Raving Amicks

From Munich, we flew in to the airport in Kiev, Ukraine, where Vlad’s uncle kindly picked us up. The next day, we wandered out to see Kiev’s Golden Gate, which was a lot of fun to climb inside. Nearby was the kitty statue pictured here with me.

To get to the Golden Gate and just about everywhere else that we visited in Kiev, we went by subway. Subways in Ukraine tend to be highly stylized, with mosaics and marble and granite used to beautiful effect. This seems to be fairly common in eastern Europe, and it was one of my favorite aspects of the trip. A few subways were also very deep, presumably for protection against nuclear warfare, with high-speed escalators just to get people in and out in a reasonable amount of time.

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Attended the NW nationals in Kent with some friends of mine who have been drag-race fans since they grew up in Chicago. Amazing! My first time and it was impressive. The nitromethane-powered engines of NHRA Top Fuel dragsters and Funny Cars produce approximately 7,000 horsepower, about 37 times that of the average street car (my M3 has 240 hp).  When the high-end dragsters go by, it’s like a heart attack. Chest pounding, the smell of burning rubber and nitromethane…..!

‘Twas good stuff. Man, Mindy or I should have posted these a long times ago. As you can see, we went over to the northern Oregon coast to check out this sweet wreck. Mason went with us too, and boy, was he were his clothes stinky.

Yeah, so I’ve told Mindy a bunch of times, that if she ever tricks me into marrying her, it will probably involve using the wreck like a church and having a pirate and ninja party around it. Doesn’t it look like it would be fun?

Well, Bellingham is certainly a snowy place right now… Dieter and I made it home safely at about two this afternoon (thanks again, Tyler and Mindy, for letting us take over your living room). Traffic was suprisingly light, and road conditions moderate. It was hailing for a few minutes when we left Seattle, but that was about it… Somewhere around Lynnwood we started seeing snow on the ground… By the time we got up to Everett and Marysville, everything around was covered in white… and past Marysville, the entire left lane of the freeway had disappeared under the snow…

Bellingham has a foot of snow, and they say we’ll get another six inches tonight… and it doesn’t look like it’s going to melt anytime soon… My car is stuck in the snow in a parking lot… I have no idea whether or not it is anywhere close to a parking “spot”… but I can’t move it… so it shall stay where it sits for the next few days, until I can finally go move it…

Dieter or I will likely take pictures and post them tommorrow… but we are home safe – you can all sleep peacefully now.

This is my new bike, its a Myata and it has all shimano parts and its really nice and lite and its got mavix rims with Bontrager tires. new Grip tape on the bars too.

Mom brought home this beast of a car today from the dealers who allowed her to test for the day. I drove it a little and its pretty powerful with a subaru boxer engine, the same engine thats in many porches. The interior has a luxurious space age look. Could this be the next Mom Beast? Make a vote in the comment section below- Y(yes its a beauty), N(no it has a big ass), or I don’t freakin’ care, stupid cars i just want a prius Damnit!