New Theme

Since we're rapidly approaching the end of 2014 (gah!), I thought it was time to turn more focused attention to this blog.  Should I keep plugging away, call it done, or revitalize it somehow?  I've had a blog in one form or another for almost 5 years, so the thought of giving it up fully is not my first choice.  Continuing on in the same way, however, is unappealing.  Writing up posts on what we did over the weekend or how cycling is going is getting a bit boring to write and probably even more boring to read.  Being an expat is no longer a new experience.  We're closing out our third year over here and despite the fact we're still not 100% sure what is going on and I haven't learned much German, this experience feels pretty normal.  We don't know what home is anymore, but I think that's because we feel evenly split after our second relocation.  Being on the banks of the Main in Unterfranken feels just as comfortable as being on the Cuyahoga in Summit County.  Sometimes, more so.

Anyway, my blogs have always been about sharing new experiences, be it becoming a bike commuter in Akron, Ohio or moving across the Atlantic.  It only makes sense to continue this approach.  So, Relish will be changing just a bit for taking a more focused theme.

Right before we moved to Luxembourg, the only camera I had was the one in my iPhone.  We thought, "Hey, we should get a decent point and shoot camera before we go because we'll probably want to take some pictures."  So, we picked up a Canon Powershot.  It's a great little camera.  But, something about this continent flipped a switch in me.  The people, the architecture, the food, the cities, the cultures, and the incredible landscapes inspired me.  I took that camera everywhere and despite its great performance, I wanted to shoot beyond its capabilities.  After six months I had upgraded to my Canon 600D, shortly thereafter I began adding lenses to my kit, and "taking pictures" became "photography" to me.  Miraculously, some have taken a liking to my work and have been willing to purchase items from my Twenty20 gallery.

So, in future posts I'll be turning Relish into more of a photography focused blog.  I plan to give background on pictures in my galleries and narrate how my exploration of photography is going.  I have a lot to learn.  There is a lot I don't get or know about.  Most of what I've discovered so far have been by trial and error or by accident.  It's not the easiest activity to get into or keep up with, but it is a heck of a lot of fun to try.  And, well, I relish the experience.

Anyway, that's what's up.  Don't worry, there will still be bike stuff from time to time.

Fujifilm X-E2, XF 18-55mm ISO 800 f/4.5 1/500

BIG Breath and....

It's been quite some time since I punched a few lines onto this blog.  August and September was all about training for a Century ride, leaving me with surprisingly very little say.  We had a rather pleasant 100 mile ride in mid-September and then after that a tight schedule leading up to our annual trip back to Akron.  Now, here we are at the very end of October.

The trip "home," the definition of which is up for debate, is an interesting experience for expats.  For those that can travel back and forth to their native land regularly the disconnect probably isn't as acute.  For those of us who only get back once a year or less, the experience can be, well, rather bizarre.  The more time that passes on assignment the greater the gulf can grow between then and now, here and there.  Sometimes, when faced with the reality that this is just an assignment and home will most definitely be over there again, the feelings are mixed.  Unless someone's expat journey has been completely negative, we feel a kinship with the new place sometimes equal to or even exceeding our native home.  But, for now here we are back in Germany for the time being with at least another year to enjoy it.

Besides all the fun parts about the home leave trip like sharing a drink at our favorite craft beer bars with good friends, enjoying a proper steak, and an early Thanksgiving meal with family, one of the annual events of home leave is making the rounds to all our medical professionals to make sure we're still doing good health wise.  I was looking forward to this year's checkup because I had a question.

My last post on here was about a particularly brutal climb that almost did me in.  After that I started paying close attention to my performance on hills and during other activities like mountain trekking.  It became clear to me that something was up with my breathing.  In the past I assumed my complete meltdowns on hills had to do with overall fitness.  I assumed I was struggling because I was out of shape.  But, as the year passed this excuse didn't seem pertinent.  We were cycling every day and during our century training we were averaging 130km a week.  Our diet has changed to being mostly vegetarian.  My weight and other vitals were in the right places.  I was sleeping normal.  But, every single time I hit a hill on the bike, a set of stairs, or an uphill track while trekking I started struggling, big time.  Off the bike I manage, but always slow way down and need breaks now and then to catch my breath.  On the bike, things get bad on those hills.  For anything above a Cat 4, I often have to dismount to calm my breathing.

