Charlie’s Haus

Monday I took off of work and went fishing.  I started out for bass on Mendota (Im still trying to break the 18″ legal mark).  I thought I was for sure going to do it too.  The first dock I got a 17.5″ Largemouth.  Good start to the day.  A couple of hundred feet up, on a weedy point between docks I got a small snake northern on a spinnerbait.  I was like all right!  Then the wind started to pick up a bit…it wasnt too bad at that point though.  A few more docks up, I nearly had the rod ripped out of my hands by a 16″ smallmouth.  I set the hook and he set it back!  That was a treat since he was way under and it was one of those crazy metal docks with supports everywhere.  I fished a few more docks and the wind really picked up.  To the point where I was only getting 1 or two casts at a dock before I was either blown past it or into it.  Also, its that time of the year when they start pulling docks out of the lake, so I was loosing docks too.  So I decided to head over to the University bay area.  The weeds were about 1 - 2 feet under the surface, so I thought I would try my new 1 minus crank bait I bought this spring.  First cast, small northern.  Second cast, little nicer northern.  At this point I was kicking myself for forgetting my pike/musky tacklebox.  I had planned on fishing bass so I didnt have anything real big with me.  I stuck on the largest bass crank I had with me, a rapala DT4.  Not much bigger, but what the heck.  A few casts later I had a northern in the 35″ range on.  I got him up to the boat 1 time, then when he took off he shook the hooks out.  Not surprising considering how small they were.  I ended up catching 3 or 4 more smaller northerns before I left.  I was going to fish second point area but there were two boats there already, so I decided to call it a day.  Not a bad day for 5 hours of fishing.  Im sure I could have had some larger ones if I had some bigger baits. 

Next time I go out, it will probably be for Muskys on Waubesa.  Who knows, maybe tomorrow.  It may be my last time out for the year with how cold its been lately.

Well its been awhile.  Life has gotten hectic as it seems is pretty much par for the course.  I come home at night and usually dont even touch the computer except maybe to check my email once or twice.  But I digress and here is part 3 =D

Germany was pretty cool.  It wasnt all what I was expecting (not in a bad way though).  We started out in Munich.  I wish we would have had more time there.  We arrived very late because our flight was delayed.  The hotel we were staying at was about 40 minutes from the airport via train (it helped that the trains were located in the airport).  We arrived around 12:30am, and were exhausted.  I just wanted to sleep.  I pulled back my covers to find the worst thing, bed bugs.  And not just a few.  I read a ton of stories about how bad they are and how easy they are to bring home.  I went to the front desk but the guy there didnt speak english really and was no help.  Mandi’s bed didnt have as many, and it was after 1am by this point so we decided to just bare it.  In the morning we talked with the lady who ran the place and she was mortified.  She got us a new room at the location closer to the town center (nice upgrade) and she gave us our two nights for free.  Couldnt have asked for a nicer person.  So we hiked to our new room and left our bags there and headed out to the city.

We checked out the glockenspiel, and walked around.  We grabbed a sandwich from a local place and I was in love!  It was probably the best sandwich ever!  Seriously, I can taste it still just writing this.  The bread had a little bit of a sweet flavor to it, and the ingredients rocked.  After lunch we hit the Deutches Museum.  It was cool but we were still very tired from the night before.  Mandi was definately not into it (I liked it because it was more of my stuff, planes, vehicles, boats, war stuff, etc). 

Since it was a Monday, there was hardly anything open for us to do.  Most tourist things are closed on Mondays apparently we found out.  So we headed to the Chinese beer garden in the English Gardens.  We had some beer and an awesome pretzel.  It was amazing and ginormous.  We headed back and took a nap, then headed out to the Hoffbrauhaus.  Good Times.

We headed out to Dachau the next morning.  It was very well done, and Mandi said they definately have more stuff then when she went there in college.  There were a ton of high schoolers there, more on that later though.

