Infestation

I have had myself a pretty darn crazy few days. It all started around 3 days ago when I woke up to look across my room in the morning and what does one see? Ants, and not just a few but my window was covered. What do I do, the most logical thing that one can think of-pour bleach all over to kill them. I assumed all was good and went about my day hoping that when I came home life would be peachy. I went out and watched Spain crush it in the World Cup match, which by the way, the Super Bowl does not hold a candle to the spectacle of World Cup. Anywho, back to the ants, by the time I got home that night, it was a whole new game. We found multiple holes in my wall where ants where crawling out off and we had even progressed onto the flying ants with wings. My life was getting to be interesting. Knowing that late at night, the store was closed our options for extinction where limited so once again, a bleach foam was laid out all over. The floor was covered, a barrier was put down in the hopes of blocking them just to my room and general pandemonium ensued. Because of the nice bleach stench I am now bunked up with my coach. The next morning, we made it to the store to purchase every single ant type of killer possible. I have thrown liquid down the holes, set traps, laid powder around all perimeters and still they continue to come. What luck do I have? The photo that I have is of the very beginning of the infestation, it is worse now, but I it is too toxic in my room to even go in and get a photo, sorry about that.












On to the next morning and my teammate comes home to find this waiting for him to crawl next to in bed.












Yes, that is a sack on its back carrying lots of babies. By now, we are all feeling pretty much like we are a part of the classic film Starship Troopers. Is the film corny, yes, is the film real, no, is the fact that I live in an invaded home for real, you know it. Makes ya sleep good at night.

This is a new place that I moved into about a week and a half ago and I have to find it somewhat ironic that I have been having nasal issues since I moved into the house too. The others allergies have been acting up at the same time and quite frankly I am just scared to start checking for mold in the walls. The less I know the better.

On to important news, tomorrow is Bastille Day, which is Frances July 4th. I am off to some race where every French rider will want to win and I am going to do my best to make sure that this does not happen. Lets hope for good things.

Humidity

Nothing too much new to report on. Finally, my bloody nose string has ended, that was quite the miserable 8 days. I have been enjoying having the chance to speak some English again with the other Americans here. But, hands down the hardest obstacle that I have been dealing with as of late is the humidity here. What is amazing, is that the french weathermen every day are saying that it is a new record and that this heat is not normal. A typical day is around 90+ degrees with around 95% humidity. What does this mean you ask? As a person living without air conditioning, this means that I am sitting around all day drenched in sweat, not even doing anything I am covered in it. I have to sleep in minimal attire on top of covers and wake up drenched. Quite frankly, it is extremely uncomfortable. I am certainly missing the desert right now.

Sorry for forgetting, there was that race in my hometown on Friday night too. Nothing special to report, I felt like junk and did not do anything of importance. I just rode around in circles around my town for 2 hours coughing up blood clots, good times.

I have also been given the task of trying to get the 2 American riders here with me some train tickets to go and visit the beach this week. Should be interesting to send off 2 young kids in a foreign country that do not speak any French. Life is all about growing up right?

I really wish that I had some really cool stuff coming up to report on, but just the same ol same ol. I will be racing on Wednesday and I will just be training otherwise this week. I do have limited internet access with my change of residence here. I now have to get across town to get to the internet rather than right up the street. Oh well, a little walking never killed anyone.

People

Firstly, want to apologize, I have been away for a bit. It all started around a week back when I got myself a bloody nose. If you know me, you know that these happen pretty frequently in my life and I normally have one bad one a year. Normally, run in to see my doc, get it cauterized and I am all peachy. Now, things are a bit different. For about 4-5 days have been having bloody noses and 3 days were just continuous. So, needless to say, my race on Monday was a wash, and doing much of anything else was just a joke.

Back to the race, I did try and start and whenever I would go hard, well I would bleed. So, I DNF'ed and spent the rest of the day watching the race I was just in. I have not done this too much and I have to say, it can be pretty darn fun. I stopped on the side of the road and ran into some fans that I know out on course. For the following 3 hours I drank good wine, ate bread and amazing Normandy cheese and generally had a pretty rocking time.

Back to normal life now, I am hoping that the bloody noses have stopped long enough for the 3 months until I get home. Frankly, I just do not trust the whole socialized medicine over here and am quite scared to have to go to a hospital here. God Bless America.

I also would like to report that Corey, Dylan and Marcel arrived in France and it has been nice to have some English spoken to me a bit. But, as I had mentioned in a previous post, over my vacation I met some unique characters and I want you to know a bit about them. On Sunday afternoon when I was ready to leave, I headed to the train station to grab a ticket home but was kindly told I had 2 more hours until the next train left as Sunday night, not too many trains run, so what did I do? Like any good Euro person, I headed off to the nearest cafe. Sat down at the bar and was generally just taking it all in. Watching World Cup on the Tele and talking to folks. A nice gentlemen decided to sit next to me and start talking to me and trying to be a friendly guy I talked back. Well, as the conversation kept on going, I was asked if I was alone, where was my girlfriend and where I live normally. None of these seemed to be redflags but when asked what I was doing that day I mentioned my train was leaving in an hour. Seizing the opportunity, he just straight out of the blue asked if I wanted to hurry back to his place and have sex before I left. WHAT? Yes I know. Upon rejection, I inquired as to why he may have thought I would want to do such a thing upon which I was told that I was in a bar, by myself in a heavy gay area, thin and clean cut. Whoops, guess from now on, need to find myself a gal around here or something. Pretty funny now that I think about it.