Then, one day we were climbing a hill at a particularly slow pace.  We had taken a break not long before for a snack and to replenish our water, but I was in a bad way already.  My husband led for a bit, then I took over, hoping that if I found a steady pace I could relax my breathing.  It wasn't working.  The wide spot in the road was a welcome sight and I pulled over, dismounted, and sat down, certain I was going to black out.  When I finally got back to a comfortable heart rate and breathing, I looked up at the hill, the road winding above me.  As I did so, a woman went past.  On a steel city bike.  In khaki shorts and tennis shoes.  She was breathing through her nose.  That was the last straw.  I was mad.

Something was definitely up.

So, I sent my doctor in Akron a note.  I have an amazing doctor back in Akron, and having her just an email away is a lifesaver.  Thank you, modern technology!  Anyway, after tracking my symptoms and performance it sounded to me that I might have been suffering from exercise induced asthma all this time.  She concurred with my theory and set me up for some tests when I came back to town.

Asthma tests are something else.  You spend two hours in a room with a technician blowing into a tube after inhaling a progression of medications as the tech instructs "BIG breath and..BLOW, BLOW, BLOW!"  All of that tests lung capacity.  People with asthma will have a marked reduced capacity during the test.  People without it will have the same results from beginning to end.  When I sat down with my doctor a few days later, she said, "I'm so glad you contacted me, because you totally have asthma!"  Apparently, I have had it my whole life, explaining why I could never run the mile in PE or keep up in any sports like soccer when I was a kid, hence being assigned more stationary positions like fullback.  I was under the impression that I wasn't "good at running" or that I wasn't "athletic" back then.  But as I've gotten older I've realized that being "unathletic" isn't a real thing.  My doctor confirmed.  She said we choose to be active or not.  Sure, not everyone is built to run a marathon or bench 250lbs, but everyone should be able to find something they can do comfortably that keeps them physically fit.  If you struggle despite being fit, then there is a medical reason for it.  Anyone should be able to exercise.

I don't know what my doctor thought, when I responded to to my diagnosis with, "Oh, thank God!"  I can't begin to describe the relief I felt with finally having a reason for why climbing nearly kills me, why I can't keep up in the mountains, why climbing the stairs to the top floor our house has me leaning against the door frame for a bit.   The thought of climbing no longer fills me with dread.  I know what will happen when I start heading up and I know why.  It's not because I'm a failure.  I have the tools to deal with it and now the odds are in favor of me getting to the top without passing out.  Sometimes an answer is all you need.  And, albuterol.

The mountains are my favorite place on earth.  Now, spending time in their heights shouldn't be such a struggle.

Yeah, folks, I'll be "doping" when I'm out on the roads.   Let me get that out there right now.  Along with my patch kit and PB sammies, I'll be packing an inhaler.  I've accepted that in order to keep this managed properly I have to reign in my riding when I have a respiratory illness to avoid aggravating the disease (hence why I'm typing this up today instead of HTFU on the bike with this head cold).  I shouldn't take up extreme altitude mountaineering either.  Sigh.  Oh well, I don't have the money for that anyway.  But, there is no risk of having to give up the bike.  I'm not expecting to take all the local QOMs, but climbing the stairs, yeah, I can do that now.

So, look out, Bavaria, as soon as I kick this darn cold I'll be back.  Here's hoping none of you in khakis and sneakers will pass me on a climb.  But if you do, let's be clear.  My chain slipped.

Making the Call

Cycling is a tough activity, don't let anyone tell you different.  It's tough for the professionals who compete on bikes and it's tough for people who ride them to work.  The only difference is the speed and the equipment.  The stakes are the same.

In a split second, everything can change.  We're out there on the road with nothing but what we have on our backs to protect us from the multi-ton metal boxes flying past or the spot of pavement that refuses to let a bike stay upright for no explicable reason.  Even when the situation is primed for cycling, things can still go wrong, terribly wrong.  There's the road, there's our bikes, there are the cars, there are other people, there animals, there's the weather, and there are other cyclists.  There are too many variables, even on a closed course, that will never permit cycling to be as safe and predictable as football.

