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Here are some photos from my 3 hour walkabout in Amsterdam last weekend….

I wasn’t so bold as to use one of these open-air urinals.  I guess these are more popular in the evening.

As previous mentioned, I am out in Estonia this week (in the cold rain, as it were) for a work trip.  I am flying back to Memphis this Saturday…  So far, so good.  Just a normal trip (I have made over 30 of them in the last several years).

Go back a few days, Andrea gets a message from her team manager that he wants her to do Downers Grove / US Crit championship.  This is a huge deal, this is the race that Tina Pic has won 7 of the last 8 years or something like that.  Now Andrea doesn’t expect to win, but a top 20 placing (or even a field finish) would be a victory for her.

Now, I usually fly back from Estonia via Chicago (on Scandinavian Airlines) which would have been perfect, but this time I am flying back on Northwest right to Memphis.  I did some fare shopping and came up with a good price to fly up there to watch.  She is racing both Saturday and Sunday, but I can get up there Saturday night to see the race big event on Sunday.

Then, I get to thinking… she is driving up… and she could bring my bike.  And there is a cat 3 race at 10am on Sunday.  So in the end I made the maybe foolish choice to race the next morning after flying back from Europe.  The good news it that it is in the morning…  in the late afternoon will be the problem.

So to recap.
Saturday:

7am (eastern european time) to 4:50 pm (Memphis time) fly via Amsterdam to Memphis
drop off back at my car in the parking lot… or put it in left luggage if time is short.
6:35 pm (Memphis) to 8:20 pm (Chicago).

Sunday:

10am, race the Cat 3 crit championship in Downers Grove
noon, watch Andrea tough it out against the best crit women in the country
after that…watch the pro men?

oh, and drive back at some point… not sure on those details yet.  So this whole thing will cap off a pretty crazy week.

Did I mention that I have been off my bike since last Saturday (the morning before I left)….?  Although I have been running some…

I have been out to Estonia and specifically Ida-Virumaa (Kohtla-Jarve) at least 30 trips most of which are several weeks in length.

IdaVirumaa

From this experience and because I haven’t been in over a year, I have some loose fun goals to fit in during this trip out side of the work week. These are not necessarily in order.

• Drink on bottle of Saku Originaal and one bottle of A Le Coq premium. [done]
• Eat shashlok, marinated pork chunks cooked over a wood fire [done]
• Prepare shashlok [planned]
• Take saunas at Toila Spa hotel [done].
• Drink a Bar Alex, take bus to Nightlife (or as I mostly knew it Joy), stay way too late…. [not going to do this one, not there on the weekend anyway. Also don't have all the friends that made those sort of nights fun.]
• Take a mining tour at Kohtla-Nomme [again, no time. but you haven’t really done a tour of mine without immenent danger. Witness powerful rock moving equipment operating inches from you,… also bare 3-phase overhead lines within easy reach.

That was really short and not nearly 10 items, but again I am tired. Time to publish…

I will just post photos with captions…

Steepest stairs…nearly a ladder.

Saka Mois (Manor House). A bit rough around the edges…

copper wire anyone…?

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Old marker… from the CCCP days….

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Barbed wire on top of this pill box looking thing…. I don’t know if this is a set-up or something crafted by the Soviet army.

Random trench

Random shelter….

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That’s it for now…

After work today, I ended up running some errands (I had to buy a swimsuit. Part of it is that I needed to get a Euro-style one, but I don’t even have one at all in the U.S. to bring). I will need it for my morning swim/sauna at the hotel.

After coming back, I went ahead and checked out the grounds at the Saka Cliff hotel.

They have a large tower / bldg that is accessed via a spiral stair.

The view from the top is okay looking out on the Baltic Sea / Bay of Finland.

After looking out that overlook, I descended the stairs to the shoreline.

to the shore…where a bunch of four-wheeler drove by…

And then saw the “blue” clay.

The trail continued on up a steep stair and by both an old manor house and some Soviet Guardpost leftovers, but I am too tired to blog it all now…. you will have to wait to tomorrow..

