Running of the Bulls

I'm willing to bet that riding through Geneva feels the same as it would if you were running from the bulls in Spain. Just picture the bulls as buses, cars, and motorcycles though. Our ride took 11.5 hrs all together with 8.5 hrs of actual ride time. We rode 123 miles and I crashed and ended up under a car at mile 115. Read on for the rest of the story.

We got up this morning about 6:30am to have the biggest breakfast we could stand for our long day of riding. We walked outside around 8am and it was still about 39 degrees. The first part of the ride was freaking cold and we got lost in downtown becasue of construction. It was pure madness for about 45 minutes till a nice lady saw me looking at the map and pointed me in the right direction.

Once we got moving and out of town it wasn't so bad. We were riding along the lake on a bike path for a ways and things were nice and pleasent. Then we got to France. You would think the country with the biggest bike race in the world would be set up to have a nice place to ride a bike, but we bascially road on a freeway till we got back to Switzerland again. Then the bike lanes reappeared and life was less stressful.

We grabbed a pretty terrible lunch because we got sick of trying to find pizza (I really wanted pizza). We got back on the road and put in some good time before the next stop. We took a bio break in a vinyard and snagged some grapes. They were pretty good but all the grapes over here have seeds, and I'm over grapes with seeds by now.

About mile 80 my bottom side was really starting to feel it. We stopped to take a break and stole some apples this time. The apples were so delicious. So crisp and sweet and juicy. It reminded me of when I was kid. We used to take fruit all the time and to this day I don't really enjoy apricots.

I pulled (rode in front so Cyndie Belle so she could draft me) till about mile 100 then I let the freeloader take over. From mile 100 on things were pretty tough and uncomfortable. My shoulders were hurting becasue I didn't fit on the bike very well. We finally pulled back into Geneva just in time for rush hour. Fantastic! There is lots of railways throughout town and I've been super causious when crossing them before, but I think I was just mentally fatigued and not paying attention. My front wheel fell into the rail way and I went down fast and hard and slid up under a car waiting to go at a red light. Cyndie was right behind me and rode over my bike but she kept it together (good girl). I hit my face on the ground and the rear axle of the car (that's how far under the car I was). I just walked away with some more scabs. Something my body is very used to at this point in my life. I crawled out from under the car as fast as I could and just wanted to find Cyndie and make sure she was okay. Once the driver realized we didn't speak french he just hopped back in his car and took off. I wrecked up the borrowed bike pretty good. Hopefully I can give him some money and we'll be square. It was a super old bike and he didn't use it so he probalby won't care. Cyndie tried to get me to take the bus the rest of the way, but I told here "No! I don't quit, I'm finishing this ride". I rode that broken bicycle the rest of the way and finished. This isn't our exact route but it's very similar.



We were going to ride tomorrow but since the bike doesn't really work now I came up with a new suggestion. We're going to do nothing with our last day here. That's right, nothing. We're going to sit around and drink tea and coffee (yes, coffee). Walk down to the local market and get some lunch. Maybe take a little walk. Maybe not. We want to take the time to refelct on the whole trip, remember what we've seen, and what God has tried to teach us. God has been very great to Cyndie and I and were super thankful we could do something like this. You learn a lot when you see different cultures and we just want to take the time and relax. Yep the adverntures are going to relax... On that note I'm out. I need to google how to relax. I'm not to experienced in that arena.

Slower day

I don't really have any exciting news for today except we made fajitas for dinner tonight and they were great.

We woke up and looked out our country side chalet to views of the Swiss alps. I didn't even know what a chalet was. Turns out it's French for cabin. We're staying in a one room chalet with a friend outside of Geneve. It's fantastic. I needed a change of pace from the hostels in downtown areas.

We walked down to the local market and bought food for breakfast and lunch. We made delicious bacon and eggs.

Coolest things we saw today was some pigeons, ducks, and swans going crazy for some bread a girl was giving them and I watched a kid flying on a motorcycle straight up t-bone a car and fly over the bars doing a front flip. He appeared to be okay. It's amazing to me how fast the scooters and motos go out here. Even old ladies carrying groceries on there Vespas pin it through the busy streets. My dad "captain safety" would not approve.

We tried all day to find a road bike rental. You would think that in a big bike town that rentals would be easier to find. Nobody out here rents. We eventually found some to borrow through the people we are staying with. We plan on riding around lake Geneva tomorrow. I hope we have the legs for it. It's about 120 miles so it should take all day, but it's suppose to be one of the top rides in Switzerland.

