Community Tap

Our first drinks at the super close craft beer bar. Nice....

Beers in Munich are THIS Big

Trains - Honeymoon/Semana Santa Pt. III

After our brief stint in Paris we went to the Gare de L'est and caught our train to Reims.  Since we live a life of ease and leisure, we booked first class seats facing each other with a table in between.

Train travel is by far one of the best things about Europe and, as you can tell, I am suuuuper excited about this (and the Gouda flavored crackers, which were delicious).

As you can see from the screen behind the girl with the silly cheeks, the train goes well over 300kph (186mph).  The highest speed we saw the screen get up to was 330kph, which is over 200 mph.

Just in case you were wondering why someone had silly, puffy cheeks.  The answer, as usual, is wine.

Checking out the scenery.  Even going really fast, its a great way to see parts of the country outside of the city.  And doing so with a Belgian beer and (amazing) French crackers makes it even better.

Brussels, Belgium

We took the train from Cologne, Germany to Brussels, Belgium and tried to enjoy all of the beer in town...

The famous little peeing boy statue

A much bigger peeing boy on a nearby wall.

A great shot of the old and new that come together so well in Brussels.

Hitting up the beer museum.  We somehow were given 2 free beers. 

 It was a good day.

Getting some vin chaud (hot wine) from a street vendor.

Its like cider but better (wine-y-er)

Awesome streetlamps.

Observing the arts, and then sitting on them.

A statue of Peter Pan.  Seems like an odd amount of statues

of small boys in this town...

The Delirium Cafe, because its Belgium, thats why.

SuperPrestige CX Race Diegem, Belgium

December 29 we took the morning train from Cologne to Brussels.  After tracking down our hotels and getting a feel for the city we took the bus out to Diegem, about 9 km away for the Diegem SuperPrestige CX Race.

We got there as a junior race was ending and about an hour before the mens race began.  After taking a peak in the techno-blaring VIP tent and getting scared senseless by a firework/bomb that got set off in a muddy field we got some frites with mayo and a couple beers and checked out the course.  The Diegem race is the only major CX race run under the lights so they had these big glowing orbs around the course for illumination.

We set up shop at the top of the wooded section where we could see the riders drop into the start of the woods and then see them come out into an uphill section with a tight 180 turn.  We picked our spot right on the barriers and stayed there the whole race.  It helps that people from Belgium (and Germany and Holland) are all really tall so noone needed to take our spot since they could all see over our heads.

 Kelly after carrying this tray 1/2 km around a muddy course right before the race!!

Tom Meeusen followed by Sven Nys

 Kelly & Mike before the race.

Jonathan Page was in the race but had to pull out due to injuries from a previous crash so we did what pretty much everyone else was doing and cheered for Sven or Neils (Sven obviously) and the guy who was in last place, who must have been a local and had a sweet mustache, who got a huge round of applause every time he went by for the entire race.

In the end, Sven Nys won the race (his last on a Colnago before he switched to Trek) with a pretty large gap.  Walking back to the train station, we passed the now insane techno-tent party and at least 100 charter busses filled with nothing but people, galoshes, and Jupiter beer (and more techno).

Just Awesome...

Here's a link to the Cycling News race report.

http://www.cyclingnews.com/races/superprestige-diegem-2013/elite-men/results

Winter Travels

After Kelly parents left Spain we headed up to Northern Europe for a little holiday travel with our friends Mike and Michelle.  The trip started in Cologne, Germany where we had brats from the winter market.

Followed by a train ride to Brussels, Belgium where we saw the Superprestige CX race at Diegem and enjoyed plenty of good beer.

Then another train ride to Amsterdam where we rang in the new year in with a bazillion other people and the got some culture at the Rijksmuseum.

And we finished off with another train ride back to Cologne where we flew back to Palma. 

Details to come...

Anchovies=common, Pale Ales=not so much

 Friday night we went out to Loriens, probably the only bar in Palma with a 100+ beer selection.  Spain has several large breweries Estrella, Cruzcampo, Mahou, which isnt surprising for the country with the most bars per person on the planet.  All of these beers, however, are pilsners and lacking in the flavor department (fortunately they are always served very cold and from a tap, which makes up for the somewhat malt-liquor-y taste).

So the chance to get a good beer on another hot October day was hard to pass up.  I had the classic Sierra Nevada, which was my first Pale Ale in over a month!  Kelly had the Red Ale from a brewery in Menorca (the second biggest island in the Balearic's).

Bonus points for noticing that the name of Kel's beer from Spain is in English and my beer from the US is in Spanish...

After enjoying our round, we went out for our 9:30 dinner of tapas.  This came with what may be my favorite starter in Spain, anchovies and black olives.  Anchovies here are really more small, salted fish fillets than the canned mediocrity you get at home.  And the olives?  Well, they are fresh Mediterranean olive, so, yeah, they are all sorts of yummy.

CX under the lights

The first race of the GJ cx series was last saturday night so we headed out that way to whup some ass on the 28 pound fuji singlespeed cross machine.

 Whats that? You want to see pictures of me and Aspen Guy deuling it out in the non-existent singlespeed category?  Too bad sucka.  This is the only pic of me you get.  You can see the tutu and please notice the shot glass holding garter on the leg  (it turns out garters dont stay on very well when running with your bike in hand).

Why?

Because Kelly was super into this...

 Bacon hand-ups all night.  Bacon combined with free new belgium beer? oh yes please.

Finally, friend of the show's Cole with a nice 6th place celebration.

Finishing up the Canyonlands Trip

 Done!

After finishing up our trip we headed into Moab and got burgers (which had been the main topoc of conversation for the second half of the trip) at the Moab Brewery.  Instead of heading home we decided we might as well camp in Moab another night. 

 It turns out finding a campsite at 6:30 on a Saturday night is pretty hard, but we eventually found an open site at Hittle Bottom with great views of Castle Valley and the La Sal mountains.

 Utah beer.

 Im tired.

 Sunset over Castle Valley.

Sunrise over Castle Valley.