I know I throw up a photo like this every winter but there are few things better than starting out a day with a quick ski just a few blocks from home. With more snow on the way tonight it looks like we’ll get to enjoy at least a solid week of it.
Next up is an attempt at a little snow bikin. Anything but the trainer…
Sent from my BlackBerry wireless handheld.
First, of Team Camp, 2nd of the French vacation that Kelly complained she didn’t get enough info about.
So… Camp: 8 days of the entire, now HUGE, team here in the bubble. Not many bars didn’t see us at least once, yet the Boulderado conference rooms saw us much, much more. With the goal of this camp being more getting all the BS done so that the training camps to come can be devoted to training, not photos/sponsors/logistics/policy/medical/drinking. There was a lot of busywork, but balanced nicely with some really, really fun dinners that seemed to have a way of turning into big nights at some point or another. “French Appreciation Night” at Brasserie Ten 10 was the epitomy of this camp - 50 costumed, to some degree, cyclists and staff took over the back half of the restaurant and by the end had drunk them out of at least half of the selections we started with. With camera crews buzzing around and a steady stream of people in and out they loved us…at least once the bar tab was paid up.
Camp wrapped up with the team launch, a huge event at the Boulder Theater that doubled up as a fundraiser for the Davis Phinney Foundation. The pilot show for our reality TV program on the Sundance Channel plus a special show on Millar were shown before a couple of speeches by JV and sponsors, and then we were all brought out, introduced quickly and then the floor was opened for questions. A lot of cute kids that came up asking for autographs, a couple of solid questions, and then the best: one of the local DBC bike messengers questioned Maggie (a hot questionee) what his gear selection would be for an hour record attempt. Sounds stupid, but couldn’t have been more boulder. Drunk messenger, cycling cap, shoulder bag and all, getting all single speed technical. Damn good stuff. After that we moved into a big auction of jerseys, bikes, trips, etc etc and an hour later a cool 50k+ was in the bank for the Phinny crew. At about that point things started getting fuzzy. The next day we were all so gimpy that our afternoon events were canceled and we all hit the sack for a bit. Crazy wrap up to a big week:)
Stop reading here if you want to avoid a bunch of food and wine blabber.
France: We headed over the day that camp wrapped up, quickly drove from CDG out to Beaune, roughly 3 hours east, with a quick detour to pick up B&J in the city. Quick, at least for navigating Paris in a non-GPS-equipped rental car at least… A little walk around town and a bottle of grand cru white burg later we all got kitted up for a dinner in the cellars of Clos Vougeot with the Chevalliers du Tastevin. Lots of rich food, serious Burgundy, singing and clapping, swinging napkins in the air, and watching some pretty entertaining, yet often long winded ceremonies later we piled back into a cab and headed back to the hotel to crash. LONG day - but a really fun evening watching some of the cheesiest Frenchmen go after wine in a classic fashion. Good stuff.
The next day started up with a visit to Serafin. As we rolled up at 10am on a Sunday morning old man Serafin was looking a little crusty and not sure what the four of us were all about. Minutes later he’d opened up and you couldn’t slow him down. A true dirt under the nails farmer-winemaker, mid-way through the barrel tasting we somehow got onto the fact that in the US most pregnant women don’t drink at all and he told us that in case of pregnancy one should sniff, taste, and then spit most wines - but then made sure that we understood that anything pre-mid-90s you couldn’t possibly spit and that you should just enjoy in moderation. Damn funny. He simply couldn’t believe the crazy Americans and their loony ways. He was however completely stoked at the prices those crazy Americans would dish out for his wines, and a good chunk of em came our way. At 70 years old he was still beyond enthusiastic, crazy energetic and a quality, salt of the earth kind of guy. A great visit and some fantastic grape juice. That evening we hit up Ma Cuisine in Beaune; highly recommended. My kind of restaurant, it’s a smaller “neighboorhood” kind of spot, that actually is, but serves some well executed country food backed up by a killer list of wines at reasonable prices. I could have eaten there a couple of times easily, and it will be a fixture any time I return to the area.
Monday was the Paulee de Mersault. A day of celebration post-harvest for many winemakers and a few lucky taggers-along we started up at noon and were eating and drinking ’til past 7. Everybody brought in wines and by noon-thirty bottles were going every which way. I quickly jotted down what we were tasting and by the end of the day we’d seen nearly 50 bottles, with most of ‘em from wax-pencil marked magnums. Not all bad. Sleep was welcome that evening.
Tuesday we were back in the rental-Alfa and headed back to Paris. A quick cruise through the cote de Beaune and a visit to a shop in Chassagne before we headed west somehow managed to get us twisted and when we hit Dijon we realized that we were not on the most direct route back… A bit of disco navigation with google maps assistance from the blackberry and we were headed back the right direction, only 45 minutes behind schedule. Then we hit town. The strikes that we’d been reading about hit home as Paris was in solid gridlock. 3 hours, some crazy shooting-it moves and 8k later we finally made it to the hotel. 30 mintues to get purty and we hit the streets for a stroll east to l’Ambroise.
“An hour?”
“oui, of course” said the man at the front desk of our hotel.
An hour and a half plus, and a couple of umbrella purchases later, we made it to the very nondescript entry in the generally pretty posh Place de Vosges of what is widely considered one of the best restaurants in the world. 5 hours later as we walked out we could only say wow. Every detail from the moment we dragged ourselves through the door, looking direly in need of bubbly, until we were handed back our coats, now barely large enough to fit around our mid-sections, was attended to with precision, and the food, of course, was approaching perfection. My 1st, an egg souffle with white truffles shaved and then folded into what was hard to compare to anything but a 70s tux shirt, then surrounded with a light cream sauce was unreal. Cheynna’s just-from-the-shell scallops in a watercress-cream puree topped with these slices of truffle so huge they almost covered entire opening of the bowl was sublime. Scary good. Brett and Jen both started up with a bit of Foie…what can I say there. One of the best foie starters I can remember, and needless to say, despite the ginormous quantity, both plates were ready to go back into the rack. I’ll stop here before I go too foodie, but the rest of the meal, beginning earlier with multiple amouse bouches and ending with a platter of petit-fours and a cigar service that we somehow denied was unreal. Service was as you’d expect at a spot like this, as in dialed, but while it could have been stuffy they managed to keep it very comfortable and actually fun. Impressive. As was the bill. I’m still trying to forget.
The next two days we walked, and walked, and walked, and shopped, and explored, and saw as much of Paris as one could pack into the alloted time. A return trip(s) are in order. We wrapped up with a dinner at the Parisian classic, La Tour d’Argent that while beautiful and I could have spent hours looking through the wine encyclopedia was a bit disappointing. Service was less than great, a couple of dishes, including their signature duck, were botched, but at least for me the cheese service put a closing smile on my face. For the coin I wouldn’t recommend a visit - with so many places to check out it’d be hard to sacrifice an evening and some hard earned coin for the quality of what was displayed, but none the less it was cool to dine in a restaurant that has been in their stellar, overlooking the Notre Dame, location since the 1500s.
The next day it was off to the airport and back to Colorado. Somehow that was a week ago already. Now I’m back to the bike and the gym in a big way and getting a reminder of how damn tired training makes a man. 6 weeks to go ’til camp 1 and some focus is in order. Happy Thanksgiving wishes, late, to all, and thanks for reading (if you somehow managed to stick around through all the food rambling - that could have gone WAY longer:).