All of us who tuned in to watch the US Pro Championships were heartbroken when Lucas Euser and Taylor Phinney went down hard while trying to avoid a race motorcycle during a tricky descent in the road race.  Euser was able to walk away from the accident.  Phinney, who won a stage of the Tour of California thanks to his descending skills and the US Pro Time Trial last Saturday, didn't get up.  He suffered a severe compound fracture to his left fibula and tibia.  That is a horrible injury, more than likely a season ending injury.  Thankfully, he's young so it is likely that he will come back from this, but it'll be a long road.  All it took was a second for disaster to strike.  It can strike someone who knows better than most how to handle a bike.  It can definitely strike the rest of us.  No matter how many hours we spend in the saddle and no matter how much practice we get, there's always the chance that something could happen.

But, we don't think about it too much.  We can't.  If we played out all the possible tragedies that could happen while riding, we wouldn't ride.  We'd go to a gym and ride a stationary instead.  We'd get in our cars and drive to work instead of loading our stuff in panniers and pedaling to the office. We wouldn't be cyclists.  But, we have to be smart about riding.  We need to push our limits, but we also need to know when to make the call.  Sometimes, it's wiser to sit a ride out than push on.  We need to know our bodies, what level we can take them to before we end up doing damage.  We need to know when the road situation isn't safe to ride.  There is a limit.  We have to make the call when it comes to our safety. The line is different for everyone, and no one else can make the decision for us.  It's a part of cycling.  Sometimes those lines change, like the more we descend the more comfortable we get with it.  Others stay firmly in place.  But, we know when we're pushing the envelope and when we can handle it.  No  Rapha ad, no editorial, no Twitter comment should determine how we approach our personal safety.  Lately, pro riders have been taking some flak for protesting the conditions in races.  It's easy to say, "You're a professional, suck it up."  But, we're not on the roads with them.  We really don't have the right to make the call.  No one has the right to make the call for the rest of us either.  We ride the roads, we know our bodies, we know our bikes.  We make the call.

Over the last month, my husband was out of town on business, a lot.  So, I dialed it back on the bike.  I popped it into the trainer and missed quite a bit of nice weather.  Being completely and utterly alone here adds a variable into the equation I don't really want to mess around with if something were to go wrong.  I played the conservative hand to mitigate some risks.  While I'm sorry I missed some potential good days out there on the bike, I'm not sorry I made the call.  It would be better to miss a sunny bike ride than end up in a nasty situation while the only person that would notice I was missing was six hours away.  I know that close calls are common on a clear, beautiful day when my husband is riding with me.  Heck, I barely missed creaming a woman who stepped out in the street, backwards, from behind a 5 foot tall hedge last weekend.  It was miracle we didn't connect!  If we had, it would have been nasty.  If I was alone it would have been worse.  If I was completely solo in Germany at the time that situation would haven been an even uglier business.  So, that's why I draw the line there.  I keep rides stationary or in short circuits if I'm solo in Deutschland.  Some may not agree with that decision, but sorry, it's not your call.

Cycling is tough.  We have a lot to take into account when we ride.  There's quite a bit we can control.  We can care for our bodies so they don't fail us out there.  We can keep our bikes in top shape to avoid debilitating mechanicals.  We can ride defensively and carefully.  But, there's a lot out there that's totally out of our hands.  We know that.  It's up to us to deal with it the best we can.  Only we know how.

Crossing the Border

The relocation to Germany is nearing its final stages.  Next week the moving company will roll up with a truck and all our possessions will be cleared out of our house in Ettelbruck.  Then, they'll hustle to get everything into the new place just before Christmas Day.  It has taken a lot of prodding and pushing to get the ball rolling on this process after The Company made its last minute decision at the end of November to move us.  Being that we're the first ones to take this assignment, several kinks needed to be worked out in the system and it seems the policy of the HR departments is to settle these things if they feel like it.  Thankfully, we have been hooked up with a relocation agency this time around.  Those guys have been absolutely marvelous through all of this.  The folks with the moving company have also been incredibly helpful and willing to go above and beyond to get us settled before the holiday.  While The Company itself hasn't been cooperative since launching this operation, we're very thankful that we have a bunch of other people in our corner who are doing everything they can to make this as painless as possible.

