Liquid cargo

How much beer can two people bring home from Belgium?



On my way over to Belgium I stuffed an extra duffel bag into my suitcase with the intent of giving us some extra storage room. My original plan was to put all the beer in my suitcase, which is semi-hard and tough for the airlines to really damage. We got a little overzealous with our beer and chocolate purchases so we ended up putting beer in all four of our pieces of luggage. Amazingly, it all made it unbroken. We spent a lot of time packing it all up, even snagging an empty box from the hotel that we put into the duffle. My big bag was barely under the weight limit (at the airport we had to shift some bottles to Christine's bags).

Left to right:
2 large bottles of Rodenbach Grand Cru
12 bottles of Rodenbach Grand Cru
1 bottle of Rodenbach Vin De Céréale
1 large bottle Eylenbosch Faro Extra
1 large bottle 3 Fonteinen Oude Kriek
3 bottles of Ellezelloise Hercule Stout
1 bottle of Ellezelloise Saison
2 bottles of Hanssens Oude Kriek
2 bottles of Verhaeghe Echt Kriekenbier
3 bottles of Rochefort 10
2 bottles of Van Eecke Kapittel Prior
1 bottle of Cantillon Rose
1 bottle of Boon Oude Geuze

They represent some of our favorites from the trip, and they each have their own story. Like the Faro-Extra that was given to us as a gift from the owners of a great pub near Brussels. But more on those stories later.

Back in the USA

I'm back in the USA waiting for my next flight in Atlanta. After spending the last 10 days with Christine, I think I finally caught her cold. I'm glad I could hold it off until we left Belgium.

The announcements over the speakers at the Brussels airport said smoking is not permited anywhere in the airport. Apparently that doesn't apply to the bathrooms, which I will refer to as the smoking lounge.

Pictures and stories to follow after I get home and recover.

Early flight

It's a good thing I'm a morning person, or I'd be pretty cranky about getting up at 3am for a flight.

I'm on my way to Belgium to meet up with Christine for our European Christmas holiday extravaganza. It's a shitty flight schedule for me (that's what you get for finally burning frequent flier miles). My flight leaves Denver at 6:20. I connect in Atlanta, but my flight to Brussels doesn't leave until after 5pm. I've got some books to read and movies to watch on my iPhone to pass the time.

I think my least favorite thing about the airport is the constant interruptions from the annoying voices on the PA. I wish they would just shut up unless it's really important. I don't give a damn that the current threat level is orange (whatever the he'll that means), and you certainly don't need to remind me of it every 5 minutes.

Clavicle update

Week 2.5 - still broken



It's looking better and the doctor seemed to think it was healing well. I learned some things that are probably obvious to anyone who has taken a basic anatomy course that explain to me why some things still hurt and why the bone isn't completely lined up. My traps and neck muscles pull up on one side of the bone, while the weight of my shoulder pulls down the other. Why must my neck massage specialist be in London. :)

I've had countless people tell me that breaking their clavicle is the most painful thing they've ever done. Maybe I broke it in a way that isn't as painful, because it's pretty tolerable. It's probably less painful than a lot of road rash and takes about as long to heal. Although, road rash doesn't necessarily keep you from riding like a broken bone does.

Some of you may remember that pro-cyclist Tyler Hamilton road the Tour de France with a broken clavicle. I'd like to see that x-ray, because I don't see any way it could have been completely broken like mine. Maybe just a crack in the bone. Not that it's any less painful probably, but I don't see how anyone could hold themselves up on a bike like this.

I forgot to ask the doctor if it's okay for me to sleep on my stomach. I get the felling, though, that I can go whatever I want as long as it's not too painful or I can tolerate the pain.

Happy Birthday Kuzca

Today is my dog's 7th birthday:

Google Apps

My office is switching from Microsoft Exchange to Google Apps. That means I get to use Gmail and GCal for work stuff. Sweet. I already use Google for my personal calendar, so now I can keep track of all my hot dates in one place. Life is good.

Insult to injury

To add insult to my clavicle injury, I just found out that our team is in second place in the overall standings for cyclocross right now. If I hadn't crashed....we'd be in first. Argh! There's still one more race so I'm hoping some of our boys can score big.

Beef, it's what's for dinner

And so it begins again. We picked up our quarter cow's worth of beef today:



We took inventory this time so we don't have to root around the freezer trying to figure out what we got. So in case you were wondering, this is what we got from a quarter cow:

Beef Soup Bone (1 per package)	1
Beef Soup Bone (2 per package)	2
Beef Chuck Roast	4
Beef Arm Roast	1
Beef Boneless Pot Roast	1
Beef Rump Roast	1
Beef Heel of Round Roast	1
Beef Brisket	1
Beef Sirloin Tip Steak	4
Beef Top Round Steak	7
Beef Cube Steak (2 per package)	10
Beef Rib Steak	9
Beef Short Ribs (3 per package)	1
Beef Short Ribs (4 per package)	1
Beef T-Bone Steaks	9
Beef Flank Steakv	1
Beef Filet Mignon	3
Beef Sirloin Steak	7
Ground Beef	24