This picture of Ty taken in the Amsterdam airport, where we caught our connection to Milan, pretty accurately describes how I was feeling at 10am local time. Blurry eyed, greasy, and in need of a big cup of coffee. I couldn't sleep at all on our flight across the Atlantic (even after downing a couple free glasses of wine) but by the time we found our way through the foreign airport I was starting to feel it.
Made our way to Milan via another, much shorter, flight and were greeted by team mechanic Antonio driving this mondo RV. Needless to say, there was plenty of room for the two of us (Ty and I) to stretch out, so I passed out immediately. Much to my dismay, when I woke up and peered out the window as we were pulling into the hotel parking lot, we were in the mountains... I didn't sign up to race in the mountains! Should be some really hard racing.
As much as I hate racing over long climbs, training on them is incredible (mostly because I can creep up them as slow as I like). On our first ride out, we basically rode up as long as we could to try and catch some sweet views, and it didn't disappoint. We wound our way about 3000 ft up on mostly single lane roads past communities and through the woods.
It's all fun and games until somebody gets hurt. Well thankfully I only ALMOST got hurt (but in spectacular fashion). These mountain roads are made up of switchbacks and blind turns, the kind most people in cars honk before rounding. As I built up some confidence leading the way down part of the descent I flew around one left hand bend to find myself face to face with some tiny euro car the all look the same to me. I had about 10ft to react, and it involved a big skid and swerve, but luckily I escaped clipping the front of the car by a couple inches.
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