How she decided that this was the sport for her, I don’t know. She tried it for the first time at the Santa Cruz Beach Boardwalk a couple of years ago, and has done it several times since on the same kind of portable 20ft wall. This is the first time she ever tried anything quite this extreme, and she was pretty intimidated at first. But about half-way up the first climb she “got it” and from that point on she had a great time.

Amazing facility, by the way, next to the Beckmann’s bread factory.

But that also means that I’m looking for my next job. Could be permanent or contract, as long as it is full time and allows me to work on user-centric software that solves real problems for real people. If you know of something, DM me on twitter. A mini resumé is also available on LinkedIn.

Another change is the URL of this blog. Somehow my domain expired at dotster on July 4 and I didn’t notice. Probably because dotster sends me so much spammy marketing email that I just auto-deleted it without reading. And some tool has hijacked the domain, so I’m going back to the wordpress default url, http://shebanation.wordpress.com. Sorry for the inconvenience, but you’ll need to update any feed URLs you may have subscribed to.

That’s it for now. I promise to actually write more about tech subjects now that I don’t have to worry about Palm’s PR folks coming down on me – although Lynn and Jon were very nice to me, they still ruled over all public discourse with an iron fist!

What is this elixer, you ask? Its Rub with Love’s Ancho & Molasses Barbecue Sauce. Unfortunately their site shows it out of stock, but it is available elsewhere including Amazon.com. It would be great on chicken as well.

I spent my first few days in Munich being a tourist: doing a beer-making tour, visiting standard tourist sites, and so forth. I also got to tour the BMW factory in Europe, which was amazing. I was especially impressed by the paint shop, where there was a continuously moving waterfall under the line and the glass walls between us and the robots had no paint on them.

Picking up my car the next day at the BMW Welt was an experience: a bit over the top but also very cool. The architecture is amazing inside and out:

Had a good time driving my new car around Europe. First to Füssen, then Strasbourg.

Overall I did about 1200 km, most of it on the Autobahn at 100 mph+. Maximum speed I hit: 240 km/h (150 mph). But BMWs are kinda famous for exaggerating speeds, so don’t take that as gospel. Trust me when I say it felt pretty darn fast. Funnily enough, 100mph doesn’t feel fast at all on the Autobahn – in fact it felt a lot like going 65 mph here in California. Can’t say enough good things about the German road infrastructure – they do a marvelous job of keeping it in shape.

The highlight of the trip was the day I spent in Nürburg, Germany, home of the Nordschleife, one of the world’s longest and most difficult road courses. Stayed at a place called the RingHaus, which is a lot of fun – many visitors from England, and one group who had driven in from St. Petersburg.

I started the day by doing a lap around the ring in my own car. I was quite nervous about doing this as I’d never driven the course before and worried what would happen if I had an uninsured accident. But my one slow lap (13 minutes, anything less than 11 minutes is respectable) was without incident. Shortly thereafter a proud owner of a new Porsche was not so lucky: like me, he patoodled around the track at low speed, only to get rammed from behind by a motorcycle going to fast around a blind corner. The motorcyclist was seriously injured, unfortunately.

I then did a lap as a passenger in a race-prepped Alfa 75 sedan that had been rented by the English folks I met at the RingHaus – the interior had been stripped and a full roll cage, racing seats, and racing belts were installed. This car wasn’t as powerful as mine but it was far, far lighter. It went around that track pretty quickly. Unfortunately, my ride was a fairly short one – 6 km or so into the lap we spun out and hit the curb, bending the car’s front suspension and steering rack. Fortunately we didn’t get run over by anyone and we didn’t hit the wall, so we just put limped the car the rest of the way around the track. That spin was a little more excitement than I’d planned on – when we got off the track my shirt was soaked through with sweat and my heart was pounding.

As it happens, though, my day wasn’t over yet. A half hour later I got a call from the folks at the BMW Ring Taxi service – they had an open slot available in one of their two BMW M5s. These are extremely capable cars driven by professionals who know the Ring like the back of their hands. We went really, really fast – much faster than the Alfa 75 even though we had four people in the car AND the air conditioning was on. In fact we hit 240 km/h at one point (it feels even faster when you do it on a curvy racecourse!).  I was sitting in the right rear passenger seat, and got thrown around quite a bit as we carved through the turns – no fancy racing buckets here. I turned quit green, and a half hour later I threw up. But it was a once-in-a-lifetime experience.

From there I drove the car to Frankfurt, spent a day there, then dropped the car off and came home, just in time for my 9th wedding anniversary on the 1st of May. A great trip.

Given that I’ve never spent any time in Germany (not counting layovers at the Frankfurt airport), I thought I’d post my planned route and see if people have comments on places to stay, things to see, etc. Here are some of my personal musts for the trip:

• drive from Munich to Fussen on the Romantic Road
• drive on the Autobahn
• spend a day in Strasbourg, France on family business
• drink some good wine
• take lots of great pictures

Click the JPEG map below to see my planned route on google maps (I’d embed the map directly but WordPress.com won’t allow it, darn it!):