Band of Brothers

Back to the trip, I left you early Saturday morning with a long day ahead of me. I signed myself up for a trip to visit all of the Normandy sites that Easy Company of the 101st Airborne division were involved in. If you do not know what I am talking about, the film and book by Stephen Ambrose, Band of Brothers, highlights one company through WWII. I got to visit some pretty cool places, along with learning even more neat details and info than I did previously.

This is the church in St. Mere Eglise where a US paratrooper, John Steele landed on the spire and had to fake death to not be shot down. He later was captured by Germans, but later escaped and went on to fight with his regiment. Today, there is a monument on the church as you can see commemorated to him.










While not nearly as flashy, but much more important, I got to see where Major Winters and 12 other men destroyed a German battery of 105 mm howitzers. By destroying the German position, it helped the overall goal of bringing US forces onto the beach. To this day, the way that they went about destroying the battery, 13 US soldiers versus over 50 Germans is taught at West Point. It is now just an empty field, but the history is amazing and to be able to see where everything was certainly brings it to life.














If you look at the photo I am holding here, compare it to the monument behind me. Just another one of the little French villages that the Americans liberated along the way.













Finally, I also got a chance to see the town of Carentan which was where, without going into a lot of detail, a large battle took place over 2 days and the ultimate result of the Americans taking the city helped link up various forces spread across the beaches. The next few images were taken near Carentan.























Once this was all said and done, what was left to do. Just a nice little barbie at the hotel grilling up some sausages and an evening walking around town. We ran into a outdoor theater with a full orchestra performing on the night and it was certainly a relaxing way to end the day.

Mini Vacation

Whew, just got back from my mid season break and boy oh boy was it a good time. I set off for the Normandy coast without any real clear plans at all. I did not have any reservations made for anything and I was going to be pretty much running on an open schedule. I have to say, that in the midst of just 3 days, I had more than my share of unique, interesting or just odd things happen to me. Over the next few days I will try and share some of the highlights with you guys. To give you some background I ended up in Bayeux, France which is pretty darn close-10 km away from the Atlantic coast. Why did I end up here, well, I found a youth hostel in this town. The hostel alone, had enough craziness to have its own blog. This cathedral is in the heart of town and my housing was about 2 minutes walk away.













My very first day there I got to go and see the Bayeux Tapestry which was super cool. It is a 1000 year old tapestry that tells the story of the Norman conquest of England in 70 meters and 58 different scenes.













As I did not have a car on this trip, I knew that I was going to be doing a fair amount of walking. On day 1 I set myself a limit that the farthest I would go from my central area would be 10 km, since everything has to be doubled for the return. With this in mind, I set off to go and find the British WWII memorial and cemetery. While walking through the hundreds of rows of tombstones, I ran into a veteran who without asking jumped headfirst into telling me the story of one of the men buried close to us. It was certainly a moving moment especially when looking at many of the ages of the men buried there. Most of the men were much younger than I am currently.

Finally, a long day under my belt I headed off to bed. As I said, I was staying at a hostel mind you. Upon arriving, I found out I was to be sharing a room with many a folk which was fine. I got to meet some cool Aussies and Canadians that were touring Europe this year. And then one of the Aussie girls had actually started her trip in Thailand and had made it all the way over to France. It was pretty fun to meet some new folks. As I have really had a girlfriend in my life nor had to share a bathroom or anything with girls in that matter, I had to learn pretty darn quick. I certainly learned a lot in a few days, who knew the power of makeup.

Tomorrow I will bring you up to date on some more of the neat stuff I got to see. I will leave you with this neat image though. This was early in the morning before most of the town was awake. A nice quiet walk through the old town is a wonderful way to gather lots of random thoughts.

tourism

Now that I have had a few days to unwind from the long trip I am going ahead and taking off in the morning on yet another. I am going to be away for a few days playing tourist. With not needing to train for a week, I would find it quite atrocious to be in France so close to many exciting things and not make an attempt to see them. How fun is it to just sit around in your room doing nothing? So, basic itinerary is heading out early in the A.M. tomorrow to take the train to the ancient town of Bayeux. It is on the Normandy coast and quite close to much of the history surrounding D Day and World War II. I am going to do my best to check out as much as I can in a few days and pay my respects to those who served and paid the ultimate sacrifice. There is supposed to be a youth hostel where I am going too, can't beat 9 euros a night can ya. Who knows what kind of conditions it is, but if all goes to plan all I need it for is a few hours of sleep at night and the rest of the day is spent all over the Normandy coastline. If this sounds vague to you, trust me it does sound vague for me too. I am jumping in headfirst and banking on a bit of American ingenuity to help me out along the way. As an extra, the Bayeux tapestry also lives in the town of Bayeux. I remember learning about it in 6th grade and doing a report about it. It was embroidered in the year 1066 and is over 70 meters long. One can imagine an immense medieval weaved comic strip.

