Life On Two Wheels

Along the river and toward the mountains a morning shadow shimmers across the road. The rays of the first light jet through the trees and across a figure gliding upon the road. His breath trails in short spurts, petrified as it hits the icy air. All is quiet except the slight sound of the athlete as he summons himself for yet another days work. Soon the rest of the world will bustle with life as well and the brief simplicity of cyclist and nature will disappear into the everyday struggle of life in full motion; the errands and intervals, the appointments and intersections, and the deadlines and finish lines OutPaceTheRace

Sunday, September 24, 2006

Traveling the day away



Salzburg, AUS to Gerona, ESP
Sunday, September 24, 2006

We had an “early flight” out of Austria this morning. It wasn’t really early, but with the drive from Salzburg to Munich and the international airport wait you’ve gotta tack on an extra 2.5 – 3 hours… Which by the way is absolutely ridiculous. They’ve got the easy check computerized system, but then you’ve got to wait in the check baggage line to check your baggage. And if you have a bike then you go to the fee line to pay for the bike. It’s all totally nuts, I thought the Germans’d be more foxy than that. We drove on the Autobahn on the way over too, nothing special there. Sure people go fast, but it’s pretty much the same as any three lane freeway. I’d say the max speed I saw was 180 kph, but speeding like that is commonplace on any European highway. The sign on the side of the road reads “fairplay…autobahn.” I don’t get it. Maybe it means they don’t want you to race or something.
It ended up being a classic airport day though. Tons of standing around and waiting, wasting your day ‘n stuff. We left at 7:00am for the airport and got into Gerona at 6:30pm… the flight was an hour and twenty-five minutes… What gives?
FrancoBelge starts this Thursday and ends Sunday.

posted by Tom Peterson @ 1:59 PM