240 Volts

Or how I managed to avoid buzzing my beard for over a month

We did have presence of mind to prepare for electrical outlet issues with our stuff in Europe. Shannon found a couple of these adapters online and picked them up before we left home.

I also had presence of mind to bring my Wahl® Shaver knowing that I would end up with quite some overgrowth without it because I usually buzz my beard about once a week and we were planning to be gone for about 6 weeks.

The one thing I forgot was that the adapters we got do not change the voltage, so anything you plug into them needs to be rated up to 240 volts. That’s the electrical standard in household outlets in Europe. In the states it’s only 120 Volts. (we did check our computer power supplies and luckily they’re OK.)

But the Wahl® Shaver is only rated up to 120V. I almost fried the thing our first week here because I was all set to plug it in using the adapter when I remembered that little detail and checked the label on the shaver. Whoops. That would have been a poof-soot event which would have let the magic smoke out of the shaver rendering it useless.

So I decided to just live with some overgrowth for a while. Like I did back in Texas in 2021:

And all was good for a couple of weeks. But then, we saw an ice cream store in Heerenveen. Soft ice cream. Delicious. And well, kinda messy…

And it was decided I need to do something about it after all. Shannon found several barbers but I kept putting it off, until we were walking by one yesterday and she finally talked me into it.

I guess I was looking kinda scraggly. But hey, this is the first time in 20 years that I’ve had my hair (and beard) cut by anyone other than Shannon so I was rather nervous.

But I think Shannon was really enjoying it. I could see her grinning the whole time in the mirror over there.

To make matters worse, the guy didn’t speak much English and he really wanted to use that straight razor on me. And I really wasn’t ready for that, but I did finally get his name: Abraham.

And what a nice chair I got to sit on…

In the end, I guess Abraham did a pretty good job. Shannon thinks so anyway…