Real Cycling

On a recent warm spring evening, some fifty kilometers north of the Austrian-German border, a highly select few gathered for the 2015 season's inaugural MRRC Wednesday night "intense" cycling training. The ride would take the participants due south towards the ultimate result of immense African and Eurasian tectonic plates colliding over a period of tens of millions of years, bringing forth from the fiery depths of the Earth continental Europe's most extensive mountain range. Picture-perfectly peaked year-round by snow, the tallest of the Bavarian Alps glowed in the evening's remaining sunshine. There was but a small breeze in the air and the paths and roads were laid with the slightest dust, coppery and insignificant in the hazy twilight. The remnants of the destroyed trees from the aftermath of Cyclone Niklas's brutal tear through the Munich area, and the rest of Western Europe, had long been cleared from the roads, though reminders of the damage that Niklas wrought remained as a whisking blur, left to the sides of the streets and in the banks and ditches of the Perlacher Forst and the Isar River.

Pemulis would arrive at the meeting point near 17h55 Central European Time on his late-2000's model Specialized Transition Elite aluminum time-trial bike equipped with Look Keo clipless pedals, and home-stirred Blood Orange PowerBar Perform Sports Drink. The spoken language was German, but the emotional language of the road was a universal drive for speed understood by cyclists from all cultures and backgrounds worldwide. The quest for raw power in all its glory is the search, through the depths of the darkest tunnels of pain that it entails, for what makes us human. Every man, woman, and child, has yearned to go further, and faster, and these cyclists understood, all too well, that there are no shortcuts around, through, or over, the debilitating hurt that must be endured on the glorious path to righteous power and speed.

Le trajet a commencé lentement, oscillant autour des 30 km/h, pendant que le petit peloton gagnait progressivement de l'altitude, allant des limites sud-est de Munich vers la Mecque de Bad Tölz et au-delà. Il y a de la beauté dans le fonctionnement parfaitement machinale d'un peloton synchronisé volant à travers le paysage, en harmonie. Le silence parfait de la campagne est seulement interrompu par le bruit vrombissant des roues aérodynamiques qui entrent en contact avec la chaussée en dessous. Le cliquetis des engrenages est suivi par le bruit croissant de la respiration des coureurs, alors que l'inclinaison augmente à un autre niveau et la somme du dénivelé s’accroît, de nouveau.

"It's a spiritual connection to the land, binding you, the rider, with the bike, man and machine, to the Earth below," said rider George Pemulis, a Canadian expat who seemed to hold up the more established cyclists at most bends and at all of the even insignificant increases in elevation. "Die Kanadiern sind sehr langsam" noted Wolfgang Radler, a former UCI pro rider who has been regularly joining the Wednesday night rides since shortly after his lifetime ban from professional cycling for installing a small motor in his bicycle hidden in the bottom bracket. "What about Ryder Hesjedal?" Pemulis asked innocuously.
"Wer ist das? Ich habe noch nie von ihm gehört," Radler noted.
"He won the Giro d'Italia in 2012. He is a former mountain bike world champion with an olympic silver medal. He won the most difficult mountain stage at the Vuelta d'España last year. He's even leading the newly formed Cannondale-Garmin team at the Giro 2015 starting a few weeks from now with a legitimate chance of being a true contender," replied Ryder Hesjedal as he cycled past the group, where they were stopped for an ice cream cone, with a breathtaking view of the Alps in the distance.
"Er muss einen deutschen Vorfahren haben," Radler said drily.

The remainder of the ride was completed in a hushed silence. Pemulis again threatened to slow everyone down but managed to hold on just barely. The final 10km stretch had the peloton moving at a consistent speed of above 40km/h, in an epic battle against lactic acid build-up, fatigue, exhausted blood capillaries, and the quickly fading, setting Bavarian sun. The cyclists congratulated each other with some pleasantries and went their separate ways. But just before the group separated, Radler had one last piece of advice for Pemulis: "Du hast eine wirklich gute Arbeit gibt heute. Bis nächste Woche!". Pemulis rode home at a recovery pace in anger, thinking that old Wolfgang had said "please don't come back next week". In fact, Radler had said something more along the lines of "great job out there, see you next week", but either way Pemulis would return the following week.

Munich Spring (post-Crete edition)

When I think of Greece, I think of hot, sunny, summertime weather, with sandy beaches, island hopping, ouzo, souvlaki, Greek letters which in turn make me think of physics and math, the Danforth, Tom's apartment with Charles in good old Greek Town, tzatziki, and maybe a little bit that movie My Big Fat Greek Wedding. But mainly the hot sunny weather. Oh ya, and the Counting Crows and their song Anna Begins because it's about this Australian girl Anna (or at least she lives in Australia) that he met on some Greek island when he was taking a break from landscaping to travel across Europe. But I digress...

