AACHEN PARIS BIKE ADVENTURE: DAY 1 <- clicken Sie here ...

Ouch!
Sprained wrist
Good start! We managed to go beyond our daily goal and ride 107 km without much stress. Never having ridden that much in my life worried me, especially after totally exhausting myself going up the first little hill still in Aachen. I was too anxious and went up too quickly trying not to fall behind well-experienced Mario. It turned out to be the hardest climb of the whole trip, after that I found my own tempo and kept up quite well.

At least until we hit the city of Luettich, Belgium, where I slipped on a patch of thick black oil in midst of heavy traffic. I was lucky not to get run over by trucks behind me, but took away a sprained wrist along with some scratches and bruises. We took a break to assess the damage, but I decided I was going to clench my teeth and ride on.

Ouch!
Wild camping
The day turned out to be hot and sweaty, but at the end I got the reward of taking a soothing shower at a campground near the place where we set up tent. I never thought a would appreciate a shower that much. I felt relief as the cool water ran over my aching body! Afterwards I felt good, clean and happy. Some vodka-coke and a nice talk about life and Mario and I went to sleep.

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AACHEN PARIS BIKE ADVENTURE <- clicken Sie here ...


This was to be no ordinary vacation. Six days, six hundred kilometers, two bikes, two tents, and no comfort. My friend Mario and I wanted to challenge ourselves for vacation, and we set off on a bike trip from Aachen through Belgium and France to Paris.

Some vin rouge to keep us happy
Well, it turned out to be quite an exciting quest, full of beautiful countryside, burning ass-pain, and a lot of adventure along the way. All the ingredients to make a great vacation. Mario played the part of the experienced guide. He had done the trip to Pairs two years earlier, but it had taken him and our friend Frank a sluggish eleven days to reach Paris, and he couldn´t stop thinking back on this disgraceful pace as we were to set the record straight. His goal was to get to Paris as fast as possible with a newbie like me in his tow. At the same time he wanted to use as little money as possible. Back to basics was his motto. Wild camping, cheap food, and cheap drink was his thing. He was kind enough, though, to take my capabilities as a greenhorn bike tourer into account, and we came to a good accord on the trip. We managed to keep a medium 100km per day pace.

Mario was very keen on keeping the bill down, so much so that he opted for wild camping on the side canal and swimming in it´s dirty-green waters instead of putting up tent in nice camp-grounds with toilets and showers. We also didn´t take a stove with us, so my food consisted of French baguette with salami and the occasional can of cold Ravoli, while Mario even went a step further by taking six rolls, 6 pieces of salami, and 3 camemberts with him from Aachen, and living off of this alone for quite a few days along the trip. Just imagine fresh camembert grilling for three days and blazing heat in his bike basket, and you can imagine how much he went back to basics.

Nice cold drinks to combat the heat were also not part of the plan. Instead we each would fill up two big bottles with luke-warm water from faucets we found along the way. The water would last us about half a day, but were far from refreshing, as they heated up pretty quickly in the blazing sun. But hey, it was for free, and that´s what seemed to count.

Mario and I under the Arc de Triomphe
Despite the hardship the trip was all worth it. We got along great, with Mario being quite considerate to my ideas, especially when I just about had it with the back to basics stuff. On day 6 at 21:00 in the evening we finally were in downtown Paris. We made it! At that point my ass hurt so much I couldn´t even appreciate reaching our goal. I decided to hit a hotel to reward myself for the long ride, while Mario camped out at the nearby Bois de Boulogne camp ground. We spent four wild days and wild nights in Paris to celebrate our trip.

In the next days I will post the diary of the trip that I recored along the way, so stay tuned.

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REBEL STREET ART CELEBRATION <- clicken Sie here ...

Street Art Sao Paulo
I have a weakness for steet artists, people who leave their mark on the cities of this world by putting their art anonymously on the streets. These beautification terrorists sneak through the night like bandits, spraying, tagging, knitting, planting their ideas for the enjoyment of everybody, taking charge and asking no one.

I have spotlighted some projects here already - like LED throwies, Punk Knitta or the PARKing project - but take a look at what I dug out tonight: The Wooster Collective, a nutty group originating in New York's Wooster street who believes street art is the shits and loves to show every piece it can find.

Doesn't that inspire you? So go out and do something!I know I will :-)

[Via Rugged Magazine]
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TECHNORATI CLAIM MY BLOG <- clicken Sie here ...

