San Gimignano

May 14
Today’s race was in a place called san Giminagno. it’s an important historical city here with a huge wall around it and like five or six big towers in the center. People used to build them to show that they were rich. The size and height would show the wealth. Today people still do the same thing with their trucks and houses!!! We started the race downtown in the narrow streets and then headed out to the countryside around Sienna here in the south of Tuscany. Robyn started up with me this week at the front of the group of over 1300 people.
Robyn went 125 km to finish her first long road race almost 30 miles longer than her half ironman that she did last year, and she did it faster too. I went 165km over almost the same course as her but we had to do an extra loop. It was pretty hard and the weather was hot. Both of us raced hard and finished and now were just hanging out in the hotel being sore and tired. Here are some pictures of where we raced today…

Lucca

We made it to Lucca around sundown on Saturday evening. First thing we did was try to find a hotel room and get some din din. We looked on the web site for the race and they recomended a hotel called the Gina Hotel. It was about 18km away from town (which is in the first photo).
It was a cool hotel, dinner was ok... the fun started after we started to get into bed.
Robyn was in the bathroom brushing her teeth when she peeped out the window and lo and behold... two ears appeared, then a Meoooow.....
Dan was in the bedroom looking out the room window when all of a sudden he heard a low moan come from the bathroom and out came robyn with the most mischeivious face and look in her eye... she was death gripping a cat...!!!
We named her Gina after the hotel, and although she only stayed with us a short time in the hotel it was nice.
On monday she came back and rubbed on our feet while we waited for our taxi home.
The race went well. it was a sunny day and we had fun. Robyn placed first in her race and won a bottle of pickled onions.
The second photo is of a bridge on the race course. kind of cool bridge.

We went home on Monday afternoon and all in all it was a good trip.

When In Rome Follow the yellow flag

Thursday afternoon we went down to the train station to get on the train to rome. They told us that we couldnt. So that was when the fun began.
We had to get like four separate trains and after leaving from bologna at 3 in the afternoon we got to rome at 1 in the morning. then we hired some dude in the street to drive us to the hotel. a 15 euro ride cost us like 40!!!
We slept on the floor next to Lynne and Steves bed. Then we headed out at 7 in the morning for the vatican where we walked through all the sites really really slow with many many gerries. We had to follow the yellow flag, which was our tour group. two of the oldies lost their way and we almost had to call the police to find them, steve ran out of the bus and tracked them down with his radar.
Later that day Lynne took us to the collosium and then we headed back to the hotel.
Later that night we ordered some pizza and enjoyed it in the hotel room. The next day was fun
We had quit a time finding a taxi and dan even lost his mind and started to shout, alot. well we finally found a taxi driver and didnt get in any fights or thrown in jail. but man, the italians suck when it comes to customer service.
we caught a train later that day to Lucca, but that is a different story.

nap dyn

all we want to do is watch our movie nap on the computer but alas we cannot. here is a tribute.

This is Robyn and Dans first modeling shoot in Italy. We are being hired by Gucci to model their sunglasses. Its the new derilict campaign.

May 2

It never rained today, but its been cloudy all day long. Robyn went riding today up to the hills... we have a few routes here. there is valley 1 2 and 3, the hills, and the flats. since we dont know what the towns are called, the streets, or the land marks we had to name our routes cause it was confusing trying to explain to eachother where we rode...(today i went out to the thing you know with the asphalt road, and the tree...???)
Robyn did a 3 hour ride, and myself a 1.5 then she hit up the gym for some more fun.
I am recovering from yesterdays race in bologna. it was tough. I actually quit riding hard at about 90km because i wanted to save my energy for next week.
So on thursday we are going to train it down to rome to see lynne and steve then on saturday were going to lucca up in tuscany to race. itll be busy but fun and we are excited to see rome.
I just hope we can find some good roads to ride one. probably have to ride early in the morning so that nobody is awake yet and clogging up traffic.

Rainy Day

Today is Rainy.
We have three leaks in our room. just when we thought it was over... all the leaking in Fiji, it starts up again in Italy. we have two on our bed, and one on our books. We had to put some cups out and a big bucket so that we could leave the apartment. It sucks to have a wet bed no matter how it happens. But I guess water is better than some things.

Usually when it is rainy we ride our bikes on the indoor trainer. It annoys our downstairs neighbor even though its pretty much the quitest trainer on the market. He will come up and complain that we are making too much noise and that its shaking his bedroom. The funny thing is its like 30 minutes every two weeks and its at noon. Maybe if it was midnight we might consider stopping. but we dont really care so we will keep doing it.

