The Trans-Europe Express

Just a quick update: I'm safely ensconced in Presov, Slovakia, my more-or-less final destination. On Sunday PM, I drove east across Switzerland, dipped briefly into Liechtenstein and made it across western Austria as far as Imst (Tirol). The next day, I got a good (but cold) ski workout at Niederthai (Otztal) and then set my nostril hairs on fire and drove to Vienna. I spent an enjoyable evening with my friend Tom and his family, and slept on the guest mattress under the dining table. After a visit to a typical Viennese coffee shop the next morning, I drove across Slovakia, stopping long enough for a quick ski at Park Snow Donolavy. I pulled into Presov well after dark and took about 45 minutes of blundering around to find my wife and our apartment.

I am now a visiting leech at the Department of Geography of the University of Presov. More details at 10....

Pulling Adequacy from the Jaws of Defeat

In some races, everything goes well - in others, it's a complete disaster. Today's race was a combination of the two. It was a nice chilly 9 below (C) in the shade this morning, but the sun came up on most of the course by the 10AM start. I didn't get the 'call-up' to the first group (Hauptklasse) so I lined up with the Volkslaufer in the second wave which started 3 minutes behind. I had a pretty good position - 4 row of about a dozen - and was ready to really give it everything on the initial 2km of icy and slightly downhill track. The gun went off, I gave a few good double poles to get going and realized that I wasn't getting any push out of my left side. When I looked down, my hand was still holding the pole grip, but the pole was nowhere to be seen. Someone had stepped on my basket and pulled the shaft right out of the grip. Nothing to do but stop and work my way backwards through the rest of the field to find my pole. Then it took 30 seconds or so to cram the shaft back into the grip, during which the grip broke! When I finally got things reassembled, I was essentially at the very back of the second wave, with 400+ people ahead of me. A little adrenaline works wonders, and I skated and double-poled past about 150 people over the next 2km.



Everything kept going well for most of the race, as I reeled in one person after another. Of course, as I moved up, I was passing faster people so it went slower, but I was moving steadily until about the 3km-to-go point. We were back on the slight downhill and I had a good rhythm going. I took another good stroke, and my left side just kept going - no pole! Somehow it had gotten pulled out of the broken grip. I completed my pole stroke by smashing into the icy track with my left knee, which now has a major case of road rash. Another 30 seconds or so to retrieve my pole and reassemble it, and I was off again. I passed back the few people who had just passed me, and was ready to crank up the final slight uphill when I noticed that I wasn't getting any grip on the left. As I suspected, the spike had fallen out of the pole, making it almost useless on the icy track. I still managed to pass a couple more people, but it was essentially a one-pole effort. I finished the 21km course (which I measured at 18.5km) in about 55 minutes flat, of which at least 90 seconds was devoted to mechanical problems. (It's amazing what a low-altitude flat icy course will do for your times - last week's Frisco Gold Rush in Colorado was only 1km longer, but took me another 22 minutes.)

To add insult to injury, the only food available after the race was for sale at the usual Swiss prices. This is my sixth race in Europe, and all the others provided a full meal and sometimes beer. Not in Switzerland...

After paying the local ski shop $30 to fix my pole (quick service, no labor charge, probably inflated parts prices), I decided to get out of the theme park as quickly as possible. I drove east past some spectacular limestone mountains that make you realize how ugly most Colorado mountains are. I took a brief detour into Liechtenstein. The royal family used to make their money by manufacturing Curta calculators (Google them!), but now it's the money-laundering capital of Europe. Finally back into Austria, through the Arlberg Tunnel and into Imst where I found a decent room for 23 Euros. I dropped a bit on dinner, but nothing like in SwitzerLand(TM). And they had Schneider Weisse, one of my favorite Weissbiers.

The World's Largest Theme Park

I know the Swiss will be offended, but I feel like I'm visiting the world's largest theme park. It starts at the border where you buy the overpriced ticket (read "Swiss Motorway Tax"). Then you wait in long lines (a.k.a. Zurich traffic jams - no bypass around the city) and eat at overpriced food concession stands (better known as run-of-the-mill pizzerias where I dropped $28 on a (generous) bowl of pasta, a salad and a small beer).

