Why Europeans don’t take long weekends.

As has become very evident since arriving in Europe, Americans need to take more long vacations (aka Holidays). As typical Americans, Amy and I usually take a few long weekends during the year and then maybe a week or two around Christmas. Most Europeans don’t take long weekends they take “holidays”. Its typical for most to take at least 3 to 4 weeks off at a time.

Our long weekend to Italy was to begin early Friday morning at 4am to catch a 7:15am flight out of Geneva. Arrive in Nice at 8:00am with our bikes and enjoy the forecasted sunny skies, riding 50 kilometers along the French Riviera (about 30 miles) to Ventimiglia, Italy. Along the way we thought we would enjoy a leisurely ride with a couple of casual stops along the way, including lunch in some beautiful seas side café in Monte Carlo. The plan was to arrive in Vetimiglia by early afternoon, in time to explore the old medieval city, check into our B&B shower and head back into town for a well deserved dinner at a traditional Italian restaurant.

From Milan-San Remo Mar-09

Our day did not exactly work out as planned. We flew “EasyJet”, now know as “Not So EasyJet” or “I am a Hard Ass Jet”, who some how lost our bikes frames between Geneva and Nice. Now this is absolutely absurd, the flight was a non-connecting 45 minute flight. Evidently, the baggage guys forgot to put them on the plane. Well at least we got our wheels, although they arrived completely flat. Lesson #1: When traveling with your bikes, deflate your tires before loading them as the air pressure change will cause them to explode.

Since we had until 2pm before our bikes arrived on the next flight, we had plenty of time to take the bus into Nice and find a bike shop to fix our flats. Upon getting off the bus in Nice, there was rain and wind and plummeting temperatures. So much for the forecasted sunny skies. The locals were friendly and helpful. We were able to get our flats fixed at Culture Velo bike shop.

From Milan-San Remo Mar-09

We arrived back at the airport around 1pm a little wet and a little chilled. Lesson #2: ?When traveling with your bike, yes pack light but at least bring something just in case it rains. Oh yeah, we arrived back at the airport just in time to see that our bikes were running late as their flight out of Geneva was delayed. After having a rather terse conversation with the Baggage Services from EasyJet that went something like this; “I should be compensated for my time. I have wasted one day of my very short 3 day holiday f…ing around with you people” Sorry President Obama, so much for change, I was the stereotypical ugly American.  I realized at that moment that had this been a 3 to 4 week holiday, I would not have given a shit, I would not have been stressed about getting to Ventimiglia before sundown. I would have booked a room in Nice and spent another day exploring.

Well the bikes finally arrived by 3:00pm. By the time we put them together and changed over to our riding clothes we set off almost 8 hours late. The sun was shining and things were looking up for our nice leisurely 50k ride. We had planned about 2 to 2 and half hours of riding along the nice flat coastline. Lesson #3: Check the elevation along the route, oh yeah, don’t forget to figure time battling a 25 mph head winds and compensate for the 20 pounds of gear your are carrying.

From Milan-San Remo Mar-09

Three and half hours after leaving the airport and in the dark, we bumbled our way through Ventimiglia to find our Bed and Breakfast perched 150 km overlooking the old city. Our hosts Jessica and her husband were patiently waiting for us and were quite surprised to see us show up on our bicycles, as they had thought we were coming by motor bike. Neither of them spoke English and they had been translating our e-mails with Google Translator. Fortunately, they spoke French. So once again we relied on Amy’s 2nd grade level language skills to get us by. Our hosts were amazing, they had our room ready and prepared a home cooked Italian meal for us. It was the beginning of what was to become one of the best “Long Weekends” ever.

Chester is Doing Great

It is hard to believe that it has been 5 weeks since Chester's accident and surgery. He is doing amazingly well. After his emergency surgery he spent 2 weeks at the University Hospital in Bern. During his stay his neurologist and two physical therapist worked with him every day. He did hydrotherapy and ultrasound therapy twice a day. He made tremendous progress and we were able to bring him home on Friday February 20th. Amy's friend Karen, who is boarding a horse here on the farm, comes by once a week to do accupressure on the little guy. As you can see from the video he has made great progress.