Shladming Adventure Continued

As I was saying before we were off on another adventure, this time up north to the Country of Austria to ride Shladming's bike park to ride some serious DH! It was quite the effort on Michaels part driving and finding his way up there throughout all of Italy's confusing highways. As we ventured farther north into Austria I started to feel more like I was at home. The scenery, architecture, and vibe that the land was giving off reminded me of Nederland and other Colorado mountain towns. I really like the fact that the Gas stations stay open later, and they also have water faucets with drinking water just another plus! I'm not saying that Austria is cooler than Italy, but it sure is more convenient to travel through. The Euro Cup is in full swing right now and Austria was playing Germany, so there was nobody on the road providing for the easiest night drive in Europe so far. After about five hours we made it, found a sweet place to sleep up in the mountains and since it wasn't threatening to rain it made for a good night.

The next day we found the information desk, bought some tickets to ride for the next two days, built up our bikes, geared up and got after it! The first run my bike was making weird noises, so I look down and miss a switchback, go careening down the run, bottom out on the next switchback, go flying and land on the road. That was only the first 20 seconds of my run! After I tightened a few loose bolts, we rode hard all days blowing my hands by the end! The riding was awesome, it was a long mountain but steep so I really put a toll on your brakes and trigger finger. We all had fun but ended up getting rained out mid afternoon a few hours before the lift closed, it reminded me off a Colorado downpour! This ruined our camping plans so we went on the hunt for a bed. There were a lot of B&B's in Shladming, I rung the doorbell on one of them and was greeted by a very nice old man who did not speak English, so he sent in his wife who spoke very little English but somehow we together managed to settle a room and a price in their lovely house. It really did boost an awesome view of the mountain and was situated right above a lush green valley. The fallowing day we rode some loose wet muddy terrain, got dirty, went big over some sweet jumps and overall pushed ourselves hard for the rest of the afternoon. Once packed back up we hoofed it back to Val Di Solle and found our camping spot yet again. So our journey to and from was successful , the Kangoo survived and we had ourselves one hell of a weekend cheering on our boys/girls in red, white and blue.

Mountain cross was epic last night, the USA kicked some butt and Ross "the crusher" Milan killed it yesterday showing everyone when it goes bar to bar he is one not to be reckoned with. Brian Lopes(lopez) looked good, but couldn't put it together like last year and Carney and Nelson each had a great day, got some valuable experience and will be much wiser the next time around. The night ended up in the streets with most of my riding idols stumbling around, there were plenty of hugs going around and Texans getting loose. It was really fun and now we are planning out our next adventure. I believe we will be heading up to Winterburgh or Winterburg, however its spelled, but we heard there is a fun bike park up there, so we will once again be loading up the Kangoo for another adventure with our bikes!!!

For all of you who raced CB this weekend shoot me a post and let me know how things go eh!

Take care all and have a great day!

Brian