SFB (S**t For Brains)

OK, maybe I'm getting old, maybe running over to Europe is taking its toll, maybe I was just worn out: I missed my 6:00 a.m flight this morning out of Lubbock because I had set my damn alarm for 4:10 p.m. instead of 4:10 a.m. If you're European, you may not understand—one is in the morning (desired), one in the damn afternoon (not so good when the flight is in the wee hours).

So I wake up at 5:33, a.m., that is. Within nanoseconds the mind starts reeling, like in an 007 movie. What are the options? It takes another nanosecond to realize that there is NO way to make a 6:00 a.m. flight when you're at the house at now, well, 5:33.0005. Holy shittola!

Make a long story and many, many phone calls short: I am in Washington Reagan, thanks to American Airlines and their amazing ability to deal with a customer's F/U. They let me stand by for a later flight, without any charges. US Airways, the carrier that will take me from here to Albany, was not that customer service oriented: A reissue of my entire LBB-DFW-DCA-ALB and back ticket would have been right at $3,000—no kidding. So, I am forfeiting my 3:30 p.m. flight and had to buy a new, one-way flight to Albany, tonight at 10:05 p.m., getting me to Albany at 11:30 p.m. so that I can drive my rental car for another hour and a half to Windham. Hey, I'm not complaining. After all, I'm the one who set the damn alarm.

I spent about 3 hours on the phone with American, US Airways, and Switzerland (who bought my ticket for me), as well as at the LBB airport check-in counter with AA's Richard, who knows me well and whom I know, too. He tried everything, and I can only say "hats off" to AA and its employees. AA may be in bankruptcy, but it sure isn't because of their stellar employees.

Will US Airways buy AA? If so, I sure hope AA's customer service will prevail

Miracle of miracles: I get to DFW, have to hustle to make it from my stand-by flight from LBB to my (unconfirmed—another $75 fee for confirmation) flight to Washington, arrive at the gate, am number one on the stand-by list, get my ticket, finally take a pee (no worries, in the restroom), and am being paged. Sit down, because I couldn't believe it either: They hand me a seat in First Class. So why would I not want to fly American?

I have another 4 hours of layover until my flight. Once I get to Albany, it will be a dark drive into the Catskills, but I'll be fine. One fuck-up a day is enough! And at the Hotel Vienna (whose owner, Rick R., I know from three years past) will leave the lights on.

As I said, SFB—and if you use your phone as an alarm clock, change it to military time!

Jürgen

Team "We Are Back" (almost) rules in 19th Stadttriathlon Erding

Sabine finally had to agree that the pockets on my jersey DO come in handy, especially post-race!

It had been a few years since I competed the last time on my bike, but Sunday was the day for a come-back. Together with two new friends, Jan Pape and Henrick Neugebauer, I entered the 19th Erding Stadttriathlon as a member of team "We Are Back." Several months back, Sabine had told me that she would compete with some of her Landscape Architecture colleagues from the City of Munich in this Olympic distance event, and since at the time no more cyclists were needed to fill up one of the 10 City teams we went with Plan B, which had sprung from a chance encounter that Sabine had with Jan a few weeks later. All three of us used to compete but then ... well, you know how it goes.

Sabine and I pre-race ...

With my screwed-up back I was worried about being able to walk after the race, but I wasn't going to let my buddies down—after all, in our first get-together at the beginning of my European sojourn, we had set the bar high for ourselves, thanks at least partly to copious amounts of beer. Well, it didn't really matter how fast we were since we all agreed that this was really—no, REALLY!—just about participating. Altogether, 55 teams (and about 1,500 solitary athletes) entered this event, and of those 55 teams we came in 30th. Jan ran a 45-minute 10 K, Henrick didn't drown (which we all saw as a definite positive), and I turned something like a 1:27 for the somewhat longish (for an Olympic distance) 29 miles. The course was gorgeous. Sabine and I had pre-ridden it on Saturday, and it was just perfect. The first 11 miles or so were almost totally flat, and then the hills started. It was a fairly warm day with just a bit of air movement—maybe 78 degrees and 5 mph. The roads were the smoothest you can imagine (if you ignore the first kilometer, which was in rather poor shape), and all intersections were secured by police or firefighters. Best of all: No WTC to be found anywhere close, so the entry fee was a refreshing 25 Euro!

