Muenster Rally

Joseph and I went out to the Muenster rally this past weekend.  It's a metric century with some of the biggest hills in North Texas.  One of the other riders described it as "Death by Rollers."  Joseph and I chickened out and hit the 65k route, about 40 miles.  We hit too many rest stops.  Had to hit the 2nd one, I was running low on water, we had drank out of my 2nd on the way there.  Had to hit the 3rd, I needed to take a "natural break."  But the time we hit the 4th, Joseph had to go.  ~1500+ riders, folks out on the side of the road in the middle of nowhere cheering you on, volunteers aplenty.

Then afterwards, we hit the Germanfest.  Nice, great German food.  Brats, sausage, beets, red cabbage, beans, potatoes done a half-dozen different ways, and kraut.  One stand (from a local German restaurant) had an all-you-can-fit-on-your-plate meal priced the same as the others, but the potatoes looked really good.  I had a ton of kraut on top of the potatoes, the green beans, the pinto beans.  The juices dripped down over everything.  Add a bit of horseradish and I was in heaven.  OK, the angels were looking a bit heavy.  I don't remember seeing so many chins on a cherub before.  They had a "Beer Garden" open for the rally riders and the Fun Run participants.  Basically, it's a nice field under some shade trees away from most all of the noise.  They rope it off and throw out a bunch of hay bales for chairs.  A perfect place to sit down and enjoy your food and beverage.

Rally riders get two beers at the Germanfest.  After enjoying one with my meal, I wasn't feeling that the second would go down so well, so I started to think about who would enjoy my second beer ticket.  Finally I remembered that a good friend of mine, Eric, a guy I was in a band with, lives in Muenster, and he would probably be at the Germanfest.  Of course he was, and so a couple of text messages later, we were sitting down in the music tent watching his nephew play the accordion.  Very German accordion at that.  They were teenagers who put quite a bit of effort into it, very nice guys.  The called themselves The Happy Wanderers, I think a reference to the Shmenge Brothers.  When they started the Chicken Dance, folks were running, yes running out to dance on the floor.  Senior citizens, kids, and all ages in between.  Good times.  Finally we made our way out, with three strudel in tow, of course.  Mmmm... Cheese strudel.  I'm bringing up an apple strudel to work tomorrow.  Those things are awesome.