As I have mentioned many times before one of the neatest things about this sport is getting to travel the world and see so much, but when focusing on trying to race as best as one can, often they only get to see the insides of numerous types of hotel rooms and never go sight seeing. Many people who know me know that I love random bits of information and love to read up on history and learn as much as I can. Frankly I am salivating at the mouth to go and learn more as this little trip is something that I have wanted to do for many years. It will be nice to get away from the bike for a bit, and not think about much else other than living a normal life for a few days. While it will feel weird to be missing the National Championships back home for the very first time I can rest assured knowing that I am on track and growing by leaps and bounds.

Back Home

whew, that was quite the trip I gotta say. I do not know where to even start. Last time I checked in I was relaxing in a fairly modern French hotel in a city of significant size waiting for the Haute Savoie stage race in the Alps to begin. To give you some background, at the big stage races in Europe, the race puts up the riders at various hotels around the area and our food is also taken care of to a point. There is quite a bit of variance on the quality of hotel and quality and quantity of food however. As day one of the race arrived something just did not feel right and whatever I tried to eat in the race came back on out so I was frankly useless. The bathroom and I became good friends. Day 2 I was still not feeling great, but our leader was feeling good and well, I worked my butt off in the morning and our team leader won the mountain top finish so morale was quite high. Day 2 was an awesome double day and our afternoon was going to be hell. This is where the start was at to give you an idea-we are pretty high up in the mountains.














The second stage started off like any, but we all knew something was not good. It was really cold and we could not see the top of the mountain we were about to go over because of some storm clouds covering it. Not 5 minutes into the day, the race got stopped because of snow and everyone hopped into the car. The race decided to drive all the racers over the mountain and down the descent to the next climb where it may only be raining and not snowing. This is what we got to deal with. We got the race restarted however, the second climb was no better than the first and upon arriving at the summit of the climb, I was expecting to have the race stopped again but no, we kept on racing, even down the descent. This is where the race was made. Those who had the right attire raced and everyone else tried to survive. I spent 10 minutes in our team car on the descent trying to warm up to be able to ride, a teammate of mine spent time in a ski lodge next to a fire and then spent the rest of the day in a heated ambulance. I finally got started again and finished almost 40 minutes down, but found out around half the field just quit on the day. No one was having fun and I have never been that cold in my life. This was what the summit looked like.













Once this god awful day was over, we were given the task of getting to our hotel. Remember, that the race promoters put the racers up and we are in France. Our race ended around 7:30 at night and then spent the next 2 hours driving around the alps to get to our hotel which was at the top of a mountain. Who got to stay here you wonder? All the foreign teams were here. Germans, Belgians, Americans, Czech, and Italians are staying hours away from the starts and finishes of races meanwhile the French teams hotels were literally 500 meters away from the finish line. By the time we got to our hotel they were running low on food and for people who had been racing for 6 hours on the day, that was not good. This pretty much sums up how the foreigners get treated at the French races. The next day, our motivation to do anything was quite low especially given more bad weather and not enough to eat. Only 1 rider on our team actually finished the race and only 30 riders of the whole field finished.

Now I am back in France for a bit getting back into the french language and watching the world cup. This next week should be fun, I am not touching my bike once to try and recover and might play tourist for a bit.

Borders

Finally made it back to France after a long day of travel yesterday. Yeah, you have had hard days of travel I am sure, but this is one of them that certainly ranks up there. We set out leaving Lucca around tenish yesterday morning thinking that we only had a nice easy 6 hour drive to go. Not an hour into our day, we had this.












Yes, that is us stuck on the freeway at a standstill. There was a semi that had jack knifed in one of the hundreds of tunnels that we were to travel through and multiple cars had driven underneath it. That accident was 5 km ahead of us and another wreck was 25 km ahead of that. Needless to say, a few hours chilling on the freeway stopped was not fun, especially at lunchhour. But once we got going again, nothing too special, just some amazing scenery.















Well, we were doing great, till bam! Italian, French border check. Once again, traffic standstill in the mountains. You don't have to have my word that it was an amazing place to have to stop, check it out. Fortunately, we only had to wait here for around 45 minutes, but the minute that we got arrived in France, driving a car emblazoned with USA all over it, our luck once again ran afoul. Driving through the Mont Blanc tunnel, a 12 km tunnel through the alps connecting France and Italy, there is a rule that cars must travel 150 meters behind the car in front and well, the french police decided that USA must had broken that law and 80 euros later, everyone was well back on their way. This is a funny place for another member of our team, Andrew Talansky, who at the same tunnel last year was pulled over for speeding and had to pay cash, 240 euro to get out of it. And guess what, it went straight into the cops pocket, nothing fishy about that.















So, today was a nice lazy down around the hotel with a pretty easy spin in the morning. Technically speaking we are in France, but somehow managed to ride into Switzerland today and we were able to see Italy a few km away. Pretty neat to think instead of riding from one county to another in America, I was going from country to country today.

I will not be posting for a few days as I have a hard stage race with lots of transfers from hotel to hotel and different starting and finishing towns every day. Free time will be at a minimum and food and sleep will take priority. If I do find a few minutes, I will try, but no promises. I will certainly update next week from Belgium though.

ciao

Boise Friends

Life truly has been getter better by the day for me down here in Italy. My love affair with this country is growing by the day and the fact that cappuccino's only cost 1 euro are amazing. Nothing too new has been going on in my life other than the fact that I have been riding my bike a lot in the mountains and eating lots of food. I am down here with 6 other guys and only 2 of us truly know how to cook. That has been great being able to cook good food for the guys and not have to be on cleaning duty. I even got to teach one of the guys how to eat a cantaloupe fresh (they were shocked how much better fresh tasted than store bought and already cut up), what an amazing concept.

