Been a while

Hello from the sunny coast of the South of France! As usual these days I will start with a short apology for the great deal of time that has passed since the previous post. Sorry about that. I will now continue this same early-post pattern and move on to the explanation(s) for the aforementioned (and likely/hopefully observed) large interval of time between this current post and the most recent (if you can even use the word 'recent' in this context) one. So here goes. First, Hannah takes a lot of time. Obviously. Second, we are trying to train for an Ironman which should take a lot of time too but we're not really succeeding so far. Which might seem counter-intuitive (i.e. we're not succeeding in properly training but I still mentioned it as a reason/excuse for not getting around to adding to GWMD / it's taking a lot of time). But just trying to do something and failing is also time-draining it turns out. Third, we bought (or are in the process of buying) an apartment. That is both time-consuming and super stressful it turns out but hopefully it will be the right decision in the long run. Fourth, we escaped to Südtirol for a short vacation in the mountains last week where computers (and therefore blog-posting) are not allowed. And now that I'm at a conference in Toulon, it seems as good a time as any to finally put some words-to-page (so to speak).

For our trip to Südtirol, we drove a (borrowed) Peugeot 107 from Munich amongst the Alps, through Austria, and into northern Italy to the town of Monguelfo. Our hotel sat on the side of a hill (note that 'hill' in Dolomites language means a jagged mountain in the range of 1500m of elevation whereas 'hill' in Southern-Ontario language [for example] means the Bowler Bump; I am using the former definition in this context) just above the town-proper of Monguelfo and our group of 4 grown people and 2 tiny people were for the majority of our stay the only souls staying in the hotel. On our first day there we drove to a nearby lake in 90 km/h [estimate] freezing-cold wind because apparently it's the site where a famous Italian TV show is filmed. After spending approximately 7 seconds outside of the car and just barely staving off hypothermia, we ran back to the car and began driving back to the hotel. On the way back, however, we noticed something quite incredible: pro cycling team buses (many of them) all parked at a roadside hotel. Hundreds of mechanics outside the buses (despite the almost-sub-zero temperatures) prepping bicycles, cleaning them, cleaning the team cars to be shiny and new looking for the TV cameras. What was this madness?

The Tour of the Alps (formerly known as the Giro del Trentino), of course. The third stage (and first mountain stage) of the 5-day race was set to begin the following morning from the town of Villabassa/Niederdorf (cool Südtirol fact: all place names have both an Italian and German version; Monguelfo's German version is Welsberg, incidentally), which is just down the road from where we were staying. I quickly consulted the stage route (vacation-Internet-bans be damned) and discovered even more interestingly that the cyclists would pass right in front of our hotel (well, at the bottom of the hill on the main road) approximately six minutes after the race began at 11 AM the following day. Ciclismo Internacional's prognosis for the stage was: "still lots of snow and freezing temperatures. Just weeks before the Giro, this will not please most of the bunch". And later: "the weather makes this stage a total lottery. If you are going to the Giro [ed: d'Italia -- starting in 2 weeks time] as a favourite, there is no way you would risk anything for a stage win here. The descents will be a nightmare and we could see a huge number of riders abandon the race early, maybe even some of the big favourites". So that at least somewhat confirms my descriptions of the rather chilly state of affairs that we were confronted with up in the Dolomiti mountains.

The next morning we (embarrassingly) drove the Peugeot down the hill to the main road (an approximately 900 m drive) and began to wait in anticipation. After 15 minutes or so our patience was rewarded with, first, a breakaway group, then a chasing group trying to decided if they would keep up the chase or not, and then a very cold-looking peloton:

We then drove back up the hill, Hannah went to bed, and I think we drank 2 or 3 coffees.

Some other highlights from the trip include the copious amounts of sodiumlicious Dolomiten food. Hannah was an especially big fan eating more at each meal than we typical see her eat in an entire week. The weather warmed up a little bit for the final couple of days of the trip and we did some small hikes in the mountains with our newly acquired baby-hiking-backup that Hannah quite enjoyed. We made it home around dinnertime on Saturday evening which gave us just enough time to invite our friendly banker to our house and sign the rest of our lives away to the good people at Deutsche Bank. I then quickly re-packed my suitcase, slept for a handful of hours, and then headed north to the airport for a short flight down to my favourite French city beginning with an M, Marseille. It's good to be back!

Springtime is a wonderful time to visit the South of France because there are relatively few tourists, it's much warmer than it is in the Dolomiti, and everything is green; the hot summer sun has yet to turn all of the lawns and trees light brown and sitting in the sun is inviting rather than something to be avoided. I am currently in Toulon which is a fairly small port town about 45 minutes east of Marseille, but something they also have (in the port as a matter of fact) is a 50 m open-air swimming pool. During lunch on the first of the conference that I'm attending I made a visit to said swimming pool and opted for a short swim. Unfortunately for me I had forgotten that open air swimming pools imply direct sun exposure that you don't really feel because it's not "summer hot" yet and you're in a nice cool swimming pool and you don't necessarily think about the fact that your skin is being attacked by photons colliding with your cells at speeds of 3.0 x 10^8 m/s. Woops. Luckily I became cognizant of the above facts approximately three-quarters of the way into my originally planned swim workout and at that point exited the pool and finished my swim in the much less enjoyable 25 m indoor "bassin d'hiver" and thereby avoided as bad of a burn as I might have gotten if I'd stayed out there for the remaining few minutes.

What else can I tell you? Hannah and Sandi will arrive on Thursday and we will meet in the town of La Ciotat. For the few of you who don't already know, La Ciotat is home to the oldest functioning cinema in the world and also lays claim to the birth of the game of Pétanque. We will make sure to get in at least one game before we head back to Germany next week.

Until next time...