This is definitely the worst trip over to Estonia I have ever had…  I have had issues with return legs (once I spent the night in Newark, another in Chicago).  My flight schedule went something like this:

NW (Memphis to Amsterdam)  7:20 pm to 11:10 am
KLM  (Amsterdam to Stockholm)  12:05 pm to 2:10 pm
Estonian Air Regional (Stockholm to Tallinn)  3:35 pm to 5:50 pm

I got to the Memphis airport early (around 5 pm) because I had a feeling that my ticket (e-ticket to Stockholm and a separate paper ticket to Tallinn) would cause an issue.  It did.  The check-in stated out with getting boarding passes and checked luggage to Stockholm…  I knew this would be a problem with having to retrieve and re-check my luggage, so pushed them to try to get it checked all the way to Estonia.  A more experienced agent came out and she also couldn’t even consulting with some unseen person via phone (who later arrived to help in person).  In the end, they decided that NW/KLM and Estonian air do not play nice together (they checked this with the computer).  This simple thing set into motion a bunch of stuff…keep reading…

The flight to Amsterdam was running late after a late departure (air traffic control computer problems is what was announced)…we failed to make up the difference on the flight over…by the time we taxied all over the Schipol airport tarmac, my hour-long connection looked a bit tight.  I was able to move through the short connection line at passport control / re-security check (where’s the love?, don’t they trust US airport security?)..  My bag wasn’t so quick (which I didn’t find out until later).

The KLM flight to Stockholm was a smaller aircraft, so I had to plane-side check my little roller bag.  When leaving the plane in Stockholm, it wasn’t obvious where my bag would come out and when I asked the gate agents, the answer they gave was seemingly clear but also smacked of them not unstanding my question…  They indicated that plane-side checked bags hit the belt with the normal luggage (which is unusual).  When the belt started moving, a bunch of usual luggage came out before my plane-side bag…  after recovering it it was a long wait until I was pretty sure they were done putting our bags out…. since the baggage office had a queue, I decided to go upstairs to try to check-in to the Tallinn flight. The time was short (<20 minutes) and queue for check-in was long (once I found it since they already dropped it from the check-in oboard since it was already boarding.

So I go to the SAS desk to see if I could change the ticket.  He sends me down to the Estonian Air desk… I went down and didn’t find it… I return and he insists that it exists, so I give it another shot and this time I find the Estonian Air desk (which is actually a multi-airline desk with a Estonian Air small sign, of course).  I work with a really nice ticket agent that explains that it is an SAS ticket, so they would have to change it.  By this time, my ticket is probably no-show invalid anyway, so I ask about just buying a ticket.  It was another $200, but I did what I had to do…

After getting my flights set, I decide to try to track down my bag.  Since I left the arrivals / baggage claim area, I cannot backtrack to it anymore.  So I have to find the outside office / window.  Infomation pointed me in the right direction and go to the window (also for about 20 airlines)… ring the bell (actually a door buzzer code), once, twice, three times.. wait 5-10 minutes.  Needing to check my sanity, I go up to the KLM ticketing window upstairs and they called down and she reported that they were “waiting” for me.  I go down and after doing the buzzer code two times, a guy shows up.  He takes the tag info and goes in the back and tells me it is on the next flight to Stockholm.  The good news is that it is due in before I need to check-in to Tallinn, so we are all together again.

My original idea was to drive from Tallinn to Kohtla-Jarve after landing at 6pm.  With the delay, I don’t want to make that drive from 10:30pm onward (and probably fall asleep at the wheel).  So I picked up another night at the airport hotel, pushed the rental car (called them to tell them not to wait on me), and pushed my hotel reservation at Saka Cliffs.

I wrote most of the above in Stockholm, but now I am at the hotel Ulemiste.  I have stayed at this hotel 3-4 times over as many years.  It is designed to be pretty basic and functional.  The bathroom for instance is completely tiled with a floor drain near the shower area.  There is a curtain to pull around, but the floor gets all wet anyway.  The main thing I like about it is the price: 60 euro a night in Tallinn is pretty inexpensive these days… and the fact I can walk to it from the airport.  (The big minus is that is between the airport and the Ulemiste shopping mall, but other than that there is not much going on in this part of town.)

After checking in the hotel, I decide to pop over to the Rimi Hypermarket (part of the mall) right next door since it is open to “23″ and it is only a little after 10pm.  I start to walk towards the back of the store and I see that all the alcohol is taped off like a crime scene.  The last time I was in Estonia (last May), the  goverment stopped package sales for several days, so I remember how that looked.  Basically caution tape around several aisles of the store.  Not able to buy a 1/2 litre of beer for the night, I bought some other things to drink and left.  At checkout, I see a sign that indicates that sales for alcohol are only from 10a-10p.  It is strange that Estonia is getting more strict blue laws than Tennessee.

So I came back to the hotel and showered up.  I am finishing the text of this post in the hotel bar area enjoying a pint of A Le Coq (actually 0.5 L).  I really miss both A Le Coq and Saku when away.  These beers are the big two of Estonia and they both make a quality flagship and several other interesting varieties.

