tim.jagenberg.info

After a number of interesting presentations on engineering design in at the IDETC09 conference in San Diego and a successful talk highlighting our paper, we ventured on towards our final destination, Las Vegas.
The first few days we rode along the back country roads of southern Arizona, where we saw the true “Heart of America”, small villages in vast beautiful landscapes offering simple lodging and typical healthy American food (the choice between sandwiches and burgers ).

The next days we used for some touristy locations such as the former Route 66, the obvious Grand Canyon (with some thunderstorms!) or the less overrun Antelope Canyon. Especially the latter was truely amazing, as one is crawling through a narrow rift with the sun shining in from above. In page we were pretty lucky: As this weekend is the famous Labor Day Weekend, where it seems all Americans explore their own country, all motels in Page, AZ were totally booked out. A friendly receptionist at one of these motels connected us to a local guy, renting out motel-style rooms for a reasonable price.

As I am writing we are on our way to the Zion National Park and are staying in Kanab, which is also dubbed “Little Hollywood”, as many Western movies where shot here.

So far for now, the last bits of information will be posten from home.
Cheers, Tim

As a friend of mine was singing at the local Strawberry Festival, a whole group of us went there to check it out.
The festival was held at the farm of a farmer in Weiterstadt, close to Darmstadt. A sunday afternoon crowd of mostly elderly and kids gathered in a big marquee and enjoyed a variety of dishes based on asparagus or strawberries.The Jazzband “Focus on Jazz” performed many ever-greens and also some less well known tunes. Overall they were really good, very professional musicians. Because of this, I got the impression, that the band was quite a bit overqualified for the crowd.

After the band, an asparagus peeling competition between some local “celebrities” was set up and moderated by a very distinct entertainer from the area. While the contestants were peeling away, she was singing behind them in a very strong hessisch dialect.

The “grand finale” was reached, when a dancing group of some girls from a local school presented their very enthousiastic routine:

Overall it definately was a very interesting and diverse Sunday arvo!

Well, the next swabian food project: Schupfnudeln, a handmade type of pasta from half flour half potatoes. The dough is THE stickiest I have ever seen. It really takes a lot of flour to keep it from sticking to your hands and any tools.The shape of the pasta (not perfect in my case) is created by rolling a small portion of the dough between your hands, forming a oval noodle with pointy tips. This process is called Schupfen, thus the name, and is really tedious as every single noodle is formed individually! After this process the Schupfnudeln are boiled in salty water till they re-surface. Schupfnudeln are used as a side dish in many recipes back home. I chose to make my favourite variation which is often served at local festivals, Schupfnudeln mit Speckkraut (Schupfnudeln with Sauerkraut and bacon). The Schupfnudeln, bacon and Sauerkraut are fried in a pan and mixed together. Again everything worked well and it really tasted like back home.

Cheers, Tim.