Go-Karting

We were happy that the Niederriter family was able to join us last month in Holland for part of their European vacation.

We did some of the regular stuff when they were here…. Anne Frank House, Zaanse Schaans, and of course a drink on a cool day on the Grote Markt. We also had a very memorable night at Frank and Natasja’s house. It started out at 5:30 with a gigantic paella for dinner and ended up eight hours later with karaoke to some unknown 50-Cent rap number. There must have been a few bottles of wine in there somewhere…......I don’t know where else all those f-bombs would have come from ;-)

But the real highlight of their time in Holland was the go-karting. We had been planning this for months in advance and after the Niederitter’s returned to Haarlem from a long haul trip through Belgium and France, the boys were ready for some fun on the speed circuit.

This Go-Kart place was like nothing I’ve ever seen in America. The huge warehouse complex held two serpentine race tracks, complete with bleachers and a large bar and restaurant. There were also plenty of video games and funky 3D reality-rides scattered throughout the place. The closest thing that I can compare it with is a Dave and Busters on steroids….but everything was oriented toward auto racing.

Let me tell you…they take their go-kart racing seriously. When we entered the hall, karts were screaming around the track at speeds that looked more like street racing than a kiddie ride. It was immediately apparent that his was NOT your average karting place found in the beach or mountain resorts in the states.

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After watching one race, the younger riders looked a bit nervous about what they had gotten themselves into.






















Now that the skid suits are on, they are looking a little more confident




















Lined up and ready to roll!



















What? You didn't think that we'd let the kids have ALL the fun, did you?



















This was really a blast! The cars zipped around the track and it was pretty cool skidding into the banked turns. But you know that you are really getting to be an old fart when you start to hope for the ride to end....not because it's scary anymore, but because you are getting motion sick from following the same serpentine course...over and over and over and over and over....

American Holiday

Sorry it’s been so long since I’ve posted anything. We’ve been traveling for the past two weeks in America with our good friends Frank, Natasja, and Eva. We started in the hustle and bustle of New York, then spent a great evening with Beth's parents in Rehoboth Beach before heading west for the peace and quiet of Mountain Maryland. We finished up with a visit to Pam’s in Washington, DC. It was a great trip by any measure.

New York City – Has it changed? Or did I? This is my third trip to the city and in the past I’ve never felt comfortable there – almost intimidated.


This time was different. Maybe it’s because we’ve been spending more time in places like Paris, Barcelona, and of course Amsterdam, but this time New York almost felt like home. The bright lights and bustle of midtown were exciting....


...but the real pleasure was spending time out in the districts – Greenwich Village, SOHO, Tribeca, Union Square, the Upper West Side and Brooklyn.

West Village – near Beth’s SAP office

West Village bakery. They were lined up around the corner for this one….it must have been good! Reminiscent of the Soup Nazi.

West Village

Doggie playground – Washington Square Park, Greenwich Village

Chess match in Washington Square Park. A bit cliché for a photo, but these guys were definitely for real.

Brooklyn Bridge. I never knew how cool this bridge was. We took a cab over to Brooklyn to visit a boxing school from one of Frank’s friends. The neighborhood was funky, the views gorgeous and the walk back across the bridge outstanding!

Intricate cables on the bridge. It is the Spiderman/Gwen Stacy bridge, right?

We stumbled on to a massive protest around city hall. This dancing troupe was hilarious. It’s not the same in a still photo. You really needed to hear them singing and see them “wagging their missiles”. It was refreshing to see dissent. It made me feel a little bit American for a change.

Lunch in the park in Midtown.

Relaxing in Central Park on a beautiful New York day.

The Chrysler Building is still my favorite building in the city.

The visit to Maryland was also great! I didn’t take many pictures but it was an extremely relaxing time visiting with friends and family out in the mountains. This picture of the Beth and Eva as they headed down the Youghiogheny River. I think it nicely captures our time in Western Maryland.

