Airlines Secret Mission: Make Sure Everyone is As Dehydrated As Possible

I love that it's quite a mission to bring your own water on the plane with you. In fact, it wasn't even possible flying from Munich to Chicago! We had to go through security for the umpteenth time right before our gate. The Chicago airport SUCKS, btw. If I never have to go there again, it'll be too soon! Kudos to the airlines, they were almost 100% for losing my luggage for the whole trip. Not only did they lose both bag and bike on the way to Italy, but yesterday, they somehow managed to lose my bag somewhere between checking it back in after customs and getting on a rescheduled flight, since we missed ours to Denver! I'm a bit over it all at the moment!

Sorry for the rant. Italy was wonderful, Melissa is World Champ (WAHOOOOOOO!!!), boys are dumb, and I'll post some pictures when I get a chance to sleep and catch up on school. :)

Bikeless and Bagless in Italy!! :(

So, I arrived in Munich on Monday morning at 5:30. My bike and bag did not make. Booo!! Lufthansa assured me that it would come on the next flight (next morning) and would be delivered to my hotel in Italy. They said that it was their responsibility to get it to me. Check. Okay, leave the airport with the team 6 hours later, certain my stuff will arrive sometime the next evening. We got to the venue in Italy 6 slow bus ride hours later, and it is gorgeous!!! What a very cool place to be! (I'll post pictures soon, when I'm not so surly about the bags...)

Anyway, I'll spare you all the details, but long story short, it's not Wednesday night, I still don't have my bag or bike, I've used nearly $20 on Skype talking to the airlines, and they're still not even sure where my bike is. Apparently it went from Denver to DC, back to Denver, then on to Frankfurt, next to Munich, and finally to Venice (maybe). Munich says it's in Venice, but Venice says no, they don't have it. ?!?!?! It's gotta be somewhere, right? My bag is stuck in customs in Venice, and someone from the team has to drive over there to get it in the morning. I'm really hoping that my bike is also there, as we start practice tomorrow night, and I'd really rather not borrow a bike. I don't have shoes/pedals or knee pads, either, as that stuff is all in my bike box! I've had several offers of bikes to borrow, so I'll sort something out, I'm sure. I've lost my cool a few times, but I'm trying to keep it together. I finally changed out of the jeans I've had on for 5 days today (thanks for the loaner clothes, Paul!). That was nice, as I sat in a flower pot the first night here and got mud on my butt... It's all very comical, well sort of. Tomorrow is GO TIME, so tomorrow I'm gonna get really pissed if it's not here.

I promise the next post will have lovely photos and hopefully no more BITCHING!!!

Italy is BEAUTIFUL, so I'll have to do a post to do it justice...until then, keep your baggage will arrive on time fingers crossed for me! :)

Reason to Smile!

So, it seems that my experiments may actually be working?!?! Who'd have thought. :) I didn't get a chance to fully analyze and think about the data that I collected before I left for Europe trip #1 until this week. I spent an hour and a half going over it with my advisor, and while it doesn't scream out that things are working...with a bit of thought and observation, I think that it is.

I'm still here at school, it's 2 in the a.m., which sucks, but hopefully when I get it all sorted out tomorrow, things will look good, and I can get on that airplane on Sunday feeling good about my research!!

I am SOOOO excited for next week, to ride, to race, to see another country, and to see people I'm really missing, even though I just left a week of so ago! Crazy!! All the work in the lab will pay off next week! Until then, however...haha

Keeping Up

So, I'm sure most of you aren't dying to know how everyone in Europe, or at a race here in the States that you're not at is doing, but I usually am. :) Mostly because I hate not being there, and I usually have some good friends racing. Anyway, there are several good websites getting some good coverage going these days, including live Freecaster.tv coverage of the World Cups! Here's a few websites that top my list of ones to check for up to date race coverage. Let me know if you know of others or better ones. I always need more procrastination tools! ;) Back to school work...