... and post-race

I don't know why we didn't take a photo of the three of us together before the start, but here are my two compatriots after the event when Sabine and I had already taken off so that we could make it to the social get-together with her colleagues from work. The "beer," by the way, was Erdinger Alkoholfrei, one of those non-alcoholic beers that make you burp a lot and that look good in those fine glasses but that otherwise are just not the real thing.

Henrick (center) and Jan (right) with an unidentified bystander—note the cool BMW shirts for our team (Henrick works for BMW and had them custom-made for us)

This triathlon presented a great way to finish my wonderful vacation in Europe. Yesterday morning I left Munich airport at 7:20 a.m., and I landed in Lubbock on schedule, at 5:40 p.m. Just a few hours, yet worlds removed. Twenty-four hours later I have unpacked my bags, done my laundry, tuned up two bikes, bought groceries, ridden 45 miles with my buddies, met with Rick who is rejuvenating my house, and gone through all of my mail. A week from today I will be in Windham, NY, as the DCO for the one-and-only Mountain Bike World Cup in the US. It's a veritable whirlwind of a life, and I hope you get to do cool stuff this summer and onward and enjoy it as much as I do.

And now, a fine parting shot that I took on Saturday when we previewed the swim course at the "Weiher" near Erding. After writing about all those Speedos I thought you really needed to get the full impact. Sorry, I didn't get any pics from transition where athletes simply stripped down to change. Oh, those Europeans!

A happy family at the lake—I didn't catch the belly scratch

Jürgen

Still in Europe, where Speedos and beer rule

It is hard to believe that 10 days have gone by since my last blog update, but here I am sitting in Berlin on a Monday morning and nothing but wonderful memories remain of the early part of June. My time with Sabine was nothing but perfect—we saw so much while enjoying each other's company. After our originally planned week in Keszthely had come to an end we decided to tack on an extra few days at the other end of Lake Balaton since the weather was so nice and the region so inviting. Last Saturday (June 3) we drove the few miles to Balatonfüred where we found an apartment for three nights. We had planned to ride on that Saturday, but we didn't get far with that plan: Our landlord, Lajos, insisted on intoxicating (and damn near blinding) us with home-brewed fire water and wine. So we sat with Lajos on his porch, making sure to stay away from open flames, and talking in passable German to a local about everything Hungarian. Quite the experience!

Flower-covered pastures and hilly terrain made for perfect cycling

The next day, we went on our longest ride of the trip, a metric century for Sabine who hadn't ridden that far in more than 30 years. It was a picture-perfect Sunday, and we rode through some of the loveliest countryside one can imagine. As a landscape architect who recently has been working on various rehab-projects for open spaces, Sabine was simply gushing over all the wildflowers and other vegetation features of the area. The roads were almost empty and in perfect shape—if only Texas had smooth pavement like that!

Scenic, scenic, scenic ...

The next day we took another ferry boat to the south side of the lake and rode in a rather prosperous area with old mansions and swank new villas. Again, hardly anybody in cars was around to disturb the peace and quiet. In one spot we found easy access to the water and stripped down to go for a nice skinny dip. Lake Balaton has an average depth of only 3 meters or so, and we couldn't really walk into the deeper water since our naked bums would have worked like lighthouses for at least half a mile. Foregoing the Speedo (which definitely rules in Hungary where old men can be seen mowing their lawns or riding their bikes in nothing but their leathery skin and their Speedo) felt quite nice, even though we were surprised by a local who walked up on us and thoroughly enjoyed the view of us (well, probably more of Sabine) drying ourselves off on a wooden deck in the afternoon sun. Oh well, no harm done—Europeans are a bit more relaxed about these kinds of things than most Americans.

Bikes, bras, and bare B&Bs on Balaton

A few days before our skinny dipping adventure Sabine and I had gone to the thermal lake at Heviz, a therapeutic spa where old and (a few) young take to the healing waters. The slightly sulfuric lake had a temperature of about 85 degrees, and we swam (I in my Speedo—no worries!) among those searching for a cure for their rheumatism or simply looking for a relaxing float among the lotus flowers. It was quite the cultural experience, once again.