Washington DC was…well….Washington, DC. I don't think I need to expand on my thoughts about this city. However, it was pretty interesting as we showed our Dutch friends around the monuments on the mall. Have you ever noticed that 90% of them are war memorials? Or intricately related to war? I guess that is what the central area of our nation's capital is reserved for, but I never really thought about it until seeing it through the eyes of foreigners who weren’t all that familiar with the city and/or history. “Oh no. Not another war monument.”

Here is a picture of one that you all know by heart. It remains one of my favorites. If you've never read the speaches inscribed on the walls here, I highly recommend it. They are inspired compared to today's politics.

Our time with Pam was wonderful and we are looking forward to returning the hospitality when she comes to visit us in July.

Going Dutch

Wow! This has been the hardest part! If you don’t know the author, how do you choose a new book to read? You look at the cover and read the back, right? But how does the author, in 150 words or less, lay out a premise for a story that excites the reader enough to plunk down $8.00 and buy it? I couldn’t do it. At 300 words, this is as good as it gets for now.

It’s been 10 months of work, and in all honesty, a lot harder than I thought it would be. The story is written. The characters are fleshed out. The ending is in place. I’m very happy with it…on most days. Writing it has been a lot more fun than I ever would have imagined. Unfortunately, at 22 chapters, I am still not done. I’m sure that practiced authors don’t write/rewrite this inefficiently. But after sitting down and reading it start to finish last week, I can clearly see that additional pacing, cadence and back-story need added before it is ready for the final edit. I think that I need another 2 or 3 months.

Coincidentally, 2 or 3 months is exactly what the publishing houses and agents need to give an initial evaluation on a new book. Also coincidentally, we’ll be in New York next week where a lot of these guys are located. They want a short synopsis and the first three chapters to determine if they want to look deeper at the work….so, what the hell…I’m going to start sending it in. I need to learn this process as well.

I thought that you might enjoy this little teaser. I’ve had a lot of you ask what the book is about. Well, here is what you might get from the back cover. Give it a read and send me an email…what do you think it’s about?

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Johnny Boyer is newly engaged. He wakes up early, makes a strong pot of coffee and watches the morning news on his deluxe flat-screen TV. He walks the dog in the park, then he drives his shiny, black, SUV from his home in West Seattle to his corporate job in the business parks of Bellevue.

Life has finally fallen into place for Johnny. It’s finally gotten easier.

It wasn’t always that way. He worked hard for all of this, and he did it on his own, never asking his family for anything. At age 18, he moved out of the house and never looked back.

His father rarely noticed him when he was living there, and predictably, barely noticed when he left. His younger brother, on the other hand, was ecstatic. With Johnny gone, Bart no longer had to pretend to be civilized toward him.

Johnny did still speak with his mother. She kept him up to date on rest of the family back in Texas. As much as he hated to admit it, he felt isolated and still enjoyed this tenuous connection with them.

But when his mother dies unexpectedly, Johnny finds himself completely cut off from his father and brother. Her funeral seems to drive the wedge between them even deeper. He has nearly given up trying to reconcile when he gets a frantic call from Europe. His little brother. Begging for his help. It’s something to do with their father…a matter of life and death.

Wary, but desperate to reconnect with family, he puts his life on hold and plunges in. He enlists the help of Eva, a girl he just met in a seedy back alley of Amsterdam. Together, they begin untangling a rats nest of family intrigue, learning more than they ever guessed about who Johnny Boyer really is.

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“DRAMATIC…CLEVER…EDGY…FRESH FROM START TO FINISH.”
--- Sebastian Wigman, Caprera Daily Review

“GLASSTETTER KEEPS THE ACTION AND WIT COMING FAST.”
--- Rosie Romijnsen, Volkstuin Weekly

“BRILLIANT! D.J. GLASSTETTER MAY WELL BE THE BEST STORYTELLER WRITING TODAY…AND HE’S GREAT IN BED!”
--- BethAnn Boyer, Financial Daily News

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We’ll be back in America for the next two weeks….visiting some of you face-to-face. I’ll post an update on the blog when we get back. Hope all is well with you!

Cheers!

