Vacation Envy

This post might sound absolutely ridiculous because I travel basically non-stop. What people don't know is that I rarely get to be a tourist. I spend most of my time in parking lots and hotels. I don't spend time visiting museums, eating at restaurants or seeing iconic landmarks. A race counts as a cultural experience if I manage to make it to a supermarket. So yes, I've visited all the continents except Antarctica, Yet, I rarely get a taste of the local culture. Instead, I judge these experiences based on hotel buffet, access to coffee and race transfers. 

I'm home this weekend and loving it. Please realize that the weather still leaves much to be desired but that's Belgium. 

On my Instagram feed, I'm seeing loads of photos of friends taking weekend trips skiing, to the beach or a jaunt to a city for a foodie trip. And I'm jealous. Typically, I go on one good 10-day vacation and a few weekend trips a year, but last year proved challenging, particularly due to the foot surgery, and basically none of that happened. 

Now this year, the Roommate and I are passing ships in a storm (the closest I'll get to seeing him is potentially on TV during Strade today) and I get a bit lonely and jealous. I want to go for a long weekend somewhere and having a good dining companion. So instead of complaining or wallowing, I'm going to pull out the calendar and figure out ways to maximize. It probably won't happen until late May and after the Tour of California, but a great little vacation is in my future. Maybe a convertible rental car and somewhere along CA Route 1? A wine tasting adventure? A jaunt to Cabo to go fishing?? Ahhhh, the options!!!

Living For the Weekend

It's pathetic, sad and I think a great glimpse into my life. When I'm on the road, I have no idea what day of the week it is. Sure, I know it's Stage 2 or 3, but if that falls on a Thursday, Sunday or Tuesday is totally lost on me. I also have no clue when I see my partner again, and that's equally okay. 

I grew up in the typical American household and was spoiled to have my dad at dinner most nights. I worked a corporate job and lived my own adult version of a 9-5 life for six years after earning my Masters degree. For those that know me from then, remember Happiness Awaits? I struggled for a long time to find my place in this world---that delicate mix of happiness combined with drive and determination. Apparently, men's professional cycling was what I need. Additionally, my team is special, and we don't adhere to the same rules, goals, and expectations as other teams. We've set our own markers for success, and I truly feel that environment has allowed me to thrive. 

Month-after-month, I clocking a ridiculous number of hours not just traveling but also simply doing the day-in, day-out tasks of my job. Sports compete on weekends, therefore I don't get weekends off. Normal business life work happens on weekdays, so.......that means I'm basically always working.

I feel spoiled, and I love this job. But at times, it can still be work. As in, I've spent two days traveling home from Abu Dhabi after 10 days of 12+ hour workdays. It is a Tuesday and I desperately need/want a day off but at this point in the season, that simply isn't an option. Maybe this weekend? Again, we race so maybe.

Additionally, this year has proven to be a comedy of 'errors' when it comes to my relationship with the Roommate. I went to Spain and upon flying out, he was already on a flight to Spain. No overlap. I flew to Dubai and he flew to Oman the day I was slated to return. When he flew back from Oman, I was on a plane to Abu Dhabi. Leaving Abu Dhabi, he's already driving to Strade Bianchi and spending nearly a month in Italy. 

It isn't the weekend work that's hard. In our world's, last minute schedule changes are what break you. You believe you have a day off or a weekend together that you desperately need and then suddenly watch it disappear. It's hard and it can be a deal breaker in many relationships. It works for us for two reasons:

1. We are both in this world. We know what the insides look like and how it works. We also understand that our schedules aren't actually our schedules. They are suggestions that neither of us have real control over. 
2. We are absolutely spoiled rotten to have these careers. We have amazing jobs that carry us around the world. It is exciting, dynamic and adventurous---all things most people would love to claim at their jobs.

So if not seeing each other for a few weeks or even in this case, a few months is the worst it gets, I still feel like we are ridiculously spoiled and fortunate for the life we lead. And even more so that I've got a partner to enjoy and commiserate with through it all. 

