the world has turned and left me here

space monkeys

My bro Ed is here! It's funny, when he got here, I think I was about as tired as he was, and he was the one who had just made the Trans-Atlantic flight. He went to bed early and then got up at 6:30 this morning to go running for an hour. He told me he would have to do this everyday, and it smacked of addiction. With me it's coffee. With Ed it's running long distances. Man I'm such a weenie of an older brother.

Ed, Martina, and I went to Munich to hang out today. At the Marienplatz, Martina got a kiss from Captain IRON-Y. I was jealous. ;) At the Viktualienmarkt, we ate a big bag of cherries, and then followed that up with Nuremburg sausages on Martina's suggestion (she's from around Nuremburg). We wandered around indecisively for a while and eventually decided we wanted to go to the Deutsches Museum.

Only we sucked so bad at finding the right U/S Bahn that we lost Ed. We were filing onto an U-Bahn, Ed first, and then Martina and I realized it was the wrong one, but it was too late, the doors closed, separating us. Panic. We followed after on the next U-Bahn. No Ed at the next stop. We hopped yet another one back to where we started and then, by some miracle, there was Ed in his maroon "Rolla Optimist Club" t-shirt. I was afraid I'd lost a brother for a while there. We made some "in case you get lost" plans as a result.

The Deutsches Museum was closed when we got there, but the Skyshot was still going. The cockpit is a steel spherical cage that hangs suspended between two steel towers. Two people get in and powerful springs shoot them way up into the sky, you oscillate above the city for a while, and then you come back down. Ed and I went first and were laughing and yelling stuff like "Work it like a pony!" the whole time. Then Martina conquered her fear of heights and went with me too. It was pretty funny to watch...she didn't open her eyes until we were in the first descent, and only then did she let out a belated scream.

The adrenaline rush came from falling, but the thing that really sticks with me is the sight of blue sky above and me rushing headlong towards it, towards outer space, blasting off like a space monkey.