This week marked the beginning of August – wow, four months passed already since we moved to the US. Time really flies. Franzi spent the week in Madison, Alex in New York. Alex met up with our friend Jay to work on his bike and was finally accepted into the circle by his dog George. His full name is George the Earl of Bowery. He experienced some trauma before Jay found him almost starved to dead in Bowery, Brooklyn. Since then he is a very protective dog and doesn’t like new people. It takes 3-4 visits to get accepted and Alex finally made it. Franzi is still in progress 😀
On Friday, Franzi attended an interview training in the office which prepares you to conduct interviews with potential new hires. In the US, the timing for interviews is mostly in fall – so Franzi is ready to interview candidates now!
On the weekend, Alex went on an awesome trip, which was organized by JANE Motorcycles. JANE motorcycles was founded by two motorcycle enthusiast which has the idea to combine a coffee shop, a motorcycle (customizing) shop and an apparel shop. Against the opinion of many naysayers who said they should focus on one thing, Alex and Adam went full risk and created a truly special place. The apparel is designed by themselves, functional (e.g. has pockets for armor), but looks not like typical motorcycle gear. For this year they had the idea to do a joint trip with family and friends to the Catskill Mountains to celebrate friendship and talk benzin. Alex was introduced to the group by Jay. The event called JANE Summer Camp started at the Jane shop in Brooklyn.
With a group of about 20 riders the first stop was at Phoenicia Diner. The final location was the Deer Mountain Inn Lodge in Tannersville. While most of the people drove with their motorbikes up to Tannersville, the guys from Jane offered the opportunity to bring dirt bikes.
After setting up the tents for the night, the group had a great dinner at the Lodge and a couple of drinks (of course not too much to be ready for riding the next day).
Saturday was all about motorcycling. Some people decided to take out their dirt bikes and some people decided to explore the Catskills via normal tarmac roads. Alex finished a 180 miles trip covering basically the entire Catskill mountains. The nature up there is beautiful and the perfect gateway from the city.
A suckling pig for dinner was exactly the right thing to fill up the empty energy storage of the body after an exhausting but satisfying day of riding.
On Sunday Alex and his new friend Joerg (a photographer from Germany who lives in NYC since more than 20 years) decided to tackle the way back together. With a stop at the Ashokan reservoir and lunch at Westwind Orchard, an organic farm owned by a friend of Joerg, we made it back to the city safe and sound.
Meanwhile, Franzi met her former colleague and project lead Wiebke with her husband and little son. It was great to re-connect – we met at the South end of Central Park and walked to the Heckscher Playground. This way, their son had some time to play and we could catch up. It was a beautifully sunny day and the playground had so much to offer, including water games! After a while we moved onto get a popsicle to refresh and caught up some more. A couple hours later, it was time to say goodbye and Franzi did some window shopping on Broadway before a chill evening at home.
