The last time I wrote, I was working on ET Monday…it’s Sunday and I’m about to start working on EuroTrash again. I guess that’s not a good thing.

The last week has been really good. I got in my best week of training so far this season (well, the season hasn’t been all that long – three weeks), the weather got better and better, I cranked out a lot of good work for PEZ, and over the weekend we had some company. Ashley’s friend from Nicaragua, Charlie, came to Innsbruck with his friend from Australia, Joey. Charlie is studying in Lugano. We had an awesome time. I’m really excited about to going to Nicaragua someday. Listening to Ashley and Charlie talking about it got me going something fierce.

We are definitely leaving next weekend for warmer environs. I’m serious. It’s a definite. We have the Eurail Passes, and the entirety of Southern Europe cannot possibly be locked in that horrific weather bubble like it was last week, which by the way – we weren’t! It was warm here this weekend. The Foehn was blowing – yahoo!

I’m going to update my Training section soon and post a couple of fun pics from the past few weeks along with a fun post about Krampus. All that and more this week on jeredgruber.com… Ashley says I’m a loser. I was just kidding.

Speaking of Ashley, funny story…we were lying around this evening and we happened to look over at our digital clock. It read 22:22. Ashley then came up with this gem:

“22:22 is the only time during the day when all of the numbers are the same on the clock.”

I looked at her, and said, “What about 11:11?”

“Oof,” was her verbose reply.

The end.

Well, I sorta rode yesterday. It was something like 25F and the roads were wet – I know, that doesn’t make sense, but they were wet. I was using my new KFS fenders plus a little handmade addition to the front one, but I still got freezing spray. It wasn’t too bad though, and obviously WAY better than riding without. So yeah, I rode for an hour and a half and I just rode hard. It was pretty and I took some pictures, yahoo:

After I finished, Ashley and I hopped in a taxi that brought us to a big ol American celebration down the road a couple of miles. I can’t remember for the life of me what the organization is called, but it’s basically the local group of Americans and their families. Anyhow, we had Thanksgiving dinner!! We did it potluck style, so Ashley made some eggplant parmesan and I made, er, bought, some cranberry sauce. The evening was fantastic, tons of fun, met some really great people, and I was full and happy when it was over. We even won two books by Donna Leon in the raffle. We had three tickets and won with two out of the three. That’s right, this is a household of winners.

Back to bikin tomorrow, Ashley is in class now, and we’re trying to buy Eurail passes because they’re so, so, so much cheaper than buying tickets normally. For example, a 300 euro Eurail SelectPass for Austria, France, and Italy for 10 days means that each day of travel costs, wait for it, 30 euros. When we took the train to Rome, it cost 140 euros…each way. It’s frustrating not to have figured this out sooner, but they have sayings for this sort of situation.

And I’m out.

It’s called Before And After. Two days ago, Ashley and I went on an hour and a half or so hike right above our apartment and up the mountain – we had a great time as always, took some pictures, end of story. Last night and today it snowed, we needed some exercise so we went for an uphill walk (as Ashley prefers to call it – why do you call it hiking? We’re walking uphill.), had a great time as always, took some pictures, end of story. When I came home and downloaded the pictures, I realized that some of the pictures coincided from the two days…this is the result.

Yep, that’s a tree.

We just posted a whole bunch of new pictures to the Flickr site from the trips to Nice and Rome. Check em out!

In other news, I just finished my first three day training block in eons. Today wasn’t much, but an hour or so on the bike followed by a two-hour hike was enough for me. I’m glad it’s going to rain tomorrow. I’m definitely not planning on any kind of physical activity (we are talking about doing the hair cut thing (that would be my first in 7 months!)). I’m not happy about the weekend though – the highs for both days will be 30 and there’s talk of snow. That’s cold in my book. I’m hoping to get in a few hours on the bike over the weekend…hoping.

Next week looks pretty shaky too. I know I must sound like such a whiner when it comes to the weather. I apologize. I’ve been spoiled for so long in Athens. It’s hard to understand the extent of spoiledness until you leave and a pretty nice day for Innsbruck in the winter is one of the coldest in Athens.

In other news, I think it’s a done deal: we’re going to La Spezia, Italy next weekend. It’s five hours away and I think a little Cinque Terre would fit very nicely in our life.

I’m going to try and do some work now. Ashley is at her Intercultural Communication Class (she has had some super interesting reading material for that class so far) so I figure I should do some work too. Maybe.

Three towns within 30 kilometers of Innsbruck start with a T, have an f in the middle and finish with an s. I’m not kidding.

