Happy Hour!

Its been a busy 2 days here in Innsbruck!

We have the most amazing breakfast at our hotel.  I have been warned not to get used to this level of luxury ;)  I dont know what several of these fruits are called, even in english!

After our awesome breakfast we headed into the garage to assemble bikes.  They had music piped into the garage. We listened to the Pointer Sisters as we wrenched

Checking out everyones bikes was fun.  For instance, here we have the wheels of Alejandro, "The Mexican" and Dan, world champion in masters cyclocross.  34 vs 23.  Can you guess whos is whos? ;)

I have a feeling I will be offering one of them a very large sum of money to ride their bike once we hit the climbs

We went out for a really nice mellow ride around the valley to spin the legs out.  There are a ton of bikeways around Innsbruck.  Some how cars, street cars (tracks!), bikes and pedestrians all comingle here.  The 2 lane roads here are narrower than our 1 lane roads in the states yet we didnt get harassed by any motorists.  There was some pondering about why people in the US have a problem sharing space on the road when we have so much.

Heres our ride: http://app.strava.com/rides/13280839

After our ride we headed to a local pub for beers and watching the Tour. The Tour is broadcast from 2-5.  Its exciting being in Europe to watch live, but it would be a bummer to be living here, since Id probably be at work while it is on.  So I guess we dont have such a bad deal in the PacNW watching it in the morning before work!

While we were trying to decode the menu and read the beer list our very cheery waiter dropped by.  Our tour leader Larry was the only one who could really communicate at all, but we did hear him say "happy hour" We told him we wanted some bier, "happy hour!" and promptly 7 glasses of the house bier arrived.  We couldnt quite figure out what to eat either, Larry got bratwurst and we all decided that sounded good too. Happy hour!  Oh, and then little stands with pretzles (bretzels) arrived! I dont know why I have yet to move permanently to the land of bier, sausage, cheese, chocolate and pretzels.

We all were cat napping during the tour and I was beat by the time I got to bed around 10:30.  I slept till 5 and tossed and turned before falling back asleep.  I woke up later and found out it was 12:15!

Crap! I had missed amazing breakfast!

And its 12:15... i wonder if I also missed the ride too? Double crap!

As Im collecting my groggy self there is a knock at my door.  Jim and Claire tell me they are riding in 15min do I want to come? I mumble a yes and try and get myself together.  Claire gives me a mojo bar so Im not riding on a totally empty stomach and I grabbed an apple in the lobby.  Feeling thoroughly disoriented and groggy I roll out for our first little hill climb ride. Forgot the garmin. Cant find one of my arm warmers or my camera. Yes I just woke up.

We again wove through little towns around Innsbruck, mid day today was a little greyer than yesterday but the roads and vistas are pretty incredible

A lot of these types of scenes rolling into little towns

Figuring out which way to go next

A canyon along the road

The ski jump from the olympics! It was all lit up in green the first night we rolled into town, pretty incredible.

I hobbled along in my groggy state with the help of more food from Claire and the kind assistance of Dan who stayed with me OTB.  The stats on todays ride was around 32miles and 2500ft I think.

The sun had come out while we were riding and we got to see the mountains when we left the pub!!!

These are the mountains we will hopefully be climbing over when we depart on Sunday. I say "hopefully" because if the weather is bad we will go around. And because I really havent thought about what it will be like to climb 1500m in 24km (thats about 4500ft in 14miles)  Ive been fighting off a cold for the last 2 weeks, hopefully my little sleep in this morning helped.

I havent been online nearly as much as usual and Im really enjoying my social media diet. Ill still continue to share but really the only thing Im keeping up with is my twitter feed (Tour gossip, mostly).