Bizarrrrrro

The last few days have been pretty nuts. The short story is that we finished racing in Munich, parted ways with David on some very strange/rocky terms, and are now staying with my cousin Csaba and his wife Emese in Tubingen, Germany. The long story is yet to come, but I'll at least recap the stories from the races.

Night two was another highly underwhelming evening of racing. During the day there was some friction within the team that led to us not getting much time on the track and our heads being elsewhere (more on this later, as it unfolds). Another very significant factor in not getting much track time is that I forgot my shorts back at the "compound." Lucky for me I wore underwear that day, and even luckier that they were black and could pass for bike shorts... from afar anyway. I used safety pins to attach my legwarmers to the bottoms and close up the fly, but I still showed quite a bit of inner thigh while riding. But hey, it's Europe, this thing is totally cool, right?

This is a good lead-in for my feature video which you will find immediately below. It is the result of having lots of time, pictures, and dubstep on my hands, then deciding to put them all together in one place for my beloved blog readers. Anyway, the first segment when I'm riding is taken in my skivies, and there is also a picture at the end of the full ensemble. Don't worry, the whole thing is very much PG, even by Euro standards.

Moving along. The last night in Munich was by far our best race yet. We scored in four sprints, took a lap with a small group at one point, and in general were making ourselves a factor in the race and not making stupid mistakes. One problem with racing in Europe, however, is the exchange rate. Not just the half-again Dollar to Euro exchange rate, but the way foreign riders are scored during the race. For instance, if a foreign team, let's just hypothetically say two handsome young lads from the US on the red team from the 2007 Munich 6 Day, were to score 10 points and finish at 2 laps on the final night of racing, in the results they will show up with 7 points and at 3 laps. Got it? The same exchange rate is also applied to all other non-German teams, even those on the Euro.

In any case, it made not such a significant difference in the overall standings after two crappy nights, so even if we wanted to dispute it in our best German it wouldn't have been worth it. But we were satisfied in knowing that it had finally clicked for us and that many of the strong teams at the race congratulated us on riding well in the finale.

This morning we bid our humble dwellings in Oberschleissheim goodbye and took the three-hour train to Tubingen, which is about 40km south of Stuttgart. In spite of having to lug around our big bike cases it went really smoothly and was actually quite a fun day. We finally got a chance to see more of the countryside than simply the flickers of light coming through our airhole in the back of the hostage van, and it was much faster and more comfortable to boot.

When we arrived Csabi picked us up at the station and we were welcomed to an amazing three-course Hungarian lunch complete with multiple rounds of dessert. We'll be here until Thursday checking out the very lovely city and finding our next Couch Surfing hosts in Geneva. I also came out of Munich with a nasty cold so I imagine a nice block of R&R is in the cards as well.

And stay tuned for stories from the Real World Munich 6-Day once the dust settles... is Adrian in for a repeat of kerekparsport.blogspot.com? Will Brian continue his lucky streak? Only time will tell.