Swedish Sweatshops

*Try and say THAT three times fast!*

My mother and I are sitting here in our IKEA-wannabe living room looking at the latest IKEA catalog wondering how they can sell their stuff so cheaply. We decided it must be because they use child labor. Picture all those poor little blond-haired, blue-eyed Swedish kids slaving away in stylishly-furnished IKEA sweatshops, forced to sit in ergonomic chairs and to work under the light of attractive, affordable, sturdy floor lamps...

Road Rage

So, I almost got in a fight on the highway today on my way home from work.

They are doing construction on I-70 near Vail this summer and it routinely causes big traffic jams on the highway. The few times I have been stuck in this traffic, I have noticed a bunch of people who think they can do whatever they want and decide to drive in the shoulder past all of the stopped traffic. It made me so mad that today I decided to wait in the right lane and watch for people doing this and pull into the shoulder myself to block them off, flip them off, and let them know that they are jerks.

So I did it. My first customer actually pulled onto the shoulder from right behind me. They were in the left lane and then pulled into the right lane right behind me and then right into the shoulder from there. When I saw what they were doing, I quickly pulled into the shoulder, honked my horn at them, and flipped them off. Well, they decided to stop and make more of it, acting like they wanted to fight with me. When I first decided upon this course of action, I didn't think it would result in any physical altercations. I thought I would simply flip them off and let them go on their merry way with them hopefully feeling at least a little bit guilty for their selfishness, and with me feeling at least a little bit vindicated. So when this guy stopped and wanted to make a bigger issue out of it, I didn't know what to do. So I rolled up my windows and locked my doors and motioned in an annoyed manner for him to keep going, but I also kept flipping him off too just for good measure. Luckily he decided to leave without incident.

Unphased, I kept watching for these hated shoulder passers. I saw a few coming, but I wasn't able to pull in front of them in time, so I had to be satisfied with merely flipping them off from the lane I was in as they passed unhindered on the shoulder. Then I saw another car coming and pulled in front of them and flipped them off through my sunroof. They got mad and made a two-handed "what the hell is this car doing?" sort of motion, and then they gave me a sarcastic two thumbs up and exaggerated smile gesture as if saying sarcastically, "Good job! You are a really great vigilante! Keep it up!". After a few seconds of flipping them off some more and giving them a "you should wait in traffic just like everyone else" motion, I let them pass while they continued to give me the sarcastic two thumbs up and I continued to flip them off. I wanted to say back to them, "yes, I AM good at this, and yes I WILL keep it up, you jerks!"

Yeah, it was pretty immature (REALLY immature), and probably not very smart of me (some might call it plain dumb), and it probably just made me even more mad than if I had done nothing (I was fuming), but I don't really regret doing it either. The people in the cars around me might have thought I was just as much of an ass as the people passing in the shoulder, but I like to think that maybe I was also their hero for doing what they wish they had done. It probably had no real effect on the people who I flipped off either, other than just make them angry, but I also like to think that maybe I made them feel at least a smidgen of guilt too. So, I probably won't do it again in the future, but I think I'm glad I did it anyway.

PS: Don't worry. I pretty much always contain my emotions quite well when I am driving, especially when I'm driving the bus. Even though there are so many thing to get mad about when driving the bus, I am really good about maintaining my composure and not letting those things upset me.

Deleted

I almost wrote another blog entry today, but it sucked, so I deleted it and wrote this one instead.

Anyway, today's video is "Break" by The Cinematics. I had never heard of them before yesterday when I randomly and on a whim downloaded their album from iTunes just because it was on the discounted "Up & Coming" list and the one or two songs I listened to sounded decent. So I bought the whole album and I actually really like it! Go figure. I don't really like this video that much though. Fluorescent bulbs as decorations in music videos is so overrated.

A date with Judi Dench

This morning I had a dream that I was on a date with Judi Dench. At the beginning of the date I was madly in love with her, but by the end I was rather put-off by how rude she was and how she was constantly stuffing her face with sweets and cakes and pastries and very small, very expensive cappuccinos. She was wearing this strange, sparkly white dress but she kept spilling cake and pudding on it. Who knew Judi Dench was such a slob? At least I was looking really spiffy in my white T-shirt. It was probably the worst date I've ever been on.

Later on, I was spraying all the plants in town with a Coca-Cola/Water mixture to attract snakes to town to scare away all of the bunnies. Apparently the bunnies were really wreaking havoc and everyone thought snakes would be better. Or wait, maybe we were trying to attract bunnies to get rid of the snakes; I don't remember. I squirted one guy in the eye with the potent mixture after he made fun of my green shirt, but really I had only squirted myself in the eye since I was experiencing a bout of multiple personalities and that guy was just my alter ego. It turned out that my alter ego and I were fighting over some woman who wasn't interested in either of us, but I was pretty sure that she was slightly less uninterested in ME than in the other alter ego me who I had squirted in the eye with coca cola.