The flight to Berlin was good and uneventfull thankfully.  Our apartment in Berlin was amazing.  It was so awesome its not even funny.  It was literally a furnished apartement. We had a mini fridge (score!) and a tv (although all the english shows were dubbed into German).  If anyone is going to Berlin, check out 1A apartments.  It was a good location and we were close to the train.  It was also nice to have a grocery store almost across the street. 

Berlin was very different from the rest of Europe.  We learned some of the reasons from the walking tour we took, but generally they are very poor.  Both as a city and as a people.  The city is still rebuilding from the war, it took 15 years for them to remove all the rubble afterwards.  The city has a very working class feel to it (especially on the former East Berlin side that we were staying in).  I always felt safe, but if you put those streets into the US, it would be considered the ghetto.  People were all very nice and Im pretty sure that Las Vegas stole the idea of “the city that never sleeps.”  Ive been to Vegas, its got nothing on Berlin.  When we left on the last day to hop on a train to the airport, we left around 3:30am and the trains were like 3/4 full still!  Insane. 

We did the typical tourist stuff in Berlin, hit the Brandenberg Gate, went to the Reichstag, Checkpoint Charlie, had lunch on the river while being served beer =D  It was pretty neat.  I mentioned earlier that we took a walking tour.  We did a Third Reich tour and Im glad we did.  A lot of the sites are not marked in any way.  Many are gone and just a parking lot or field now.  The germans tried to forget about the horrible things that happened.  That brings me back to Dachau.  On the tour we asked how the German people feel about the war.  It was pretty amazing what they have done.  At first they just wanted to forget about it, it was too hard to live with.  Within the last few decades though, they are really working hard on moving on and making sure it doesnt happen again.  For example, its Illegal to display any nazi symbols, its illegal to give the Heil Hitler salute, and its illegal to own Mein Kampf (although I disagree with that one, I understand why).  Every student learns extensively about the war and the horrors that were commited.  Every student must visit a concentration camp before they can graduate (thats why Dachau was so busy with students).  Most of the third reich sites are not marked, and if they are, its a small sign.  For example the bunker where Hitler killed himself has a sign about 3′ x 2′ to mark it.  If we werent on the tour, we never would have known about it.  We were 100 yards from it when we visited the Memorial to the Murdered Jews, but never saw it.  They are trying to focus on the victims now. 

We found out that Obama was going to be speaking while we were there so we went and saw him speak (against my better judgment).  He really didnt say too much, but the crazy thing was how many people showed up.  It was packed!  Something like 200,000 people were there to see a senator from the US.  Just goes to show you how interested the rest of the world is in US politics.

We found the joys of Currywurst.  It sounds kind of strange, but it is so good.  I have a recipe that is supposed to be close, I need to try it =D 

The last day we went to Wittenberg which is where Martin Luther founded the Luthern Church.  I wasnt much interested in it, but Mandi was.  Its a cute little town though.

Germany was really awesome.  I would love to go back to Munich and just relax, and also hit some more of the Vienna area.  Although I wasnt too keen on Berlin before we went, it ended up being a really nice place to go.  There was a lot to do, and it was probably the cheapest place we went in Europe.  Highly recommended.Â

Today I feel like Im Joe Bauers in the movie Idiocracy.  If you have never seen it, its because the studio tried to dump it as it makes fun of 90% of the population.  Even though the movie itself is pretty dumb, it is an excellent social commentary and where our world is heading at the current rate.  Today is one of those days where I feel like the main character.  Can people really be that stupid?  You dont have to answer that unfortunately.  /me sighs

OK, back to Europe.  We took a ferry from Ireland to France.  It was an interesting experience.  If  you ever do it, dont pay to upgrade to a “window.”  Your windows shade will always be drawn since people can look in otherwise….doh!  The ferry had everything, restaurants, gift shop, movie theatre.  It was crazy all the stuff to do. 