Tonight, I am flying out to Estonia for a week. It will be short work trip without much extra time. The weather is looking pretty bland with temperatures in the low 60’s and rainy (constrasted to 90’s and sunny in Memphis).

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I plan to post up some photos of anything I see that is interesting. Going to Estonia is pretty routine for me, I have made the trip at least 30 times since 2002. It has over a year since I have been, so it will be interesting to see what is different. I know that with 5-8% inflation and an even weaker dollar (10 eek = $1 instead of 12 eek last year), means that it won’t be the inexpensive place that it was back in 2002-2003.

The real challenge will be that I return next Saturday and plan to race the following Saturday at the BMW Omnium / River Gorge race in Chattanooga. That race is difficult one anyway, so I hope my 7 days off the bike will result in recovery, not loss of fitness.

Last night Andrea and I were talking about the return trip to Memphis. We decided to see if we could make it all the way home in one shot… Since she is flying out for a conference on Thursday morning, we wanted to get back early on Wednesday… so that meant driving Wednesday morning from Fond du Lac wouldn’t work. Our original idea was to go down about 12-13 hours and then get a room. With 2 dogs and bikes on the back of the car, it is sort of a hassle…

We left this morning about 7:50 am (eastern) and headed south. Stopped in Escanaba and grabbed some Baroni’s spaghetti sauce (made up in Calumet, sort of a taste of the U.P. thing). On the way down we stopped by Fond du Lac to pickup some water bottles we left at my brothers (only 2 miles off our route) and get some New Glarus beer to take back (three 6-packs). Somewhere just south of Normal, IL we hit the rain… about 150 miles of it.. lightning and all. We drove out of it probably 40 minutes before St. Louis. There we stopped to eat south of St. Louis around 7pm and the tail of it caught up with us… it only took about 20 minutes to clear that part of it. The worst part of any trip is usually the end. The last 100 miles up I-55 to West Memphis took the both of us to knock off without falling asleep. We ended up rolling into Andrea’s around midnight. 975 miles. 17:15. 56.5 mph.. probably close to 50 gallons of fuel.

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I am glad I have tomorrow to recover from this trip. Vacation is a very good thing.

We (Andrea and I) went out for a longer ride today out of Marquette. We choose a hybrid route looking at numerous roads on my mapmyride.com. The route wasn’t bad, but started out on small highways with too many double (and single) dump trucks.

After winding around to the open pit mining area south of Ispheming, we got on some smaller county roads. Unfortunately, they were pretty rough. Right away on one of the hills, I spotted “feed zone” and then we started to count down the kilometers from 5k to go… at the end, we sprinted for the finish line… well sort of……

I am 50% Finnish by blood, so I felt right at home leading attacking and winning that sprint. Andrea won her share out there including the all important final city limit sign… for the City of Marquette. The cool thing is that right after that city limit sign was one of those speed measuring signs… we ramped it up again and I saw 35 before we passed the sign. Not too fast, but we were just putting along on the ride, so it wasn’t too bad.

And finally, as Andrea has already blogged, we ran across a historical landmark. The county road we rode on used to be the US-41 highway. This was first use of a roadway centerline. This concept is familiar to all road racers…the centerline rule.

This morning Andrea and I are prepping to leave Wisconsin and progress further north. We got up here Wednesday night (as planned) and have spent two full days with my brother and his wife. During that time we have gotten out to ride twice in the rolling hills & farm land around Fond du Lac. The day one ride was very hilly up and down heading out east to large bank of wind turbines. The economics of turbines don’t really work in west Tennessee that I have seen (I am guessing it is wind speed and probably cheap TVA power). In any case, it was cool to ride along a road in the middle of a wind farm. We even stopped and rode up to the base of one. The day was clear and sound the blades made was very quiet and peaceful.

That night we went down to SummerFest down in Milwaukee. It was a good time in general, but the crowds and drunk kids +/- a couple years of 21 were a bit annoying. The lineup on Thursday night was just okay and we saw a couple of bands playing their one or two hits. I guess that means I am getting old that I don’t know many of them.

Yesterday we went out for a ride down more south and east from Fond du Lac. No wind farms, but more good rolling roads and some nice looking lakes (Kettle Moriane State Forest). I brought my camera and took some photos of Andrea riding (and she of me). Here are the best ones.

We had the requisite cheese curds… but they apparently are not fresh enough to squeak. We need to get those on way out of the state.

The other good things about Wiscosin is the New Glarus brewery. I think we have tried maybe 5 or 6 types and they are all good. The Road Slush Stout is particularly good.

Michigan is next. Marquette and the Copper Country.