It's been a cold and long winter here in Germany. I know, not nearly as cold or as long as in, say, Canada, but nothing like last year, for example. We were more than 100% ready to lie in the sun, lounge on the beach, drink cold – perhaps sparkling of some kind – beverages reclined in the afternoon heat, gaze at the night’s starry dome underneath the Matala moon, and other forms of hot weather enjoyment that are typically partaken in by vitamin-D-deprived humans such as ourselves.

Alas, much of the above was never to be. While days 1 and 7 provided us with ample sun and little wind, days 2 through 6 could be acceptably and accurately described by lacking those two important features. Apparently Greece is not always warm, nor is it always sunny. One evening as we were en route from our cottage to the taverna, it literally snowed on us. In Greece. In April.

Despite these issues, however, we had a wonderful Cretian vacation. I even swam in the sea just outside Joni’s cave in Matala. We also consumed cold sparkling beverages. On some occasions we lounged and ate in the warm Cretian sun. We hiked through the Rouvas Gorge, starting around 300m elevation (where our stone cottage sat), up to 1000m in the old growth forest full of ancient Oak trees. We of course visited Joni’s – and all the other 1960’s hippies’ – caves, and we ate (probably) at the modern version of the Mermaid Café. As planned, we each gained approximately 5kg due to massive food over-consumption, and (importantly) played some intense rounds of ping pong. On the colder evenings, we sat by the fireplace in our stone cottage, and one night watched what is easily the worst Bond film of all time, Moonraker, in French (!). We learned some Greek: καλημέρα! (“good morning”, pronounced “kaliméra”); καλησπέρα! (“good evening!”, pronounced “kalispéra”); καληνυχτα! (“good night”, pronounced “kalinychta”); ευχαριστώ (“thank you”, pronounced “efharisto”); and finally παρακαλώ (“you’re welcome”, pronounced “parakalo”). I especially felt really cool and smart being able to pronounce the Greek words from knowing all the Greek letters from physics. λ, “lambda”, is the wavelength of a wave, of course, and so is kind of like “L”; ρ, “rho”, is of course the density, and so is kind of like the “R”; π, “pi”, as everyone knows, and so is like “P”, etc, etc, etc.

Now we're back in Munich and the spring and the lead-up to summer seem to have begun. We had some days of 24 and 25 degrees sunny weather, we've hiked the mountains of Tegernsee and the Schliersee in the springtime sun, we've exchanged trainer tires for outdoor tires and tested out the road bikes on the open road, and my friend visited for the weekend during which we spent time in the Viktualienmarkt biergarten, watching the Eisbach river surfers, eating hausgemachte ice cream, and drinking ice cold Radlers.

And here are some pictures from Crete...

Lunch by the lake

Outside the Eleonas Cottages

Outside specifically our Eleonas Cottage

Snow in the mountains in Crete

Matala -- from Joni's cave

Just hanging out waiting for Joni

To get into some of the rooms you had to be pretty small I guess

Going for a snooze in the caves

Where the bees made the Cretian honey that we enjoyed each morning, afternoon, and night

Sitting on the beach in Matala

Drinking a coffee in Rethymno

Heraklion fishing boats

Heraklion port and sun

Hiking in the Cretian mountains

More Matala pictures by the caves

At the top of the mountain

Taking a break while walking through the Rouvas Gorge

Climbing further into the Gorge

About to cross the bridge

Climbing some rocks

Nice view, eh?

Sandi and her goats

Sitting by the fire playing cards (just like Pinelands!)

Eating dinner by the fireplace

And one more in the port of Heraklion

See you next time...

Munich Spring (pre-Crete edition)

Did you think I'd forgotten about you? Nope. Not even close. Could never happen. While this may have constituted one of, if not the, longest consecutive periods of time without a GrenobleWMD blog post in its 3+ year history, power law distributions scientifically suggest that the longer we wait, the bigger the longest consecutive period of time between posts will likely get, so really we're just letting practice follow theory and experiencing a universal probability distribution that governs the universe and keeps the moon from crashing into the Earth and all other manner of important things so let's just be happy that it exists and move on shall we?

Since our previous encounter last month, many exciting things have transpired in the land of hops, potatoes, and occasional imports of rucola from Italy. To begin, the First Lady of this blog had her Nth birthday where N = 100010 (in binary). Amongst the figuratively thousands of gifts that she received, the crown jewel was surely a Bavarian-designed Maloja long-sleeved bike jersey imported directly from the Chiemsee area between Rosenheim and Salzburg. Said article will allow these happy cycling foreigners to head deep into the cold spring-time hills of the countryside without FL herself becoming too cold. Or something. We could probably really use a picture of her wearing that on here, but I don't presently have access to such a thing, so, thems the breaks, as they say.

