Welcome to Blog-World

Change is good, they say, so we decided to give up our website service and join the rest of the world in blogging away. This could mean that we will actually post more stories and / or pictures, since changes usually come with renewed energy. It could also mean that there is yet another website that is not used regularly. But we'll try.

The last few weeks (since we returned from New Zealand) have been full of people staying at our place; first John, coming back from South America, then Jen, also coming back to jump into a principal's job, and Jeff, looking for a job in the City and spending random nights here. It has been great to have them around, it's like a big family. Slowly everybody is (or has been) leaving us, so I finally have time to post a blog :-) I am in the process of sorting out the slides from New Zealand, which I am hoping to post in the next week or so. I am not sure yet how many pictures I can fit on the blog, but I guess I'll find out. To try it out, this is a picture I took on a backpacking trip in Yosemite last September; I hiked to Vogelsang Lake and was again amazed at the beauty of that magnificent piece of granite called Half Dome:





I am also working on my old Koga bike; I received a new frame since my old one broke at the crank. It was still under warranty (actually, it was expired 3 months, but they were OK with that), and I got a brand new frame from the manufacturer, which was shipped to and put together in a local store in Santa Barbara that sells Koga-Miyata bikes. I am obviously very proud of this service, since it is a Dutch brand with Japanese frame. Some of the parts had to be replaced, and a piece of the stem was lost during shipping from Santa Barbara. I am hoping that I can ride to work on my new bike on Monday.

Sven