Bike:Trip:Two, Ambition Strikes

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Um, so... 131 km/81.9 miles roundtrip, almost 14 hours. We didn't think it'd take that long, but the national park was great and we lost track of time. i'll post more about the trip when i've had a chance to rest. cheers.

jump here for flickr photos

UPDATE: THE STORY :910: biketrip2: we started late, around 1030 or so, because most of us had stayed up all night in the finest tradition of an international student house. originally we were five, myself, lavinia (from romania), jasper (dutch, my student manager), freddy (german), & pettik (turkish), but when only lavinia and i made it out of bed and onto our bikes. :) so off we went. the northern dutch countryside is beautiful. clean, well-kept fields, fat-short sheep, placid cows and little mini-canals running all over the place. our destination was a national park called lauwersmeer in the northwest on the border of the provinces groningen and friesland. the trip there was pretty idyllic; the weather was a perfect autumn day and we found a great balance between blindly exploring the bike paths (fietspaden) and knowing which way to go. once we arrived we rode around the bike paths for a couple of hours, exploring the wetlands and watching birds. i saw a lot of heron, geese, and huge cormorants. we then decided to eat at this little restaurant. i had a pannenkoeken, or dutch pancake, though it's the american pancake's much larger, thicker plate-sized brother. and then we noticed the sun going down. whoops. well, needless to say we got lost a bunch of times in the dark, went in circles twice, and finally found the right fietspadden to follow. a high note: got to see a bunch of meteors :D
we arrived safe and sore in groningen around 1130pm. a falafel met patat later and i crashed.

BIKESHED ETIQUETTE

i was leaving to run some errands (pay tuition and such) went to get my lovely, harmless, innocent bike and lo, what did i see? my bike and six or so others laying in a domino-heap, all still chained to their slots, mine at the bottom. now, at first, this didn't seem so bad, until i realised that the racks are thin slots for your wheel to go into + my wheels are thin aluminium composites = my front wheel bent and crumpled like a soda can = not happy alex = 3 hours of walking around town trying to find a good, inexpensive replacement. i found a really cheap second-hand wheel, but i wasn't happy with it. it was really beat up and old, so i kept looking. in the mean time, i got on the bus with my two wheels and rode up to Zernikecomplex. After paying tuition and talking to the International Student Office (ISO), i went to the bike shop on campus and found a beautiful italian Fir wheelset with a Shimano hub for 40euro. Ontop of that, the owner of the shop bought my two old wheels, the damaged one for scrap and the other to sell for 15euro and only charged me 10euro for a new tube/tape and assembly. All in all, i bought a new wheelset for 50euro. The new wheel lives in my room now, not the bike shed. And my fiets is no longer subjected to the tortures of the rack. i found a nice quiet spot in the back next to a steel roof-support pole. that was my adventure.

so far, so good.

my actual classes will start on monday. first up is an intro to the tech lab, then on later in the week we start theory and computer visualization. then nothing else until the following week. there really aren't regular classes, just workshops and open hours for the labs. i've been filling my time with trying to get some basic BEAM bots to work (no luck so far) and learning a new program called "Pure Data" which is an open source version of a popular media IDE called Max/MSP/Jitters. Yeah, it's actually called all three of those. Oh, that and i'm working on my Dutch. . .slowly. Well, i'm going to go shower now and get ready to pay the last bit of tuition. Bye, Bye, Money. oh, i also uploaded three photos of my worktables in my room.

cheers.

Mij Fiets

the conclusion of my first week of studies is nearly at hand. not much has happened in the way of school, though monday we had a meet/greet. most of the faculty for my program, IME, weren't there and i was the only first-year IME student there. There are two second-years, a Dutch guy, Pascal Petzinger and a lady from France, Berthe Salegos. Other than that it was the usual introductory thing: "state-your-name-and-the-nature-of-your-business", and, "do you have any ve-guh-tAH-bles to declare?" well, okay, maybe not that last part. i'm not very funny first thing in the morning after a night/early morning of international student parties. actually, that and collecting electronics gear is about all i've done this week. i did find a comic shop, the proprietor of which is one "Bob" who is dutch and speaks engels with an VERY british accent, but is like most comic-shop owners: very laid back and very cool.

i also found a great electronics-gear store for all my needs called "okaphone", and the dutch version of a thrift store. they're called "koopwinkels" ("sale-shop" i think, my head's a little fuzzy right now, but coffee's trying to change that). one in particular, "mama-mini" is definitely an almost exact copy of goodwill/sal-army we have in the states. all of that combines to make for a cheap supply of electronic guts and parts for BEAM bots, etc. all for now, tot ziens! ('tot-scenes' "see you later") as always, click on the photo to see more!

Spreek het Nederlands?

Yeah! In six weeks I'm off to The Netherlands, specifically The Frank Mohr Institute in Groningen, Groningen. There I will be a graduate student in the department of Interactive Media and Environments. :D I'm extremely excited and extremely nervous. I've a lot to do before then, but not as much as I had originally thought. Wish me luck.