Een lange Lente

The flowers are finally starting to bloom and the carnival has been set up on the Grote Markt – both good indicators that spring has finally arrived here in Holland. It’s been a long time coming this year and temperatures have still not reached normal. They even had to import flowers from France for the annual "Bloemencorso" parade – a national disgrace in the eyes of most Dutch.

Most of Eastern Europe is inundated with floods from the warm temperatures in the Alps melting the snow so quickly. We’ll take a little bit of that warmth up this way!

The Rats Nest

The whole house-buying thing here in Holland has turned into a bit of a challenge for us. Before we jumped into this little adventure we checked with our bank and got pre-approved for the mortgage. “No problem” they told us. “Go buy a house.” So we did.

Timing and Karma are everything.

Last year when we received our residency permits here in Holland, Beth was working for a different business under a two year contract. They would only issue the permits for 1 year because our passports were due to expire this July (2006). They told us when we got our new passports to come back in and they would extend our residency permits. However, because I am “dependant” upon Beth (I hate saying that) my residency permit was set to expire 6 months before hers. On November 26, 2005.

Ok, so I was a bit late getting the paperwork in. I think that I sent it on December 8. I had an excuse. Remember the hellish trip back to The States over Thanksgiving to close down the house for winter? Plus, the US consulate was late delivering my new passport anyhow. In my mind, it was close enough.

What does this have to do with buying a house you ask? I’m getting there…

The letter that I received back from the Immigration and Naturalization Service on February 27 made it painfully clear that I was not anywhere even remotely close to submitting my paperwork on time. 1 day late is just as bad as 100 days late and unless I had a DAMNED good excuse that could be fully documented, with each page marked with Dossiernummer 0409-02-0086, within the next 5 working days they would reject my application for extension of my residency permit. I’d have to have my butt back on the first plane out of here. Oh, and by the way, here is the paperwork for your wife. Please fill it in and submit it with your completed application thank you very much.

So I spent the next three days assembling my excuse for tardiness to submit to the Dutch INS. The package included letters from our renters back in Maryland, plane tickets to America, flight cancellation notices and rebookings on flights to Canada, and numerous lost luggage vouchers. I bundled it all up with the weepiest sob story that I could compose in Dutch and returned it to the INS offices in Zwolle for their evaluation.

Still nothing about the house….patience…..

Beth was traveling in Singapore the week that I had to submit the new documentation. She had not yet renewed her passport and of course had her old passport with her in Asia. So, my paperwork for Beth’s renewal was not complete. I wrote an additional letter in Dutch to the INS dude and included copies of her flight itineraries marked with Dossiernummer 0409-02-0086 to explain that she was out of the country and that her new passport was forthcoming (try THAT in Dutch).


As soon as she got back from Singapore we had to scramble with photographs and applications for her new passport. The US Consulate advised us that everything would be ready by March 20, 2006, so I had included that as the target date in my first letter to the INS.

On March 20, I composed another letter to the INS saying that the US Consulate was behind in processing passports and that it would be at least another week to send him a copy of her new passport. I included the receipt for the new passport, marked with Dossiernummer 0409-02-0086, as evidence that we had actually applied for the new passport.

House? I was talking about a house?

Last week we started getting into some of the finer details of the loan with the bank. Things like interest rate, payment terms, etc. This is where the rats-nest started to reveal itself. The bank was not happy. When Beth took her new job at SAP, she was hired under a manager from the States who is based out of New York. Her agreement with him was for full time employment. No problem. But we had forgotten that because she was a US national that the Dutch work contract that she signed was explicitly for 1 year. It had not yet been renewed. According to the INS, she would no longer be employed on April 16. This was a problem for them and they didn’t want to renew her permit.

Inexplicably, no residency permit and no job was also a problem for the bank. They didn’t want to loan us any money.

We were lucky that the foundation had been laid with all the other correspondences to the INS and that I already had an active Dossiernummer. All it took was one phone call to her boss. The new unlimited contract was in our mailbox the next morning. I wrote several more letters, including copies of the new contract, and sent them to the bank and INS. It appears that things are starting to fall back into some semblance of normality. I got a bill from the INS today. I take this as a good sign that we have been renewed for residency. The bank also called and is willing to loan us 85% of the money for the house. I guess that we didn’t fully convince them, but what the heck, right?

