Tuesday, August 3, 2010

Heidelberg

Sometimes it’s the little things that make life so wonderful.  I’m in Heidelberg on business; last night I routed through Stuttgart (by train) to have dinner with an old Army friend I’d not seen in 20 years; we’d been in a nine week course together way back when (thank you facebook, she is now a reserve colonel who happened to be in Stuttgart for a few weeks).  It was great to catch up even if only briefly.  So what happens between meetings here in Heidelberg today?  Waiting for a cup of coffee I run into another of our classmates from that twenty year’s past “small group” of twelve.  He’s now the head Chaplain for the Army in Europe and we’d not seen each other in probably ten years.  I found it fun to note that his team seemed so amused at our past old guy musings.  After a particularly successful day of meetings I returned to the hotel to find my key didn’t work but we’ll forgo the annoyance of the hotel expecting me to check-out a day early … if only because it’s out of consonance with the rest of the trip. 
Heidelberg is an old and wonderful college town on the river Neckar; Mark Twain lost his heart in this romantic city, along with countless others.  After a long stroll through the pedestrian old town I had a magnificent dinner in the company of John Grisham’s latest novel (thanks to my pal Gerhard, recently in England, who loaned me his copy) outdoors at a restaurant with a view of the old bridge (or more to the point a whole bunch of Japanese and American tourists).  Beef tenderloin atop a mountain of roasted mushrooms and vegetables topped with Rucola and parmesan along with a wonderful local beer whose name I’ve already forgotten … the food was fantastic … and the lovely young waitress was nice enough to flirt with a middle aged guy.
Walked a mile and half back to the hotel along the river in the company of two coxed four rowing teams, several scores of college kids on bikes and quite a few runners, most of whom I’m happy to report I could probably more than keep up with (or perhaps the two beers at the restaurant were getting the better of my imagination).  Got to view a great sunset to the over a yacht marina and made it bake to the hotel just as the storm clouds from the east started dumping rain.  So here I’ll close, with a mini-bar beer within reach and ready to call it a night … tomorrow is an early train back to the grind-stone.

Sunday, February 7, 2010

Basketball Update

Well sports fans, I know most of you are real disappointed that ESPN is paying so much attention to the SuperBowl that they haven’t reported the Upper Palatinate (Oberphalz) Senior Men’s Basketball league.  So I’ll play the slightly biased sports reporter and give you the latest, this afternoon Sulzbach-Rosenberg smashed Schwandorf 60:53.  Thankfully, it wasn’t as close as the end score shows; they hit three desperation 3-pointers in the last minute to pull as close as they did.   We played better than normal with good passing and a solid defense forcing a lot of turnovers (I was happy with three steals).  Schwandorf, with eleven (younger) players, waited far too late to rotate their guys and try running the seven of us into the ground while pushing a full court press.  As it was, they fouled out three for their efforts and the men from Sulzbach were all about spent at the buzzer (me included).   
The rest of the story is our semi-official senior’s league is once again not turning out as we’d hoped.  The idea is a more relaxed schedule, no need for neutral refs, beers on the court afterwards … or slightly more emphasis on fun over hard competition.  Just as last year, five clubs signed on and again all but two of us have failed to get enough guys together to get schedule games.  We lost our first game to Weiden but they soon thereafter dropped from the league.   So instead of 20 or 30 games in a season in the competitive normal leagues, we may only see 3 this year.  Schwandorf will try for revenge on our home court on the 27 March … be there!