thom space

I am anxious for the coming ski season, I hope that the snow pack is more stable than it was last winter in the alps, the 2005/6 french avalanche report just came out, last year was scary. the alps can kick your ass. 

It is warm outside, nearly 25 degrees, and the first world cup ski race of the year is canceled in Soelden : ( It is supposedly the warmest October in the garmisch ever, and the rest of the alps aren’t far behind. I sure am glad global warming is a myth. otherwise I would say that we are barnied.

I miss good old american television, esspecially when it is all about the death of habeus corpus . maybe I miss that too.

oktoberfest has come and gone and now it is nearly Halloween, Halloween means that it is time for snow, and snow means skiing, and skiing, well skiing is skiing, but that brings us back to oktoberfest. I went this year with two friends, tall tom and neuman (I am the short thom) here are the pictures. We  had our first liter sized beer at 11:30am and our last of six liters at 9:30pm. the key to longevity at the Oktoberfest is correct eating, and that means a half roasted chicken and potato salad at lunch and a ton of big salty pretzels, it is the only way to survive. If you are able to stay up until the end it means that you get to dance on the benches with crazy girls in dirndls, Oktoberfest is ok.

I just registered for almany stock photography agency and will have to see how that works itself out. it should be a good exercise for me to create images that meet the standard for submission, not to mention if I will be able to make a little money from my hobby. It should be fun.

I have been trying to organize my photo collection for the past few days and let me tell you it is hard to get things reorganized with out using a good program, manually going through each folder is time consuming but it really is worth being able to see every thing that I have done in the past few years.

I just got a new computer in the mail yesterday, a Dell inspiron 6400 with one of the new fancy Intel duo chips and 2gb of ram, it is so nice to have a computer again!

Yesterday I also finalized coming back to the states for a two week vacation between november 15th and 29th. So if anyone will be in colorado during that time and wants to see me, well by all means lets make it happen. I am excited.

I am using the new windows live writer that my friend harper has been raving about recently. And I have to say that I agree, it is awesome. I don’t know how I ever did with out it. It makes editing a blog as easier than writing and email.

I am hooked on Federweisser. I first tried it a few weeks ago and I have been craving it ever since, I think that it might be because I know it is in short supply, the last bottles will disappear next week.
Federweisser is a German wine, but it is by no means a fine German wine, in fact if one were to judge it on its objective merits it would have to rate quite low, however objectivity is boring, so subjectivity rules the day, and Federweisser is incrediable! It is only available for a very short period of time between the middle of September and the middle of october, oweing to the fact that it is made of the mash of the first grapes and then is put directly into bottles with yeast to ferment, and the wine must be sold before all of the sugar is turned into alcohol. As a side affect the fermentation of the wine produces loads of carbonic acid (H2O3) and therefore is be sold in a semi-open bottle that must always be refrigerated and always stood up right, this means that real German federweisser does not usually find its way far from German boarders, which is a shame because it is sooo good. It is such a refreshing beverage you have no idea. anyway, I just thought that I would share.

Today I went Paragliding for the first time from the top of the Osterfelderkopf with the illustrious Audra Bintz it was a very good time. Perfect weather and 3000 feet of the ground, not a bad way to spend a morning.

I have been in the process of listening to music, during this process I began to think about the kind of music I was listening to and it dawned on me that I really did not have a very good idea about just what it was I was pumping into my head. thank goodness for wikipedia. it turns out it all fits into tidy little box called “new weird america” Now I know.

I just road my bike from Garmisch, Germany to Pula, Croatia. It was a fantastic ride! Trans-alp, Trans-Dolomite, and along the Adriatic Coast. It was a very good time.

here are all of the pictures