I'm having trouble uploading photos so picture me having fun in your mind.

Money doesn't grow on trees

I've had major problems with this post and have lost all that I typed more than once so you're getting the condensed version.

We got to Zurich and started looking for a hotel. Things are crazy expensive. We settle for a pretty sleezy place but we didn't find any bed bugs so it was sleep-able. The showers were communal and gross so we showered in our room sink instead.

We got some free rental bikes (the only good deal in Zurich) and rode around. We saw some old churches and just sight saw because everything else was too expensive.
see 3 pics here for blog

The next day we got breakfast for 26 CHF which is basically equal to 26 USD,and all we got was a cup of coffee, tea, some juice, and bread! We hunted for a grocery store for lunch and got twice as much food for the same price. Then we had a picnic.

After lunch we went to get our train tickets to head to Zermatt. They were 260 CHF. Something we didn't expect. The night before we checked the weather there and it was below freezing. We wouldn't really be able to do anything because we didn't have the clothes for that. We decided to head straight for Geneve. We're staying with a friend and the train tickets were way cheaper. Overall we will save tons this way.

We're hoping to get some road bikes and maybe ride around the lake. It's 120 miles it will be a big trek if it works out. It's really tough to find rentals.

Don't judge me for complaining about money you don't know how I was raised.

Sands through an hour glass

Do you guys remember Days of Our Lives? My momma use to watch that before I would head off to school. I wonder what that cast is up to?

I like the long train rides. Train rides force everything to pause. Time out! The feeling you get that your vacation time is coming to an end and reality is catching you slips away. There's really nothing you can do but throw on some good tunes and just watch the country side go by.

Well if you're Cyndie than you just sleep. Riding on the trains is probably one of my favorite things about this vacation. It provides valuable reflection time.


I made a playlist before I left home called "glass cage". It's basically a bunch of songs that bring all different kinds of emotions out of me. I have those songs on there that take you back in time to a place in your life and just make you think how time is just flying by. How do I get this sand to flow slower through this hour glass called life? There's still so much to do and see. I heard some great advice the other day at church. It was to try and take the words "should have" or "shoulda" out of your vocabulary. There's nothing we can do about time that's past except remember it so choose to only remember the things that brought you joy or something you learned a valuable lesson from. There should be no life long regrets, only well feathered steps. Don't sweet the small stuff and enjoy what short time we have in this glimpse of eternity.



See, she's a sleepy head. And a pretty head. A pretty sleepy head.

What's my age again?

I thought long and hard on writing this blog because I don't know if I'm cultured or embarrassed.

The red flag should have been the people that suggest the show to us. A very nice senior citizen couple just loved this Tyrolean folk show they attend last night and suggested we go see it. Well we had nothing going on so we rounded up some tickets at the tourist info station and made our way to the folk center by bus. The place was also a restaurant and we had a pretty good dinner before the show. It was more tyrolean food that had delicious dumplings mixed with some scrambled eggs. It tasted like a good homemade scramble from Cracker Barrel.

When we went and sat down in the stage area something felt a little off. I said "Cyndie do you notice something here?" she just started laughing cause we just wondered into something that would resemble a Red Hat Club prom littered with q-tips (little old lady with poofy hair) and bald heads.


We gaped everyone in there by at least 30 years. Icing on the cake was you could pick up a VHS for 20 euro at intermission and people were.

I don't feel like I wasted my money because I was entertained to some degree. However, it was almost awkward for us being we didn't experience the depression like everyone else.

Now let me tell you about the show. I think yodeling began from people getting wasted and wanting to hoot and holler because well... they were drunk. The dancing was just straight up goofy.

And though I'm sure yodeling is difficult when done correctly. I think I could probably do a pretty good job just acting silly.

Some interesting things from the night where the instruments they chose to play. Basically if you were sitting at at a dinner table you had the full orchestra. They would use spoons on sticks, cowbells, hit hammers on rocks' chop wood, and one guy even used his knuckles to hit the table.