Of course, the most important thing to work out is finding a new place to live.  Last week, my husband and I drove over to the Frankfurt area to meet with our relocation agent.  Then, the three of us spent a good portion of the week visiting just about every rental property within our budget that was in a 30km radius of my husband's new office.  Whew.  What a wild few days that was!  Apparently, we are moving at a weird time of year (or at least that's what we kept telling ourselves).  Nearly every single property we looked at was in a terrible state of disrepair.  They were downright nasty.  We looked at a place that was designed as an office building.  It was a fabulous office building.  It would not make a great house.  I mean, you'd wake up every morning wondering if the dentist was about to walk in.  The kitchen was a sink and microwave.  Another house had a pool in the basement.  And, not only a pool, but a sauna and a tanning bed too.  Sounds pretty sweet, huh?  No.  This stuff was probably awesome in 1980, but apparently nothing had been cleaned since then.  It looked like a set from Cormac McCarthy's The Road.  Another house we looked at could have housed three families it was so huge and labyrinthine.  It also had a pool, in which a majority of the garden furniture had ended up.  The whole place was decorated with clowns, Jesus, and life-sized portraits spanning the entire life of some guy named Willy in all his afroed glory.  Another house's entire interior was painted black and burgundy.  It seems the former tenant fancied themselves living in a vampire coven?  My nightmares have plenty of material for the next several months, that is for sure.  Dear Frankfurt area real estate agents, please Google "staging" and "vacuuming."  Dear readers, I'm so sorry I have not provided pictures of these stellar properties for your entertainment.  I think I was in a state of shock and completely forgot to pull out my camera.

When all looked hopeless, we ended up in a little village in Bavaria along the banks of the River Main.  Swans bobbed around in the water and an occasional boat or barge drifted by.  It was a quiet place.  Someone pedaled by on the bicycle path in front of the house.  As we waited for the owner to meet us, the idea began to creep in that perhaps this area would be a nice place to live for the next couple of years.  I crossed my fingers as the owner opened the door and whispered, "Please don't be filthy."  It wasn't.  Oddly enough, this was the only property not being shown by a realty service and it was the only one that was spotless and freshly painted, in white.  We took it on the spot, hoping that it wasn't a hallucination.

The new place has a small garden area this time, large enough to enjoy, but not so large I'll be enslaved to it for the next two years.  We have a balcony once again, but this time when we step out we're not looking at garbage cans, walls, cigarettes, and pigeons.  We get to enjoy this view:

Even on a dreary day it's a beautiful thing to look out onto.

There isn't a bar around the corner.  Our only attached neighbor is a single, older woman.  The nearest construction site was four blocks over.  We're not on a main, high traffic road.  In fact, the only real traffic it gets are pedestrians and cyclists enjoying the green space along the river.  The house is the largest place we've lived in yet.  It has five floors!  We're still working out what to do with all the rooms, but there's no concern that we won't have space for the bikes.

The village is much smaller than any place we've lived, however.  The population is just over 4,000.  There are a couple butchers and bakeries, a few other shops, and a handful of restaurants.  There are, strangely, a lot of wineries.  A lot of people sell goods like eggs and honey from their homes.  The closest grocery store is 10 minutes away by bike.  The biggest city, Aschaffenburg, is an easy 45min by bike following the river.  It's a beautiful city with everything one needs for entertainment, cultural activities, and shopping.  The only drawback is that the house is too far from his office for my husband to cycle to work regularly.  But, thanks to the beautiful German highway network, the drive will usually be under 30 mins.  There's always going to be a trade off when you're moving under time constraints as expats.  But, he was willing to have a longer commute in order for us to be in a nicer town this time.  Being a little further out in the country will provide the opportunity for me to get around by bike again instead of on foot.  We're still going to be a single car house.  So, we'll be getting quite the well rounded experience in Europe with time living in a city and now time living in a village.  We're pretty excited to begin the new chapter.

