ebringen, germany

so we had a "rundstreckenrennen" this past sunday in germany. now im not sure exactly what you would call this. they don't call it a kriterium because there are no intermediate points like before, but it was only like a 2K or less course that we did 24 times so to whitney and i we saw it as a crit, so i guess the best way to describe it would be a really hard american crit course. half the course was up, the other half was down. there was a nice hard hill going up to the finish and continuing false flat all the way until the 3 to last corner. the course was very windy and narrow which was really cool to have some technical sections. the hard part was clearly the hill on the home stretch.....we started with the junior men and they went balls out for the first half of the race. immediately we were sprinting all out to try and stay on them as they killed it up the hill and then took it easy on the decent. i was able to stay with the boys for about 5 laps or so before popping off. that put me first for the girls. I tt'ed for quite some time when ernst yelled at me that sereina wasnt too far behind. i waited up for her so we could work together. at about 10 laps to go i hit a wall and a told sereina i wasn't feeling well and she continued on.....i slowed down slightly and kept going on my own, catching person after person until 2 laps to go when whitney came up to me with a couple juniors. ernst had told her i wasn't too far up the road so she attacked the girl she was with so as not to bring her across to me. this was such a relief to see whitney because i was so tired. she pulled around the lap and i sprinted for the finish with the two boys we were with......one i got easily and the other boy i barely missed at the line. if only there were 5 more meters.....he didn 't like this AT ALL.....anywho, it was our first european podium, flowers included :) apparently the race director was excited that he had americans at his race and we were told he would be boasting for the next couple weeks to all his buddies.....funny.
in addition to flowers we each got a bottle of german wine because the area we were racing in is well known for their vineyards.....sweeeeeet.
it was a fun race, but super super hot, even for being a texan...

the funniest part of the race, well not at the time but later, was when i grabbed a bottle from france and started pouring it on me only to realize that is was an esotonic drink and not water.....yuck.....

the trip home was interesting...it was my first time to experience taking luggage and bikes on the train, with 3 different trains changes, boy was that fun.....not. we arrived back at almost 11pm and we had a snack and went straight to bed

the urban scene

so the last few days have gone by pretty slowly. i went out riding on my own both tuesday and wednesday for the first time since I've been here. it was squite nice actually. fabienne pointed me in a direction and was like go that way.....so i did.

thursday morning i got up and packed my things to ride to visit my friend larssyn. she was nice enough to motor pace me once I got over her way, which was about 40K one way. we motorpaced and then went back to her house and we spent the rest of the day checking out zurich. minus the couple hours she had to go to work at the primary school where she works. it is a very neat school where the children learn a half day in english, and the other half in german.....so they are going to be completely bilingual once they are older......i meanwhile checked out lake zurich and read a book (yea i know, weird) while watching all the people who apparently have no jobs run around swimming in the lake.

stadt zurich
the starbucks humored me

the next day we took her vespa into old town zurich and she showed me around the grossmunster and all the cool little shops and boutiques. it was really nice to see her again after not having hung out since 2006!

vessssspa

2006

2009

when it was about time for her to go to work I hoped on my bike and rode back to Remigen. Fabienne left Thursday evening for a triatholon she is doing this weekend. Mirjiam is coming here this evening and driving me to meet the team to head up to Ebringen, Germany for our circuit race tomorrow. wish us luck!!

For now I think I will go make myself a coffee and contemplate when to do my hour ride....maybe towards the evening when it's cooler, ive become such a wimp since leaving the texas heat :)

ive started writing poems.

this one is called
"overseas spending"

in switzerland:
food is cheap.
electronics expensive.
clothing expensive.
replacement razor blades are $40 for a box of 6........
chocolate is abundant.
tortilla chips, not so much.

what do you think?

abigail doing my hair amazingly

andrea got 3rd in the swiss championship road race

weird jiggly milk grain things?

from geneva to northern switzerland is 3 hours. HA

so shortly after posting on friday the weather turned really bad all of a sudden, pouring rain, strong winds and lighting. so since we didn't have trainers and didn't want to risk getting sick we opted for a rest day instead. im not one to particularly train in the rain anymore. i know what it feels like to race in the rain, so that whole needing to practice to know how to race in those conditions, to me, is a bunch of bull. so we ended up tagging along to abigail's physio-therapy appointment to check out the sweet gym there, and after to her ballet class.....yes we've done some interesting things since we've been here. never thought i'd say i attended a kids swiss ballet class.....who knew...

so early early saturday morning we got up and i went over to check my email, where suzanna had set out a complete buffet for breakfast included a farewell bar of chocolate each :P
i would be moving to fabienne's house that evening after the road race in Nyon.
we departed with sad goodbyes, really, because they are such a super nice family and made our transition to swiss life so painless....abigail made us promise to visit again before we leave :)

we got to the race in Nyon to find out that it didnt start until 1:30 and we were there at 10:30. so whitney and i decided to go get our ride out of the way so that we could ride in the car during the race. talk about sunflowers galore, sorry sollen blumen.....we managed to not get lost and find our way back to the car. we quickly showered and hoped in the very tight car to go to the feed zone....there i met a man who knows my friend larssyn, and he was talking to us about how kristen lasasso had stayed with him last year for the season while she was racing.....small world i know...
in the feed zone to pass the time we had these weird jiggly, milk things.....no idea what they were, and the texture was so strange but they tasted suprisingly good. im determined to find out what they are before leaving...

