Bob, Kim, Wendy,, above and beyond the call! And a special thanks and love to the Mothers Nancy for keeping us supplied with Mac and Cheese, peanut butter and Gluten-free treats and Papa Ray and Grammy of the Seattle pick-up. You all are amazing and I'm glad you are in our lives,,, ok getting sappy,,, time to go get some sleep!

Girls in Austria

Claire and Julia were cut from the same cloth. They had to say good-bye today and the tears would well up and flow again every so often in our car for most of the afternoon. Our fathers and daughters trip to Austria last week surely didn't help them part ways. I have the usual pics of flora and fauna from the trip to share, but for this post it is pictures of inseparable friends on a carefree vacation together.

There was even a bit of glissading in the alps

and the best unattended coin-operated rides EVER!

Little Differences

Some things are just a little bit different in Europe and sometimes those odd little differences make me chuckle.

You can have a museum about pretty much anything

All the folks running for office put their pictures on their posters, even when they shouldn't

Lots more nakey people, and lets not even talk about the saunas

Just about everything is "street legal"

Not everything translates well

Get your hair cut and colored, damn it!

Taking a dump is gonna cost you, but the crapper has a catchy name

This guy gives your chips that extra special flavor

Everyone has their own ideas about art

When you want to say "hybrid", it's OK to say "bastard" even at a botany seminar

The gall of some creatures

I do so love a good gall. Not sure why, maybe it is the way that they catch your attention as just being wrong and not how things are supposed to look. The deciduous forests in this part of Germany seem to have more than their fair share and that is just OK with me. The first one is likely fungal or viral and quite a beut'. It's the only one I've seen on Beech. The second one on rose, well I don't know what the hell that is, but I suspect it is the result of alien visitors. The rest are insect galls. Mama sticks her ovapositor into the leaf, deposits a single egg and the rest is all chemistry. Usually the larvae makes or modifies plant hormones and gets the unsuspecting plant to make it a pretty little home for the growing baby. I just love it when one organism tweaks another's biochemistry to its own advantage. As long as it isn't a parasite in me that is!

WTF was I thinking?

So I really did walk 100km, aka 62 miles, starting at 6pm on a Friday night somewhere in eastern Germany, of my own free will.

A print-out of the distances with my times between checkpoints, a certificate, and this pin were the tangible things that I got for my trouble. Well I guess you can include blisters and the fact that I will walk funny for a few days.

The hike is limited to 850 people. I'm pretty sure 849 were German and I knew none of them. Talk about alone in a crowd. As you might imagine if you thought about these orderly Germans a bit, we were all issued microchips that were scanned on departure, several places along the way, and at the finish. I know, to the second, how much time I spent on the trail. Exactly 19hrs 3min and 58seconds.

As we all fell into our pace and headed up to the hills, the crowd thinned a bit.

We had enough traveling before getting to the single track that we were very well sorted. It was a beautiful cool evening for hiking. The sun set, the full moon rose, the headlamps came on and we kept on walking.

Food and drink rests were a great place for me to get ahead of the crowd. I filled up my water, pounded a few cokes to stay awake and didn't linger. There was almost nothing I could eat anyway so I brought my own and ate on the run. The first 21km clicked by at 15min/mile, the next at 17 min/mile. That was literally a blistering pace, and at the 42km food stop I did a little surgery and changed socks but felt pretty damn invincible. The night was cold and clear and moonlit. The city lights at night were great. By morning I was getting a bit stiff. This picture was at 62km and was the only place I stayed and ate some cheese and gluten free bread at a table. That was still less than a 5 minute stop.

By 70 km any heady invincibility was crushed, but I kept walking. Between 77 and 85 km I dragged my ass along at 24 min/mile, my slowest pace, but that short stretch had included a few minutes spent doing more surgery.

By not stopping much I got ahead of the pack and spent much of the last half of the hike walking alone with my thoughts and aches.

I picked up the pace again for each of the last two sections, mostly because the finish kept getting closer and I wanted this walk to end.

Kristi and the kids were waiting to walk the last 200 meters with me and they were a great sight
to see. Kristi grabbed the camera out of my pocket, ran ahead and snapped this picture. I usually figure 20 minutes/mile as a pretty good walking pace. Overall I averaged 18.75 minutes/mile including stops and though I haven't seen the placing, I doubt that there were more than 40 people ahead of me. The cost was enduring the last 8 hours which ranks right up there as one of the most physically and emotionally challenging experiences of my life, but the intangibles somehow make it all seem worth it in this clear light of the next day. But if you ask me if I'd do it again, you will hear me say, "no f*cking way!"