I had two reasons for coming to Switzerland (which isn't exactly directly between Paris and Presov). First was to visit my long-lost (well, not really lost) cousin David near Basel. We hadn't seen each other in over 40 years, but we had a fine old time drinking, eating, telling stories, etc. Thanks for the hospitality, David!

The second reason is tomorrow's cross-country ski race near Einsiedeln. It was supposed to be IN Einsiedeln, but since they have hardly any snow there, they've moved the race up the valley to Studen, where the ground is covered with a white substance that resembles the stuff that used to build up inside your old freezer. But it's fast skiing - you just have to stay upright. And the scenery is spectacular - Alps on all sides of you. (The course itself is the usual Alpine XC course - up one side of the valley and down the other.)

Speaking of skiing, I did 22km yesterday on some trails near Gerardmer in the Vosges Mts of France. The snow conditions were pretty bad, but the trail system was excellent - this place would be a blast if it had good snow.

Nancy Says Hello

So I actually made it to Europe – for a while, I wasn’t sure it would happen. Wednesday got off to an unauspicious start at 5AM when American Airlines called to say “Your flight has been canceled”. But then they continued “and you’ve been re-routed through Dallas”. The Dallas flight got in only an hour after the canceled Chicago flight was supposed to. And the AA agents were really nice to me – the first one counted my huge duffel bag as a ‘boot bag’, which meant that I only had one extra piece: the bike box. She could have charged me excess baggage fees, but only hit me up for the standard $110 international bike fee. Then when I got to DFW, I checked at the gate and there was an exit-row seat left for me!

After retrieving my mountain of luggage at CDG and getting it all on one cart,

I trundled through the airport trying not to maim people with my ski box and got to the Peugeot pick-up desk. They sent a van over for me and took me to pick up my brand-new Peugeot 307 station wagon (diesel, 5-speed, supposed to get around 50mpg). I got everything inside, filled the tank and set out for parts east. In all the travel literature I’ve read, I’ve never seen a 250-mile drive recommended as a cure for jet-lag. After a couple of espresso stops and some odd thick fog on an otherwise sunny day, I pulled into Nancy about 5PM.


Here on the south side of Nancy there are 3 hotels in a row, all run by Accor. The ‘high-end’ is the Novotel, mid-range is the Etap, and I’m staying in the Fomule 1. F1 hotels have all the comforts of home, provided you were raised in a Stalinist labor camp. The formula seems to be to cut out everything you can – there are no power outlets in the room, the bath towel is the size of a hand towel, and there don’t seem to be any toilet seats. But the WC (down the hall) goes through some kind of strange cleaning cycle after you leave, with all kinds of whirring noises coming through the door and a red light telling you not to enter, so it probably passes the stringent EU sanitary requirements.



I’m looking forward to spending a night in a horizontal position.

Packing, or Getting My Sh*t Together

So I got this nifty bike box from Crateworks – somewhat cheaper than the hard plastic cases, and it looks like my 61cm bike will fit (although I think the chainrings would have to come off the 64cm bike). It’s made out of what looks to be plastic-impregnated corrugated cardboard. Here’s what it looks like with the frame



And here are the wheels


And here it is all closed up.

Too Much Racing

Well, the snow is here, and I've been overdoing it - 8 races in just over 3 weeks. Three of those were the Eldora Nighthawks 5km night races where we ski around the base of the ski area in temperatures as low as -1F (-18C). I also did a 10k snowshoe race in Silverthorne, the Devils Thumb Pursuit race (7.5k classic, 7.5k skate), the 15k at Gold Run, and yesterday both the 5k classic and the 20k skate at the Frisco Gold Rush. I actually won my age group at a couple of these - there are lots of faster guys my age, but I guess they didn't show up.

I'm seriously tired now - time for a few days off before next weekend's race in Switzerland (I hope).

Grinding out the K's

Not much new to report - just grinding out the mileage (or kilometerage) at Eldora (ugh) and Frisco. I just put in 30km at Frisco in a few inches of new soft stuff, and I'm knackered - time for a day off...

I did a few miles on the 'cross bike on Friday - I tried to ride through the Open Space off S Boulder Road, but couldn't push through 4 inches of melting slush/cement.