Places You've Been ✈️

I hear this list is floating around on Facebook and my mom and sister thought it'd be fun if I did my version. Apparently most Americans only have eight. I have 66 and that definitely isn't a complete list. I have many places that aren’t even on this list. Like the text message I got today:

I’ve also been to Poland, Turkey, Sweden, Portugal, Poland, Croatia, Cyprus, Denmark, Cape Verde, Monaco, Andorra and a few other places that aren’t listed. And here I am looking at the list below as an outline for places I need to prioritize and get to soon.

That list has 99 places, so I've hit roughly 67%. Obviously, I need to get that into the 80th percentile at a minimum simply as a bucket list item.

Fighting Jetlag

You'd think I'd be pretty good at it by now. I live on planes and constantly move around the world. I pride myself on being an expert at hacking jet lag.  

And then this silly three-hour time change killed me earlier this week. I think it was due to the fact it took two days to get from Belgium to Abu Dhabi. I left Sunday midday, slept in an airport hotel in Milan, and finally arrived at my hotel in Abu Dhabi late on Monday night. 

I was exhausted and hadn't eaten a real meal since dinner Saturday night when I crawled into bed on Monday. I expected to sleep like the dead. Instead, I counted sheep. I tried everything, meditation, sleep apps, drugs, hot shower, wine, etc. Nothing helped. I think it was a mix of sheer exhaustion and hunger that wouldn't let my body relax. Around 3 am, I finally drifted off only to wake up about four hours later. 

I've been here three days and it still hasn't gotten much better. I'm surviving off caffeine in a way that's a little pathetic for a three-hour time change.  I need to prioritize sleep tonight, otherwise, I'll be totally smashed after a few race days. Thanks Abu Dhabi for keeping me humble on my traveling skills.

Being the Biggest Adult

I'm sure shifting into being a real adult is more recognizable for people who are raising children, but the fact I'm typically the main, 'real' adult keeps catching me off guard. 

When situations go astray, like when my flight to Italy on Sunday was rerouted to a different airport and all the taxis were on strike, my first reaction was to look around for someone to solve the problem. Then it dawned on me that I was the biggest adult and I needed to figure out getting a rider and myself across Milan and quickly.

I've had a variety of these scenarios over the years traveling with athletes. Their duties are to perform in a race. For the staff, we each have our own roles and responsibilities, but at the end of the day, our jobs include making life as easy as possible for the riders. 

This means problem-solving on the fly, often in foreign languages and with limited knowledge of the area. While my first reaction when problems arise is to look around hoping that someone more senior than me is around, I've learned things always work it. It might not be pretty, you'll probably be exhausted and need a few glasses of wine, and it will cost something, but things always work out. And humans are much friendlier, kinder and more helpful than we give them credit. More times than not, random strangers help. 

Remembering that helped me stay calm while trying to navigate across Milan late at night without any clue as to what was going on. And guess what....it all worked out.

It's Time for a Change

I've been doing this for almost a year. It feels stagnant, yet I love the writing, and I appreciate the accountability. I have no real goals for this, definitely nothing fiscal, but I love writing for writing's sake. 

I'm growing, changing and tackling the world in such a dynamic way that sees me living in a foreign country, traveling frequently and thriving as a female in basically an all-male professional sport. 

I've learned several tricks and been bruised by a variety of situations. They've all helped me grow into someone I'm quite proud of being. And I still have so much room to grow and develop. According to Malcolm Gladwell, it takes 10,000 hours to be an expert at something. I've probably clocked at least 8,000 hours in my job with this team. I've grown and developed so much over these past 3+ years, and I've had both amazing successes and painful failures. I can feel this is a critical year in my career and I want to squeeze every drop out of it. I want to keep pushing myself, writing more and simply exploring ways to develop as a human. 

My goal here is to push myself to have a more consistent, meaningful and creative writing practice. I'm not sure what that'll exactly look like, but I'm interested in finding out. I want this to be less recapping my experiences and more analyzing and contemplating all that's going on around me. I'll aim for a daily post for three months. After that, I'll check in and see where I'm at and if I've got the same motivation. Maybe it'll shift into something different. Maybe it'll die. Only time will tell.......