This goes to show how song and dance can bring people together to enjoy life (although beer might of helped a lot with this genre). I may not have a musical bone in my body but I'm pretty sure I could play all the instruments they did tonight to some extent. I find it interesting that all the senior citizens were entertained to their hearts content while I was thinking to myself "this really isn't music it's just dressing up an making noise". But come to think of it that's probably how older generations see my generation and the music we like. In fact almost all generations can be divided this way. One of my favorite bands is an Irish punk band that brings folk music to a whole new level. I want all those senior citizens to attend a Flogging Molly concert with me to see how an accordion should really be played "in my humble opinion :) "

What's left of the flag, by Flogging Molly

All differences and generation gaps set aside at the end of the show they sang typical songs from every nation. For USA they did Yankee doodle (I think). They would have anybody from that country stand up and sing along. There were people from everywhere. Germany, Poland, Canada, Japan, Korea, and many more. It was really interesting to hear all the languages and see all the people gathered together in peace enjoying the universal language. Music.

Down came the rain and washed the spider out

You can't really tell from the picture but the rain is coming down something fierce. We plan on doing all in door stuff today. A couple of museums and old town centers. The rain doesn't stop the Austrians from riding their bikes though. They ride like it's not even wet

We went to the swarovski crystal world today.



I thought it was going to be a tour of the swarovski factory and how the crystals are made but it wasn't at all. It was more of a modern art museum with some crystals and a big jewelry store. Most of the artwork was pretty neat to see with the crystals and the light but I'm just not an art buff. Especially if it's modern art. When it looks like a kindergartner can make it than I'm not really impressed. Now the works of people like Robert Feuille that just amazes me. A cool part about the museum was it was way out of town so we got to take a bus out there and see more country side.

The rain stopped once we got out of the museum. Probably because I paid 10 euro for an umbrella. Grrrrrr.

Weather actually turned out to be really great. I wish we would have known that we could have gone mountain biking. We bought some tickets for a musical tonight. Some people on the bus recommended it. There is legit yodeling. I'm pretty excited for something different to do tonight. I hope it will be really entertaining.

Today was pretty slow. After the museum. We went and found some lunch. I got a kabob that gave me some major stinky gas, but it was really good. Lots of walking and just sight seeing. Better slam some caffeine so we make it through tonight.


We moved our train ticket time up because we've pretty much seen all of Austria. Heading to Zurich tomorrow.

G'day mate

Yes I know it's not Australia. For those of you who don't get it... Well I just feel sorry for you. We're off to the unknown again. No idea where to sleep, no idea what to do, I don't even know what language they speak in Austria or what their currency is. Oh this is fun. I wish you guys could hear Cyndie try to speak Italian. 90% of the time she says gracias instead of grazie and she can't role her r's at all. It's very entertaining.

Cyndie and I got off a train today to walk around the train station asking people where our next train was and then we got back on the same train. Little language barrier problem.



We made it to Austria and checked into our hostel by noon. This is probably the least nice place we have stayed so far. I found a bug in the bed but Cyndie said it wasn't a bed bug. Guess I'll have to trust her on this. She did some researching before we left cause she was all freaked out about bed bugs.

We were completely lost on what to do today, but we knew we wanted to spend it outside because the rain is suppose to come tomorrow. So we started looking for some bikes to rent. I found out Austria has one of the most technical downhill tracks in the world, but Cyndie didn't want to ride DH. We ended up getting some towny bikes which turned out to be perfect because we basically saw all of Innsbruck. See this is why I love bikes, you can cover so much more ground and it's more fun and it doesn't hurt.


We rode to a little historic district and actually put in 20 miles on the townys. Innsbruck is super cool. Absolutely everyone here rides bikes all over. There are 10 times more bikes than cars. The cooler part is it actually seems like the bike is cooler the more crappy it looks. Some bikes didn't even look like they should roll.


Most people don't even lock their bikes but some do with just a little tiny cable. If someone showed up with a normal pair of bolt cutters he could pretty much have his pick. This might be
Why the ride super junky bikes. I'd like to know the stats on how many get stolen.

We stopped in a little plaza where there was a bunch of street performers and found this little tasty treat. Very original.

We ditched the bikes and hunted down an authentic Austrian dinner. We asked some locals and found out that this is where wienerschinzals came from so we found a restaurant known for that. We had a wienerschinzal and some tylorean. Tylorean is this dumplings gravey meat sort of thing. We can just refer to it as delicious. After dinner we grabbed an ice cream cone and strolled back to the hostel. Walking back to the hostel in Austria was actually the first time I felt a little unsafe. We passed a couple sketchy bus stops and there wasn't many people out so it just made me a little more alert.
Here's a picture of me in a typical old man German hat.


Safe with the bed bugs now. We'll see what tomorrow brings.