The thermal lake/spa in Heviz

Eventually, we had to close the Hungarian chapter of our trip, and we did so with a beautiful drive from Balatonfüred to Millstatt in Austria, where we spent two nights before heading on for a few miles to the Gailtal, where we found another apartment for two nights. It was quite a change going from the gently rolling hills of Lake Balaton to the Alps with their wide valleys and high mountains. In Millstatt we had the most beautiful view of any of our accommodations on this trip, when we found a room right on the lake for about 75 euro for the night (also the most expensive of the entire trip). We had access to the lake, which we used to cool down a bottle of Hungarian Muscatel, only to see the bottle get stepped on my an inquisitive swan. We enjoyed some red in the late afternoon sun, and later we tested the waters, which were colder than Balaton—but that didn't keep us from going for a late-evening skinny dip nevertheless. Bare bums and breasts know no borders!

Enjoying the last of the afternoon on Millstätter See

The swan, three little ones, and a bottle of wine

Night falls on the mountains surrounding Millstätter See

Our 60 euro a night apartment in Kötschach-Mauthen in the Gailtal was the most comfortable of all. We had reign over a modern apartment with all amenities, including one of those beautiful Austrian balconies with the big overhanging roof line. On the way to this valley that stretches for more than 50 kilometers on the north-side of the Dolomites (and the border with Italy, where we went for dessert one evening) we stopped by the fixer-upper of one of Sabine's old friends, Rudi. Country living at its best—or worst. After that visit we enjoyed the sleepy roads and villages of the Gailtal for our final few rides.

No traffic, just nature and smooth roads

One of countless small water fountains that dot small villages

Had it not been for my lifting my bike the wrong way on the very last day and screwing up my back, everything would have been perfect. Bummer! Still, our last meal at the Ödenhütte overlooking the valley was the perfect way to finish our trip.

Deer goulash, home-made noodles, and cabbage salad

On Saturday the weather turned really nasty even in the Gailtal. (It had been rainy and cold north of us for several days, and by staying south of the Tauern we had managed to eke out two more days of sunshine. The drive back to Freising was punctuated by occasionally heavy rain and low clouds, which was a real bummer since we didn't see some of the great mountains of that part of the Alps. One other reason to come back one of these days.

On Sunday, after a befitting breakfast of Weisswurst and a few good beers, Sabine took me to the Munich airport and I boarded the short one-hour flight to Berlin to see my dad for a few days. My back is smarting enough that I walk like an old man and may not be able to get on my bike here the way I had hoped. A few minutes ago I scheduled a massage for tomorrow (upon the recommendation of my banker here who is an avid water polo player and who tells me that this Thai massage is the perfect way to get re-adjusted), so maybe help is on the way. I sure hope so, because before my flight back to the US exactly one week from today I am supposed to complete the bike portion of a relay triathlon back in Bavaria. We'll see.

As always, thanks for reading.

Jürgen

Riding bikes in Hungary

A few years ago, Judy and I flew with our CoMotion tandem to Budapest and rode a sweeping circle through south-western Hungary. We stayed for a night at the western-most end of Lake Balaton, in a small town called Keszthely, and now I am back here, with Sabine and two bikes instead of a tandem.

Lake Balaton, vineyards, and gentle landscapes

Last Saturday we drove from Sabine's home near Munich about 600 kilometers to this place, where I had arranged for a vacation rental ahead of time. We have a comfy apartment with all the things one would want, and we get to ride our bikes on a daily basis. During the days of Communism, this area was the playground of the East German elite as it was still behind the iron curtain but was more relaxed (and sported a nicer summer climate) than any other tourist destinations that people were allowed to travel to. Thus, many of the locals here speak more than just a smattering of German, which makes travel much easier than in other parts of the East Bloc where Russian and the local idiom were (and still are) more prevalent than English. Hungarian is as foreign of a language as it comes, more closely related to unwieldy Finnish than anything out of the Indo-European language pool. Just today Sabine commented that it is pretty pathetic that we don't even know how to say "hello" in Hungarian.

Hungarian: It might as well be cuneiform!