We arrived in France on Bastille day, which is their independance day.  Unfortunately for us, Bayeux where we were staying, had their celebration the night before.  We were pretty bummed about that.  Bayeux is pretty small, and there was nothing open (cause stores in Europe close by like 6pm on a regular day, so a holiday is out of the question).  We walked around and window shopped for a bit that day.  The next two days we spent on the battlebus.  Battlebus ( http://www.battlebus.fr/ ) was totally and utterly sweet.  I want to go back and do some more tours.  I learned a lot about WWII that I didnt know, and the sites were amazing.  The first day we did the American highlights tour.  We got to see the beaches, hit a couple museums, saw the place in Saint Mere-Egleise where the movie “The Longest Day” was shot and really took place in real life.  It was sweet.  The second tour was the Band of Brothers tour.  That was pretty amazing too.  It wasnt as scenic as the other one, but our guide Dale showed pictures from the movie to help remind us what we were looking at.  We got to learn some cool things about what really happened (dont believe everything you see on tv) in some of the battles.  If I could some it up in one word it would be amazing.  I cant rave enough about it.  Too cool.

While waiting at the train station in Bayeux, we met a few other americans, and this guy from Texas.  We only remember him cause hes like, So and So, Texas.  He had to throw that in.  It was hilarious.  So we took the train and made a short stop in Caen to the war museum there. It was a good museum, except that a few parts where in French only.  Still, it was definately worth seeing.  After that we continued on to Paris. 

Paris was a little different than I expected.  First of all, its Ginormous!  I really didnt expect that.  We did altogether way too much walking there.  We should have used the metros more.  It was much dirtier than I had expected.  But I guess that could be expected with how many people are around.  The sites again were good, and we had no problems with anyone being rude like we had been warned about.   The Louvre sucked.  I hated it.  Really.  The interesting thing is that its the worlds largest museum inside the worlds largest building.  Lets just say its intimidating.  It was way too spread out and the stuff there again was mostly only in French.  Not very helpfull for us stinky Americans ;) 

We did have a picnic in front of the Eiffel Tower at Dusk and ate a pizza and drank wine.  That was cool.  We did go up in it to the first deck.  Im glad I saw it once, but that is good enough for me now.  Thats how the majority of the places are.  Especially the modern art museum (Centre Pompidou).  That was the most crazy stuff I have ever seen.  I definately would laugh at calling some of that stuff art.  For example, on “art piece” was a couple of inflatable furniture arranged on a display……shocking.  I wish I would have taken a picture to proven it.  Lucky it was a free site with the museum pass we bought.

Im sure Im forgetting something, but Mandi will leave a comment about that ;)  I was pleasantly surprised by Paris not being what I had expected.  However saying that, I have no desire to ever go back there.  Ive seen everything I wanted to see there.  Bayeux on the other hand has potential still.  Mandi and I were talking and we think it would be cool to organize a family trip to Bayeux and do some WWII tours.  How fun would that be? 

Well thats it from France….next up is our final stop, Germany!

OK, so the reason I havent posted about the rest of Europe is because I was in Canada last week at my yearly Lake of the Woods Musky fishing trip.  It was kind of weird being back for 5 days and then leaving again for another week.  You sure burn a lot of vacation that way!  Anyways, as always it was a good time, and this year we had a phenominal showing.

We had 9 guys sharing our 8 man cabin, so it was a little crowded, but really, I was surprised that it didnt feel too crunched.  There were 4 boats between us.  In the boat with 3 people we had the priviledge of being in the presence of someone “famous.”  He writes for Musky Hunter magazine and was pretty cool about sharing information…a drastic change from last year.  The rest of the guys still kept pretty quiet about where they were fishing, but he would tell you everything.  That was very helpfull and helped you pattern things better.

This year we definately didnt do as much eating.  The 3 man group liked a different schedule.  They liked to get up at dawn, fish until 10 or 11am, then come in for brunch, take naps, play cards, etc.  They would then eat and leave to go back out around 4pm for the rest of the day.  Now I completely understand why they were doing it that way, but because of that, some of the other guys tried to follow suit.  That ended up in a giant clusterfuck of not knowing what was going on.  Normally we would eat around 7:30am, then pack lunches and come back between 2-5pm and eat then go back out right away.  I like that much better since after all, this is still a vacation and I am definately not an early riser. 

