Friday, March 21, 2008

Happy Spring


Finally at least we hit the date, March 21st the first day of Spring. For the past few days while Mary and Marco have been in Prague I've been home living with the dogs. My mode of transportation my mountain bike and just regular work days. The thing about it though is the weather couldn't have been worse. It has rained or snowed ever day this week. The worst was yesterday where the ride to work was in thick heavy snow (coming down). The ride home was in high wind, rock hard rain pelting my face and mud. So I've been feeling a bit sad about this great weather.
Yesterday though my mind turned around. I was talking to one of the young German guys in our department Thomas. It was snowing really hard and I said "Hey Thomas, I'll be you like this weather". Thomas smiled and said "Of course I love it, I'm going skiing tomorrow and there's 1 meter fresh powder in the mountains". Then he said "Dave, in Germany we have a saying that goes something like this Make due with what you've got. So when it snows, we ski and when it's sunny we head to the beach." I had a flashback of San Diego where the sun shines almost every day. You get so used to the Sunshine that you forget just how good it really is. I remember days when it rained in So Cal, life simply took a day off. But that is not the German mindset. So today, I became German. The wind was raging yet again. Rain mixed with Snow. The outlook is for this to continue for the next 3 days. So today I put on my tights, my long sleeve thermal top, my hat, gloves, wind proof jacket and I-Pod and went out for a 2 hour run. I ran into the forest to get out of the wind and simply too trails I don't normally take just to stay in the Forest. I came back home muddier than I left, and feeling really good about the rest of the day.
By the way it is Good Friday which means no work! Germany takes day off seriously. Everyone in Germany gets a 4 day weekend. Monday is a Bank Holiday.
Happy Spring...
It's a good life.
Dave

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