This woman had a flock of dogs following her everywhere she went. Each of the dogs was like a representation of one of her former boyfriends. There were some really mean, nasty, mangy looking dogs, and a few nicer looking dogs. My dog representative was a Weimaraner. My alter ego's dog was a Pomeranian.

Here's a video of a Pomeranian wrestling with a bigger dog:

Published

A week or so ago Mom pointed out to me that the local newspaper, the Vail Daily, was looking for contributors to their blog. So I wrote the guy telling him about my interest in cars and whatnot and he replied saying he was interested and to send him a blog. So I did; he liked it and he put it up on their website.

"Diesels emerging as 'economy cars' in the US" by Yours Truly for the Vail Daily

Hilarious

The blog topic recommendations have been noted and I might write about them soon, but for today I just want to put up some videos of a hilarious episode of my favorite automotive TV show, Top Gear on BBC (also the source of the last Bus-Jumping video). In this hour-long episode the guys head across the pond to the good ol' US-of-A for some hoot-hollerin' fun. They start by buying each of themselves a car for under $1000 in Miami which they then drive to New Orleans with plenty of funny moments in between.

It is worth watching all six ten-minute segments, but if you want to just skip the funniest part, go to Part 4 and fast forward to approximately 7:30 in. In this segment the boys have been challenged to go camping and only eat whatever they can find dead along the side of the road. After finding and passing-up a few candidates they finally find a squirrel that might work, but Jeremy decides to keep looking and this is where he returns triumphant with his hilarious findings. Really the whole episode is worth watching though, so if you like this part you should watch the rest too.

Top Gear in America, Part 1


Top Gear in America, Part 2


Top Gear in America, Part 3


Top Gear in America, Part 4 (this is the funniest one, FF to about 7:30)


Top Gear in America, Part 5


Top Gear in America, Part 6

Bus Jumping

I don't think this video even needs an introduction.

Reader's Choice

I have been feeling kind of "blah" since coming back to Edwards after being in Europe. I feel like my whole life is sort of in limbo because I don't want to live here much past, say, September, but I don't have anything lined up either... In the mean time I am just driving the bus hoping to save up enough money so I can maybe afford to do whatever it is I end up doing when that magical arbitrary September deadline rolls around. Anyway, as a result of this "blah-ness", I have been experiencing writer's block with this blog lately. I have been trying to write blogs but I just haven't been able to write anything that I felt like posting. So if any of you have ideas or suggestions for blog-worthy topics, let me know. If I like your topic idea then maybe I'll try to write a whole blog about it. I'll take any and all suggestions into consideration. I would list some of the topic ideas I've had lately just to get you guys started, but I wouldn't want to stifle your creativity. Thanks in advance for your help.

Europe Wrap-Up

Now that I've been home for a few days and have had some time to reflect on my trip to Europe, I thought I should write an entry about it before too much time passes and other more blog-worthy things start happening to me and I never get around to writing anything about Europe. I'm also trying to put together a Google Map showing our route and some highlights and whatnot, but no promises...

So, to make a long story short, it was a great trip. After booking the airfare both my dad and I confided in each other that Germany was actually nowhere near the top of either of our travel wish-lists and that we both would have probably preferred to go somewhere else. Despite that, we both loved Germany and the other places we went as well. I was actually surprised at how much I enjoyed Germany. Here are some of the things I liked about Germany in general:

• Carbon Conscious - One of the very first things I saw after arriving in Germany was vast fields of flaxseed and windmills. Flaxseed is used to produce biodiesel and Germany is one of the world's leaders in biodiesel production and consumption. I think I read somewhere that most (all?) diesel sold in Germany has some blend of biodiesel and higher blends are readily available. In our few days driving around in the car we saw many gas stations offering biodiesel, and it was always the cheapest offering too (probably thanks to government subsidies). Gasoline in general is quite expensive though (approximately $5/gallon) which I actually think is a good thing because I think it probably makes people drive less. But expensive gas isn't the only thing that helps remind Germans of the carbon their cars emit; new cars sold in Europe all seem to include a carbon-emissions figure on the sticker right along with the gas mileage and the horsepower. In general Germans and other Europeans just seem to be more aware of the impact their activities have on the planet and I like that very much.
  