Well,  more than likely this will be the last post for a bit.  We need need our new German residency before we'll be able to set up things like internet and cell phones.  That process usually takes about a month.  So, I'll be seeing you sometime in 2014.  Until then, Frohe Weihnachten und ein glückliches neues Jahr!

Moving On

Happy Thanksgiving to all my readers in the USA!  It's hard to believe we're back in the holiday season already.  While we are having a typical Thursday here in Lux, our thoughts are with everyone back home and especially with friends and family who we miss.  Sometimes we think that the holiday season is about the traditions, the celebrations, the to do lists, and the inevitable stress.  But, I think I can speak for all those who live far away from their homes when I say that the holidays are really all about spending time with those you love.  So, despite all the hassles that come along with this time of year, treasure those times and make the most of them.

My husband and I had a quiet Thanksgiving dinner just the two of us last Sunday night.  We are just finishing up those leftovers today.  We didn't order a turkey from the UK this year, but decided to just do chicken.  There wasn't pumpkin pie.  I didn't pull out the decorations.  Before you start thinking we've fallen into a holiday depression, let me explain.  We've been a little busy.  While normally we would like to have the usual shindig with all the trimmings, we spent most of the weekend taking pictures off the walls, sorting our belongings, and deconstructing furniture.  It turns out our tour here in Luxembourg is ending sooner than originally planned.  As things stand now, we'll be moving out of the house, out of Ettelbruck, and out of Luxembourg before the end of the year.  Instead of heading back home, however, we're going to be setting up shop a little further to the east, just outside of Frankfurt, Germany.

We're pretty excited to say the least.  While starting the house hunting process and getting the legalities settled once more feels a bit daunting, it's kind of fun to be at square one again.  We'll get to learn about a new place and culture, and new opportunities will present themselves.  I'm pleased to have more time in Europe than we thought we would.  This move means a bonus year.  Now we will have a chance to get to those places on our list we thought we'd miss.  It'll be interesting to try my hand with German too.  I mean, it can't be any worse than my French.  It's a brand new adventure and yet another chance to experience the blank slate of expat life.  My husband is the first American to be assigned to this branch of the company, so we're definitely walking into unknown territory and breaking new trail.  We certainly can't say this will be a dull experience.  This coming weekend we're off to find a new house and town to live in.  No doubt we'll be spending our Christmas break sorting the kitchen and unpacking boxes.  Once again, we're leaping into the unknown.

So, on this day when we think of all the things we're thankful for I know I have a lot to list.  It has been an amazing experience in Luxembourg.  We have learned so much about the world we live in and who we are just in these two years.  We've met and formed relationships with an incredible group of people from all over the globe, relationships that have been at the core of an overall positive experience here.  We have been to beautiful, life changing places.  We've had a lot of epiphanies.  We're so very thankful to have the opportunity to continue the experience from a new locale.  Most of all, we're thankful for the friends and family at home who have supported us on this journey.  It means a great deal to be remembered and to hear from them, especially at this time of year.  We know this chance isn't a common one and there's no way to describe how grateful we are to have been presented with it.  Thanks of course to all of you who keep reading this too.

Happy Thanksgiving and while we're at it, Wir wünschen Ein frohes Fest!

These Two Years

We've passed the two year mark of this wild adventure.  It has felt like two seconds.  It has felt like two decades.  We don't know what is coming; we do know we can never go back.  There have been moments of supreme clarity and beauty.  There have been just as many moments of frustration and regret.  The expat experience isn't something that can be written up and shared in a glossy brochure.  It can't be explained away as one thing or another.  It can't be understood completely by those who haven't been there.  And each experience is so unique, one cannot even completely share it with those who have been there either.  So, we end up not talking about it much.  Sure, you answer the questions from those at home and you commiserate with your fellows about milk prices and inexplicable bureaucratic hurdles in your country of residence.  But, the other stuff, the stuff that no one else would really get ends up being packed away, tucked in a journal, filed in that part of the brain that shapes who you become.

