Wow, its been almost 9 months since my last ‘News’ post. I suppose it is partially due to my life being pretty uneventful, and then partly due to laziness and also I’ve also been quite busy lately thanks to my recent decision to start freelancing. But enough with the excuses, on to ‘Super Vacation 09′!

The first stop was New York City. We stayed with our friends Dominic and Lindsey (and their dog Bo!) in Inwood which is located in upper Manhattan. They live right next to Inwood Hill park which was a really beautiful area. While in NYC we also hung out quite a bit with one of Christys’ friends, Ryan and his girlfriend Meredith. Ryan lived just below the Brooklyn bridge on the Manhattan side, and his apartment looked over the Brooklyn bridge (very cool) so we hung out quite a bit in Brooklyn and the lower east side. My goals in NYC where small and simple; 1) go to Trackstar and 2) play polo at ‘The Pit’. I checked #1 off my list within the first few days, but unfortunately when I arrived to the Pit on Sunday there was a festival taking place right on the court – bummer. We did a bit of ‘touristy stuff’ while in NYC too, went to Time Square, 30 Roc, the Natural History Museum, rode the Staten Island Fairy, blah blah… but for the most part, we just did a ton of aimless walking, train riding, eating and drinking. Before we knew it we where back at the airport catching a flight to London.

We arrived in London and managed to stumble our way through the transit system and found our friends Matt and Ellens’ apartment. We had met Matt and Ellen while living in LA, Matt was actually one of the first people to bring bike polo to LA from Madison WI. When planning this vacation, I requested that we go around the European Hardcourt Bike Polo Championships that where taking place in London that weekend. I wasn’t able to play, but Matt was one of the main organizers of the event and I volunteered to help any way I could (gotta free shirt, whoot!) so I spent most of my time helping get the event together. Christy and I did spent one day by ourselves and took one of those double-decker tour buses around and got the ‘quick and dirty’ tour of London… but other than that it was polo polo polo. Matt loaned me his fixed gear and I rode that most of the time. Riding bikes in London is quite a rush (Christy did not like it at all!), a lot of the time you are going faster than traffic and lane splitting between cars and buses, which takes some getting use to. Not to mention the lanes are opposite to ours, which also takes some getting use to. When it was just Matt and I riding around, we would take it up a few notches and really haul trough traffic – that was really fun.

In London, they play polo every night of the week, and it shows. I only got to play a little because I didn’t have my own gear (bike+mallet). I used loaner bikes and borrowed mallets for a few games, but a lot of folks didn’t want to loan out their bikes a few days before EHBPCs. I tried out a few ‘capped’ mallet heads, but I couldn’t get the hang of it and quickly traded it in for a ‘open-mouth’ mallet.

The EHBPCs turned out to be a blast. They had 2 courts set up with these modular plastic barriers and enough matches to make your head spin. There was a tent that had one of those radars that measure how fast someone can throw a baseball repurposed to measure the speed someone could whack a hockey ball with a mallet. I overheard a guy saying his clocked 72 miles per hour! They had a massive stash of prizes; ranging from laced ‘Chucker’ wheelsets, tires, Brooks saddles, clothing, etc – but most important round trips to Worlds. Matts team ended up coming in second, so he will be flying to Worlds next month! Unfortunately we had to leave 2 games before the final match to catch the over-night ferry to Amsterdam.

We hopped on a train to the ferry, and got there just in time. We where given a little room with bunk beds and a bathroom. We hung out for a little bit on the deck, but soon enough it was time to go get some rest. They woke us up super early, we hopped off and took the train onward to Amsterdam. The train ride was absolutely beautiful, Dutch countryside accompanied by a seamless blanket of graffiti (there where even greenhouses that where covered in graf!). Once we stepped out of the train station, in front of me was the Heineken Brewery, then to my right was a parking garage with MILLIONS of bicycles parked on it (really, I think it had 3 million bikes). We took a cab to our hotel and you cant help but notice all of the bicycles and scooters. EVERYONE rode the classic dutch style bikes, I didn’t see a single Fixed-gear, and only 2 guys on road bikes – but thousands of dutch bikes. Our hotel room was really cool, it was one long skinny room. In the front where 2 big ‘tubes’. In one tube was a toilet, and in the other was a shower. We had buttons we could push to set a ‘mood’ for the room that would play music and adjust the lighting accordingly. We walked down town the next day and went site seeing. Amsterdam was very un-crowded in respect to NYC and London, giving us a nice break in middle of our vacation. Almost everyone spoke english too, which was good for us. We only stayed in Amsterdam for 2 days, then it time to catch our next train to Paris.

I think this was about the point that taking trains had lost the ‘romance’. We arrived in Paris that night, and headed to our hotel. Our stay in Paris was also only 2 days, we took another double decker tour bus around the city and got off at the Eiffel Tower to take some photos. We then walked down to the next tour bus stop and rode it to The Louvre. We did the best we could to see as much as we could, but I spent most of my time looking at the Egyptian artifacts – too much amazing stuff to mention. Before we knew it we where heading home.

We took a train back to London to catch our flight, this time going under the English Channel. Our international flight ended up being late, and to make a long story short we missed our flight home and had to buy plane tickets from NYC to Tulsa – NOT FUN. Our only other option was to stay in NYC for 6 more days – and we NEEDED to get home at that point. We finally arrived that night. I had never been so happy to step foot in Tulsa International. Needless to say we have gotten all of the ‘vacationing’ out of our system for quite some time.

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