This morning we were awakened by the annoying downstairs neighbor with some loud pounding. He was obviously pounding on ceiling of his room with a little hammer. It only made me laugh because his hammer is obviously really small. what a weiner.

More pictures are to come soon... Oh yeah and we got some postcards to send everyone, so if you read this give us your addresses and we can send you some cards.

April 24

Robyn is now 27!!! Happy Birthday Robyn!!!












We just got back from our trip to a place called Lari, which is part of the provence of Pisa. Its about 15 km away from pisa where the leaning tower is found. The race was killer and as were the others, difficult. It was fairly hilly with about five small climbs that were 5-7 km long each and about 10 % in steepness. but the last one was the killer one, it was 9 km long and 13%. very steep and i actually fell off the bike at one point. my legs stopped working and i couldnt go any further, so i just unclipped my feet, then took a load off, and lost some fluids... I had no water left in my bottles and the weather was really hot. But I eventually got up the climb. Coming down the other side i was really worried that I had lost the peloton and would never catch up. I said a little prayer and within minute i had this guy that wasnt in the race and must have been 6 foot 3 at least 230 pounds come up behind me flying and i drafted off him till i caught up with the rest of the pack. It was seriously a miracle cause he just disapeared afterwards. after the climb there was about 15 km to the finish line. I broke away from the pack a few times but the wind kept me coming back to them. then at the finish line we sprinted for the line and amazingly i won my first sprint!!! It felt good and I have my coach to thank for the increased power and speed.
Robyn was at the finish line sceaming for me . it was a good race!!
after the race we watched some parachuters jump and land at the finish line.
Next week I race here in bologna The 10 Mountains of Bologna its called.

dragons and witches

Lady was a strong bike and had taken her owner on many strong and fast rides since that fatefull day when they were hit by a car. R2 was starting to bond to her and had taken excellent care of her. Together this strong duo had logged over 400 miles in there first three weeks together, however there was no preparing her for what would befall her on that fatefull morning of April 2006 in Bologna Italy.

While warming up one morning Robyn had decided to guide lady onto a path specifically designed to handle birds of ladies size. they called it the bike path. she was cruising down the path that had only a few morning walkers here and there. the speed was starting to really pick up maybe 25 or 30 miles an hour (the fasted species of bird in europe is the Lady Carrera hawk). when out of nowhere an old witch of around 100 or 150 years of age let her huge flame throwing dragon off its leash! As most dragons do when freed it ran rite in front of Lady and began to breath fire!!!

Lady was not scared and didnt hesitate to strike him. In fact she flew straight into her at full speed !!! Well what you have to understand is that Lady is but a bird and is no match for Dragons when they have people sitting on them. So in an effort to best the dragon, the rider (Robyn) was thrown off her. Once again a huge accident was the result of Lady trying to be a hero. the dragon ran off crying and whimpering with the old witch and R2 lay on the empty lonely path in pain. She summoned her wizard Dan and he helped to make the pain go away.
Till next time
D and R2

Flight of the bikanator

I thought i would tell you all about Robyns adventures so far here with her bike. As some of you may know her bikes is named Lady Carrera, and they have many adventures.
Once apon a time in a land far away there was a bike named Lady. She was white and blue and had an eagle painted on the side. She was a very pretty bike. one day she went out on a ride with her owner R2 and came apon a busy street. she rode out into it without a care in the world. she loved the street and loved to go fast. but all of a sudden out of the side of her a car came up and smashed into her rider sending them flying over the curb and onto the sidewalk. Lady wanted to fly up and peck at the car, but the rider was still clipped into her pedals and lay on the side of the road in pain. eventually they got up and rode home to their safe nest. stay tuned for their next adventure... which are many.

internet cafe...

once again we are back in the net cafe... our computer should be fixed tomorow. we are both really tired from everything and need to get a new bed to sleep on. cause now we are on a couch and it sucks. Ikea is on the plan for tomorow. also when the computer comes home we will try to put up some new pics...
its sunny and warm here now and we like it alot. i am too tired to write any more...