Heading Back to the UAE

On Sunday, I head back to this UAE for another 10 days. This time, I'll be in Abu Dhabi, which is somewhere I've never been before. I could be wrong, but I'm heading in with the assumption that Abu Dhabi is very much like Dubai---hot, dry, (hopefully no sandstorms), luxury hotels and extremely expensive. 

My hotel room was absolutely amazing in Dubai but our hotel food left much to be desired. It was boring, redundant and featured none of the foods you'd want in the Mideast--hummus, olives, etc. Eating out wasn't a real option because everything was so insanely expensive. Instead, it was all race buffet. Breakfast was 2 to 3 hardboiled eggs and that was it. Lunch proved to be impossible to eat gluten and dairy free and they kept throwing in peanuts to really keep me on my toes.

I don't really want to be traveling with this much food (added weight) but I also want to stay on my good eating habits. It is going to be redundant but at least I'm prepared. I'm really not that excited to eat a can of tunafish every.single.day but I don't know how else to travel with protein and not completely survive on bars and powder.

In addition to the above (that's Julian Bakery Vanilla Nut powder, which I ADORE), I'll throw in some Julian Bakery bars, RXbars, coconut milk powder and hopefully some true lemon and true lime packets if I can track them down in Belgium. I'm planning on race buffet dinner being fine, so all this is to just supplement breakfast, lunch and snacks. I'm hoping there will be fresh cut veggies and salad that I can steal in the evenings to make snacks for the next day. Just need to remember to pack some sort of tupperware.

Hopefully, my bag won't weigh too much.....this is a bit ridiculous.

Dubai Eats

Eating in Dubai has been...fairly boring. I ate race buffet 90% of the time, which means the same exact meal, every time. It's simply too expensive to eat elsewhere when food is provided. Thanks to being gluten and dairy free, this definitely limited my choices and I ended up eating basically the same thing every day. It wasn't very inspiring.

• Breakfast: 2-3 egg whites and to just try and make it exciting, some pickles, mustard, pickled onions, and capers. I know...it wasn't good and my stomach hated me for it. I'm in no hurry to repeat this meal. Except that I ate it for a week straight. Ugh.
• Copious amounts of coffee and tea until I left for the race. My hotel room had a Nespresso machine and the first thing I did when my alarm went off was to make an espresso. I really should think about installing one of these on my bedside table at home....what's this silliness of walking to the kitchen?! Also, I skipped all faux-dairy products for the week. Eager to get back to coconut or almond milk. Basically desperately. 
• Lunch: I went to a grocery store and bought a few cans of no-drain tuna that were actually quite tasty and a few avocados. Every evening, I would fill up a plastic container with lettuce and some veggies (typically cucumbers, mushrooms, and peppers) from the race buffet and then add in the tuna and avocado at lunch time. I topped with some of my travel oil and vinegar packets. It wasn't exciting but it got me through.
• Snacks: Cashews, almond butter or beef jerky. Not my finest moments. Probably didn't need all those nuts, fats and calories.
• Dinner: Typically a that I would top with grilled (typically with too much oil for my liking) vegetables and some kind of protein.

And that was it. The same nearly single day, especially for breakfast.

So, by this morning, I'd hit a wall. I was staying in Dubai for an extra day to do some additional work and there was no longer a race buffet. I did a fancy dance, a full-on celebration and loaded up my plate. What you see above isn't everything I ate. It got a little out of control, quickly. There was another plate of veggies and then some scrambled eggs. I was so excited for the variety that I couldn't hold myself back.

Tomorrow--I head back to Belgium for a little bit. I already have all my meals for the next week worked out in my mind.

Do Anything as Long as it Feels like an Adventure

Living out of a suitcase and constantly moving around the glove is a lifestyle that wouldn't suit many people. Combine that with your only home being a strange foreign country and I'm basically always living in total chaos and tackling the unknown.

After nearly 10 hours of straight work and more still to do, I snuck down to the beach to read a bit and watch the sunset.

I think a common phrase said within the bike racing community is, "this isn't a job for many could handle, but for those of us who can, we are the luckiest people in the world." 