It is still a bit shaky, but we are hoping that the rats nest continues to unravel and everything will eventually fall into place. I guess the point of this little diatribe is to let you know why I haven’t posted any pictures of the new house. I think that I’ll wait until we get the keys.

Alpe d'Huez

24,710 Acres
84 Lifts
6 Cable Cars
10 Gondolas
41 Ski ropes
121 Marked trails
Virtually unlimited off trail skiing
6824 Foot vertical (Pic Blanc Gondola to L’enversin D’oz)
Longest single trail – 3.6 miles, 3320 vertical feet


Add a crystal clear blue sky, bright warming sun and French hospitality and you’ve got the makings for a great holiday weekend.

Wow! We’ve been wanting to do a ski trip in the Alps ever since we visited Innsbruk, Austria back in the 1990's. It’s hard to imagine that it took us over 10 years to finally make the return trip.

So when an old work colleague and friend of mine, Mederick invited us down to France to join him and his girlfriend Muriel for a weekend of skiing, Beth and I jumped on the opportunity. We flew into Lyon and rented a cheap little micro-car for the 2.5 hour drive up into the mountains. It was a pretty drive through the narrow alpine valley. But it turned truly spectacular when we turned off the main road and started up the twenty six switchbacks that climb from the valley floor to the mountainous slopes of Alpe D’Huez.

Tour de France

This was taken about half way up the switchbacks when we broke out of the hazy clouds of the valley. The building looked like an old monastery that was built on a precarious bluff on the side of the mountain. After we stopped, we weren’t so sure what the building was, but the views were spectacular. By the way, the climb up the mountain is one of the more brutal legs of the Tour de France bicycle race. I can’t imagine being able to climb it on a bike after already pedaling over 100 kilometers.

M & M

Our hosts – Mederick and Muriel. Not only did they introduce us to this great ski resort, but they let us share a friends apartment and cooked outstanding French meals for us each night. Thanks! That is why we let them whoop our butts at Eucre each night ;-) We’ll return the hospitality when you visit us in Holland….well, maybe we’ll cook some Spanish meals for you instead of Dutch and we’ll play cards to win ;-)

People Mover

The village crosses several different levels of the mountain and this lift is designed just as much for people coming home from a restaurant as it is for the skiers.

Honden

Sage would have had a ball here!

Pool

An outdoor heated pool in the center of the village.

Flatlanders

Two flatlanders near the top of the mountain. We just finished our first (and last) black diamond run of the day.

ATV's on ice

ATV races on the ice track. I’m sure that Katie and Jody could have cleaned up this crew!

Gondola

The photo doesn’t do this gondola justice. Unfortunately I forgot my camera on the day that we rode it to mid-mountain. The gondola stopped here and you had to walk across a metal grate (the flat part in this picture) to get back to solid ground. What you can’t see from this perspective is that the walkway was perched over about a 1000 foot drop down a rocky gorge in the side of the mountain. Let’s just say that Beth didn’t look down through the grate as she jogged with her ski’s to solid ground.

Slopeside

This photo gives a good perspective of the three tiers of the mountain. These two gondolas that you can see are on the second tier.

Dennenstraat 7

Wij hebben een nieuw huis gekocht!

It’s been a stressful few days as we tried to navigate the process to secure a bid on the house. As I’ve told some of you, the market here is extremely hot right now and houses frequently sell for more than the asking price.

The way that you bid is downright bizarre. Whoever makes the first bid on the house holds all the power. Anyone who comes in afterwards with another bid has no idea what the opening bid was. And to make it worse, you only have one opportunity to place your bid. So it better be right on target! Once you make your bid, then the opening bidder is notified and has an opportunity to match or beat your bid. As the second bidder, you are done. You have no other chance to again match/beat the other's bid. It is downright brutal!

We were sent information on this house late last week, but they were not doing any showings before Tuesday. We got a 2:00 timeslot for viewing. As soon as I walked in I knew it was our place. It had the kitchen on the front side of the house and was built out in the back. This configuration is pretty rare and leaves a large open room on the back south facing garden. It allready had the third story built up and everything was remodelled in the last 5 years. There is very little work to do besides painting and carpet. Perfect!

