Tuesday, August 25, 2009

World Track to the Alps by Eamon

As I ride on the train to Bolzano, Italy I think of the past few days. The seats we had in the stadium were all spectacular, the competition was fierce, and Pearse could not stop smiling at his autographed shirt. The most common question he asked was, “How much do you think this shirt is worth?”
On the final day of competition, Seamus, Pearse, and I thought about getting autographs, and lots of them, due to a day of finals and victory laps. On our way down to our seats in section F we noticed that now getting tons of autographs was possible. After every gold medal won by the USA, the boys ran down to the end of the isle, which was ten feet from the track, and yelled to the athletes as they went by.
Pearse was wearing one, highly favored shirt, his autograph shirt, and Seamus and I wanted to throw it out to the athletes to sign. Pearse did not. He didn’t feel comfortable standing there half naked or having his shirt thrown around. Then I noticed Seamus was wearing two shirts, the top one was to throw out to the athletes and the other to wear during the signing. I told Seamus to give Pearse his 2nd tee shirt; I threw Pearse’s shirt out to the American 4x400 Gold Medalists and they all signed it! I felt like a genius. Pearse could not stop saying, “Jeremy Warner signed my shirt!!”
Overall, the 3rd day of the World Track Championships was a top ten of the Glavin Adventure.

The Italian Alps……..I let those words and scenery sink in while on a bus from Bolzano to our hotel, Hotel Touring. We waited for 2 hours at the bus station because of insufficient information. Nonetheless it was a bus ride very well worth waiting. As we drove through the devastatingly beautiful terrain I could not stop thinking about how much more beautiful it will be in the winter. From where I am sitting right now I can see many things: two ski lifts (those will come in handy), a tunnel with many cars, friendly people, and mountains that will be amazing to go snowboarding on.
Last night there was a band playing at our hotel, and all of the songs were in English and all the jokes were in Italian. We walked around all night and listened to the band, they were pretty good. When I finally fell asleep I had dreams of the mountains flowing under my board.
The next day the boys had a job to go and find out where to rent, are there ski/snowboard teams, and where can we get ski passes. We were only able to find out where to rent because EVERYTHING else was closed down (I think for the summer). We also had to do our run……….and everywhere was uphill, but what do you expect in the Alps? I decided to do something very unordinary, run up a ski slope to see the view and to say, “I ran up a mountain in the Italian Alps.” Seriously, who else can say that?!? The view of the town was fantastic, unbelievable, out of this world, extraordinary, inconceivable, beyond belief, incredible, astonishing; however none of these words can describe it enough. I wish I brought the camera up, than you would know what I am talking about.

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