Another thing that's happened, or at least progressed, is that I'm now essentially a full-fledged real-life boulanger. Like I make bread products from elemental ingredients such as home-milled flour (though it's not actually home-milled yet), bio free range Bavarian chicken eggs, and cetera. In addition to the chocolate cake that yours truly alchemised into edible oil product for FL's birthday, I also learned from my favourite American French-food chef David Lebovitz an approach to make home-made cheese naan bread. It is really something I should brag about here because it's pretty darn good and infinitely better than any of the naan bread I've experienced in the Munich Indian restaurants. And I even have a picture:

Yes, that beautiful (Jamie Oliver lingo) perfectly crafted delicious naan bread seen just above was of my own creation. I combined and I mixed and I folded and I kneaded and I waited and I rolled and I cooked and the end result was that golden delightful treat.

In addition to testing products from our home boulangerie, we have also hired the laid-off staff from the Neuschwanstein castle to make us ice cream. Pretty random eh? You see, every year the Bavarian tourism industry goes through a cycle of approximately seven hundred thousand billion people visiting schloss N. when it's warm out, all the way down to -5 (consisting of the Kitchen staff who are kicked out) visiting during the cold winter and early spring months. So anyways, we threw them some scraps from the experimental doughs that didn't work out and in return they made us the only thing they knew how to make: King Ludwig ice cream.

But back to Sandi's b-day. Although she was as sick as a dog (a dog that's really really sick, that is) we eventually made it out to the hip Ramen noodle place in Munich. Tom has these not quite solid, well let's be honest here -- call a spade a spade, if you will -- and say completely flawed, utterly unreliable, and altogether farcical universal theories of life such as Pemulis liking a band will eventually lead to their ruin etc etc, but here is a real theory that has a greater than 1% success rate and can empirically be verified by your local neighborhood scientist: any major city worth its weight in noodles will have a hip Ramen place where you stand in line with a bunch of hipsters with beards and lumberjack shirts and toques and piercings and extra-tight jeans, and then eat a big bowl of usually over-priced soup. But it's fun and the soup is usually pretty good and actually it's not all that over-priced!

Last weekend there was actually a nice warmish sunny Saturday. And I got a ton done! Since you're clearly interested in all the intricate details, let's begin at the start when I woke up: 7 AM. You see, a friend and colleague of mine has decided to set sail towards greener pastures (greener because it rains all the time there) in the Seattle/Redmond/Bellevue area of Washington state to work in another division of Company X and so, kind gentleman that I am, I volunteered to help load furniture into and out of trucks on the day in question.

We broke long-standing records of moving efficiency and were done by 11 AM. To celebrate the fact that only one of us endured long-range moving-induced spinal hematoma, we headed to the Löwenbräu Keller to enjoy an early Bavarian meal of beer and  schweinebraten (a disgusting amount of high-fat pork roast covered in gravy).

Having accomplished more before noon than I tend to accomplish during most entire months, I called up my better half and, being the nice day that it was, suggested a meet-up in Munich's own Viktualienmarkt. We strolled the outdoor kiosks and market stands, drank coffee and ate cupcakes, and Sandi even nourished herself with an authentically Lebanese falafel sandwich (seen below).

But the day was not over yet! Upon arriving home about 15h (and reminding the reader about a certain quickly-upcoming Swedish 140km bicycle race of which the protagonists are dutifully registered), I jumped on the old bike trainer to knock off an intense 1 hour interval-rich YouTube-indoor-cycling-video-led workout. Seeing as that we will surely be racing some manner of triathlon race this summer, we then jumped out the front door for another 1 hour of cardio heart-building exercise with a run along the lovely Isar.

So did you think the day was over now? If you said yes, you would be right, but only if today was opposite day. But then actually I suppose you would be wrong because opposite day is normally seen as a universal thing and so it wouldn't just be you speaking in opposites but also me and therefore me saying that you would be right actually would mean that you would be wrong which gets a little bit confusing so to clear the whole thing up let me just say forget the whole opposite thing and give it to you straight: the day was not yet over!

Following a shower, a shave, and a dash of Dior Homme, I clasped up my Patek Phillipe and we hit the town for nothing less than a meal of Tapas! Of course! First on the menu was naturally patatas bravas with a few litres of Spanish house wine. Something something Hemingway something something.

And now today here we are on the saddest day in Bavaria: Good Friday ("Karfreitag"). In this backward region of the world, Karfreitag is also the infamous "no music" day. There is a law that bans all music in all public places because they're pretty seriously catholic here. This law ruined our plans to head back to our favourite jazz bar tonight, but it does allow me to tell you a funny story about this day. Some bars close down altogether, such as Jazzbar Vogler, which makes sense because the whole point of the place is to listen to live jazz. Other places, though, open and the place is silent. It remains silent until the clock strikes midnight and music starts up everywhere at that exact moment. It's kind of a funny thing. I guess it sort of goes against the spirit of the law, but there you have it...

This brings us towards the end of the post. Sunday, bright and early, we head up north of the city to our favourite European airport, where a charter jet will whisk us away to the sunny shores of the Grecian island Crete (or "Kreta" as the Germans say, and maybe also the Greeks but I'm not so sure about the latter). We will try to remember to take lots of pictures because posting a bunch of pictures as a blog post is a lot easier than writing all these silly words...

Yiamas!!!*

* apparently Cheers in Greek