We’ll start with Tulfes first, as it is the closest, at only 16.6k from Innsbruck.

Moving along to #2 in the TFS sweepstakes, there’s Terfens at 24.2k from Innsbruck.

And finally the largest town in TFS-ville, Telfs, comes in at 28.1k from Innsbruck.

Am I crazy? Is this not weird? Once I realized the oddity, I haven’t been able to get the three names out of my head. I don’t think I can list another town that meets these credentials and yet there are three oh so close to Innsbruck…it’s not like they’re German-sounding town names either. I’ve been wondering why I have a hard time keeping my town names straight sometimes in the valley…maybe because they’re all so similar.

Ah well, that’s about the only thing on my mind at the moment. Ashley is touring the Altstadt (Old Town) with her class this morning. She left around 830 and two minutes later I got a text from her that read: Snow! Sure enough, I look out the window and it’s snowing. Oh wait, I’m looking out the window and suddenly the sun is shining. No, scratch that, it’s gone again.

I rode 2.5 hours yesterday, I’m shooting for 3 today. I updated the Training section…check it out if you want.

We’re thinking about going skiing this weekend, but I need to find some boots first. It’s supposed to snow most of Saturday and Sunday. Who knows though, the weather report changes by the hour here in the lovely Inn Valley.

This is my first post. I feel like I should state some sort of goals. Well, I’d like to get pet rocks from all corners of the globe (which means traveling there first), and speak the languages where the rocks came from, and write about the journeys here so I don’t forget the minute feelings of day to day life. Also to give a small picture to my friends or family who care to know about what I’m up to.

We got back from Nice, France last night around midnight. Every time I travel somewhere I feel like I get a “country update” with new perspectives of what daily life is like there, how awesome or not the food is, etc. In the case of Nice, the food was great and the area I saw was beautiful. We stayed at a great hostel and met 2 girls from New Zealand. They are traveling across Europe for a year and working at hostels in exchange for a place to stay (and I would guess a little money). That was thought provoking.. and it certainly sounds like an adventure and a cool way to see new places cheaply. I can’t say I did that much in Nice except for watch 2 incredible sunsets, 1 sunrise, eat some good food, sun bathed a bit, went “jellyfishing”, and swimming. That pretty much sums it up.

What can I say? Crappy fall colors says Jered.

Jered and I had such a great time, especially putting the “frightening reds” in their place. We named the species of jellyfish that we were hunting that, as we didn’t know their real name, and this was more fun. We think we do a better job naming critters anyway… who says Adam gets to have all the fun? Not us! We even incorporated teamwork with the locals (ranging age 5-9) and gave them our probing devices when we called it a day. It was lots of fun.

This jellyfish is known as a ‘frightening red.’

It’s been so amazing to have so many different landscapes within a few hours of the Alps, and we’ve certainly been taking advantage of it. Since May I’ve been to China, Thailand, Cambodia, Germany, Austria, Switzerland, Slovenia, Hungary, Slovakia, Croatia, Scotland, France, Italy, Monaco, and the Vatican. Wow. I can’t say at this point how it has changed me, but I’m sure that this is leaving a mark on me. I expect that after I’ve been living in the States for a while again I’ll be able to tell the difference. The internet makes such a difference as far as keeping in touch with everyone, and facebook allows me to actually see what they are up to. I’m happy for that.

We are having a Thanksgiving dinner with the “Austro-American Society” that will be potluck. I’m glad I still get turkey and all the dressings even if I’m not at home. School is going well, and there is always something to study. My German is improving, but not as quickly as I would like it to. Over the next two weeks I’d like to use my “german intensive trainer” to get me up to speed. I would like to start running again too, but the cold has proven a successful deterrent in the past (when it was warmer), so I’ll really have to make an effort for that to happen. That’s all for now. Next time Jered will show me how to put pictures up, and they can tell the story for me..

edit* he just showed me! (how to add pictures)

Nice was absolutely amazing. I want to live there. I did two rides – the first one was along the Mediterranean and took in the final 50k of Milano-San Remo, and then on Saturday I rode to Menton and up the Col de la Madone. That was a long climb. 15k and 925m of elevation gain. I know that because the climb starts at sea level and the elevation at the top is 925. I’m good with simple arithmetic. I got bored about 20 minutes in and started taking lots of pictures. I think my attention span for climbing is around 20 minutes. So I guess I should climb faster.

Yep, I made it. So did my Seigler.

