burn calories "on the go"

I think one main factor why Japanese people are usually more skinny is that they always engage their whole body when talking. This one pretty woman was ordering a skim latte and "also an ice cube on the side, ja ja ja" while she was bending her torso like a chicken picking for corn. That is exercising right there!

My Ford Escord. I love hating it. Hate loving it?

My white Ford Escord is a '94 and it is getting old. The last 1/2 year it got a valuable internal make over. Silicon boobs, in other words. It's old, but looks and feels good due to some mechanic surgery. It got a fancy water pump, a new generator, new break pads, and some other new parts which i don't remember the words. OR maybe comparing it with Silicon Boobs is not a good one. Because i don't think they look good and i can't imagine that ice-pack gel like knobs feel good. And compared to silicon boobs I really believe that my car feels the touchy-touchy I sometimes give it after it is getting into the "hot" range. Giving it touchy-touchy is not always easy. it lacks its damper. and that sucks. Makes me a bit furious.
But my white Ford Escord is a tough, good running car. And it is the car of choice when it comes to jump-start Ferraris. Ferraris are the most beautiful, hot, elegant, powerful, awesome cars there is. A black horse- simply fascinating. I could just sit in a beach chair and look at it. Black horse or white donkey, I know about the hassle of not having a car. And I am very thankful that I can drive one. And because i love Ferraris so much, i drew one. Came out cool.

She came, she saw, she conquered

I support smoking, i race fast myself. At this first race of the year I totally smoked them. I even smoked the guys, comming in 3rd overall (men and women). If they would have let the women start with the men, i would have won the whole thing. Read on!
I did my first race of the year, the HQBN Sprint Triathlon on the Marine Corp Base in Hawaii. I want to start telling about it the day before. I went to meet my coach Mike, because he has aero wheels that I could race on. I love aerowheels. Alone the summing sound of it makes me want to go fast. As we put the bike together, the moon rose up from the ocean. Mike is the house care taker or a multimillion dollar house project on the secluded side of Kailua beach. It was fantastic!
Race morning was unspectacular. As long as I can hit the potty before race start, I am happy. That is usually sort of a problem. Oftentimes I need to go when the run starts. And that is no fun; seriously. It sucks, actually. I went to the race withoug knowing how I will feel. I have been training a lot, but not as intense as last year. I am also still not running a whole lot because of my lingering hip/hamstring/wherever-it-is injury. I wanted to get a hard effort session in by racing and I wanted to smoke the swim and especially the bike. Whatever would happen on the run, was fine with me. The swim was great until the 2nd turnaround, where it started to become a battlefield of fast women against slow guys. I need to say that the mass start at the xterra world’s is by far the best idea. If I had no “traffic” blockage, I would have won the whole thing, men and women together. And that would have been history! The bike was fast, hard and in the zone, meaninig I don’t remember what was happening or how I felt. Just as it should be. The first 500m into the run felt heavy and stiff, but then I actually got speedier than I thought I can push. And there was a little hill as well! I love hills! So that definitely made my day- I finished with a pace of 5:41 min/mi.

Back in Hawaii
The first thing I did when I was back on Oahu was go to the ocean at Kailua Beach and listen to the waves. I now frequently visit The Sky Tonight at the Bishop Museum to learn star constellations. So that became a frequent as well, looking up to the stars and the moon. The second thing I did was riding Tantalus the next morning. I love riding Tantalus. It’s like meditation. Last year I could not do any workout without my i-pod; this season it is so easy to zoom in, get in the zone and be in the nirvana or wherever you might call it. Feels damn good. Power bar fruit smoothie tastes damn good when riding Tantalus. The third thing after the workout was getting Starbuck’s. I am a Starbuck’s addict. Venti decaf with ½ inch of steamed soy, foam on the side. If you want make me happy get me a Starbuck’s gift certificate! Or surprise me with Business Cards (that’s you Blair)!! Then I felt really flat. The best thing to do for acclimatizing when I am traveling is to force myself to get up as sunrise, take a 1 hour nap at noon and go to bed around 9:30pm. The rest of the week was spent cleaning the Kailuana Cottage, which is usually a 4 day project. The cottage is part of a multi million dollar beach front property. Don Eovino (www.eovino.net) is a friend of mine; if you would like to invest in his projects, please contact them! The cottage is for vacation rent and needs to be cleaned meticulously. I love it though, because the location is just insane-ly beautiful. I went to an interval swim in the ocean and my buddy Jimmy took the kayak out to take pictures of me. I love side of the island the most. Fantastic!

