Holland/Belgium/Germany Motorcycle Ride

This past weekend I took a ride up to Holland from Stuttgart on my BMW F800GS. I was in a hurry to get there so I took the highway on the way up. On the way back, I took a long ride from Maastricht down into Belgium and through a piece of the Ardennes Forest and over the Eifel in Western Germany. It's an incredible place thick with dark Belgian pine over a mossy primeval forest floor. It's easy to see where the Brothers Grimm got the setting for a lot of their stories.

I came out of Eupen in Belgium and traveled across the German border and into Monschau, a medieval village deep in a gorge on the Ruhr River. After a lunch of smoked trout and salad, I continued on down the ancient Roman route to Trier, the oldest city in Germany.

It was nice to get out for a long ride late in November when the weather is normally uncooperative. But by the time I left Trier and the sun went down, the temperature dropped swiftly as I rode over the Hunsruck and down to Kaiserslautern. But a hot shower and a fine dinner at the Barbarossahof put things right.

The Abandonment of Nuristan

Ghosts of Alexander posted comments on the US decision to abandon a series of outposts in Nuristan province along the Pakistan border in eastern Afghanistan.

I was on the first SF team that went up into Nuristan in early 2002. It was obvious then that the province was key terrain along the Pak border that needed attention before the Taliban resurgence that inevitably came.
We laid the groundwork for cooperation with the border keepers in the region, but like many of our endeavors, it fell to the wayside when we rotated out and more conventional troops moved into our basecamp in Konar.

I feel badly for the soldiers that were killed recently when their outpost in Nuristan was overrun. I have no intel on what the circumstances of the attack were, and I'm skeptical about news reports, but in these cases it's my opinion that someone broke one or more of the 3 principles of patrolling - Planning, Reconnaissance and Security.

Abandoning Nuristan will turn out to be a very bad decision in the war in Afghanistan.

Prep for Winter Touring

I spent the day Sunday in the village of Tiefenbach while my sons were training with the USYS State Soccer team. It's about halfway between Heilbronn and Heidelberg in an area of low hills and vineyards. With winter coming on, I've been trying to get in shape for some serious ski touring, so I took advantage of the day and did some nordic walking in the countryside. I guess I did about 8 kilometers of fast-paced hiking with ski poles and by the end of the afternoon I felt like I had really accomplished something.

I also got to spend time in the woods, which is always a great way to spend the day.

I've begun to do some "unconventional" training techniques to get in shape. I was inspired by a newsletter put out by a guy by the name of Michael Geary. His web site contains lots of ideas for ski-related workouts that will build leg strength and all-around stamina.