Two years. Two years that haven't been remotely like any two years before.  Two years that are so different from everyone else's.  Two years that you wouldn't trade for any other two on offer.  How do you explain that?  You can't.  I, more often than not, find myself speechless at their immensities.  I don't know if there will ever be a point when I can sum this up in a crisp concise way that can make any sense to anyone.  Maybe I'll just fumble with it for the rest of my life.

The good?  The good stuff goes on and on forever.  You can't list it all, but I'm going to give it a go anyway.  The best part is standing in the middle of somewhere you never thought you'd stand, looking at something so incredible there's a lump in your throat that makes you want to scream, "Look at this!  Look at this, dammit!  This is what it's about!" Or it's a conversation with someone you never would have met any other way, someone who in a huge or small way will influence your life.  It's the conversations you would never have in your hometown, big conversations about life and death; conversations that have you rethinking just about everything.  It's the moments that are absolutely terrifying, those moments where you are on the brink of becoming paralyzed with fear but realize you have to keep moving.  Those moments change you.  You don't go back to who you were before.  Then again, sometimes it's all about the calm, the calm that comes with being completely broken from everything and everyone that used to define you.  But, there's lots of good in trying to share what they're like with those you encounter in the new place.  It's the liberation that comes when you know you never have to see the same place twice, the realization that tomorrow can be completely different and even the mundane is a revelation.  The good comes when you finally can be who you want to be every single day.  It comes with the slow comprehension that this life isn't something you win at.  Each day is a gift to explore, and do, and live a life you always wanted to try.  It's immersing yourself in something you dreamed of being immersed in.  It's not about being the champion expat with the longest "been there" list, the cleanest house, the busiest social schedule, the mastery of the local dialect, the most well-rounded children, the best bizarre food stories.  That's not the good.  The good are things seen, heard, tasted, smelled, and felt that wouldn't be profound to anyone else.  The good isn't in the pages of the guidebook.  It's moments short or endless.   The good is the reason we're here.  The good makes us better.  The good makes us grateful.  The good has the power to tip the scales.

The bad?  The bad is stuff that can't be talked about.  It's not the inspiring things.  It's the stuff that has you screaming, not in joy, but alone in your room so no one hears it.  It's the stuff that you're not proud of.  It's the stuff that breaks you down to the brink of retreating into yourself.  It's the confusion, the endless, always present confusion.  It's being left, ignored, drowning in the confusion as other's walk along the river bank without even looking your way.  It's the sad understanding that you don't belong where you are and you never will no matter how long you remain there.  It's having the experience of being unwelcome all too often no matter how much you smile, apologize, and kowtow.  It's the loneliness.  It's knowing that your loved ones are going through life's ups and downs without you.  It's being unable to offer comfort in tragedy.  It's watching from a distance and being powerless to intervene as someone jumps off a cliff of a mistake.  It's missing the incredible triumphs too.  The bad is being just a cliche, a walking flag.  It's having to explain where you come from, a place that everyone already has an opinion about.  It's trying to balance that with the fact that you love your country and despite everything, you are proud of it.  It's the inner battle to reign in the incredibly angry side of you that can't stand all the things that would be classified as "idiotic/horrible/criminal/totally wrong" back home but are completely normal where you are.  It's bad knowing that no matter how you explain the bad, no one is going to take it seriously.  You're living in Europe, quit whining.  But the bad is there for a reason.  It makes us grateful too.  It teaches us lessons.  It challenges us to take it, mold it, and turn it into good.

These two years are all that and so much more.  It's been way beyond a trip to the sea, cheering at a cycle race in Flanders, delving into the caves of prehistoric civilization, climbing mountain passes in Switzerland, tasting rare cheeses in Paris, laughing with friends in centuries old pubs, visiting long lost homelands, and being moved to tears.

Being an expat is a mishmash of the crazy good, the crazy bad, and the just plain crazy.  It can't be explained in a way that makes any real sense.  But, there is one thing that I can say clearly about these two years.  I know that they have changed my life, they are vital, they are priceless.  I cannot imagine nor would I want a life in which they didn't happen.  Hopping on that plane over two years ago to take that plunge is one of best decisions we ever made.  They are our two, painful, gorgeous, profound years.  And that's that.