Sunday, October 26, 2008

Happy tree lifting day!

OK, that's not really what Saturday was about. In Germany there are church holidays (every holiday seems to be mixed with some reason or another to party, called Fests) such as this weekend in my town called Kirwa's which is supposed to be the annual rededication of the local church. This is joined with a party for late teenagers when they take center stage around the kirwabaum or kirwa tree to dance the day after the tree is put up and after a night of seeing how much beer they can drink. So Saturday we walked the two blocks to our castle to watch the tree go up. Unbeknownst to me all the able bodied me are enlisted to push the tree upward with a precarious leveraging of long poles lashed together at the top. This particular tree was not that big apparenlty, only 22 meters or 72 feet. But a tree this size is HEAVY! So, with two other guys on our pole (there were five or six sets of poles each of varying lengths and used as the tree is elevated from the horozontal until it slides into the 5 foot hole) we heaved for TWO HOURS, well around 1.5 hours, hefting this thing up. Imagine grabbing a pole and doing squats for that long with each effort about every three minutes. So I felt at the end like I earned the liter of beer! Of course today I was so sore, my legs, arms and back are tired! A good workout all in all but probably not on the cyclo-core program.

We hit daylight savings here so it is now dark at 5pm so my weekly commute home will be in the dark from now until spring. YUCK! At least I'll have some light in the morning although it's supposed to snow this week. YUCK! Cross time!!!!!! I watched the cross world cup and it looks hard but I think if I just take off across the terrain here I'll get a good equivalent workout.

Weigh in tomorrow but I'm not worrying. Whatever happens will happen and I'll take it from there. Cheers to all!

1 comment:

CQ said...

Great story! I'm so glad you posted it. It is a treat to get a look into another part of the world.

I just hope Graeme's mind doesnt start ticking and getting new ideas for outdoor cyclocore workouts from your post. :)