Germany, Cham

I keep thinking about this stay. It never was that much fun for me to “have to” go back to Germany. It’s not “home” anymore and I never felt really home in Germany either. This time was different though. I spent a lot of time with my sister Michaela, her husband Gerard and her kids Sara-Mia and Helena. They are amazing. And exhausting. The talking is most exhaustin. For me at least, but it is also looks exhausting to me what they are doing the whole day. They talk the whole day and run around all day and try to move all day. Sara-Mia will be two in June; Elisa will be one a month later. Last time I saw them, Sara-Mia was about 2 months old. Sara-Mia got to know me from pictures as the famous Aunti Marion from Honolulu and she indeed recognized me when I arrived. I thought this is impressive. She is in fact scarily smart. Elisa has an insane deep look. She just looks at you and you can tell that she is thinking something seriously. Her hair is so thin and about 1 inch long and sticks towards the sky like she’d got stroke by lightening. I cracked up because of laughing so many times. I think that is the main reason why I enjoyed my stay so much! My sister and her husband are finishing building her house and they saw me as a welcomed guest for the reason that I would be the baby sitter to give my sister a time out so that she can do more outdoor work on the property. I always liked kids and I seem to be able to easily connect to kids; but I really feel more for Sara-Mia and Elisa. They are mine, kind of. Just looking at them during the day was fun and did not seem wasteful, although really nothing got done (in terms of studying and working). And at the end of the day, I was so out of energy that I had to drag myself to the gym to get on the spinning bike to do my interval workout. Respect to all the mothers out there that have the drive to do triathlons while having kids.

Another thing that I always enjoy while being in Cham is that I am known. People know me on the streets, they know what I do, they know my name. Physiotherapists call me up to ask if they can work on me and if I can leave an autograph. This time some of them even called my mum prior to my arrival. When I go to the local pool, they close up a lane specially for me. If I go to the gym, I can have the entire spinning room for myself and I can train for free on the machines.
Again I was reminded that I am so blessed for what I have. I have an awesome family, including the most goofy cat there is and most snoopy dog there is. Basically one bunch of ‘amusingly genius individuals’. I have a home that will always be home even if I am the exotic one of the family. I am blessed for being able to live out my talents, that my parents pushed me to do sports when I was younger and that they have let me make my own decisions and let me go to Hawaii. Hawaii is the place where I have my home, that’s ‘where I am’. I will go back to Germany in 2010 and look forward to it.

Tripping

The last 3 weeks my body felt mixed around like a 'Zusatzzahl in einer Lottoziehung in dieser durchsichtigen Mixkugel'. (I know most of you don't have a clue what that means, but I don't know an english explaination). I flew to Germany for 10 days, just got acclimatized to the 12 hour time difference, then heading back to Hawaii for 6 days and then flying to New York for 5 days. I already wrote a little bit about my Germany visit, but will write some more about it and about Hawaii and New York.

Today I received an email from my mom. Apparently my neith Sara-Mia, a 2 year old found a picture of me in my mom’s car. It is now her “comfort-item” in the BMW. She holds it in her hands and says, “ Mati – Honolulu”. That would be me then. Sara-Mia calls me “Mati”. My sister tried to teach her ‘Tante Marion aus Honolulu’ (Aunti Marion from Honolulu -in English), but even if she is able to toss in whole sentences in the middle of a conversation, she kind of refuses to pick up ‘Tante Marion’. This is a good thing. Being called “Tante” in Germany has something negative on it. We call fat slow people Tante. We call old fat slow people Tante. Not sure why Germans do that.
Today, I spend time thinking about Sara-Mia on my long Pali-Loop ride. Long rides are always dangerous for getting into some serious thinking. So here is the second good reason, why ‘Mati’ is preferred to ‘Tante Marion’. Obviously “Mati” is shorter than saying “Tante Marion”. About 50% shorter. Lets say we would condense 2 or 3 words into just 1 word. Lets think further: if my professor cut his blablabla-privat-stuff by 50% during a usually 3 hour lasting lecture, I would save 1.5 hours. Figure that out, I could go for a nice run or swim or bike ride or just sleep longer!! It would be of high interest to me which language actually uses the least amount of words. I would love to learn it!! Time for googling it out.