In the summertime, Keszthely is a booming resort that bustles with vacationers, but right now it is still quiet and totally laid back. The town (about 25,000 inhabitants) is located at the south-western end of Lake Balaton, which is the largest lake in all of central Europe (more than 40 miles long and about 10 miles wide). It has many small hotels and apartments (I used my time share points to book our week here), and there are lots of small restaurants and shops. We've found a mom-and-pop grocery store where we've been buying fresh veggies, bread, eggs, and meats, and cooking our meals in the apartment while sipping the local wine is definitely A-OK. Talking about wine: Hungary has multiple wine-growing regions, and we're in one of the important ones. One afternoon we "got stuck" in a family-owned wine shop that also happened to serve the best sandwiches ever, and for literally pennies we drank a few hours away while it rained. Actually, we've been doing quite a bit of that, coming to think of it....

Goose-lard-and-onion sandwich with local red—100% better than it sounds!

The riding has been outstanding. There are lots and lots of tiny roads, almost all of them with the smoothest asphalt you can imagine, and the traffic is extremely light. We have good maps, and every day we have been riding a different route. Along the lake things are, of course, totally flat. As a matter of fact, an asphalted bike path leads around the entire circumference of the lake. The northern shores are quite hilly with some volcanic features. Toward the south-west are areas that are relatively flat, with only light undulations, that are dotted with corn and sunflower fields as well as forests and marshes and lakes. The variety is amazing, and riding here is extremely pleasurable. In the five days that we have been here I have already clocked about 230 miles—a good thing since the beer is cold and we do have to occasionally sit out a thunderstorm.

Taking a break with a small beer ...

Almost every small village that we ride through has at least one resident stork. Yes, the bringers of babies live here, at least in the summer months. There's something very cool about those huge nests, with two storks clonking their beaks in a display of bird intimacy (or whatever it might be) while one can just barely make out a young one craning (or is it storking?) its neck toward the parents.

Stork and storkette

The villages are very clean, with tidy little houses that have small gardens with lots of flowers (mainly roses) up front and veggies in the back. Old men and seemingly even older women putter around, or just sit. It is very quiet here, no screaming and hollering, just pianissimo. Many of the streets are lined with fruit trees, especially cherries, which right now are just loaded with fruit.

Cherries are free for the picking

Overall, this vacation so far as been everything we could have asked for. The wine is good, the food (either in the restaurants or what we find in the stores) is yummy and very affordable, the roads are ideal for our type of cycling, the weather has been beautiful (every day with lots of sun, temps in the low 70s, and only occasional afternoon t-storms that make us drink more beer than we probably should while waiting out the tempest), few tourists, great accommodations—definitely a place to put on the short list for a rewarding vacation.

On Saturday we will leave Keszthely and start driving back toward Munich, but the plan is to stop for a few nights here and there on the way back. What fun!


Jürgen

Urlaub!

Judy loved the word: Urlaub. She never did like "krank feiern," the other way Germans get time off from work. Urlaub is legitimate—it's vacation (instead of calling in sick). On Tuesday, while riding my bike after returning from California, I suddenly realized that I won't have another race, another responsibility for a whole month. I know, y'all think that just because I'm retired I don't have a worry in my life. The reality is that I work more than I ever have. If you were to see the paperwork (OK, electronic paperwork, mostly) that comes with these races, you'd be amazed. I do have a lot of flexibility in my work, but I'm not just loafing all the time.

Busy, busy, busy—London's Heathrow, as seen from T5

But now I am. I am sitting in London's Heathrow, on the way to Munich where in a few hours I'll be picked up by Sabine. Right now she's putting in the last few hours of work at her job in the City of Munich's landscape architecture department—and after that, it's Urlaub for her, too, for two weeks. We've been planning a relaxing trip to Hungary's Plattensee region, and if AA and BA are reliable, we'll have bikes to ride as I hope they will be disgorged from the baggage conveyor belt in MUC in just a few hours.

My (upgraded) flight across the big pond was superb: The crew was extremely friendly, the steak dinner was truly outstanding, and the almost five hours of sleep I got were rather refreshing. And now I'm in the Galleries South in Heathrow's T5, my favorite lounge. After a rejuvenating shower (I love the six body jets that these showers have—when I redo my house I will have to make sure I update my own bathroom) I just had my favorite breakfast: kippers, poached eggs, bacon, baked beans, and toast. How much more British can it be?

