Spain and Nuerburgring

In the interest of trying to catch up on my adventures in this thing, I am going to combine two trips together.
The second weekend of May Shaun and I went to Alicante Spain. This was our first trip using Ryan Air, which calls itself the 'low fares' airline. It has some pretty cheap flights, but they pack you in like no other airline I have ever seen. My upper leg didn't even fit between the seats. It was not the most comfortable flight, but it got us there. Getting to the airport was a little adventure too because we had to go to a regional airport which required us to take some trains a buses fairly early in the morning.
Once we got there, we found our hotel, which was right on the ocean, and then decided to go to the beach. We also needed lunch, so we stopped at a little cafe on the beach. It was pretty nice, and the food was very good. After that we found a nice little beach to lay down on and took a nap. It was nice to be able to sleep on the beach again. However, I can definitely say that the beach near my house on Lake Michigan is much better. I don't think there are many beaches in the world that can get better than that. I have a small argument with some friends from Australia about whether or not I can consider our beach a beach. I just keep telling them they don't even know.
Anyway, back to Alicante. The first night we were there we decided to see if we could go SCUBA diving anywhere. We found a place and made arrangements to see them the next day. They were actually in the next town to the south, and we got really excited when they said they could pick us up.
The next morning saw us getting up to go SCUBA diving. On our way to the dive shop, we discussed it with the instructor, and decided that we would begin the first part of our dive training. It wasn't too much more, and it last for life, so it seemed like a good idea. So that is what we did for that day and the next.
SCUBA diving is a lot of fun. I love being in the water, so actually being about to explore underwater was amazing. Getting used to the equipment takes a while, but it is well worth it. We are actually going back two weeks from now to finish up our dives so that we will be open water certified.
When we left we had to take a taxi to the airport because we had to leave so early. Spain is a very pretty place, and it is warm and sunny.

The weekend after the Spain trip saw us going to one of the biggest races in Europe. It is a 24 hour race. No joke. They have 3-4 drivers per team and they switch out every couple of hours. Because I am not a car person, I only went to this race because a friend asked us if we wanted to go and it sounded kinda interesting. If you want to know more, google '24 hour neurbergring'. That should give you the home page for the event. Anyhow, it was fun to see the start of the race. when all of those motors started to race, the sound was very impressive. However, it got kinda boring after that. The track is about 16 miles long, so each lap takes about 10 minutes, and that is in the daylight. At night it got kinda interesting for two reasons. We watched most of the race at the first turn after a long straight away through the stands. The cars have to slow down an lot, so at night you could see the brake discs heating up, and then cooling down even faster. It was a pretty sweet piece of engineering to see. Also, the cars misfire a lot, and at night you can see the flames coming out the back. That was fun.
Overnight the four of us that went slept in our light Mercedes C-class that we rented. Not the most comfortable night ever, but it worked. We didn't even have to pay for parking, so can't complain too much. Near the end of the race we drove to some other places where you could see the track. This is a week long event, with the end being the race, so the camping areas we went too looked like refugee camps or something. There were people everywhere, and as they packed up, they left garbage everywhere as well. It was rather sad.
All is all, it was a good weekend. Got to see some interesting things and it was probably the most relaxing we have had in a while.