I'm grateful and spoiled that I have a job where when I tell someone sitting next to me on a plane what I do, their eyes expand and they immediately tell me how jealous or lucky I am. Trust me, I know.

Who knows how long I'll do this for. I'm applying the advice of Neil Gaimon, "I tended to do anything as long as it felt like an adventure and stopped when it felt like work.”

Right now, Dubai feels just right. It's an adventure; it's strange; it's fascinating and I'll be happy to be back on the move come Monday and on to the next adventure. 

No Internet at Training Camp

I didn't mean to disappear! I actually tried as hard as I could to put something up here, but the powers that be in Spain overruled me. While in Spain, we got hit by apparently the storm of the century. There were massive power outages, rain, leaks, everything. We had snow, massive amounts of rain and galeforce winds. This meant that the Internet and Wifi were down for the whole area for days. 

The 10-day training camp started so well. Sunshine and sunglasses. Little did I know that all of that was about to disappear.

While I couldn't post, more importantly, I couldn't work. I'm now paying for it. I got home late Sunday night with the plan to take Monday off after 10 days of working 12-15 hour days. I almost laugh at the thought I could take Monday off. Instead, I'm still scrambling trying to make up for all those lost days without Internet.

Looking forward, life is about to get crazy. It already is crazy. I'm both scared and excited at the same time for what is to come.

Stay tuned....it's going to be a big year!

My Birthday. At Work

Ever since leaving for Hawaii over three weeks ago, life hasn't slowed down. I've gone through some big changes at work, which have meant a huge increase in work load. That should all quiet down now, but these past few weeks have been intense. After the Dominican Republic home build, I spent about a week in Stone Mountain, GA. During that time, I celebrated my 36th birthday.

As a kid, I was a huge birthday person. I think this is part of being a December birthday. No one wants to celebrate your birthday. It's another gift, another event, just another something during a crazy month. That was a huge frustration as a child. My birthday always felt like a chore and like all little kids, I wanted to be celebrated and spoiled with gifts, cakes and parties.  

As an adult, I get it. I have so much going on, I barely want to celebrate my birthday. If I could, I would probably let everyone forget it, especially when surrounded exclusively by coworkers. The last time I spent my birthday at training camp was four years ago and it actually was my first day working for the team. That meant I wasn't friends with anyone on social media and no one really knew me. I skated through without a single happy birthday and that was fine.

My birthday fell on one of the busiest days of training camp (media training) and was two days before maybe my biggest day of the year (media day/team presentation).  I wanted to cruise through the day without anyone mentioning it, but thanks to Facebook reminders, everyone knew. And after living, working and traveling together so closely for this many years, no one was letting me skate by.

And they did a great job spoiling me: I received a cake, tiara, flowers, balloons and a great meal out. I felt loved and celebrated. A few special people lead the charge and made sure I felt spoiled all day long. It was nice. And when you work with so many Italians, you realize all those great birthday kisses aren't such a bad thing.

Dominican Republic Home Build

I spent the past week in the Dominican Republic. It wasn't my first time to the island but this wasn't an all-inclusive, fruity drink vacation. I went with my team to build three houses for families affected by diabetes. It was hard work; it was hot and it was so incredibly rewarding.

I think we all took away lots of different lessons from the experience, mainly just how fortunate we all are....and that we don't really have any 'real' problems. These people didn't have food or shelter. They didn't have their basic needs covered.

What stayed with me was how easy it was to help. It only took two days of hard work from about 70 people and we changed three families' lives forever. It made me so aware how easy it is to help. For the most part, it is just about time and effort. And so often, we claim we don't have enough of either. After seeing the level of poverty they lived in, I am positive that we all have the time and effort that's needed to help those less fortunate. The hardest part is getting motivated and deciding what to do. The easy part was the work.

Now I'm spending another handful of days in the States finishing up a training camp. This one is primarily meetings. My job has seen several roles change, which means I'm juggling more than normal. This should all settle down by the new year but again, not a real problem. After this training camp, I'm heading up to see my sister for a few days and I cannot wait to see her.