iron eyes for the normal guy

greetings from augsburg

so we made it in one piece (and so did our bikes!) - the flight from amsterdam was short and sweet with a bunch of heavily-tattooed english soccer fans (my friend - you know who you are - would have loved the flight hehe) - anywho, we got to the munich airport and daniel's bro, gerhard, was waiting for us - thankfully he had a minivan where our bike boxes and luggage fit nicely

we drove (about 40 minutes) to augsburg, where we's be staying until thursday. daniel was very psyched to have taken our turbo 6-speed vw golf plus rental car on the autobahn since we were hitting speeds of 140-160kph - the further out you are from a big city, they have "no speed limit" signs where you can go as fast as you want. the only thing is when there is an accident here, it's usually pretty bad.

anyways, augsburg. this is where daniel's mom is from and where a lot of his family lives. our lodging is at a fire station (daniel's bro works there) where it costs 5 euros/day - we have a clean private room and a swimming pool to use whenever we want - it's also located across the street from a river with a nice path for runners, walkers and bikes alongside it - the weather is great - a bit hot, but not too humid - so yes, very conducive to training!

anywho, yesterday we put the bikes together and went for a short spin. the roads are very nice here - no potholes - and there are bike-friendly lanes everywhere. many people ride bikes here for both transportation and leisure - cars seem to be used to them 'cause we haven't been yelled at once by any motorists :)

this morning we went out to a very nice clear lake - freiberg see - it seemed a bit shorter across than walden pond, but we swam 2 laps and it was great. we were the only nutcases wearing wetsuits...i guess people here are used to swimming in 65 degree water in speedos. other sightings included many more speedos including one on a very hairy 350-lb man - and various instances of full frontal nudity while changing into and out of swimming gear - all genders and ages - we were the only prudes utilizing the towel method

now we're off for another spin - this one a bit longer maybe 2 hours - one of daniel's friends who used to ride b4 having his 2 kids mapped it out for us.

photos coming soon (we forgot our card reader so we'll have to go get one tomorrow when stores open back up) - until next time!

pam (and dan)

posted by supersonique @ 4:54 AM