Confirmation

Following up on an earlier post on the CCB -- a photo from last week's News Costa Lavante, a local English-language newspaper, accompanying a story about the new Starbucks in downtown VLC. Another test of the direkt-posting feature of Picasa, hence this logo at the end of the sentence....

The AC Turns 155

Yesterday was the 155th birthday of the America's Cup, the date (22 August) in 1851 on which the yacht America raced and beat 14 British vessels around the Isle of Wight -- spawning the adventure we are on in Spain and have now been involved with, in one capacity or another, for (yikes!) 26 years.

You may find interesting the story posted about the Cup's birthday on the BMW ORACLE Racing team blog. There's a few bits, too, on the Challenger Commission blog.

Test Post from Picasa

This is a test of the posting facility from Picasa. 

Paella Party

Thursday evening we had a most enjoyable time at the home of Mirko Groeschner and Stephanie Walz who live just down the street from our house here in Alfinach. Mirko and Stephanie are from Germany, and he is the marketing director for our AC team BMW ORACLE Racing.

Also joining us were Grant and Brenda Davidson (NZL; "Guthrie" is our team logisitics manager) and one of their two daughters, Olivia -- who, like Meg, also attends Caxton College so they are school chums.

The stars of the show were Lars Boecking and his partner Anja (also GER), who also live here in the urbanizacion with their son Aron. Lars is the marketing mgr for the South African AC team, Shosholoza. He is also a good cook, and paella is one of his specialties (in coordination with Anja!). A friend of theirs, another Stephanie, is visiting from Germany. She joined in the fun along with her two kids.

Rounding out the gang was Mirko's delightful 15yo cousins Lauren and Louisa, identical twins, who were down from Germany for the week, and with whom Meg struck up a close friendship -- allowing them to practice their Englisch and Meg her German.

All captured in another of our video slide shows....

Off With Their Heads

Apropos our previous post....

A Post Without Photos

An email from Grandma Jan (my mother, in Michigan) this morning:

I helped Ruth "process" 70 chickens on Sunday. She has a "killing box" (the chicken goes in head first and she cuts its jugular and it bleeds into a bucket), a scalding tub (loosens the feathers) and a plucker which does what it sounds like. It is a tub lined with rubber fingers which spins.

Lots easier than "plucking" by hand. Then they go on a table where we slit there fronts, remove the crop, sever the trachea and cut off the head. Of course, as you probably know, we first cut off the feet. Then comes the really fun part. You slit the abdomen, cut around the cloaca and pull out the guts saving the gizzard, liver and heart. Then they are washed and put into ice water. The faster, the better.

She will have 100 more to process in October. We thought you'd like to come and help.

Love, Mom.


Surely you jest! And, please, don't bother sending photos.