The question is: If you start with a laptop that has Windows Vista, that is, Windows Vista that has never, ever been updated since the day it was brand-spankin’ new, how many updates does it take to get it current?

The moral of the story is: There is no free lunch. I spent the 2011 Christmas Holiday enjoying great food. In exchange, I fixed Shaun’s laptop. Fair trade.

Some things about the Christmas holiday are traditional, and are essential to the entire holiday experience.

(click on photos for full size image)

For instance, it just wouldn’t be Christmas without Ralphie.

Others things are unique to that year’s holiday, and make it a memorable, unique occurrence.

Such was our fate this year.

One of the kids, Shaun, is a chef. We had the great good fortune to have Shaun with us this Christmas. In addition to just sharing the time, which we always enjoy with Shaun, we also benefited from the fact that he can’t avoid the compulsion to cook amazing food for more than about two hours.

Some of the food was, indeed, traditional, such as the Sour Soup that is a holiday-must in Shaun’s dad’s family, who hail from the former Czechoslovakia.

Mushrooms in:

Finished product – trust me on this one, it’s amazing:

Other foods were less traditional, but even more amazing. About every two to three hours another delicious creation would appear from the kitchen. I can’t begin to remember what was in each of them, so I won’t attempt to list the ingredients.

In rough order of appearance:

Steph and Shaun’s Bloody Mary fixin’s. Tito’s is a local Austin Vodka that they tell me is excellent. Those are Steph’s homemade blue-cheese stuffed olives in the foreground.

Steph’s “meal in a glass” Bloody Mary

Lamb chops with a chimichurri-type marinade (it actually uses anchovies and a bunch of other ingredients, but Shaun describes it as “chimichurri” because otherwise people are scared to try it; that’s a shame because it’s amazing).

This marinated for 24 hours.

As the saying goes, “You either like bacon or you’re wrong.” The only thing I specifically commissioned all weekend was a bacon sandwich that Steph made for me. It was as good as it sounds. The bacon was also used in a variety of dishes and garnishes.

Christmas Eve dinner, which we usually make a snacky-grazing type affair. Note the white asparagus, which was a reflection of Steph’s (and Shaun and my) German heritage, where it is a favorite.

Christmas morning. This is the beginnings of Shirred (or Sheared) Eggs. Shaun credits this variation to a base recipe from Chef Emeril Lagasse.

You start by baking the Italian ham over some ramekins to cook off some of the fat.

Then you line the ramekin with the ham and fill it with a mixture of eggs and other goodies, top it with some secret chef concoction and bake.

The result is this. What a way to start the day.

Meanwhile, Shaun was prepping the crab cake appetizers for dinner. That’s a bowl of crab meat in the foreground. The crab cakes were actually Latkes (a type of potato pancake) with crab and other ingredients (secret chef stuff).

Crab cake / Latke prepped and ready for cooking.

Shaun made me a preview in the afternoon so I could try one. The sauce on top is a mixture of secret chef stuff – just call it “perfect accompaniment.”

One of the secret ingredients of the holiday was this:

It’s a Finger Lime. They are originally from Australia. They are rare here on the commercial market and correspondingly expensive.

Through a fulfillment error, this package was not delivered to one of the top Japanese restaurants in town and Shaun was able to procure it. He told us that there were only two places in Austin this weekend enjoying Finger Limes: One of the most expensive Japanese restaurants and the Hackneys.

They have a wonderful, delicate taste and the texture is like lime caviar. Highly recommended if you ever see them at the market. Be prepared for sticker shock.

$25 worth of Finger Limes:

Another theme ingredient for the weekend was mint. In addition to the Finger Limes, Shaun brought two pounds (about one kilo) of beautiful fresh mint. It was used in a wide variety of drinks and dishes throughout the holiday.

Broiled “finger squeeze” onions in an orange and other stuff sauce. No, I don’t know the details and no, I can’t recall everything that is in this or exactly how he made them. I just show up, eat, and smile a lot.

Christmas Dinner.

Shaun plating the Crab Latkes.

It is a rare treat to know someone who is passionate about their career and who matches that passion with creativity, skills and perseverance. It’s really cool when that someone is one of the kids.

Brussel Sprouts with bacon, carrot & balsamic & secret chef stuff puree and lamb.

Yes, it did taste as good as it looks.

Shaun after two days of non-stop creation of culinary delights. I guarantee you he’s dreaming about new ways to create new dishes from new combinations of flavors, textures and ingredients.

So, bottom line: If one of your kids expresses an interest in becoming a chef, be brutally realistic about the incredibly difficult road that career entails; but, if they make it, be prepared to enjoy some amazing fruits of their labors.

As everyone who has raised kids to this age knows, there are ups and downs along the way.

During the downs there are many times when you wish you could reach inside your kid’s head and pull the levers and turn the knobs to put them on the path you can see so clearly but they seem blind to. Since you can’t reach into their heads and pull those levers and turn those knobs, your kids almost always continue down the path they are convinced is the right one, often to find it leads into murky water or, occasionally, directly off a cliff.

Amber, now in her mid-twenties, did the full-on off-the-cliff swan dive in her teens. As she relates it now, she “was on a very bad path” and now considers herself “lucky to be alive.” During that time I didn’t have any contact with her and had absolutely no idea where she was, what she was doing or where she was headed. Based on what little I know now, I was probably fortunate to be so ignorant of her circumstances at the time.

One day while Steph and I were motorcycling through Japan, completely out of the blue I received an email from Amber. It was the first I’d heard from her in years. A few months later I saw her again. It was a great reunion.

She didn’t tell me much about how she’d spent the prior years and I didn’t ask. I was just glad to have her back in our lives.

