Euro Livin'- Day One

I love flying. I love traveling. Sure, it’s stressful, tiring, and sometimes downright uncomfortable, but to me an adventure doesn’t start once you arrive, but when you first step out the door of home. I remember traveling down to San Francisco earlier this year on my way to the Sea Otter Classic. That trip was an amazing adventure in itself filled with so many laughs and the unbelievable support of my team RAD Racing, but while I was making my way through terminal after terminal I couldn’t help but notice all the amazing places seemingly every plane I passed was departing for. Thought’s crept into my mind of what it would be like to just do it. Hop on the next flight I came across to another interesting and exotic land and just roll with it. This was just around the time of the L.A. to Honolulu teenage stowaway and, let’s be honest, there was a spark of curiosity- insane, twisted, wacko curiosity, but curiosity none the less. However, I boarded my plane with homesick eyes set on Helena, Montana. I knew sometime, hopefully sooner than later, I would be one of those travelers who others could look at with jealousy and curiosity as I handed my boarding pass and passport to the polite stewardess at gate E11 with service to Brussels. It definitely happened sooner rather than later.

The travel day was a fairly easy one. Helena- Salt Lake, Salt Lake- Atlanta, Atlanta- Brussels. I unfortunately wasn’t quite on my game taking pictures through the travel yesterday, which you might as well thank me for. Oh, all the wasted time I saved you scrolling through pictures of planes and the back of people’s heads and airplane food. Yep, I didn’t even take the customary shot of my vegetarian pasta, inevitably used to Segway into a rant of the poor quality of food on airplanes. Though Jerry Seinfeld is one of my favorite comedians, I’ve never really been one to complain about airplane food. No, it’s not five star, but hey, it’s recognizable food being cooked a 35,000 feet. What more do you want.  

Once we landed in Brussels, we had barely gotten our bags before we were greeted by the USA Cycling entourage. We rolled in style.

 

After a quick and beautiful drive from Brussels to Sittard, our home base for the next couple weeks, we proceeded to unpack the bikes. It’s always a quiet and reflective time, unpacking bikes, as thought’s and worst case scenarios are played over and over in heads. Are there any scratches? Are any spokes broken? I can’t believe TSA stole my peanut butte- oh… there it is… Thankfully, my bike ended up without a scratch. As for the peanut butter, well, I brought almond butter, so I guess we’ll never know.

After building bikes we all went out for our first team spin in Europe. It’s pretty cool when describing the route you can say, “Yeah, so we started in Sittard, Netherlands, and then took a left at the round-a-bout into Germany for a little while. We could have gone right, but that would have just put us back in Belgium and we’re planning on doing that tomorrow.”

 

The ride was beautiful, and other than dotting through about five different hamlets on our 45 minute spin and the exceedingly narrow roads, we could have been taking a ride through Kansas. But we weren’t, and that’s what really makes it unique.

I had to snap a picture of the circus we passed on the way. It seemed to be a pretty big deal.

After our little spin we went out to the grocery store. Even though this is my second time to Europe, I’d never been to a super market over here. It was pretty similar other than a few slight differences, including being able to roll the little baskets.

But the size of their candy bars made me feel right at home!

It was a great first day in the Netherlands. I was even able to put my two years of high school German to the test. After lunch I made sure to tell the cook, “Schmek sehr lecker”. He looked at me and said, “American?”

 I looked at him and said, “Yes, very much so.”