In other news, got to hang out for a bit today with a friend from back home. Liza Racheto is over here in Italy racing for a team this season and was great to reminisce about Idaho. It was certainly amazing how I had to travel halfway around the world to meet up with someone whose childhood house is only a 20 minute bike ride away.

Sorry for the short post, I am a bit tired after having to ride my bike home tonight from the gelato shop. I am heading out of Italy on Wednesday and heading up to France for another stage race soon.

training camp

Nothing new really going on over here. Been riding my bike a lot, doing some amazing climbs around Lucca. With every day here I find myself falling more and more in love with the area. I am currently staying at the SRM house which is the headquarters of the SRM powermeter. It is quite stunning to say the least. Today we had an awesome ride and had good company too. Joining us for our jaunt into the mountains was Jorg Jaksche, who a few years post cycling career can still throttle. He also lives here at the SRM villa and even in retirement is more lean than I have ever been, I was quite impressed.

Last night we went out to dinner and Jorg also came out with us. It was quite the experience to get to really enjoy a truly Italian dinner and sample some different types of food. To give you some background, Jorg won a very large stage race in France and had quite a good career. To see the women that would walk up to the table to speak with him was downright jaw dropping. I think that I need to start to learn some Italian.

I am looking forward to some more good training, especially once I get recovered from getting my butt kicked in today. I am also pretty darn excited about the weather I am in too. Its sunny and around 38 degrees celsius, while back at my home in France today was 18 degrees celsius and rain. This tan is going to be quite nice.

Italy

Well folks, sorry to be so tardy on the blog here, I have been a bit busy. We finished our stage race down in Spain late Saturday night and hit the road immediately making it to the Spanish/French border. Unfortunately we lost the yellow jersey and Andrew Talansky finished the race in 2nd place, but we were still delighted to have 2 stage wins and a great GC result. My teammate Carter Jones put on an impressive display of power by winning the last day solo. For the night we stayed in a neat little town named Girona, which is the hotbed for American cyclists living in Europe. We did manage to have an amazing dinner which consisted of hands down the best paella I have ever eaten in my life. Unfortunately we did not have too much time there to check it out as we were all excited about our final destination-Lucca, Italy. Yes, I am here for a 9 day mini camp to get some climbing in and gain some fitness for my last race with the National team up in France. While sitting in a car for a whole day can really drag, the thought of starting out in 1 country, going across another and finishing my day in a 3rd country was pretty neat. However, the best part of it all was driving along the southern coast of France, also known as the French Riviera. I saw Monaco, Cote d Azur, Nice, probably drove through over 100 tunnels through the mountains and never had a straight road longer than a couple hundred meters. As our vicinity got closer to Monaco I have never seen so many lamborghinis, Ferraris, BMW's, and Porsche's in my life.

But, back to Italy. I am in love! I will be doing many climbs this week, enjoying many cappuccinos, gelato and trying to get as fit as I can be. I am really looking forward to the next race and hoping that I can do something there, maybe its my turn to have a great race? Will get some photos up in a few days so that you can appreciated how amazing Lucca really is.

ups and downs

sorry for not posting lately, I have been a bit busy and the whole Spanish daily schedule has thrown us a few curveballs. We are starting our races at 3:30-4:00 normally and not even getting back to our hotel until 9 at night. Needless to say, our normal schedule has been thrown way off. Where do I start? Headed out on a nice little ride on Monday up to a cool church in the mountains. It is so hard to describe how amazingly beautiful it was. This church was nestled quite precariously on a perch. And yes, that is the Mediterranean Sea in the background.
















However, on said ride none of us could imagine the heat. Coming from cold Belgium where I was wearing a sweater to amazing Spain where its 100 degrees has taken some getting used to. Having long hair has been great in the cold regions, but down here it is quite hot and well...





I am now quite cool in the crazy hot temperatures. Now on to the racing. Where to start? We are super pumped as a team and felt great coming into this race. My first stage started out as nothing special. Breakaway is up the road and being hot, we are going through a ton of bottles. So, I head back to the team car to load up on some more bottles for the guys and well shit, somehow another wreck. Somehow while stuffing bottles down the back of my jersey with both hands off the bars I either hit the car mirror with my handless bars or hit a pothole or something, but I went down so quick I had no time to even think about it. Fortunately I did not go under the car, a major plus and normally when you wreck going above 30 miles an hour there is a bit of damage normally, but I really lucked out. A sore shoulder now with limited mobility and a bit of road rash. It really should have been worse. And I even finished with the peloton after a fun chase back on with the team car.

And today, we won! Andrew Talansky, who is having the year of his life took the stage win out of the breakaway today. As an added bonus he took the leaders jersey and with 4 more stages to go we are going to work our butts off to keep him in that. Super pumped and excited to keep on helping out.