Hi guys, here is my last Zwift blog of the season! After having talked about some serious topics along the year I wanted to end up on a funny subject: my worst travelling experiences!
For some reason, most of people think we are so lucky to travel around the world, to see many countries, places, coffee shops … I’m always so impressed by those who continue during their off season to travel every 10 days to a new place while I’m just trying to recover from 1000 hours flying, training, running, lifting my bag and bike…I’m DONE!
I know travelling is part of the job, indeed I’m so impressed by the team staff responsible of booking every journeys of every person in the team! What a job!
I’m one of the most complicated rider for her as I’m living where pigeon travellers are the best way to send a mail. I’m joking of course but which rider can tell that travelling to “Plouay” is easy and relaxing? That’s my seasonal concern: finding the less tiring way to reach the race, camp…
Of course it’s far to be always smooth, and here I’m gonna give you some of my funniest and embarrassing travelling stories.
- Being late at the train station: most of my trains/flights are early morning around 6am and it often happens, ok each time, that I need to run to catch my train. Going to my last race this year with the team, I literally closed the trunk of my car on my face. No time to cry even if I thought my nose was broken, I ran into the metro full bleeding and met some drunk students looking at me like a zombie. EMBARRASSING.
- Forgetting my luggage in the train: one advice I can give to everyone is, never separate your luggage in the train. French trains are not made for people travelling with big suitcases and even more not with bike bags. It can happen that you have to dispatch one bag at the top of your head, another one in the luggage rack, another front of the exit door (which is not allowed but “no choice”). Unfortunately, I forgot one of my bags containing a new nice power meter I just bought, it travelled to Strasbourg, without me. FRUSTRATING.
- Starving for 10 hours stuck in a terminal: as a very frequent traveller, I have my best places to eat, to drink coffee or to shop! Even STARBUKS barista Terminal 2G at Paris CDG can spell my name correctly as he sees me too often! It happened once that I had a 10h transfer in CDG, obviously I went for food and when I had to pay I literally forgot my CB pin code. You know when you are in total black out? First try “invalid code” you think ok maybe I pushed wrong one number. Second try “invalid code”, sweat and heart beat going up. Third try, fingers shaking, “invalid code”, red face, eyes down, false smile, return to the start point : STARVING.
I’m curious to know some of your stories, as I guess some of you have funny, embarrassing and memorable experiences.
I can’t wait to the next travelling season… Or not ! ☺
Audrey Cordon-Ragot!
