Berlin, 19.02.01
Busy weekend:
Saturday morning I came third in a marathon-distance speedskating event on the outdoor oval.
I was pretty happy with the result, on the whole. I didn't have much trouble holding the pace of the two leaders, I'm much quicker than last year, but without decent training over the past few weeks I just couldn't stay down in that tuck for more than 20 or 30 laps at a time. So I would race fast until my back and legs began to hurt too much, join a group of slower skaters for a few laps, attempt to stand up, then jump back on the fast boys when they lapped me. In the end I improved my time by four minutes (1:14). It was a hard effort (I have the heart rate data to prove it) and my legs were still a bit sore this morning. (For the truly interested, I posted a more detailed race report to rec.sport.skating.racing.)
The requisite baby picture:
She's starting to think about crawling, really enjoys laying on her stomach peering around. To encourage mobility we put her about a foot away from the cat. She wills herself to move closer, but the body doesn't quite respond yet. Occasionally the cat does - yesterday Vita backed up and gave her the "butt-check" against the side of her head. They seem to like each other.
Finally, some local colour:
Schlecker is a drugstore chain. The rest of the translation I leave as an exercise (solution below). How I love Friedrichshain.
Otherwise, we had a friend in town for a day-and-a-half, so when I wasn't racing around on skates I was walking around Berlin pushing a baby carriage, showing off the sights while trying giving Annette some baby-free time to finish her article, which, thank Wotan, she did on Sunday afternoon.
Translation: arschlecker = ass licker. (Disclosure: I actually did that in Photoshop, I saw it when leaving for a ride one weekend but by the time I came round with the camera a few days later they had painted it over.)