My famous Cons
Dear readers, I want to become famous. I want to be recognized on the streets, want beautiful yet shy girls whisper to each other "that's him! That's Brad Wurst. He's got that killer blog. He's so funny. I wish I wasn't so shy. Then I would just go up to him and kiss him."

I thought this would happen by itself, by just writing witty, original articles about delightfully funny things. Well, not quite. What's missing is marketing. I need to do is advertise the existence of my entertaining little baby, e.g. on Technorati. Well, I did, so now I am waiting for people hungry for my original humor to start pouring in. "Hello, I am Brad. Brad Wurst. I am ready."

THE THREE STOOGES

Getting drunk in Baad Aachen

BULLSHIT BINGO OR HOW TO SPICE UP BORING BUSINESS MEETINGS


Working as a freelance software developer for a large international organization is a curious thing: Unmotivated permanent employees called managers suck all motivation out of the freelance nonpermanent staff called developers, until the freelancers are fed up and leave. Our small team of freelancers decided to spice up our time here by adding some fun to this dull, draining routine.

Our days as developers here are boring, uneventful, tedious and annoying. An animating exception to our daily rut are our weekly progress meetings with management. This is the time when management - the permanent staff - manages to suck all the motivation out of us, little by little. Slowly, ever so slowly you realize that they have no idea about software development, no clue how projects are managed, and that all they do is confuse everybody around them while at the same time grind all projects to a halt.

Our little team now came up with a particularly cunning way to pass time during those meetings. Our project is managed by Rashid, an extremely fine example of managerial incompetence. He is a big, dorky, 40-year old guy, who leaves the impression that he is a bit slow in his thinking. On top of the apparent lack of capacity, our project manager is of Tunesian descent, and has a bit of a problem with the English language: He does not speak it very well, nor does he understand it - or anything else for that matter - very well. His native language is French, but I have been informed by native French speakers that his French is not very good, either.

His English is so bad that we don't even try to understand what point he is trying to make anymore. Let's face it: It's most certainly some ridiculous idea anyway. So we started collecting original quotes from him as a way to pass time. We write them down, collect them, trade them like kids do with baseball cards. We even started imitating his liguistic disasters during lunchtime to entertain colleagues from less fortunate teams.

To get a feel for the magical mishaps we are lucky to parttake in each day here is a small selection of Rashidisms - named in honor of the perpetrator - and the translation that we have agreed upon (Try pronouncing them with a thick Tunesian accent for laughs):
  • Error of message, aka message of error - Error message
  • We haven't to waste time - We shouldn't waste time
  • Time is really money - And e=mc^2
  • Compound - Component (big difference in the world of computers)
  • Go down by the button - We still don't know what this means
  • SOAP massage - SOAP message
  • NilPounter - NullPointer
  • future - Feature
  • IPI - API (Application Programming Interface)
To round off his speeches our project manager likes to sprinkle them liberally with the phrase in fact at the most inappropriate places, just to make it sound like he made some important discovery.

After collecting enough Rashidisms we started designing games around these words. First game was Bullshit Bingo: Draw three-by-three squares on a piece of paper, fill each square with one of your favorite Rashidism, and then cross them out as they occur in the meeting. The first one to get three in a row jumps up and yells "Bingo!" We even developed a Java application to print out the bingo sheets.

After getting bored with this game we now devised a new one: The aim is to diligently weave as many Rashidisms as possible into our own speeches during a meeting. A tallysheet is kept and the winner is announced after the meeting. Of course each one tries to outdo the others with sentences full of Rashidisms when it is their turn to explain what they are working on.

Imagine seriously explaining to your project manager and your eager colleagues - while keeping a straight face - that you went down by the button to find the NilPounter in the IPI of the compound, but in fact you were not able to reproduce this error of message, because it is not a future of this compound. Finish off with the conclusion that you haven't to waste time on that anymore, because you know time is really money. It is sure to get you a high score on the tally sheet, and the respect of your peers.

I think our project manager knows that something is going on, as we developers constantly mark things on pieces of paper, giggle around, and make incomprehensible statements, but owing to his wit I don't think it elicited more than a "uhh?" in his brain. At least he never questioned people jumping up jelling "Bingo" at inappropriate times.

So if boring meetings and incompetent management sound strangely familiar, try devising games like this for yourself! Trust me: It will make your drab meetings almost thrilling :-)

P.S.: Another beautiful Rashidism for the road: Don't say what I am not saying

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