Sechsundzwanzig

Cheeseball and I set off for post this morning, reams of paperwork in hand. I was a little nervous about riding the bike today, given how much my knee has been hurting. But the repetitive motion of pedaling actually seemed to snap something back into place and I'm left with nothing more than a big, ugly scrape and some residual swelling. MUCH better than limping up and down the stairs because any pressure on the knee in a bent position just about killed me.

I love biking here! The train and bus web site for the area has a bicycle route planner, that gives directions and indicates which portions of the trek are on auto streets and which are on strict bicycle paths. It also gives you an elevation profile, showing the ups and downs over the whole route and an overall total climb for the ride. I went on there to grab the profile for this route, to show you how CRAZY UPHILL it is but it tells me to go a different way. Because most people don't try to pedal straight up vertical inclines, particularly with giant trailers in tow. Lacking common sense, I chose the ridiculous route. Yay me.

Even without what Cheeseball calls The Mountain, the route planner reports you pick up about 243 feet over 2 1/2 miles. Which means you climb about 20 feet every 10 to 15 minutes. Insane, no? Now factor in the fact that - between solid little Cheeseball, the giant two person trailer I just had to have and all the crap we loaded in it - I'm pulling almost two-thirds of my body weight behind me. Like an ant. This means I'm a super hero and deserve a cape. Thank you. All I could think the whole way was THE RIDE HOME IS GONNA ROCK.

Once on post, we spent about 4 hours trekking from government office to government office blah blah boring. But, we'll be in our house on Tuesday!! We're all so excited to be out of the hotel and starting to settle in. I have so many crafty ideas I can't wait to get started on, I can't wait to start cooking again and I'm really looking forward to learning how to tend the garden that is now our responsibility. We'd call it a yard in the US, but here it's a garden. There are some pretty flowers in it, though, and I'm so excited about it!

All in all, things are really starting to come together and Germany is starting to feel like home! I will note, though, that the info I gave the kids the other day was not right. People are not, in fact, saying "cheers" here. They're saying tchüss, which means bye and is actually a lot closer to juice than cheers, so score one, kiddos.