the girls ended up doing well despite some unsportsmanlike behavior from some of the other teams in the race. andrea got 3rd, fabienne 4th, and jessica 5th....congrats to all..

after the race we packed my billion tons of luggage into ernst's car and headed towards basel where we dropped over mr. german man and then headed to Bruegg. Fabienne's mother came to pick us up just off the highway and we drove back to my current location, Remigen. The riding here is supurb. there are mountains galore and flats so that is good also :)

sunday we woke up and decided to go ride towards ernst's house because fabienne forgot her wallet in the car the day before and wanted to pick it up. we ended up doing a good solid ride, a little over 3 hours. got a little climbing in also. it was decently paced so i was pretty tired afterwards not having gotten do much intensity in my legs since the week before.

last night we went to a reception thing for the club that Fabienne is a part of. one of the girls had won her category in the juniors at nationals so they were throwing a congratulatory party. of course i couldn't talk to anyone so it was a little weird for me but fabienne was nice and introduced me to some of her friends....
after we came back and made dinner, wurst, potatoes, and salate....we sat out in the garden to eat, they tend to do that alot here, and fabienne's brother showed me pictures of where they are going on holiday next week and what i would be missing :P

early evening since fabienne had to be up at the crack of dawn for school......just an easy day today. might head into brugg to check it out. it is much more of an urban setting here but both places are super nice in their own way. can't wait to go visit whitney down at jessica's and see what bern is like in the daytime. i will visit my friend larssyn on thursday. it is a 30K ride to her house from where i am and she generously offered to motor pace me thursday so i will go do that and spend the day checking out zurich with her....

that's all from here for now.

stockhorn and swiss elementary schools

so we got fairly late from nyon, where the swiss TT championships were being held. the junior nicole on the team won the U19 category......congratulations to her. Andrea ended up getting 5th in the elite women, and jessica 7th I believe. Fabienne coming in just behind Jessi. It was fun to be there and check out how things worked in switzerland for nationals but I was kind of wishing I was racing with them also. It was a really sweet course, super technical, sometimes dangerous even. It felt like a roller coaster ride. We rode in the car behind Serena and got our first look at caravan driving in europe.......not for those that get car sick for sure.....
was pretty fun but we were tired from just standing around all day and passed out in the car on the "long" drive home (2 hours)....


thursday we got up early because the parents of the family wanted to take us to stockhorn, a giant mountain, from which the top you can see all the surroundings mountains and big cities....
only catch was we had to ride a gondola up to the top of the mountain...
gondola=small metal box of DEATH!! i do not like heights at all so it was a bit nervewracking for whitney and i...it was spectacular at the top though. high above the clouds we had a coffee before going back down to hike around the lake...

this body isn't made for hiking....muscles hurt after that i didn't even know i had. so we just spun around easy after getting back over to the post office to send out some things and then back for dinner.

this morning we joined abigail at her school for a safari breakfast with her class. they spent the night in a teepee outside of the school and had a breakfast with guests of their choice this morning. she really wanted us to come so we of course accepted :)
we have a ride later this afternoon with some climbing so we may head over to Moosegg or back up the climb to the cheese factory we went to.....either way, the weather is nice today.....perhaps the cold of the sheep is over now!

cold of sheep=a period of time, about a week, during the summertime where it is very cold, abnormally cold for the time of year.

anyways, ciao!

we are show and tell..

so since monday we ventured off in a different direction to train....
we headed out toward burgdorf and finally got on some less trafficked roads that were one word.....freakin amazing! okay that's two but whatever...
through the thick of the forest and rolling hills towards the base of the alps, it's absolutely beautiful.

yesterday we got back from riding about the time that all the kids were out playing after school. we were curious as to why the kids when they saw us come home, started riding up and down our street past the house a billion times.....like they were saying "hey! let's go ride by the americans....!"
last night we went over to bruno's sister's house and found out that abigail had gone to school and told all the kids that she had americans at her house and so all the little kiddies decided to come for a looksy....hahaha

we got up early this morning and ate breakfast with abigail before she headed to school and we went out for our 2 hr ride....we had to be done early because here in about an hour we are heading with the team towards geneva to go cheer them on during the swiss national tt championships....we can't participate but figured it'd be cool to go watch anyway...

oh yes, and it's baby birthing time here i think because everywhere we ride there are babies, baby horses, baby sheep, baby pigs, baby whatevers.....EVERYWHERE.....even slug but those are just freakin gross...

anywho, lunch time now before we depart to Nyon.
bis bald! (see you later)

in memory of mi mamá

3/19/62 - 6/23/05