So I said we did well as a group, and we really did.  Between the 4 boats we caught 30 muskies.  Not bad at all.  I boated 3.  2-39’s and a 36.  I had one in the upper 40’s on (Im guessing around 48″) but after an awesome battle, I lost it boatside before we could get the net under her.  Very disappointing.  My boating partner Andy got only 1.  The rally hat came through for him and on the last night at dark (litterally last minute) he got a 46″ fish at the boat.  I expertly netted it, and that was the last fish of the trip for us. 

Here are two of the fish we got. One of my 39″ and Andy’s 46″:

I have decided that for next year I am going to do a lot of studying on muskies so that we know where to fish more.  We are battling 3 other boats filled with DNR guys, so I think we held our own pretty good.  Especially since this really was my 2nd time ever fishing for them.  I think I have Andy convinced that you dont need to be so far away from shore to catch fish (every cast was a power cast….that wears you out fast).  At the end he went to the other extreme and was way too close, but I wasnt about to complain since I had complained all week about being to far away =D  Baby steps. 

If anyone has some good lake of the woods forums, or some good musky forums, I would be happy to have some ideas on where to look on my quest for knowledge.  The only forum I know of dedicated to muskies is the musky hunter/fishinfo forum.  The information there is pretty slim though.

For the rest of the trip pics…go here http://www.charliemaurice.com/?page_id=286&g2_itemId=518

OK, not much time to write this, but I will squeeze as much as I can in before I have to go.  Europe was pretty awesome.  Of course there were some highs and lows, but overall, it was great.  We were in Ireland, France and Germany for a total of 3 weeks.  It got to be a little long at the end, but I think we spent a good amount of time in each city (except Munich, we only stayed a day there and another day or two would have been nice).  This post is going to be about Ireland…one of my favorite places.

Ireland has always been very attractive to me with both Guinness and Whiskey.  The pictures you always see of the scenery are fantastic, and after seeing these things first hand, I can honestly say it doesnt disappoint.  We started our trip in Dublin.  Dublin is an interesting city.  It almost seems as if its growing/getting more tourists faster than it can keep up.  There is plenty to do in the city besides drink too!  (and there is plenty of that let me tell you) 

I think the worst part about Dublin was the bus system.  The buses themselves were fine, its just that as someone who doesnt live there, its impossible to figure out what stop is which, and which bus to take.  They dont have a typical spider map of the stops/busses.  We had to go to the bus station and get the bus schedule for all the buses, then find a street near where we wanted to go and see if it had a stop, then find out the route for that bus and if it connected anywhere.  A giant pain.  Then, the stops arent labeled, and the drivers only stop if someone flags them down or someone pushes the stop button.  So you never know if you went by the stop or not.  On our last day we had it down mostly and found out they are working on a spider map for the busses. That should help out a ton.

One of the best things we did in Ireland was the Musical Pub Crawl.  There were two musicians and they took us to a couple of bars.  At each bar they would play some songs and tell about them….the meaning of the song, the type of song, etc.  It was a lot of fun and very interesting.  The Guinness “tour” was really neat too.  You walked through how they make Guinness and the history.  Then at the end you get to have a free pint at the bar on the top floor.  Its a glass room with a panoramic view of Dublin….its by far the best look at the city. 

I was slightly disappointed by the Jameson tour.  It was good, but since all of the distilling is now done down in Midleton, it was just a preserved tourist attraction.  I did however acquire my bottle of Old Midletons Reserve.  Best. Whiskey. Ever.  The kind of cool thing is that I got a free tour with the purchase of the bottle.  So Mandi and I took the tour down in Midletons.  It was some of the same stuff, but when you put the two tours together it was good information.  Still disappointing that you didnt get to actually see the distilling process for real.