Pinned MTB Magazine (JDD does an awesome job of keeping us all updated!)
Canadian Cyclist (the Canadians are on it with equal coverage for men and women!)
Freeride Foundation (this is only info on what the ladies are doing, sorry boys)
Litter Mag
Decline Magazine
Jill Kintner (Jill's usually on the ball, although, she's only doing BMX this year)
Anneke Beerten (Anneke is quick, she barely is done racing before there's an update!)
Dirt
Transcend (Fraser's a usually a little OTB, but sometimes has some good stuff, too)

That's a pretty good sampling of places other than Cyclingnews.com and velonews to get gravity info from. Happy procrastinating! :)

Home and Going Back Again!

Well, I made it home from Barcelona last night round 10:30. The travels were pretty seemless, rental car checked in A-OK (didn't notice the mirror was pretty marked up from one of the cockroach scooters in downtown Barcelona running into it), didn't charge me for my bike (wahooo!), bike make it here without getting lost (haven't opened it to see if it's messed up yet, still have my fingers crossed), missed the bus by 10 minutes, but another was on it's way 50 minutes later. All in all, a pretty good travel experience.

Got home and found out that I made the World's team. Thanks for letting us know with 10 days notice to fly to Europe USA Cycling! Ugghhhh. Oh well. Hopefully I'll get my flight, etc... sorted here pretty soon. Gone for 10 days, home for 10 and then back to Europe. I should just quit grad school and move over there. haha, just kidding...sort of. :)

World's is in Trentino, Italy at a resort called Val di Sole. It should be a cool event, no matter how hard USA Cycling trys to ruin it for all of the gravity racers!!



K, time to put the nose to the grindstone and whip out as much schoolwork as I can in the next 9 days! I feel a bit schizophrenic with the ride/school/ride/school schedule! I guess I'll get it figured out sooner or later (hopefully sooner and not later!). :)

Una Dia en Barcelona

Barcelona in the background behind me

Melissa, Jaym, and Mott left last night, so I had an adventure in Barcelona today all by my lonesome. Melissa's Aunts set me up with all of the info to get the train from Sitges to Barcelona and then a good "tour of the city" tourist bus that you can get off and on where ever you'd like. Unfortunately, shortly after I got on the tour bus, I realized that my camera was nearly out of battery power, amateur hour for sure!

La Sagrada Familia: it's been under construction for a LONG time...

One of many sculptures on the side of the cathedral

Needless to say, I didn't get too many pictures of anything other than La Sagrada Familia and Park Güell, but in the end those were two of the coolest things that I saw all day.

The park is full of so much cool mosaic artwork and sculptures

The famous lizard/dragon that greets you when you arrive

Several mosaic pieces on the ceiling of one area...there are tons of them!

Plants growing on the top of these rock sculptures

This is a really amazing city. The architecture is truly unique and very beautiful, very gothic. One artist, Antoni Gaudi, had a huge influence on much of the architecture and a lot of the art/statues in this town, and I love his work. If you're the traveling type and ever want an amazing trip to take, I'd recommend Barcelona, but I'd suggest coming with someone special. This place is too beautiful to not share it with someone. That's the only thing I'd change about today!!

P.S. Barcelona has more scooter per capita than any other city in Europe...they're almost like bugs crawling around at rush hour time, it's crazy!

Back to Spain...

Jaym, me, and Melissa at our hotel in Andorra

Fee, Melissa, and me at Cedric's Club

Good times until someone set off a smoke bomb...Dumb!

The racing didn't go so stellar for me this past weekend. The course was super fast and technical, and I couldn't get my head together. Oh the learning curve! We headed over to Cedric Gracia's cafe for a little get together after that. We had a good time, that's for sure. The evening was filled with some not so great Euro beer, dancing, a smoke bomb in the cafe, and 3:00 pasta cooking for Melissa. :)

The beach in front of Melissa's Aunt's house

The next morning we set out to get back to Melissa's aunt's house in Sitges, Spain. It's really beautiful here, and I am so, so lucky to be staying here until Thursday. Today, Jaymie and I successfully got sunburnt (not the original plan, of course), at the beach 50 feet out of the door. Then we all headed into Sitges for lunch. Melissa, Jaymie, and Mott set off for Fort William this evening, and I'm here with Gina and Cathryn till Thursday.

Me, Melissa, Gina, and Mott at Gina's beautiful place in Sitges, Spain

Along the coast in Sitges

I'm hopefully gonna head into Barcelona tomorrow and do a little site seeing before hopping on the plane and coming home. Should be fun! :)