Fun in Bologna...

So this weekend was lots of fun. First off, on Friday morning a group of my classmates and I had to go into Florence at 8:30am for a museum field trip to the Archeological Museum and the Pitti Palace for the Mythological Erotica exhibit. The Archeological museum was not really that much fun cuz all we did was look at vases for about an hour, yay! But then we had to trek across the city to the Pitti Palace after that for the more fun museum tour. The Mythological Erotica exhibit was cool. It was a lot more paintings and had cool scenes in them...not gonna lie, some of them were kinda sexual seeing that it was "Erotic". I know what I'm going to write my paper on now for mythology class...'rape and abduction scenes'. Yes, I know that does sound weird...but being raped by a swan I think is a little weirder. You don't see that everyday.

I was able to get back to the villa at about 1-1:15pm. I had my bagged lunch which we get every Friday. It's some good stuff. I was then going to get ready for a ride, but since I only got 4 hours of sleep the night before, because I can't go to sleep until about 3am again. And I've been riding since Sunday, so I decided to take a nap. I was only going to go for a recovery ride for about 1.5-2 hrs anyways. But sleep is important too. So thats what I did. I'm going on a good hard ride with the team on Sunday morning and I'll be walking all over the place in Bologna all day Saturday. I'll get my exercise.

I woke up at about 4:45. I got a good ~3 hours of sleep. SWEET! And then I had to throw everything together and go get some money from the ATM before getting to the train station by 6:15pm. Dan, Kat, Lindsey, Danielle and I left at about 5:40 from the villa to get on the bus. We arrived at the train station at 6:14 or so. Ran in, got our tickets and got on the train. It started moving about 5 minutes later. We just made it, eh. The ride wasn't bad at all. 1 hour train ride. We got to the Bologna station and got some bus tickets to get to our hostel. We finally got to our hostel at about 9:15 because the bus schedule sucks. Got ready to go out and then went out. We found this really nice family owned restaurant. I had Passatelli, some Caprese(buffalo mozzarella and tomatoes), some caffe, and a couple glasses of wine. I didn't eat since about 1 on Friday so I needed some food. Our bill came to 108 Euro for 5 people (we got two bottles of wine). Not actually that bad for everyone getting two courses and two bottles of wine, and it was really good food. We got out of the restaurant at about 12:30am. Not gonna lie, I love sitting in a restaurant for two hours until after midnight. Its always a good time, I love how things work here. So before we left we had a huge table of 50-60 year olds start talking to us and then wanted us to sing 'West Side Story' with them. Ok so we did, it was awesome. But then it was time to go see a couple bars and clubs. We started out at this Irish Pub (name was too long to remember) and I had a pint o' beer and a malibu and pineapple. I got a little tipsy seeing that I bike all the time and I'm a light weight anyways. We stayed there until abotu 1:30am and then decided to go to a Disco called 'Kinki' There was an 8 euro cover for guys and a 5 euro cover for girls. God damn it. But we got in and there was some good music playing, you could dance to it. So we danced the night away...literally. By the time we left it was 4am. Yeah we danced for almost 3 hours. Awesome time. The girls with us had Dan and me save them from the crazy Italians wanting to dance all over them. When we left it was definitley like the Dane Cook Joke. "I was in the subwoofer". My hearing was all muffled and everything. Yeah I'm probably a little bit more deaf now, awesome. But we got a cab which only cost 12 euro to get us back to our hostel. That is an amazing price...split up betwee 5 people. We got to sleep at 6am and then got up at 10am. Sweet jesus.


Just one of the many covered streets in Bologna


The rest of the gang, hanging out at the Irish Pub....Dan's being a silly bitch like usual.


Day two in bologna was a little bit more relaxing and touristy. We walked around for about 5 hours taking pictures and shopping. It was a very nice day. There was the 'leaning tower of Bologna' (well, thats what I like to call it). It was actually built to lean like it does. But Bologna was a really cool city. It kinda is like the Madison of Italy, but Italian-ized. I liked it. For lunch we went to Nicola's Pizzeria. We had some amazing Bruschetta (probably my favorite antipasto), and then some awesome Ravioli al quattro formaggi (4 cheese ravioli). There was just one thing I was craving all day...PASTRIES!! I love the pastries here. Not donuts, actual pastries. So good. We finally found a pasticceria after looking for one for about 45minutes. I don't think my group was liking me too much after the 45 minutes of trying to find it. We left at around 5:45 to get back to Florence cuz we were all tired.


I want this to be my new bike


A little acoustic music in the streets


Neptune...The God of the Sea


A bike protest....they want people to ride bikes more, therefore creating less pollution...YAY


Dan Crump and I trying to look all badass...My god I love the coat I'm wearing...