Beats the hell out of cereal!

In a few hours I'll be in Munich and my Urlaub will start in earnest. Life is not just good, it is extremely good!

Jürgen

A one-week stage race is a bunch of work!

Start of Stage 4 in Sonora

If you have waited for another update after I abruptly finished my last post (because I simply had to get some sleep) and hadn't seen one so far, well, it's because I honestly could not find the time to write for an hour or so. Right now I am sitting in the Admirals Club in the LAX airport, and I have about two hours before my flight to Dallas.

Jens Voigt about to do the sign-in in Palmdale

Yesterday's eighth stage, which finished with six fast circuits in downtown LA, concluded this year's Amgen Tour of California, the premier stage race in North America. It was quite an experience for me, as it was the longest stage race I have ever been involved in and one that was as professional as it comes. The sheer logistics behind an event like this are simply mind-boggling. Take 16 teams, each with eight riders, plus all the team soigneurs, mechanics, and other staff, and you already have about 300 people running around. Add to that neutral support, the folks in charge of VIP services, catering, course and finish set-up and tear-down (every day!), the media guys, officials, doping control folks (yep, that's me), motorcycle drivers, medical personnel plus all those other untold positions, and you probably end up with 600 people who are traveling the entire time. In addition to that there are all those local volunteers (too many to count), the police contingent, and I don't know who else who are involved every day, but all on a changing basis. Man, to coordinate all of that is not an easy task. The race is run by Medalist Sports, and I have a new-found respect for this biggest name in race promotion in the USA. And then to think that the Tour de France and the Giro d'Italia are a magnitude or two bigger! Wow!

GPS, orchards, and the Central Valley

Heading east across one of the bay bridges

Yoshua trees, not redwoods :)

For me, it was truly an amazing experience. Obviously, I had been to California before, but traveling the way we did, from the Wine Country all the way to LA, brought with it a much better understanding of the topography (and a few other aspects of this big state) than I had before. I drove about 1,000 miles in the process—that was part of the big time drain. For most stages we had to transfer either to the start or from the finish to a hotel, with distances that were sometimes Texas-sized. Generally, I tried to be at the start (which was not always possible because I had to be at the finish in time to set up the Doping Control Station and train the local doctor and volunteers before the racers arrived) to pick up the day's start lists and communiqué as well as exchange my race radio battery. I needed to know who might have dropped out, and I needed to have a lot of the same information that the commissaires had. In the car, I listened to the official radio channel, Radio Tour, which informs everyone in the race caravan on what is happening. Incidentally, I had very little contact with the officials as they would be done with their work when I started the testing, after the finish, and they always stayed in a different hotel than I did. Nevertheless, there was some contact with the PCP, Martijn Swinkles from Holland, as well as the occasional quick chat with our own Bonnie Walker from Austin, who is hoping to become an international commissaire before long.

The spoils of racing

The route for the tour was beautiful, with the only exception being the time trial in Bakersfield. I have to say, that ugly town (a mix between Clovis, NM, and Las Vegas, NV) was definitely the low point in otherwise spectacular scenery. The start of Stage 4 in Sonora, the finish of Stage 6 at Big Bear Lake, and of course the spectacular last five miles of the penultimate Stage 7 that climbed up all the way to Mt. Baldy will stay with me for a while. Unfortunately I didn't see any of the course between San Francisco and Santa Cruz (Stage 2), which led all along the Pacific coast. I saw the redwoods as well as the dry, rolling, yellow grass-covered hills of the East Bay area, the interminable orchards of the Central Valley, the Joshua trees from Palmdale until the climb up to Big Bear Lake, the LA metropolis and its smog—what a kaleidoscopic view of the state. The crowds were bigger than I had expected, but the race didn't faze all those homeless folks that I saw all week, with their shopping carts and meager possessions in plastic bags. The economic impact of such a race will surely not trickle down to all levels.

