Garmisch - Saturday We are here! Checked in, unpacked, a few groceries and refreshments cooling in the mini-fridge, hotel explored ... And now we are sitting in the hotel bar having a nice, cool beer. We plan on having an early night tonight though so we can be ready to go bright and early in the morning. All of the transportation went very well. Dave booked us for an empty row on the international flight, so we could stretch out and get some sleep. It is handy that Dave can sleep sitting up, because there was only room for one of us to stretch out. We landed in Amsterdam, and successfully followed the signs for our connection _ a little confusing for us because we did not expect to have to go through customs, but we ... read more

Started off cold this morning, with a dusting of snow still on the ground from last night. We travelled down to the Waterloo battlefield sites today ... and were surprisingly impressed. The battlefield complex is not at all like you would think it would be ... kind of like Gettysburg. Instead, it is a visitors center, a huge pyramid with a lion on top that overlooks the main battlefield, a cyclorama and a wax museum. We started off in the visitors center with a surprisingly good movie about the battle. I think this movie featured some of the reenacters in the footage and it was narrated by a historian. The next movie featured excerpts from a Waterloo movie that was shot in Russia. It was good too. After both of these movies, even I had a ... read more

Everyone over here cycles .... Grown ups, women in skirts and high heels, kids, cycle fanatics ... Just everyone. So i noticed the other day, a group of decked out cycle fanatics - each wearing their favorite pro cycle team spandex and with sleek racing bikes - struggling up a pretty steep hill. Behind them, a lady, probably in her late 20s or early 30s on a town cruiser was pedaling the same hill. She didn't catch them, but she didn't fall behind them either. This made me think of two things. The first thing I thought of was of a friend of mine who trained for and entered a triathlon a few years back. He did fine, but he tells the story of running along, and being passed by a lady who was probably at ... read more

Well, we had a great sight seeing day, but before I tell you about that, I wanted to tell you about an item on the menu at the restaurant last night. They had frog legs ... Now, I have never been any place where frog legs were an option to order - though Dave has had them and swears they taste like chicken - but the great thing about them was the Dutch word ... Kikkerbillen ... I can see the little guys kicking their billet right now. What a great language. The other thing I forgot to tell you from the day we got stuck in the mud, was to highlight the improvised roundabout. I stuck a picture in, but it is hard to tell what I was taking a picture of. There was a ... read more

The title of today's blog is - a few bricks short of a road. An alternate title for today could be - how annoying can Americans be? After you read about our day, let me know what you think the title should be. Dave was so excited to start the day .. The parking ramp we are parking in overnight gave us free parking! So, today started off even better than planned. We were first going to go and find the Roubaix velodrome and the Pave clubhouse. What we had hoped to do was to have some coffee at the clubhouse and maybe buy a Roubaix coffee mug. Well, we found the velodrome without much trouble - and it was pretty much what we had read it would be. An outdoor velodrome, the huge paving stone ... read more