We got back into Sesto at about 7pm. We made reservations at the Sesto Pub for 9pm. We got there at 9 and the place was packed. Lets just say reservations in Italy are shit. We had people come in after us and get seated. We didn't sit down until about 9:40. They probably just don't like Americans. I just had a salad with tuna (Insalata di Tonno). Then we went back to the villa and watched 'The Rock' until about 1:30am. And I didn't get to sleep until 2:45.

I woke up this morning at 8:07am. I was suppose to meet my team at 8:30 at the shop. CRAP. I still had to get ready, eat, fill up my water bottles, and get my bike ready. and I had to at least leave the villa by 8:25. WOW I hurried. I got ready very quickly...thank god its been warm. I didn't have to put on too much winter gear. I ate. I don't know how I survived the ride today with the amount of food I had. I had 7 small graham crackers with some nutella, and three pieces of bread with just a little bit of peanut butter. I'll get to the ride time and distance in a second. That's not too much to eat before a hard long ride. I brought a package of graham crackers with me (about 10 crackers). I got everything ready and I was out the door at just about 8:25. Don't know how I did it. I blasted down the streets to the shop and they were just leaving as I got there. WHEW... A couple called out my name "Matteau, ciao" I love it. There were about 20-25 riders in the group. Nice big group. I like it. Ok, it was then the start of a long and tough ride. We started out west like usual. There's some pretty nice roads out that way. My legs were feeling good after two days of rest. I could hear some of my teammates talking about me "Americano, giovane" (young american), and telling each other what they know about me. I bet some of the people I haven't met yet were a little skeptical of my ability. But I'll show them what I can do. We go to the first climb about 15km into the ride and right away the field broke apart. I noticed that there were about 5 of us that stuck together on the climb and we kept going hard. It was only about a 2-3Km climb with a gradient of about 4%. We kept a nice hard pace up it. More was to come. About 35km into the ride there was another climb. This one was about 5km at a 5% gradient. The field broke apart again and it was the 5 of us again with one extra. The extra was thrown off half way up the climb. And then I was with about 1km to go. My legs needed a little bit more feeling for the climbs. I'm still not quite a climber yet, but I'm getting there. I was able to keep them within about 75-100 meters though and at the end of most climbs my legs all of a sudden feel fresh. Its kinda weird. We all got back together at the top and continued on. I was wondering how long the ride was going to be. Just wondering thats all...I didn't quite know if my fuel was going to last. We hit another hill. We took this one a little easier, it wasn't that long at all. Very easy. At about 65km one of the guys told me a 6km climb was coming up with a gradient of about 5-6%. Ok not bad. "The Elite 5" (The 4 other climbers and me) and two more started booking it up the climb. We had a really hard pace going. One guy got shedded off and then with about 2km to go my legs feel like they're on fire. Damn it. I slowed down a little bit. They started taking off. Two of the other guys got dropped and then it was a group of 3, a chase group of 2 and then me. I was able to catch up to the chase group. We were only abotu 15 seconds back or so. At the top we rested a talked for just a little bit waiting for the rest of the group. One of the guys asked how old I was, I said 21 and then he said "molto giovane" (very young) but he said he was impressed with my ability. AWESOME. I guess all the others turned off at some point cuz they didn't want to go any further. We continued on. I had to go with even if I didn't want to, cuz I didn't really know my way back to Sesto. About 3Km later there was another climb. 5km with a 6% going up to 8% a couple times. I was GOING to stay with the group this time. Hard pace up it again. I stuck with. Little pain. Get out of the saddle for just a little bit. Keep Going. YES I made it. OW. We kept going. Two more climbs after that. The wind started to pick up too. I guess we had a 16mph wind with gusts up to 30mph. Wow, this is a hard day. We ended up going 110 km in just under 4hrs with 7 good climbs. It was about 25km of climbing (probably a total of 2000-2500meters of elavtion change). Good ride. After all of that, I can't believe I didn't bonk with the amount of breakfast I had. Thank god. It was a good day. I got back. Took a shower and then passed out on my bed. I got up at about 5:30. Damn I was tired after all of that.

Well, I made my goal this week. I lost 5 pounds. I'm down to 164 now. I think if I can lose about 4 pounds each week I should be good. I want to get down to 153lbs (~70kg) by March. We'll see if thats possible. I think it is. Then I'll definitely be awesome up these climbs. I wish all of you could experience cycling in Italy. The way we ride in the cities (Crazy) and how hard some of the climbs are and especially the beautiful views of the Tuscan countryside.

On Tues I'll be going to get my stress test and then I'll be able to get my racing license. I was also thinking about buying my racing license for the US. So I don't have to worry about it and they'll be there when I get home.

I think that's enough writing for one night. Time to do some homework. Happy training...