Summer 2008

After taking almost 4 months of vacation and unpaid leave this year, I'm sticking close to home this summer. But things could be worse - I live in a place where people come for vacations.

On June 15, I joined my friends Steve and Larry and a couple of others for a backcountry ski trip on Mt. Trelease, near the Loveland Ski area. Trelease isn't much of a peak - only 12477'/3803m - and when you're on top, everything around you seems to be higher. But it had a nice line on the northern side, and I needed to get one backcountry trip in this year.

I like to go as far as possible in my running shoes - this time I made it up to the base of the headwall before I had to put my boots on.


Steve and Larry hike in their ski boots.


Steve points the way.


Steve and Larry kick-stepping up the headwall


Yours truly heading down

I need to get some more weight on that back ski. But I've got some hamstring tendonitis, and I'm just happy to be out skiing...

I had some use-'em-or-lose-'em miles, so I took a quick trip back to Michigan over July 4th to see my parents and my brothers.

The next weekend, Sandy and I rode the Triple Bypass (120 miles with 10000 ft of climbing) for the third year in a row. It was a good ride, but we both agree that it's time to do a different ride next year.



On August 3, we had the High Altitude Hash at Berthoud Pass, so I went up early and tried to ride my mountain bike over Jones Pass. I almost made it but was turned back by snow a few hundred feet before the top of the pass.

Post-Mortem

... and the mortem thing is almost right. About half way across the Atlantic, I realized that I was getting sick. I ended up with one of the worst summer colds I've ever had - nasty sore throat, and a cough that still lingers on two months later. Maybe it's the dreaded Luxembourg Lung Fungus.

The grass in the yard was about a foot tall in many places. I have a teen-age son who is blissfully ignorant about how to use the lawn mower, so I had to deal with it myself. It was way too deep for the mower, so I spent about an hour with my two-stroke weed whacker, filling up the neighborhood with purple smoke and making more noise that a motocross race.

I went back to work the day after I arrived, and hadn't forgotten too much of what I do for a living.

Cindi spent the next two weeks touring around Normandy, visiting monasteries, battlefields and cheese shops, sleeping in airports, etc. But that's her story...

Heading Home

Monday (May 26, Memorial Day for all you folks back in the USA) was another beautiful day in Austria, but it was time to head home. We loaded up the car

and headed out the autobahn into Germany and around Munich. Anyone who tells you that all Germans drive 100mph on the Autobahn probably has never been there. This is a typical scene on most Autobahns:

a line of semis (mostly from Eastern Europe) in the right lane, and everyone else in the left lane. And there's a general speed limit of 130km/hr anyway. (But I do know a couple of stretches of Autobahn with no traffic or speed limit - I got up to 180km/hr last year.)

After a few hours of this, we left the Autobahn at Karlsruhe and headed northwest into Saarland. There are some pleasant low mountains in this area, but it's not the Alps. Eventually we crossed the Mosel River at Schengen and we were in Luxembourg, a new country for both of us. Luxembourg is clean and boring in a Swiss kind of way (but without the scenery).

Diesel is cheaper than almost anywhere else in Europe, but everything else is on the slightly pricey side. We ate at an Italian restaurant on the main square (the cheapest thing except for McDonalds)

(yes, that's a Belgian beer - there is Luxembourgish beer, but they didn't serve it) and had some good but expensive ice cream. Then it was back to our Ibis hotel (a step above the Etap which is a step above the Formule 1).

The next morning we drove across the border into Belgium looking for breakfast (and keeping an eye out for ornery people).

We found a bakery with some nice waffles and pastries, but there was no way to warm the waffles. Maybe they don't do microwaves in Belgium.


We crossed back into France and drove the backroads into Riems, where we had coffee in a PMU (off-track-betting) cafe. (No, we didn't place any bets.) Then it was onto the Autoroute (expensive tolls) to Paris and our hotel near the CDG airport. We took the train into Paris where we visited a couple of bookstores and an internet cafe before dinner at a nice but somewhat touristy restaurant.


Paris is famous for Bertillon ice cream, but at $6 for a modest cone, I let Cindi enjoy it while I watched. After a bit of a battle to find where to re-enter the train station, we took the train back to the airport area and walked back to the hotel in the rain.

The next morning I packed everything I could into my two bags, and Cindi dropped me at the terminal. I must have triggered some kind of warning, because the security people grilled me for about 10 minutes about the contents of my bags (including the large black bike box) and how I had managed to arrive at the airport. Apparently the idea of being dropped off by your wife in your car was something new to them, but fortunately Cindi was back and had the car registration to show them. My flight was uneventful, and I got lucky on the exit-row seats again. US Customs in Dallas was slow, but they didn't ask any strange questions. Andrew picked me up in Denver, and I dropped him off on campus and managed to stay awake for the half-hour drive home. The house didn't smell too bad, so I said hello to the cats, unpacked a few things and got to bed around midnight.