One of the lasting downsides to her lost years was an incomplete education. It kept her at a disadvantage in the job market and severely limited her career choices and potential. After gaining some retail management experience, she found her passion working with emotionally disabled teens, most of them autistic or Asperger syndrome kids, and almost all of them from disadvantaged circumstances.

But, even though she’d found her passion and was very good at it, she was still limited by having no college degree. Plus, she’s a single mom, so she couldn’t just abandon responsibilities to pursue an education. She was stuck, with no perceived avenues to advance herself, her life, her education or her career prospects.

Then, by pure chance, a friend mentioned an education program designed for single mothers at a local school. The program included financial aid, housing, child care, flexible schedules and, best of all, a bachelor’s degree. However, there were a very limited number of slots available and the deadline for applications was approaching quickly. Amber jumped at the chance and spent the next few weeks working the process of phone calls, applications and interviews.

Just a few weeks ago, Amber was grinding it out in a job with few upside prospects, light years from her dream of teaching emotionally disabled, inner-city teens. Today, she’s a student at St. Catherine University, a private, all-women’s institution of about 4,700 students located on 110 idyllic wooded acres in the heart of St. Paul, Minnesota, the same metro area where Amber grew up.

Last week we were in town, so Amber gave us a tour of the St. Catherine’s campus. As we walked the beautiful grounds and passed out onto the grand entrance drive in front of Derham Hall, Amber stopped us and pointed down the hill to the main gates. She told us of the many times in past years she had driven by the campus and wondered what it was like for the students she saw walking through the gates and up the hill that lay before us. She told us of how distant and apart the campus seemed then, like a fairy tale dream world that only other people—people who were different from her—could ever be a part of.

Amber then told us that just a few weeks prior to our visit, the first time she parked along that very entrance drive, hung her student parking pass on her car’s mirror and stepped out onto the campus as a student, as one of those other people—those people who were different—it all seemed so surreal she just couldn’t believe it was happening, that she was really there, was really one of them.

But she really was there; she really was one of them.

After telling us this story, Amber needed to attend an evening class so we split up in the late afternoon. That day happened to be the end-of-term celebration fair in the campus quad; Steph and I took Amber’s daughter, our granddaughter, over to enjoy the celebration.

As we waited at the fair for our granddaughter’s face painting, the band played a cover version of Journey’s Don’t Stop Believin’.

As I listened to the chorus, my mind filled with visions of Amber driving by the campus along Cleveland Avenue, peering through her car’s streaked windows at the students walking through the gates and up the drive to the St. Catherine’s campus, shining on the hill like a fairy tale dream world, a world far away from her then gritty reality.

Our granddaughter looked up and smiled, proudly displaying her face painting–a magic princess.

The princess’ magic wand sparkled.

The band sang, “Don’t… Stop… Believin’…”

Indeed.

Amber is grateful for how far she’s come since the dark days of her teens when she disappeared into the mean streets of the very neighborhoods she is working to return to as a teacher. If it is possible to quantify such things, I estimate she’s about one millionth as grateful as her dad.

I’m slowly trying to adapt and adjust back into American culture. I’m using riding as one of the tools to accomplish that task. I rode the Bonneville SE. It was fun, but I think I’d go for the T100 to gain a little peg to seat room.

Anyway, I was chatting with a rider in the dealership when I was tracked down by a guy asking if I was the owner of the GS with all the flags on the pannier boxes. He related that he was accompanying some friends during the U.S. portion of their Round the World (RTW) trip. He thought I’d be interested in their trip and might be able to give them some advice on places we’d been and they were headed.

I wandered out to the parking lot and met Klaus Ulvestad and his 1938 Nimbus, its sidecar, and all 22 of its horsepower.

A man after my own true heart.

Klaus and his riding partner started in Norway one year ago (April 2009) and crossed Europe, Russia, Siberia, Mongolia, South Korea and the northern tier of the U.S. They crossed that northern tier, from Seattle to New York, in December, January and February. My take was that they don’t teach the details of U.S. weather in Norway. Klaus said, “We were very lucky on the weather.” Just more of that classic Norwegian humor for you.

So, here you have two guys, each on their very own 70 year old motorcycle and sidecar, traveling around the world on next to no money.

The good news is, this is really, really cool.

The bad news is, you now have officially zero excuses for not following your dreams and doing this yourselves.

Remember: It’s not about the truck. It’s not about the bike. It’s about the experiences.

An audio interview of Klaus is here (MP3 file):  http://www.hackneys.com/video/2010-04-09-klaus-ulvestad-interview.mp3

Video of the bike running, including the open valve train, is here:

Their web site is here: http://www.kccd.no/

Their ADVrider thread is here: http://www.advrider.com/forums/showthread.php?t=419271&highlight=Nimbus

Photos follow.

RTW team logo:

Spoke/wheel reinforcements installed in Siberia:

Video clips of Steph’s segment on the Dr. Oz show:

Steph’s portion only: http://www.hackneys.com/video/droz-steph.wmv

Entire segment: http://www.hackneys.com/video/droz-full-segment.wmv

Due to formatting requirements I needed to produce this post in PDF format.

Please click here for the post: http://www.hackneys.com/docs/stephs-big-leap.pdf

Click here to learn how you can avoid the same fate: http://www.hackneys.com/docs/aworthwhileresolution.pdf

Happy New Year.

Now go get checked.

Parque Nacional Los Alerces, Argentina 

You can travel to the ends of the earth, but you just can’t escape quality Iowa manufacturing…

For those who just can’t get enough of our rig, I created some photo albums of shots of the rig in action here: http://www.hackneys.com/gallery/v/travel/fuso/