Prague

Hello all from Prague!

I flew in early this morning for meetings and will be here for a few days. What is really cool is that it is summer and it dusk at 10:00 pm! I took the opportunity tonight to walk Wenceslas Square a little bit. It was too dark for pictures, but I will try to get out earlier tomorrow to take some pictures.

Prague is unique, the architecture is just amazing. I love walking slowly down the side streets and looking at the buildings. Each block seems to be it's own fortress. The fronts of the buildings are all connected like a protective wall from the second floor and above. But at the first floor, you will find little passageways which will lead to a little courtyard in the middle of the block. Very cool looking.

The nightlife seems never ending as well. At 10:00, Wenceslas Square was absoutely packed with people, 70% were of a younger generation, which, I must admit, I am not part of anymore... but there was a mixture of all generations out and about.

Well, that is it for now, I will get some pictures tomorrow and upload them.

México!

Ok, so it has been a while since I blogged - sorry about that. Not much has gone on actually. I haven't traveled (until this week), nothing exciting has happened in Bonn, and as my son says after I get home from a ride, "No fresh booboo's".

But, that all changed on Monday, the traveling, not the booboo's. I had meetings in México City this week. Fortunately, there is a direct non-stop from Frankfurt to México City, unfortunately it is 12.5 hours to get there. Thank goodness for personal entertainment systems on the airplane. I watched two movies, two TV shows and played a few games. I also worked a little bit...

I really liked México City, mainly for the food. Everything has a great flavor to it. A lot of really good spices and salsa on everything! The other thing I liked about the trip was my hotel was right in the airport and the offices I had meetings in were right in the airport as well. All I had to do was roll out of bed, walk to the office (deciding which of the 3 Starbuck's to stop at) and I was at work. Same thing at the end of the day - no Taxi's! Although the taxi's are cool. They are old VW Bugs, well, old body style since they still made them for México until 2 years ago, and are green with white tops! Very cool looking.

Finally, what trip to México wouldn't be complete without a margarita? Well, just in case you missed out on one while you were there, Lufthansa offers one as a welcome beverage in addition to the normal champagne, water or orange juice. Very nice start to the long return flight... Next week, Prague!

Driving and Music

It has been a while since the last blog entry...

So I did go for the bike ride on Sunday. It was a great ride. I went out with a new riding partner who is used to flats and not much climbing. Now I have heard he is a really strong rider on the flats, so I was a little worried about going for a ride as I do not consider myself a super strong rider. However, the hills leveled the playing field. All in all, it was a really good ride. The weather was good and the roads were dry. In the end it looks like we will ride some more in the future and he invited me to use one of his bikes in the States next time I am in town and want to go for a ride.

After spending the day with family, I had a quick business trip to Brussels, well, the meetings were at the airport, so I didn't really see Brussels at all.

Anyway, it is 235 km (141 miles) from Bonn, 225 of these are on the autobahn :). The company has a fleet of cars we can rent out for trips like this. I had a relatively new BMW 320 with a 6 speed :) I really enjoyed cruising on up the highway on this trip. Even though the car was a combi (stationwagon), it drove like a sports car. Plus the car even had a hook up for the iPod, so I got to listen to good old american music for the entire ride up and back!

This leads me to my last good tidbit for the day, one of my favorite artists Toby Keith is releasing another album in June! Thank goodness for iTunes. It makes buying music so easy and the iPod makes travel so much better, especially on long flights like the one next month to Mexico (12 hours).

Sun at last!

Today was a great day. We dropped our son off at school and then went shopping for the babies room. We actually got a lot accomplished!

The best part of the day though was the fact that the sun came out! It was gorgeous. So, after getting back from many different stores, I finally was able to go out for another metric century (62 miles for those of you across the pond). Since I have made plans to ride another century on Sunday with someone whom I have never ridden with before (and happens to be a pretty high ranking executive in my company), I decided to take it somewhat easy and not to try to kill myself. I should try that more often! I finished the ride in 3 hours and 30 minutes, a whole 45 minutes less than last Saturdays ride. Of course, the lack of rain and the lack of blood probably helped this some.

Well, I think tomorrow will be an easy day instead of the 4 hours I had planned, need to save the legs some for Sunday!