Bologna week five or six or whatever

So its a wednesday night and Robyn and I are hanging out in an internet cafe. the thing is that our computer busted down and we cant get on it and access the internet so here we are... that is our excuse for not adding any blogs lately.
This last week Robyn fell in love with someone new. this time its actually a woman... a metal woman named lady carrerra. she is a white a red carrerra bike. her old bike named nova-lee had a breakdown and couldnt perform anylonger so we went out to the bike store and found a cute little frame. now she cant part with it and loves to ride it everywhere. its about six pounds lighter than her old one.
I had my second race also. race number two was 150km long with some huge hills. however this time it was sunny and warm so i felt alot more comfortable out there. i raced as a pro because the pros get to start at the front of the group. it was easy to lie about because my licence is in english and they cant understand what it says. they asked me if i was a pro and i said... I am an elite... it worked... I finished this one in 7th place but 25 minutes behind the winner. i did alot better than race number one in pomerance last week.
tomorow we are going to train down to the island of elba to do race number three. it is 155km long. unfortunately i am already registered as an age grouper so i will have to push and shove to get to the front of this one.

Race One... Gran Fondo In Pomerance

We just got back from our trip down to Toscano. Its an awesome area! there are farms, mountains, hills, vineyards, castles, ancient towns built on the hills and on the tops of the mountains... We got down there by the train. We had to take like four trains though because there were no straight routes. the last train we had to take was simply a Deisel Truck on the tracks... no bigger than one passenger car with an engine underneath. So we got to this town called Saline, Then we had to jump on our bikes ride uphill for 10km to Pomerance, Register for the race, ride around town only to find no rooms in any hotels, ride back down the slope, then back up it... finally after like three hours and lots of worrying we arrived at this agri-tourism farm. It was owned by a huge family. They showed us the "room". It was a huge kitchen, dining room slash living room, bedroom with kingsize bed, and two bathrooms. It was fully equiped for cooking, cleaning ... anyways it was really nice. the floor, walls, and ceiling were all built with brick and stone. and best of all it was heated!!!!! something we havent had for a while. All this for only 30 bucks !!! We should just move down there. The next morning we awoke to find the sun had decided not to be warm and the rains came down. After a crappy warm up and tour of the town I headed to the start only to be the last guy there and started at the back. I need to start at the front or I have no chance at all. Anyways we headed out on the race course and I got up to 40mph on the downhill, then shortly after started the climb to Volterra. It was a sweet medieval town up on this huge hill of about 2000 feet elevation. There was a tall wall around it and cut backs all the way up to it. At the top there was an aid station, but only juice in little Dixie cups. So I just rode through without any. Coming down the other side was fun and fast. 40-45mph around the tight turns was fun especially on the slick surface. I had to take it easy though and hold back because of all the people on the course at that point. Because I had started so far back I was constantly behind people. So then the flat road began and we cruised at about 26-27 mph for quite a while in a large tight packed group. Nobody wanted to take any turns pulling at the front so we went pretty slow and the folks in front of us got quite the advantage I am sure. There were two or three more climbs… a little smaller than the volterra climb, however one of them was so steep I almost went backwards on it. And because the road was wet I slipped a few times and my wheel spun in place. People were flying off the road and sliding around everywhere, but luckily for me I had fallen in similar conditions in Australia a month ago and I knew my limits in the conditions.
After 100km in the saddle we made our way back through Pomerance and I was in the lead of our group. I passed by the race headquarters and saw Robyn sitting there… she started to scream and shout and wave her arms… it was awesome. She said that she wanted to chase me down and run next to me, but it was too cold. Well this was the time the race started to suck. There were three more huge climbs the biggest was to a town called castelnuovo. It was a steep climb about 12 km long and ended in this town that looked like it was used in the lord of the rings movie. But my hands and feet were too frozen to feel anything and I was having trouble shifting and braking.
I ran out of water and food and the rain continued on. My bike also had some problems, it started to make funny sounds in low gear and I was afraid that I had ruined my rear wheel. Well I made it back to the town and finished the 135 km race. I had been dropped by the 10 guys I was riding with though and finished in 75th place overall out of 1200 or so people. I felt great about it and enjoyed every minute of it. I just wish I could have taken some pictures of what I got to see. Robyn was waiting for me there alone, and helped me get back to the room to warm up.
Later that night I ate an incredible amount of food. So much that I was sleep talking later that night shouting that my stomache hurt!!!

March 14

We had a nice sunset last night and we wanted to post up a picture of it from the apartment. Today was a good day here, a little chilly but a good day. Robyn is feeling really fast running and has found some good trails around town to run on. Dan rode up a small mountain today 3 times and would have done more but his pedal broke. Now we are out the door to get some thai food at the local restaraunt...
The Food was great. Dan had the thai Chicken with rice and steamed vegies. We followed it up with some bowling in which robyn Scored an amazing 296 on 3 games... 100 more than last week. It was a good night. And Dan had three strikes in a row (turkey) gobble gobble.