I also want to leave you with a photo of a gal that was in the city of Rouen, France. Once again I had about an hour and a half in between trains the same night so I decided to walk around town to get a feel for the culture. She was trying to get money out of everyone she could and I am said to say, she asked me too. I had to be a mean guy and say no. I just cannot support this habit.














Going to try and race tomorrow night if I can. I have a night time crit in my hometown over here and am just praying I can pull it together. Lets see.

4th of July

Happy 4th of July to yall!! It is certainly a bit of a bummer to not be back home in the states celebrating on OUR day, but what can I do? To all back home, enjoy your fireworks, barbeques and beer for me, what do I eat on this sacred American day you ask? A nice french baguette and quiche. Pretty backwards eh? To touch my American roots though I am watching some U.S. Dirt track racing on Discovery channel, the only thing I now need is some PBR to watch too.

I have got some exciting news for this week as my coach Corey Hart is going to be arriving in France on Tuesday and he is bringing 2 other riders with him to get their feet wet in Europe. The 2 riders coming with Corey are Dylan Jones and Marce Delisser.This is a part of the BODE or Boise Development cycling program and is a great way to help under 23 riders along the cycling path. I owe a lot to this program as it has been a huge help in getting me to Europe and follow my dream. Some nice things about their arrival are that I am going to have an outlet to speak some English with fellow Americans around and get to show some visitors around giving me a little bit of a feeling of a "local"

I also have some other news to report. I have had quite a few breakthroughs this year with my French language skills from when I first arrived. My first 2 months were pretty awful honestly, but things got much better and I and others became quite complacent with the level that I was at. That stage is long gone and now on multiple occasions daily, those who I have lots of contact with are continually upping the French that they use with me and I am back to learning lots of new words and phrases. So the downfall to all of this, what I do know, I can speak with conviction luring those around me into a sense that I have a much larger grasp of the language, which I do not. This results in even more chances to learn and hopefully less fatigue when speaking down the road.

First week back training has been great and I am off to go and see how my legs like me tomorrow on race day. Good times are waiting to be had and looking forward to a great week.

Normandy American Cemetery and Memorial

On to the final day of the vacation and boy oh boy was it a doozy. I knew that the American Cemetery in Normandy that is dedicated to the fallen US soldiers during WWII was close to where I was living this year and felt that it would be such a shame to not go and honor their sacrifice. I set off Sunday morning to find the Cemetery, knowing that it was going to be around a 25 km hike to make it to the beach from where I was, I was in for a long day. The minute that I made it out of town, a nice Frenchman stopped just ahead of me on the road and asked me where I was going. When I explained to him where I wanted to go he immediately said hop on in. He was only going half the way, but still drove me the whole way there because he said that it was the smallest thing he could do, he was a little child during WWII and America gave him freedom again he said. While dealing with some bad French apples a few weeks back, it was nice to meet the good apples too.

On to the Cemetery and Memorial, I was not prepared in the least bit for the amount of emotion that this place can bring out in you. You start your day by taking a tour of the Memorial learning even more of its history and significance before having the opportunity to walk through the graves. Before you watch this little video, I suggest that you turn off any music or TV around you and just listen to how truly peaceful the area is. It is amazing to imagine that this is the exact land that 66 years ago, one of the worlds largest battles took place.



Walking row upon row reading the names on each grave truly means so much. There are roughly 10,000 Americans buried here and I still cannot wrap my head around it. The number of lives that the War touched is amazing and to have the opportunity to read the stories of so many of the men gets one to really think. Many of the lives lost were even younger than I am currently and it certainly brings to mind that while they made the ultimate sacrifice for freedom, what in my life have I done? If I were to die today, what would my lasting impact on the world be and was it positive? These are just a few of the questions that this place implants in you and having quite a bit of time to walk and think are an important part of this memorial.

















The Cemetery overlooks Omaha beach which was one of the landing points for American forces on D Day and today is quite a peaceful place. It was pretty neat to be able to hike on down and check out the beach today. Not to mention have some sand running through my toes and get to dip my legs in the Atlantic.















Knowing that this was the last day of my trip and I would not get to have many truly calm days left, I decided to just hang out on the beach for a couple of hours. A nice little picnic while watching kids play around in the water and families relaxing on Sunday afternoon was just what I needed. It is certainly great to be able to see the happiness on this land today considering what this land has seen in its days. An interesting twist is that at one of the memorials, it is written in Latin that this land was taken back for the people who took their land. This is in reference to the Norman conquest that I visited on day 1 with French taken over England and 878 years later, the English helping take back land for the French. In no ways was this planned that my trip timeline would work like that, but an added bonus.















To this day, old German bunkers are still left to decay on the hillside while giving a unique insight to what the US soldiers had to deal with. With the day nearly over, I headed off to make my way back to Bayeux and the train station and once again, a friendly stranger gave me a ride from the beach back into town. The people that you get to meet along the way certainly make for an interesting trip and the conversations are able to give one an insight into local culture even more so than just a standard visit. A successful trip all around in that I got in some ok R and R, even though all the walking was draining. I also got to see some sites that I have always wanted to see and now, am extremely motivated for the second half of the season. Stay tuned for an update on some of the more "unique" characters I got to meet on my trip.

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.