One of the best less touristy places we went was Dingle.  Its on the west coast above the extremely touristy Ring of Kerry.  Since we had rented a car we drove the scenic drive around the penninsula.  The views were amazing.  Pictures just dont do it justice.  The town was a sleepy little town with plenty of little shops.  At night the pubs were packed with tourists and bands playing the same songs over and over again.  We did manage to find a nice put with some more traditional music, but they were jamming more than playing, so the music was far and few between.  We also had to make a stop to a “towny” pub.  Picture this.  By day, an unassuming small hardware store.  By night, packed wall to wall with locals chatting about the latest news (mostly in Gaelic).

On our way to the ferry crossing to France we stayed a night in Waterford so we could check out the crystal factory.  Mandi makes fun of me, but it was one of the coolest tours I have ever been on.  You walk through the factory as men are actually doing their work.  You stand 10 feet away as they blow glass, shape and sand glass, etc.  You can see the entire process from beginning to end.  In the begining they do a little horse and pony show and make a fancy pitcher…amazing what these guys can do with some melty glass.

Thats a very brief summary of Ireland.  Too much happened to fit it all on the page.  If anyone has specific questions, I would be happy to answer them.  For everyone that has to sit and listen to me talk about our trip…sorry ;)  Pictures will follow in a few weeks after I am done with them all.  I am about half way through processing Ireland.  The ones I have so far are pretty amazing though.

There is good reason that I havent posted in a while, Mandi and I were in Europe for 3 weeks!  We just got home on Saturday.  We went to Ireland, France and Germany.  It was a great time, and we saw so many cool things.  The time really flew by.  I will be making a few posts about it in the next week here, there is way too much stuff for 1 post, that is for sure. 

I will also eventually be posting pics, but I need to go through them first.  We ended up with around 1500 of them…yikes! 

Something else I wanted to talk about was E85 gas.  I have seen some discussion on a few car forums about it, and I heard people mention it a few times recently.  There seems to be some bad information going around about it, and I thought I would inform people of a few dangers.

First is that only cars that are “Flex fuel” can run it.  Sure any engine can use it and burn it and work fine with it (for now), but if you use it in a car that it isnt meant for, you are going to be running into problems down the road.  First a few tidbits of info.  Ethanol (or E85 as its called since its 85% ethanol and 15% petroleum gas) has a lower potential energy than regular gas.  What does this mean in english?  1 gallon of regular gas will get you further down the road than 1 gallon of ethanol.  In other words, ethanol will give you worse mpg.  There is no possible way for it to give you more.  Its called physics =D  Second is that corn based ethanol really isnt better for the environment.  In fact its typically worse!  Corn ethanol has 1.3x as much energy as it takes to create it.  Gasoline on the other hand has 5x as much energy.  Most people dont realize exactly how much diesel fuel it takes to create corn based ethanol. 

The problems that can be had by running E85 in an engine that isnt made to run it are fairly severe.  Most of the time, people wont have trouble with it until many years later.  E85 is MUCH more corrosive than gasoline.  Flex fuel cars are made with more stainless steel parts in the fuel system (like the injectors…kind of need those) to resist the corrosion.  The same goes for the rubber parts such as o-rings.  E85 will eat them away much faster.  If that alone hasnt made you keep away from it (those can be mighty expensive to fix), then the next one really should.  I mentioned before that E85 doesnt have the same amount of potential energy as gasoline.  So in order to push a car 1 mile, you will use more E85 than traditional gasoline.  So that means that the injectors arent going to be big enough to handle the fuel demands of the car at high rpms and at full throttle (or really at points below that).  Also, the computer in non flex fuel vehicles doesnt have the A/F ratio mappings for E85.  So that means you are running the car lean.  What happens to an engine when its runs lean?  Usually you will eat the pistons.  When you are running an engine lean, you produce a lot more heat.  Once the cylinder gets too hot, you start predetonating.   Once you do that, you melt rings, crack heads, crack pistons, etc.  In otherwords, you fry the engine.  People that are easy on the pedal will probably never have those problems, however they will eventually have fuel system/line problems.

So what is the lesson in this?  Dont use E85 unless the vehicle is made for it.  Even then, it costs just as much as running regular gasoline since you use more of it to go the same distance.  Lastly, the corn used in 1 gallon of E85 can feed a family for a year…really makes you think.