Willkommen!!

Well, I managed to survive the 12 hours hours of flying from Calgary all the way over to Switzerland. Everything went really smoothly, watched "I am Legend" and "American Gangster", plus a couple of sitcoms. Didn't manage to sleep very much, which was my plan...sleep the whole way from Toronto to Zurich, then when I get to Zurich it'd be 8 in the morning and it'd be just like I woke up from a good nights sleep. Didn't work that way, I think I managed about 2 hours of really bad sleep..oh well.

Sandra picked me up at the airport nice and early. When I booked my ticket, I didn't even take into consideration the time she'd have to get up to drive the hour and a half to come pick me up.....I owe her big time.

After stopping to get a couple of groceries from the local market, in which I struggled because I'm a complete moron when it comes of any language, including english, I built up my bike and we went for a ride. Sandra's aunt and uncle live just outside of the capital city, Bern, on a farm, and there's nothing but miles and miles of twisty farm road. Most of these roads appear to be single lane with no shoulder, but they are indeed two way highways. There are soooo many turns that I'm surely going to get completely lost when I head out by myself this afternoon, which will definitely be entertaining. But it was a really cool ride, saw lots of neat country side, and if you've never been to Switzerland before, absolutely everywhere looks like a postcard...it's really pretty.

Managed, for the most part to stay awake yesterday until about 9:30pm and crashed hard, the time is about 8 hours ahead of Calgary time. Slept for almost 12 hours, and I feel like I could sleep for another two days. In fact, I'd probably still be in bed if the rooster hadn't woken me up at 10 :) Oh yeah, the weather here isn't very nice right now, we had to completely bundle up in winter gear to head out for our ride this morning..and my fingers were still cold. I'm waiting for it to warm up some before I attempt to go out for my second ride. Right now I'm enjoying I think a double or triple americano to warm up and try to stay awake today.

Tomorrow we're up early to make the 6 hour drive up to Houffalize, Belgium, where the first world cup is. Checked the start list online and I'm in 60th position..yuck, but there are 130 girls entered...it's definitely my biggest start. The weather forecast doesn't look much better then here, so I'm definitely packing mud tires. What a shock after the 31 degree heat of Phoenix..kind of miss it now :0

I'm off to try to learn some German, wish me luck.