• Cars - Because it is expensive to own a car and difficult to park it, there just don't seem to be quite as many cars as in the US, but there are a lot more cool cars. I think per-capita there are more Bimmers, Benzes, Audis, and Porsches there than there are Fords, Chevys, and Toyotas here. On this trip I also saw several very special cars which I will probably never see again for the rest of my life. So the car-watching is quite a bit better there, but even the more plain-jane cars there are better. Small and efficient is the name of the game rather than big and bulky like here.
  
• Public Transportation - As cool as the cars are, Dad and I were happy to return our rental car and go back to the fantastic public transportation. Between the trains, trams, buses, and subways we easily, cheaply, and comfortably got everywhere we needed to go. Actually, it was the 3-hour trek between DIA and Dad's house in Berthoud that was the hardest part. On a slightly unrelated note, German tram drivers have some pretty good bus-driver waves, but since they don't have to steer they seem to have a broader range of wave possibilities, but that's another blog...
  
• Laissez-Faire - I've written and re-written this bullet three times now and I just don't know how to articulate it, but the basic idea is that Germans are pretty laid-back. Yeah, I'll just leave it at that.

And now for the highlights of the trip, in no particular order:

• Berlin - I loved Berlin and if I only spoke German I would love to live there for awhile. It is a pretty big city, but it has lots of neat little old neighborhoods scattered throughout the city, each with its own distinct flavor. Although the wall came down nearly 2 decades ago and the city has for the most part integrated itself back together pretty seamlessly, I still found the history and the legacy of the wall to be quite fascinating. I'm not sure if I liked Berlin or Munich better, but Berlin might be the favorite by just the slimmest margin. I do think though that where I would describe Munich with words like "lovely" and "laid-back," I would describe Berlin with words like "interesting" and "vibrant."
  
• Munich - With its attractive old town, English Garden, efficient public transportation, pretty Isar River, and most important, its fantastic beer gardens, Munich is a real gem. And its proximity to the Alps means skiing probably isn't too far away from here either. Hmm, maybe I'll have to re-think putting Berlin in first place.
  
• Budapest - Budapest certainly lacked the aesthetic beauty of Munich and the vibrancy of Berlin, but it had a character all its own which I enjoyed. I wrote in a previous entry that Budapest was "gritty" and had sort of an Eastern-Bloc feel to it, and I guess still haven't thought of a better way to describe it. I guess none of those descriptors make it sound very good, but somehow I really liked it. I also felt like the Hungarians were some of the nicer people that we came across on the whole trip, and I was also pretty intrigued by the Hungarian language which is a pretty crazy language with no close linguistic relatives. Finally, Budapest has several big thermal pools, one of which we visited and it was very pleasant. It was sort of like Glenwood Springs pool, only less stinky, more elegant, and with slightly more good-looking people.
  
• Driving - The driving portion of our trip was fun not just for the actual driving (curvy narrow roads and fast-paced autobahn), but also for all the quaint German countryside that we got to see.
  
• M.C. Escher Museum (The Hague) - I knew that I liked Escher before going to this museum in The Hague, Netherlands (who doesn't like Escher?), but I gained a new appreciation for his art after seeing this museum. I hadn't realized that much of his work was done with wood block carvings, which kind of blew my mind. I also got to see a lot of his pieces which I had never seen before. He must have been a real genius. I bet he was good at puzzles too. I bet he kicked ass at scrabble too. We also went to the Van Gogh Museum in Amsterdam which also made me better appreciate Van Gogh, but not as much as Escher.
  
• Mercedes-Benz Museum (Stuttgart) - I'm not really a big fan of Mercedes-Benz because I'm pretty sure they haven't sold a car with a manual transmission in the United States for several decades now, but despite that I loved their huge, fancy museum full of millions of dollars of old, rare, and one-of-a-kind cars. Dad and I went about two hours before closing when we got to Stuttgart and only managed to see about half of it, so I had to go back the next day to finish it. The best part, however, was the buses on display. They had a big fancy new one, but you couldn't sit in the driver's seat unfortunately. Luckily they had another older bus in which you COULD sit in the drivers seat. So I waited for all the other little kids to hurry up and get out of it so I could have my turn at the helm and boy was it worth it. They also had a sweet video of a bus doing 360's on a sheet of ice doing ABS brake testing or something. It looked so fun, I hope I don't accidentally try it someday...
  
• Audi Factory (Ingolstadt) - Audi also had a museum that looked suspiciously similar to the Mercedes museum, but it wasn't nearly as good. Audi DID have a factory tour though which was very interesting despite our lackluster tour guide. It was neat to see the whole process of assembling the car and seeing the big robots deftly maneuver themselves through their confined workspaces, not seeming to care about all the things that they almost collide with as they run through their programmed motions. I think the most important thing that I got from the tour, however, was the realization that everything is infinitely connected. When you go buy a car from a car dealer, it seems very simple, but then you get thinking of every single part on that car, thousands of parts, each of which had to be assembled with the other parts, each of which were produced using tools which were constructed of many other thousands of parts which were made from materials which were produced in some other factory which had more tools to produce the materials which are used to produce the... well I could go on and on.
  

