Biking Bros

We are Dwayner(Svein) and The Young Man(Christian) and this is our word

The day started with a couple surprises, the first being waiting for a taxi that was never really coming but thanks to Garmin’s logistics extraordinaire Louise we still made it. The second being much more of a shocker, being spoiled with nothing but sunshine and 30 plus degrees for the past month so when I heard the flight attendant announce 16 degrees and rain I wanted to storm the cockpit to get the plane turned back around to the land of golden sunshine and sangria. To tell you the truth until that moment it hadn’t even really entered my mind it was going to be any different than the amazing weather we have been experiencing in Girona, I know I should have know better, luckily I packed my rain bag with warm clothes. Oh jeese, this could be bad, I was thinking as we were getting ready to get off the plane but to my surprise it really wasn’t as bad as I had made it out in my mind, even went on a ride once we got to our house and actually thought of maybe taking my leg warmers off during it. Tomorrow evening is the first race of our little race week, a crit in Bavickove, 90km of crazy crit racing. Hopefully not in the rain. 

The odd rest day gives us a chance to check out some of the cool sight, including some amazing beaches along the Costa Brava like this one

So our time in Girona here is slowly coming to an end as Amber and I will pack our bags and head off on our next little adventure, a trip to Belgium.  It all came about when we were looking for some races I could do between the end of Portugal and the next team race GP D’Ibergues, and with an aunt and uncle living just on the outskirts of Brussels, team DS Jonhy suggested some Kermesses. The team was quickly able to round up 3 kermesses and on crit, which from what I could find is considered a post-tour crit with many big names showing up last year so that should be interesting. That puts us in Belgium from the 6th to the 18th before hopping a quick flight to France for the GP, then maybe back to Girona for a couple days to train a bit with Michael Barry and hopefully Dwayner before traveling to Italy for Worlds.

So christian has finally let me use his mac book and i have decided to create my own section that I will write in when he goes on his 6 hour bike rides… For all of you that don’t know, my name is Amber, and I am Christians little love interest. I am currently in Girona with him now, which i still can’t believe. It was a very last minute decision, which included me giving both of my jobs 3 days notice, telling them i would be needing 2 weeks off…oops. They were not too happy, but no jobs can get in the way of amore. As Christian has probably explained, it’s pretty awesome here. Tons of small restaurants, a morning market with fruits and a million different type of meats and fish. Not to mention fresh bread, eggs and a booth just for shoes…yes that’s right, in the middle of this farmers market is this shoe vendor, specializing in knock off leather kicks, for people of all ages! Christian took me to the tapas restaurant on my first night here. Wide eyed, he explained, in detail how these small appetizers work. Apparently all i had to do was choose, eat, and leave the tooth pick on my plate. He was so excited that i caught on so quickly. We ate tapas for the next three night, until eventually the buzz wore off for him. We had dinner with some of the Garmin boys, who all seemed like fine stand up gentleman. I liked how they seemed kinda like me, just visiting a nice spanish town, kinda new to the whole different language thing, but then they would order something off the menu and speak to the waiter in some elaborate spanish dialect and my happy bubble was no more. It seemed like I was the only one with the language block… Even Christian had started to pick up some vocabulary. He knew some numbers, how to say “check please waiter”, and if that failed he would break out in french, and most of the time the Spanish understood that! So i just decided to hang around him, and he would do the speaking. Yesterday was by far the MOST rain i have ever seen in my whole life. The day started out fine, some sun, partly cloudy, no chance of showers, than BAM! We decided to take a walk to the grocery store about 15 minutes away and 3 minutes in we are in the middle of a monsoon! Lightning, thunder, the whole works! Me, quite liking rain chose to venture on, but Christian, not so much. He was running for the nearest awning suggesting we just “wait for it to die down”. Ha ha. Fat chance. We waiting for about 6 minutes, him under the awning, me jumping in the biggest rain puddles i could find. After much persuasion he joined me, and we both walked, soaking wet, into the grocery store 12 minutes later. He was quite the sport, and in the end clothes can be blow dried right? ha ha.

As I am just opening the door heading out in the narrow street the other day I hear and “oh wow” and when I look up there is a younger man with his parents. “Wow, can i get my picture taken with you? I am a big fan”, a little dazzled I say “yeah for sure, where you from?”, at this point feeling pretty good about myself, I mean a random cycling fan knows who I am. Then it all came crashing down for me and my new found stardemhood, “your Ryder Hesjedal, right?”. Yeah, maybe the midget version, come on, haha. I mean I guess one could make that mistake, Ryder is Canadian and rides for Garmin, so when I come out wearing a Garming jersey with a huge maple leaf on it I can see how the correlation could be made. By the time i explained who I was the pictures had already been taken, so I now have one official fan if he likes it or not.

So today’s ride went got a bit out of hand, haha, kind of misjudged the size of the loop I had planned and then after I forgot to charge my Garmin my ride ended up being 2h longer than it was suppose to be. It was suppose to be 5.5h with some efforts on the hills, definitely got in the hills, figured I got in about 4000m of climbing, so when I did finally roll in after what was probably my longest ride ever I was hungry, thirsty and tired. Did get to ride some pretty amazing roads though, through the many small postcard like towns speckled within the mountains. If you ever get the chance to come to Girona don’t think twice. 

Hey YoungMan… here’s a good mac tutorial video. Hope your having fun with your pearly white shiny new rig. Esto fue muy divertido.

Since the Portugal tour I have been back here in Girona, taking a bit of an easy week to recover from the past two weeks efforts.  I moved from where I was previously staying with Lukas, on the outer borders of Girona, to the team’s apartment in the heart of the old part of town, actually I think just one or two doors down from where that Armstrong fellow used to live, and it is absolutely spectacular. Waking up and opening the balcony doors to the narrow cobbled streets below, the building hundreds old years old, rich in history, surrounded by tiny alley with shops and restaurants filling every crevas. Its one of the most beautiful places I have ever seen. After I learned that I would be based out of Girona until at least worlds Amber quickly jumped on a plane over to come and stay with me for a couple of weeks to hang out, see me and the sights. Our days so far have been busy with shopping, eating at the great tapas establishments, going to the local markets and even a trip to the beach yesterday. The easy days only last so long though and by the weekend I will be getting back into the full swing of things to get prepped for worlds. With not much team racing going on they are looking at getting me into a couple of Belgian Kermesses before doing GP Isberge and worlds.

Mythbusting the Canadian Olympic coverage All right my first bikingbros post is a rant.

The Olympics are over - I barely watched. I have a hard time watching the Olympics because they just make me mad. Maybe I’m bitter because I was never good enough to make it… there would be some truth to that. But really its the commercials on TV and the commentary on CBC.

I get frustrated with the multi-million dollar commercial productions from companies like Bell who just seem to crawl out of the woodwork on a four year cycle to capitalize on the marketing opportunity of the games. All the while I know most sport in Canada operates at third world levels. Then we have CBC commentators bemoaning our athletes performance. So typically Canadian, lets whine aboot something we don’t like - and then blame the government.

So here’s some Olympic myths busted: Read the rest of this entry »