Really vacation thoughts inspiring video of an R1200RT going through Scotland:

You must see this: click here.

When we came home last week Tuesday after climbing the whole area where we live in was dark. Completely dark. No power. This is something I remember from being a kid and in the 70s and early 80s we had some power outages back in Germany. After a big thunderstorm and a flash hitting somewhere close so that the fuses blew out and you had to switch them back on. It was rarely a wide spread thing.

Now in 2010, about 30 years later, in a country that claims it is a modern technical society this happened.

Andrea just picked them from our Mandarin tree.

"Feuerzangenbowle" is a traditional German drink made with red wine, rum, and burning sugar. As our friends Sonja and Roland were here over Christmas and we also invited Corinne and Dan, our friends from Palo Alto, we were enough people for one.

Over the last few weeks it got a little bit cooler here in California and while I am very happy with my new Aeroflow windshield on the F800GS, there were two things missing:

Today we did a "Christmas Tour". Sonja and Roland are here over Christmas and Sonja and I decided this morning to go on a short tour with the F800GS.

As the weather was almost perfect today - 15 degrees Celsius and sunny, I decided that it was time to try out the new Aeroflow XL windshield together with the Aeroguards which have arrived last week. I had them sitting in the office as I forgot them a couple times there as I wasn't riding anyways in the last couple days, but on Friday I brought them home and installed them yesterday.

It really gets colder at the moment and we have a real fall feeling. It's late in the year for this, but as we are in California, I'm not really surprised. November was a wonderful month, sometimes cold (okay, a bit cooler), but mostly sunny.

December gets way more rain now, about every second day at the moment. Still I was riding my bicycle to work today.

One of the really nice things of fall are the crazy colors at some times. See the attached picture (click it for a large version).

The Mandarin Tree we have in our backyard is really hanging full! Now, having this at the current time of the year really reminds me why Mandarins always remind me of christmas ...