Euro Livin'- Losing Myself in Europe

“Are you guys going to get any bratwursts while we’re in Germany”, I asked our mechanics as we started rolling down the driveway, finally leaving for our race weekend in Germany.

“No way, we don’t eat that crap”, said Michelle, the Belgian.

“Yeah, those things have more brains in them than most Belgians”, replied J-Dubz, the Dutchman.

I think it’s going to be an entertaining drive.

The last few days of euro camp have been a better experience than I could have asked for. I woke up Thursday to birds singing out my window again, but after that sound had done nothing but tease me every morning for the last two days while the rain still poured down in droves, I wasn’t too optimistic. Yet to my surprise I pulled open the blinds to find, well, no rain at least; fog, unbelievable fog, but no rain.

The fog was so thick it was solid, it was an unmovable wall until the sun came out. When the sun finally peeked through, though, there was no stopping it. I could see the flames erupt for short spurts as they burned off the haze. Like paper in a camp fire, the fog was swiftly consumed by the sunshine till, finally, we were free. At this time three of the guys and I were out cruising the roads of Europe in style, on actual road bikes!

The mechanics at the USAC service course were gracious enough to set up and lend us some road bikes so we could ride the trainers on Wednesday, instead of going outside and drowning. However, Thursday got sunny and a few of us decided it might be fun to go out and actually cover some ground. We did cover a lot of ground… the only issue was once we had we didn’t really know how to “uncover’ the ground. Four Americans were hopelessly lost in Europe with no idea how to get home.

 

Here’s the thing about getting lost on a ride in northwestern Europe: it’s flat, like really flat. I’m from Montana where no matter how turned around you get there will normally always be some kind of landmark to keep you anchored. A river, a mountain, something will at least let you know what direction to head. Here the tallest mountain is the overpass above the highway, and while each and every European town you pass through every five kilometers are all beautiful and special, they all look exactly the same! Yeah, we turned left going out, so right coming home. I remember that German flag, or was it Belgian. No, I would have remembered the goat farm. This defiantly isn’t the right way. Ok, back on track, we just needed to turn left! Wait, no… no. What other way is there? GIVE ME A SIGN! After going in the wrong direction for far too long we decided to pick a direction and ride. We’d either end up back in Sittard or the French Riviera, either option was fine with us.

After going for a while we rolled through a town where some people actually seemed to be awake. I asked one of them which way Sittard was. We were in Germany and I was asking directions to a town in the Netherlands. They could only point me in the right direction of the country I wanted, but once we got there who knew were Sittard would be. Though as the sun started shining down through the seared holes in the fog, so did luck shine down on us. It wasn’t long until we saw a road sign: Sittard, NL- 10 KM.

We followed the yellow European road signs as our yellow brick road and sure thing, ten kilometers later we had made it back to home. I still had time for a strength workout before lunch.

 

In between flashing nightmares of selling my bike and working as a shoe peddler’s apprentice in the flatlands of Northern Europe, I did take some time to notice how beautiful the ride was. We found amazing farm roads to ride on- all paved for miles (and no chip-seal). We found so many towns and it seemed as though each one was more medieval and beautiful than the last. I was never actually that concerned the whole time we were lost, just because look where we were at! Who could let fear get in the way of enjoying that?

After a good lunch we went out for our second training of the day, bowling!

There are certain things the euro’s don’t do nearly as well as Americans; hamburgers, trucks, toilets. Bowling is not one of these things. The actually rock at building bowling alleys.

We all decided that if this whole biking thing doesn’t work out, we probably shouldn’t depend on bowling as a fallback plan, unless they have a category for looking good while bowling. We’d win that every time.

 

Another thing the euros have simply made better is the movie theater. Yesterday was a rest day for all of us in preparation of the race coming up on Sunday. Normally these days are the worst. Other than perhaps a short spin in the morning, the idea is to stay off the feet and store as much energy as possible. This doesn’t always leave much time for being a tourist. One of cool things we can do is go see a movie. Other than being huge and having lots of cool movie posters, at first glance the theater seems pretty average, but the devils in the details. They have a massive snack selection which even has kettle corn along with regular popcorn (of course!).

 

Once you get your kettle corn and make your way into the theater they’ve been cleaver enough to give you a little shelf to place your concessions on for easy access (why have we not thought of this?).

The portions of the popcorn might not be as big as in the states, but not to worry, you can just go get a refill during the ten minute intermission in the middle of each movie. And if the movie you’ve gotten roped into is especially terrible? You might want to take advantage of the wide selection of adult beverages offered at the concession stand to make it a bit more tolerable.

Us, we didn’t have that problem. We went to Transformers: Age of Extinction, which was basically two and a half hours of metallic grinding noises, nice cars, and randomly placed shots of the American flag. And, SPOILER ALERT: Optimus Prime rides a fire breathing robot dinosaur. So it has that going for it.

 

Well, I think that about gets you up to date. Good thing too, J-Dubz just took the car onto the autobahn and inertia pushing me against the seat is making it a bit hard to type.  

I leave you with a picture of my bike. It’s ready for this weekend, I think I am too.