And finally, a few disappointments:

• BMW Museum - Under renovation, they only have a temporary exhibit which I didn't even bother going to. But hopefully the renovated one should be fantastic when it is finished, supposedly in just a few months.
  
• Porsche Museum - Under construction, the current museum is pretty underwhelming. At least it was free though, and it did feature a Porsche Cayman cut in half... Rumor has it the new Porsche Museum will also be big, fancy, and amazing like the Mercedes one... I guess I'll have to go back and see it.
  
• Nürburgring - The only disappointment with this was that I didn't do my homework and so I ended up showing up there and having no way to get a ride around this public race track. So I just stood at the entrance/exit point and watched all the Porsches and sport bikes and stuff go in and out from the long, curvy track dubbed "The Green Hell." I'll just have to plan on going back after I turn 25 and rent a car and drive on it myself I guess...
  
• Stuttgart - Home to Porsche and Mercedes-Benz, I was hoping for a lot from Stuttgart, but this ended up being probably my least favorite German city. That's okay though because Germany seems to have more than its fair share of charming cities, so if it has a mediocre one here and there I guess it is only fair.
  
• Amsterdam - As I mentioned previously, A'dam was just too debaucherous for my taste. I guess some people like it though. Good for them.
  

Ok, I guess that's it! It was a good trip! Hopefully I'll do that map thing... eventually... maybe... but we'll see I guess.

Beer Diplomacy

All good things must come to an end. Dad and I will be flying back home to Colorado bright and early tomorrow morning. It has really been a great trip, better than I had even imagined it would be. I don't have time right now to write about my overall feelings and impressions from the whole trip, but I will write about the past few days.

Basically we did a lot of driving through some very picturesque German countryside and ended up in Stuttgart on Friday. The car was a fun adventure, but we were happy to get rid of it. We think that Dad managed to get two photo-radar tickets in a 5-minute span towards the end of our last full day of driving. And then the morning that we had to return the car our GPS system decided to freak out as we were approaching Stuttgart so we spent an extra 45 minutes and probably €15 of gas driving around lost in Stuttgart. Eventually we found the place though and we happy to go back to using public transportation.

Our first night in Stuttgart we wandered around trying to find some dinner and ended up having some beers outside at a little french restaurant. Dad and I were sitting there having a conversation about something and I noticed that this guy sitting next to us seemed to be paying a lot of attention to our conversation. After awhile he finally leans over and in some labored English asks us where we are from. It turns out he has been studying English for 3 years and was enjoying listening to our "beautiful language." I do this all the time when I sit next to people speaking other languages, so I know exactly how he feels, but I'm sure this is the first time I've ever heard anyone feel this way about English just because English is so ubiquitous. It was kind of refreshing to hear someone say that English is a beauiful language. Anyway, he obviousy just wanted to practice some English and we obliged. We had a nice little simple conversation. He said something about how the USA is "such a wonderful country." I guess that in lots of ways it is, but we told him that we feel much the same way about Germany and that we think in many ways Germany is better off than the USA. Before we knew what was going on he had paid the waitress for our bill as well as his own and left before we could even offer to buy him another drink. It was kind of a neat encounter.

The next day we had the misfortune of being stuck in Stuttgart for a huge futbol game. This is the second time I've unknowingly ended up in a European town on a futbol game day and I've decided that I don't like it. Part of me feels like it is the sort of thing that I should enjoy and a unique cultural experience or whatever, but mostly I just dislike the unruly mobliness of the whole affair.

The highlight of Stuttgart was the amazing and huge Mercedes-Benz Museum. Dad and I went inthe afternoon on the first day we got there, unfortunately in the two hours that we had we were only able to get through half of the museum, so I had to go back the next day to finish it. Today we went to Ingolstadt, home of Audi, and saw their museum which was not as good as the Mercedes museum, but we also did a factory tour which was much more interesting. We saw the automated robots and the whole assembly line for the Audi A3. It really makes you realize all of the work that goes into making a car. I was very impressed by the whole thing.

And so now we are back in Munich where the whole trip started. I wondered if I would find Munich as appealing the second time here as I did when we started here a month ago. I wondered if after seeing a bunch of other cities if Munich would still seem as cool, and in fact it does. Anyway, I only have a few hours left of daylight here before we hop on the plane in the morning so I had better to go the beer garden for the rest of the afternoon. I'll hopefully write something about my overall thoughts and impressions shortly after I get back home. Tchüss!