Fans photograph the riders' bikes in Sonora

At the start I had a chance to be up close to some of the biggest names in cycling. (Of course, I also did so when testing, but that information is verboten.) Tom Boonen (who had a stellar spring season by winning three spring classics), George Hincapie, Levi Leipheimer, Chris Horner, and the affable Jens Voigt were all there. The two announcers (who had also worked Worlds in Louisville) did a fabulous job interviewing these racers during the mandatory sign-in before each stage, and the crowds loved it. For me the most memorable start was in Sonora, a quiet town in the hills east of the Central Valley that has a distinctly European flair and that made for the most scenic start that I witnessed.

Tom Boonen coming off the stage after sign-in

I didn't see much of the race on the road itself. For most of the finishes, however, I was there, right on the line (and I mean right on the finish line—my credentials got me anywhere I wanted to go) to see who the winner would be. It's pretty cool to see a world class sprinter like Peter Sagan take five sprint finishes at speeds topping 40 mph. On the Mt. Baldy stage I drove my car for the first part of the route in the caravan before turning off for the mountain top, and it was pretty cool to see riders who were struggling in the early stages of the climb hold on to a bottle that their team manager would hold out of the window in an effort to help them stay in contact with the tail end of the field. The crowds were amazing, and everybody was waiving and shouting. I really had a great time.

George Hincapie's left leg

Levi Leipheimer (l) and George Hincapie, all relaxed before a stage start

Yes, they really have a broom wagon

The caravan heads for Mt. Baldy

As you know, I had taken my bike along, and I did manage to squeeze in about 150 miles of riding in 10- to 30-mile segments, sometimes late in the afternoon, sometimes really early. I rode around Big Bear Lake, cursed the crappy roads in Bakersfield, and enjoyed the redwoods around Santa Cruz. I'm glad I went through the trouble of taking the Ritchey.

Boulder Bay at Big Bear Lake

Covered bridge close to Santa Cruz

I finished the Tour in a befitting way: After finishing my testing and paperwork yesterday afternoon I rode my bike from Culver City down to the ocean at Santa Monica and rode along the beach for a good 15 miles (for a total of about 30). Joggers, skaters, tons of tough-looking guys on fixed gear bikes (they call them fixies and try to look like old track racers, I think), and walkers were out, and I had to think: Wow, I'm truly a lucky dog to be able to do and see all of this!

Fixie rider in Santa Monica

And now I better close this chapter because my flight to Dallas is about to board. The next update will be from Europe, once again.

Jürgen

California dreamin'

The past few days have simply flown by. They start early, shortly after 6:00 a.m., and there hasn't been a night when I have hit the rack before midnight. Granted, there's a little bit of personal time, like right now at 23:35 hrs (that's the style we use to record times on our doping control forms) when I am updating the blog, or this morning at 7:45 a.m., when I dug out a 1-inch drywall screw out of my rear tire when I flatted on a rare morning ride. Essentially, it's been racing non-stop. And even though I see little of the race while it is progress, I have access to areas of the start and finish that even VIPs don't have.

Belgian super-star Tom Boonen passes by me after signing in for Stage 4

Let's see, my last blog update had been right after stage 1, I believe. The next day we ended up in beautiful Santa Cruz, after the racers had pedaled down HWY 1 from San Francisco on that beautiful coast. The entourage spent the night in the Scott's Valley Hilton, and before stage 3 I had a chance to ride about 20 miles or so in this beautiful part of the world before hopping into the car to do my work on the other side of the Bay area, in Livermore, where stage 3 ended. In the evening I had enough time for another fast-and-furious 10 miles. Interestingly enough, soigneurs from the teams and others from the entourage pull out the occasional bike, too, and try to sneak in just a little bit of exercise. I can tell you, my weight-loss program has been seriously hampered once again.It's not easy living on the road.

After my morning ride near Santa Cruz

Doing the doping control, I get to meet interesting people. There are the chaperones, whose job it is to notify the appropriate riders that they have been selected for drug testing, and there is of course always a local physician whose responsibility it is to literally watch the riders pee in the cup. Seriously. It's the full Monty, so if you're squeamish, you may want to think about a different career choice.They're all good people, excited to be involved and appreciative of the guidance I give them.

With two of my chaperones in Clovis

 -------------------------------------

And at this point I have to apologize because I am simply too tired to continue writing. I will add more as soon as I can, with photos galore. But now I HAVE to sleep.

Jürgen