Kaffee Magic

We have our own coffee machine in our office at work, literally in the same room I work in, with a cabinet full of various coffee mugs in the kitchen at the end of the hall.  Generally one of the first guys in will grab a bunch of mugs and bring them in the office.  Almost all of us have a mug that always go for, but occasionally an orphan mug will show up in the office.  I've gotten the same one a few times when my mug wasn't there.  Each time I've gotten this cup I swore it was black, but when I was drinking out of it I noticed there was some picture on it.  I always thought that it was too early to really remember which color coffee mug I grabbed.  Until today.  I grabbed the same black mug this morning and filled it up with the hot caffeinated magic and settled in at my desk.  I waited a minute or two for it to cool off and then noticed a picture of a city wrapping around the mug.  Wait, what the fuck?  I know I grabbed a black mug, don't fuck with me.  But there was this damn picture again.  After about the third sip I noticed the black returning from the top and down to about where I had drank.  That's when my Sherlock Holmes skills kicked in.  Holy shit it's one of those mood rings but in my mug!  Fascinated I drank some more and watched night fall over the city on my mug.  When the whole thing was black again I went back to the coffee machine and watched the picture reappear as it filled up with the hot caffeinated magic again.  Another case solved.

 I knew that damn thing was black

In more exciting news, I drove on the Autobahn for the first time last week.  Another guy from work and I had to drive 4 hours to a paper plant to help a customer with a busted pump, and we got to take a company car.  It wasn't a Porsche or a Beamer, but we had a turbo diesel VW Passat.  It's clearly no race car but I still got it up to 210 km/h (130mph).  Even though I was on the Autobahn I was still checkin my mirror for 5-0.  While on the infamous Autobahn, I became aware of a few things.  First, there are parts of the Autobahn where you DO have a speed limit.  They generally don't last long though.  The second thing is that when you're in a section with no limit, people haul major ass.  Cruising speed is about 180 km/h (110mph) for the middle lane.  If you're in the left lane, your last name better be Andrette.  No joke.  I had to keep an eye on my mirror for people coming up behind me.  It's not like the US where people will weave in and out of traffic like it's Nascar to get around the slow pokes.  That shit is illegal here.  You have to pass on the left.  The amazing thing is that people here actually do it.  There aren't too many jackwagons snailing it in the left lane.  You might find a few in the middle lanes and definitely in the right lane, but the left lane is a legitimate fast lane.

Last thing I wanted to mention was that this I'm changing the name of this blog to "The Vertical Mind."  I've been wanting to change it to something that relates more to what I write about, which mainly consists of my outdoor pursuits and what I'm getting into here in Germany.  I also wanted to wait until I came up with the new design.  I chose the name "The Vertical Mind" because most of my so-called "outdoor pursuits" consist of going up and then eventually down mountains.  It also touches on the 'moving forward' (or upward) mindset that I try to live by.  For me that means training for a race, climbing 5.13, or finding that dream job.  Anyone that knows me has surely seen my competitiveness.  That's what I'm talking about.  The desire to never 'settle for anything less than your best.'  Some people are content with what's put in front of them but I want to keep moving forward, or upward

I won't be posting on this blog anymore but I'll keep the site alive for another month or so in case anyone loses the link to the new blog.

New blog link:  http://theverticalmind.blogspot.com/