Sean
S Joined: March 21st 2005
Logged in: February 21st 2008
Logged in: February 21st 2008
Travel Blog Posts
Les Baux
Cruising down Rue F.D.R. (the tenth such named road Ive seen), is my ticket out of Brussels, an unusually easy escape from a large city. Two autobahns make Luxembourg a straight shot. My route, less so, a two day trip took many, all the usual, bike breakdowns, wrong turns, stupid ideas. Stranded in St Hubert, two flats on one stretch of road I realized my patch glue is sitting in a field in the Netherlands where I had my last flat. I blow the second 100 meters from a bike store, suck luck, again! No, a note on the door in French seems to indicate a vacation till late October, damn. Four buses, two trains and eleven kilometers of walking gets me back to my bike with glue and new tubes and a new high of ... read more
Stine
Aug 5 to Aug 28 Flying into Oslo to visit Stine, my dearest friend Ive met travelling, 16 months ago. I spent nearly three weeks with her rock climbing and hanging out in Krabi, Thailand. Over the past year she kept me entertained with funny stories into her daily life via email. My first day there we road our bikes to her local lake for a swim in a beautiful pine surrounded lake with diving board and sunning rocks, and even better, a huge underwater rock you can stand on in the middle of the lake. Having swam there since she was a kid you would figure she could find it right? On my first two visits her and I swam in a grid pattern while the people on shore had a chuckle in our hopeless ... read more
Edinburgh Castle
July 22 to Aug 4 Scotland is effortless, very gorgeous, isolated and few cars on the secondary roads, any route you would choose to take is going to be perfect. My time there was so easy and enjoyable there isn't much to write about. The two places I would recommend for a two week long cycle tour would be here and Tuscany. Arriving into Abedeen on the east coast I would cross the highlands, meet my steepest climb of the trip and then into Inverness for a sharp left turn into Loch Ness. Stupid fiberglass nessy statues made me race away from the lake and I couldn't stomach a tour on the water for all the cheese that is dished up. Leaving the Loch and riding through the five sisters of Kintail on my way to ... read more
Cross
July 4 to July 21 Stumbling off the ferry from Wales at six am blind with sleep and hunger I fill up on seawater and Irish Brown bread. Tap water so bad and then some of the best bread I've eaten in my life. The ingredients say that half of the bread is made with buttermilk! In my 18 days in Ireland I think its safe to say I ate 18 loaves of this bread, made in heaven I think. My first stop was Jeripoint Abby and the city of Kilkenny for some history. The Abby was manned by two different orders and left very unique limestone carvings of Saints and other religious scenes with tell tale signs for the modern viewer. For instance, if a snake has a knot in its tail, you know that ... read more
Bridge
June 27 to July 4 Catching London in good weather gave me a bit of respect for the locals, they really take advantage of it. People outside of pubs, (glasses are allowed in the streets), public movie events (tried to watch Constant Gardener but it was super echo) and lazing in Hyde Park or on cathedral steps. English bitch constantly about weather so it was good to see them outside en mass. Football = Get beaten up, I was outside a pub when England loses to Portugal in the World Cup on horrible penalty kicks, it was amusing to see just how sick it made the fans. Guys pouring out of the pub looking like they had been kicked in the stomach after eating rotten eggs. I made eye contact with one while walking by and ... read more
The ugliest I could find
June 17 to June 26 The biggest damn pork knee you ever saw, two pieces of capsicum and a silver of carrot, all the food groups you need. Three days I chased one and missed out, bitter disappointment as I had to settle with every other part from a pig. On the advice of Sarah, a girl I traveled with in Israel, I rode from Salzberg to Cesky Krumlov, a perfect Medieval village in the south of the Czech republic that was holding its annual - medieval festival. Aussie Kathryn and I literally got the last two beds in town, like the world cup, my luck continues in cities. While in the mountains, I get strange and scary animals charging me or my tent in dark scary forests. I never what to know what kind of ... read more
Start of the World Cup
June 10 to June 16 Singapore is burning. My first night in Munich at the massive Tent and my only chance at a place to sleep, crazy enviornment complete with large campfires nightly. We gathered around a semi drunk Singapore man on the guitar, a great time chatting football and listing to his very karaoke voice with matching guitar scratch. He would dive into a Bob Dylan song, say, 'the Hurricane' and not but one minute he would lose his place, re-sing the chorus three times, then reach for his mystery bottle. I walked over to take a peak at the juice and found it was a German hot sauce bottle, contents unknown. It was a laugh, sitting around a bonfire in modern Munich with 30 people, then all of a sudden he fell to his ... read more
View of Fussen
June 3 to June 9 Riding into Bavaria, with lots and lots of rain gave me a quick dose of BMWs in featured commercials, f**** fast, not crazy just fast. Except for a guy in a Fiat that gave me a thumbs up as he passed, followed by a look of his two huge eyeballs that rotated a full 360 degrees at me, that's plain scary. After five minutes riding the entire length of Liechtenstein, shamelessly to add a country to the list, even though all it took was crossing a river, I hit a long stretch in Austria to the tip of Lake Constance. On the lake shore I watched an Asian kid with the legs like like lightning, legs that Keven Bacon would be proud of. A row of a hundred paper cups spread ... read more
Just into Switzerland
May 25 to June 2 After my second day riding the passes through the gorgeous Swiss Alps I settled down for bed at 9pm in the mountains. I carry a sealable plastic box for my food as much as I love the clothes smelling of onion and cheese. I foolishly set it down next to my head after dinner and was asleep in no time. No tent just a drop cloth with the starry night. Around three in the morning I hear a nasty noise and my body fills up with super adrenalin, 'I'm about to be attacked!" Two dark objects come charging towards me as I panic, zipped to the top I cant get my arms out of the mummy bag, one black object hits my food box head on at speed and rolls around ... read more
Tuscan Villa
Leaving Rome for the hills of Tuscany was exciting, some places you tend to hold high expectations for and just know it wont disappoint. You cant complain about the climbing either, lest some tour group of silver haired sixty somethings pedal past you with their massive tour van bringing up the rear. I must have been the only cyclist carrying his own gear. That will be me in a few years so I cant complain. Leaving Rome I followed Via Cassia for the first 50ks, built during Roman Rule along with Via Aurelia and Appia these 2000 year old roads run as far as Barcelona and Brindisi, my entry point into Rome. Access to medieval Sienna was a bit strange, park your car/bike walk towards very high and imposing city walls, jump into a modern automated ... read more