But by the time that I got there, there were already two bids for the house. Did I mention that Beth was in Germany from Monday to Wednesday? So, what do I do?

I sucked up and made as an attractive bid as I thought was possible without causing a divorce in our happy little family. Full price, no contingencies. My realtor called it in from the sidewalk in front of the house. She suggested that we put some pressure on them to accept by setting a 6:00PM deadline on the offer. At 5:30 I got a call from the realtor. They rejected the offer because of the deadline. There was so much interest in the house that they wanted to continue showings for another day. The only goal of which would be to drive bids up over the asking price. Disappointed and sure that we'd lose the house, I let the bid ride until noon on Wednesday.

To my surprise, I got a call at 12:30 on Wednesday that the bid had been accepted! Our “no contingency” clause had sealed the deal. So, I had just spent almost $400,000 Euros on a house that Beth had never seen! And you thought I didn’t have any cajones!

All the paperwork is due in next week. I don’t think we’ll be taking possession for several months…another oddity in the way that the real estate market works here. But for now, we're happy with the purchase. We’re flying down to the Alps in France to ski away a carefree weekend with friends.

Beth will get to see the house next week. ;-)

Firewood

- what a difference a few thousand miles make.



When we lived back in the mountains of Western Maryland, Beth, Sage and I spent many weekends out in the forest with the tractor, trailer, and a couple of chainsaws cutting up firewood for winter. We heated our house with wood and needed to have 12 cords cut and stacked in the barn before the first snows flew.

It was hard work, but we really enjoyed doing it. It made the evenings in the hot tub seem that much more special.

Nowadays things are a little different ….




These little bags of wood are sold at our local garden store for 2.5 Euros each. We only use them on the open hearth for ambiance and we go through about 8 bags in the course of a winter here. It’s a far cry from loading the outside furnace three times a day.

In a way, I miss the woodcutting, hauling and stacking. I think that we’ll do a few loads “just for the fun of it” on one of our trips back to the land this year.

Paella

I got lucky this weekend!

Some hot babe flew in from the states and decided to spend a few days with me before she jetted back off to Asia. I had meticulously planned my three days with her, trying to maximize every minute of our time together.

Unfortunately, the first day was lost to jet lag…hey, I said she was hot, not young. But we made up for it on Saturday and Sunday, acting like a couple of hormonally overcharged teenagers who's parents are out of town for a few days.

It was a great weekend by all accounts. But it is kind of funny to compare notes between us. I think that I've been as clear as I can in expressing what my favorite part of the weekend was. Remember, my parents (and Beth's) read this blog. I'm a guy. We're easy to figure out, right?

With Beth, it's not always so easy. We were out walking the dog in the park on Sunday evening and ran into a good friend of ours. During the course of our conversation, this friend asked Beth what the best part of her weekend home was. I expected her to get a little red in the face and maybe let out a girlish giggle or two of embarrassment. But instead, Beth looked our friend right in the eye and without hesitation answered: “The Paella”.

Ok. It’s true. I make a mean Paella. But c’mon. You’d have thought she could have at least acknowledged the innuendo and maybe thrown my ego a little scrap of recognition. Well, I guess that I’ll just have to try harder next time.

The Dog Days of Winter

February turned into a heavy travel month for Beth. She is on a marathon three week business trip that takes her across 13 times zones and a 35 degree Celsius temperature difference (that’s 95 degrees Fahrenheit folks!). She started out in London last week then headed over to Philadelphia to conduct interviews for one of the two positions that she is hiring. Then she spends the weekend with her parents down in Delaware. On Monday she goes up to Boston for the week. Luckily she gets to stop over in Haarlem the following weekend for a much needed conjugal visit before making her way to the other side of the globe – Singapore.

So, this week I’m just going to put out a few pictures of Sage and her friends. It’s where most of my “out of house” time is spent while Beth is away, so it feels appropriate. Cheers!