Bowlerama

Robyn is the newest high score bowler at the local bowlerama!
here is our stats...:

March 7
Dan 297
Robyn 197

March 13
Dan 285
Robyn 175

We had an awsome time tonight for FHE
Oh by the way Robyn got hit today by a car... she was riding down the street and a car sideswiped her into the curb and she flew and roled and ended up on the sidewalk. the car never stopped to see how she was but Dan rode after the guy and kicked the door of his range rover a few times till he drove away. we try to be carefull here but sometimes the trafic is terrible... hopefully we can make the move down to tuscany this next week where the cars are very rare, and the roads long and empty.

Well I went to the gelatto place right by our place and got a a mixture of strawberry, cookies and cream (sort of) and pistachio...yum! Dan ate most of it but I managed some bites. It was so good. I hope you are having a good day. i am going to try and go to bed soon but after my nap I am not so sure if I will be able to!!

ITALIA WEEK ONE

Italy has been awesome. We live downtown Bologna in a four story apartment building. Its like seven stories tall though but since its so old they have knocked out some floors and stuff and not each story is like twice as tall as a normal one. We have our own bedroom and we share the little kitchen and living room with Max. Action Max he calls himself. He even has a website were you can look at him posing and flexing. He is a personal trainer. He is a very nice guy. Today he is in the hospital for 2nd and 3rd degree burns he got in the tanning bed. Terrible burns… I don’t think we will be going back into one of those things any time soon.
So far we have put in about 50 miles a day each. There is great long roads here with nobody on them. Large wineries, orchards, old churches…etc etc. very cool. I will let the pics do the talking. We are going to take much more and post them later. We only have a few so far. Its hard to ride with a camera on our back, but we have seen some awesome back drops. Today we bought a internet connection, and some groceries. Fresh parmigian cheese… so good and pasta five times a day… Dan rode his bike in the snow capped hills all week.
Good times everybody, good times.
Miss ya’ll
Talk to ya soon

London

England was brown flat and cold. we had to take our gear from the first airport and walk it about three blocks to the bus station where we bought tickets and some hot drink for Robyn. When we got on the bus we were two of five passengers. So we both took our own row in the back of the greyhound sized bus. There we left and headed out to the other airport on the far side of the city. It was about an hour long trip. Neither of us remember any of it because we were out cold. With the time difference it was like 2 in the morning for us still. Its like a 17 hour difference or something crazy like that. When we checked into our flight to Bologna we were told that we had about 60 kg too much weight. At 8 euros per kilo we were charged 500 USD approximately… and we were advised that “this is not mickey mouse money!” Dan was taken aback at his ignorance. He thought it was monopoly money!! and since we had like an extra 200 each from passing go we were ok. This is a picture of Robyn at starbucks in london airport.

london segment

It started with a little layover in Calgary. Yes that is rite. You ask yourselves "hey didnt you leave from Calgary" yes we did. and we waited in the airport for like 4 hours to find out our flight was delayed too long to catch our adjoining flight in vancouver. so they rescheduled us on a flight straight from calgary to london later that night. So we went to Chili's in the airport and ate another meal then rushed off to our new gate. we hustled around in the airport trying to get our bags re-tagged also. it was a huge pain in the butt. Well we got on the plane and realized that everything had to be explained in English and in French. This is ok on the side of a cereal box, but it was long and crappy on the plane. We fell asleep fast because the crappy movie sucked. (pride and prejudice). Don’t go and see it. It is pretty retarded. We made it To London though and awoke from our slumbers.

Canada

Calgary was fun. We almost froze to death every time we stepped outside. Staying at Lynne and Steves house in Cochrane was awesome! They have a sweet house with an entire basement that we could move into and live in for a few years before anyone would know we were there. So we made an extra big mess in the weight room with our bikes and in the bedroom and hallway with our clothes, books, bags, and jackets. While there we got to go to the mall and get some new warm clothes, go to the grocery store and get some good food, movie theater for a great movie about the huskies called -8, and we also got to lay in a tanning bed for a half hour. Both Robyn and Dan Rode their bikes on Stephens indoor trainer each day and Dan even tried to shovel the front driveway in his sandals. Cochrane was nice and we really want to go back there and check it out soon, and hopefully when we can ride our bikes up into Bragg creek and Banff. One hard part of the trip was the indoor riding. We had logged about 500 miles combined during our 5 day stay in San Diego, so the trainer was pretty boring in comparison. All in all we were in America for just about as long as we could bare. Now we are out of there and on with the adventure.