Bonne Année! Bonne Anniversaire! Bon Voyage!

New Year’s Eve: the long pending report. This will be the Reader’s Digest version though because my better senses tell me to not disclose all my secrets. It all started at my humble language exchange before Zürich when I asked some French buddies if they had New Year’s plans because there is nothing obvious to do in Nice (no fireworks, street parties, etc). They offered a costume party in the hills outside of Nice, and I tentatively accepted.

Fast forward to New Year’s eve, the day we returned from Zürich after five days of travel and three days of racing. That morning we head to a thrift store in Zürich recommended by our couchsurfing host and buy “costumes.” For the next five hours we walk around Zürich taking in the sites and lots of chocolate milk and Ciabata bread, then catch our flight and get home around seven. We quickly build our bikes, go through a few different costumes eventually settling on some kind of “pirate” theme, then ride 30 minutes up a big hill (in our costumes) to the fête.

That’s when we decided we were something between party angels and party pirates. Angels because we spread the gospel of American parties, aka going nuts and dancing in a very un-French way. Pirates because thrice did we invade a neighboring party filled with very snooty French hipsters dressed entirely in black with a hired DJ, a caterer, etc. They were playing really good music all night so we just bounced back and forth between the two parties, each time livening the place because everyone was just standing around sizing everyone else up. Then we burst in and went crazy dancing wearing pirate clothes and capes and somehow that seemed to lighten the atmosphere. A few times people asked us who we were and maybe even asked us to leave but we could neither hear nor understand them so we just smiled and said “Ouais ouais, nous sommes Suédois! Ouais, Suédois!” and kept dancing. And every time they delivered us glasses of champagne on the dance floor so we figured we weren’t unwelcome.

At the end of the night we made a lot of friends, perhaps some enemies, but both Dan and I agreed it was one of our best experiences out on the town so we were pretty psyched. And at the end of the night we had about four hours of vigorous booty-shaking and an hour bike ride under our belts so if nothing else it was great training.

My birthday: was the following weekend. It has somehow become a tradition to go for an epic solo winter training ride on my birthday and one I decided to continue this year. It was overcast all along the coast but that’s not exactly epic so I headed back to my old friend/foe the Col de Turini. Just to refresh, it’s a loop through the mountains north of town with a one-hour climb to open then a 1:30 feature climb that gains about 5000’ over 18km. The first time I rode there it was nice and sunny and warm and I was all bent out of shape about having to wear leg warmers all day. This time it was snowing the whole time and for about 20km over the top there were several inches of snow on the ground and people skiing on the road. Epic.

It turns out that fixies make great snow bikes because brakes stop working when they’re all frozen and clogged with snow, and descending I wouldn’t want to be jamming hard on my front brake anyway. So for the first half of the switchbacky descent I basically just locked up my rear wheel and skidded the whole way to control speed. The great thing about the fixie though is if the back starts to kick out too much you can just start pedaling again and everything straightens up. I made it down without crashing and thankfully didn’t spin my cog since I’m morally opposed to lockrings. I did have to stop a few times to do calisthenics to get blood flowing to my feet, but otherwise it was a solid 5hrs of birthday fun.

The week between: since my birthday not much has happened. The weather got really nasty and there was lots of rain, some locals say more rain than they’ve seen in the last ten years. Sweet. So I turned my attention to French again, and did lots of yoga (and still rode, just nothing memorable). For those following along at home, this week’s routine includes: forearm stands without using a wall, and walking up and down the wall into wheel. I’ve also been practicing my belly rolls because you never know when you’ll need to throw down.

Yesterday: winter epic part two. Turini again, but colder and way way more snowy. I also rode all the climbs at tempo, which was necessary because the snow was so thick and wet that if I slowed down I’d just start to spin out and fall over then it’s impossible to get going again. Coming down was hairy again but mostly just really cold and I had to stop several times, take my gloves off, and stow my hands in a very warm, very special place for a while to get them moving again.

Today: Saint Rafaël. It was sunny and warm again for the first time in weeks so I headed out along the coast for a long ride. But I felt really good so I threw on a big gear before hand, made another multi-hour playlist, and went for it. Today’s theme was dance-rock and included such bands as Bloc Party, The Rapture, La Tigre, MSTRKRFT, and the Scissor Sisters. I also threw in an hour of Neko Case because as the Björk of alt. country she rocks my world. I felt great the whole day so just stayed on the stick and ended up doing a hundi+ in about 5:30 and tempo on all the climbs. I did stop about halfway though to top off the tank with a giant brownie and a liter of coke. Hey, chubby kids have to eat too.

The highlight of the ride though occurred in Cannes (yes, home of the Cannes Film Festival) in typical weekend-traffic. Drivers here are in general extremely courteous to cyclists (even if they do have a rally streak in them), but every gets super agro on the weekends. So there I was riding in so-so traffic and a car pulls along side on the left lane and rolls down his window to yell some sort of advice at me. Somehow I sensed it wasn’t very kind or loving advice, traffic was slowing down ahead of us, and I happened to be rocking out to dance remix of a Death From Above 1979 song at the time, so as soon as the window was down I grabbed the sill and simultaneously gave myself a huge Madison sling and leaned down and blew him a kiss then rode off through the traffic. And then I found twenty bucks! Ouais!

To come: newest news is that the end is nigh and I’ll be home at the end of the month. The option to race Stuttgart, Berlin, and Copenhagen is there but I don’t have a partner and I don’t fancy jumping in with yet another person. And with a bunch of 20+hr weeks of overgeared tempo climbing under my belt I’m not sure how fresh the legs would be anyway. So it will be more of the same until then. I have a much more consistent social group now as well so life is pretty low-stress and routine… in a good way. OH, and I got accepted to UW Law. There are only a handful of state-schools that are ranked better and it’s by far the cheapest in the country so that’s exciting. One unfortunate thing that occurred to me recently is that law school really just consists of studying laws, which somehow doesn’t sound so compelling as I originally thought. Hmm.