Rust, Sweat, and Italians, Oh My

What do you get when you mix an 80 year old rusty road bike, tight mountain trails, no ability to change gears, an 8 kilometer ride, and heat with humidity? One unhappy me. Biking to Villingen sounded like a great ideas especially for Coloradans but what started out as a nice European adventure turned into an exhausting ride and a cranky me. We borrowed a bike from the frenchies so that Lara and I could ride to Villigen and back. But this bike was an old road bike that was stuck in high gear. The path that we took to Villigen was through part of the Black Forest so is was tight, dirt/gravel paths and many hills and turns. It was not designed for a road bike nor was it designed to be road in high gear. Some of those hills nearly killed me and I was wiping off sweat like nobody's business. It was a beautiful ride but it definately made me appreciate a good bike. I never fully understood gears until this trip. We only stayed in Villigen for an hour or two. We ate lunch, shopped (like spending more money is just what we needed) and then decided it would be best to catch the train back home. Call us pansies but this ride in that heat with that bike was just not happening again. So we got to the train station just in time to sprint across the tracks and catch the train back to Schwennigen. And I'm thinking this day had bad connotations with it anyway. The train was so hot that both of us were sweating worse just standing on the train than we ever did battling the heat on our bikes. Needless to say a shower was very well welcomed by this point. So now we had a fussball match to watch. We cleaned up, dressed in our Germany swag, and headed out to catch some food and watch Germany take on Italy. Everywhere in town was packed. The whole city was out to watch the game and there were actually a lot of Italian fans as well. For those of you that watched, Germany lost and the Italians fans were going crazy. Horns were honking all over town, the police was out standing guard everywhere, and Germans fans were left to look on in despare as the soccer cup ends for them. Memories were made yesterday and it'll all be something to laugh at in the future. But what a day!