In long climb news, the stage race that I’m going to do in Montenegro – the Paths of King Nikola – has a climb that goes from sea level to 1200 meters. That sounds fantastic and by fantastic I mean horrible.

Yesterday, we checked out some markets in Nice and then drove down the coast toward Monaco to a little town called Cap d’Ail…the town has an awesome little beach and we hung out there all afternoon before heading back up to the Madone in the car to watch the sunset. It was pretty crappy.

We had a nice lunch of peanut butter and jelly sandwiches and Orangina. What more could you ask for?

I of course have lots of pictures and will try to get to some of those soon.

It’s truly unfortunate that we had to leave Nice though…it was 70 something and perfect in Nice yesterday whilst it’s low 40s and getting to rain here in Innsbruck. The highs by the weekend? Low 30s. Here comes winter. I’m not ready.

The view of Monaco as we started our drive home to Innsbruck last night.

In summary, go to Nice, it’s awesome.

It is 643 in the a.m. and I’m up. I like it. I’m going to go riding soon, but just wanted to check in with a few words from yesterday…

We left Innsbruck around Midnight, drove over a very snowy Brenner Pass, and then from that point forward it just got warmer and warmer. By the time we made it to Genova around 5 or 6 in the morning, the temperature was a solid 20 degrees warmer.

We pulled into Alassio right about sunrise, crawled into the backseat (kicked the bike out) and took a nap. I got up around 10 to go ride and headed up the coast for first San Remo, and then Nice.

I rode the last 50k of Milano-San Remo yesterday. It was incredible. The riding on the coast is nothing less than amazing, it’s hilly, it’s fast, and the Cipressa and Poggio are fantastic. They’re not too hard, but I can’t even fathom how fast they climb em…actually I can. I rode with Michael Rogers for a little while yesterday and at one point we were climb at around 20kph and he said they’d be doing that same section at around 35-40kph. Unbelievable. Not to mention that’s after a solid six hours of racing.

Anyhow, the ride was awesome, I have lots of pictures, I’ll post some soon, and Ashley and I are having an amazing time. We still get two more full days here, the hostel is fantastic, and I’m sitting in bed with internet. All is very,very excellent in the world.

Alright, so against my better judgment I’m going to start keeping my training log on my site…I don’t know why, I definitely have nothing to brag about and lots to be embarrassed about. Ha.

Basically, I’d like to document a big time improvement. I don’t think I’ve been this bad off since maybe 2005? Maybe earlier? I’ve ridden perhaps 20-30 times since the end of June. I’ve started a number of ‘comebacks’ in that time, but they haven’t lasted for more than a few days.

Climbing the godawful steep road to Halltal…I only do the first part though and it’s ok – dead straight, maybe six feet wide, and steep, but ok.

I want to be a bike rider, so I’m going to ride my bike now. The only really good part of all of this is that I’ve gotten so bad, that I have a ton of room to improve…and get back to where I was previously, which kinda sucks, cuz normally I try to get better over previous years and not make up lost ground. So it goes.

I’ll post some stuff on the front end of the site, but for the most part, I’m going to keep it hidden to the TRAINING section so it can sit there and be quiet and no one will be bored senseless with numbers and stuff that doesn’t really matter. I don’t want to drive anyone away. So yeah, that’s my plan…

The start of my new favorite climb – to the town above Innsbruck, Hungerburg.

Oh, and we’re going to Nice. We’ve got the car rented, found an awesome place to stay, and we’re leaving super early Friday morning. I’m going to ride the last part of Milano-Sanremo (from Alassio to Nice – so more than just the finale) Friday afternoon! Saturday I’ll do a short-ish tough-ish ride and climb the Col de la Madone! Yahoo! Bike riding is fun when you go to awesome places that aren’t freezing cold.

I’m going to work it out though so that I get my bike work taken care of so we can enjoy being in what I’m guessing will be an incredible place.

We are pondering where to go this weekend, since it’s going to be bad news here in Austria.

1. Pula, Croatia on the Istrian Peninsula

or

2. Nice, France…

Pula has the significant benefit of being a lot closer mileage-wise, but the driving time should be about the same.

The weather looks about the same for both areas, though Nice will be a couple of degrees warmer at around 60 for the highs each day. Ha.

Nice has a number of positives for sure: two new countries with Ashley (Monaco and France) and what I’m guessing will be a gorgeous drive along the Mediterranean, but wait, Pula has that too. Nice will probably be a fair bit more expensive than Croatia though…

It’s such a hard choice, it really is (tongue firmly in cheek), so if you think you might be able to help with the decision, share some experiences, or something like that – have at it…please!