Two weeks ago today I set off from Bishopstoke, Eastleigh and there was no way I could predict that I was going to be waking up in a bus stop two weeks later but I did. As I said before, it was more like a house really but the bed was absolutely horrible and half way through the night I was forced to get my mat out. The mat transformed it and after that I managed to get a good 6 hours sleep in the end. Today I was going to do things right as far as navigation was concerned. I went back to my favourite wifi hang out, wrote down all the major landmarks I needed to know on order to get straight to the training ground and within the hour I was there! The facility is 3 year old and its quite impressive really. There were 14 full sized pitches, most of them artificial and fenced all around and there was also one baseball field (never knew the Swiss were ballers!) When I arrived there were lots of matches and training going on as its a public sports arena but during the week before 6:30pm FC Zurich Academy have it for all their age groups. I walked up to the club house and changing room building to check out what was going on on their digital schedule. It was great, told you what teams were playing, what age group, what pitch and in what competition. I arrived at 12 and wasn't meeting Heinz till 2pm so watched the Zurich U18 girls which were decent. My dad says women only score "bum" goals in the way that every shot seems to deflect of their bums as they turn to block the shot and he's been proven right many times but no bum goals today. At one point I sat on a wall that divided one pitch where the U14s were playing and the baseball pitch. It was very bizarre to have "go on baby, hit first baby, you can do it baby" in one ear and "ja das ware klasse Matthias, sehr gut!" In the other. I cycled around for quite a while asking different Zurich coaches if they had seen Heinz. Heinz is the head of the academy so I was looking for a track suited man or possibly suited man with Zurich badge stitched into the jacket, that sort of thing. Nobody had seen him and I was starting to think that I has cycled all this way for nothing. A man then came up to me, "who are you? Chris Harding?" The man was wearing jeans, a Harley Davidson leather jacket with an ear ring that was a loop with an arrow dangling down, basically looking positively George Michael-esque. "Heinz?" I said. "Yes, yes Heinz Russheim" Blimey I thought, you get frowned upon at Saints for wearing a different brand of socks and this joker has turned up having jumped straight out of YMCA. We got talking about philosophies of football and the Zurich Academy works whilst watching quite a testy affair between the U15s and a team near Italy, Ticio I think they were called. What Heinz said I thought was spot on and the U15s won a game that turned a bit nasty with one of their players getting sent off but despite being under pressure the whole second half they scraped at 2-1 win then unfortunately rubbed it in a bit after the final whistle. Heinz was very honest with me and would've preferred them to lose because he believes in playing god football and is looking for development not 3 points. Clearly a very layed back man with what seemed a good footballing head on him was pretty gutted to hear that I was leaving that day. He was more then happy to have me there for a few days as he said he done previously with head of academies from other professional teams. This attitude is not always the case in professional football but I thought it was great and maybe one day I will return for longer and do a bit coaching there also.
I left the training ground with a huge air of freedom. I had completed all my European scheduled stops and I had just myself, Nigel and the road to contend with now. Whatever path I walked along now was the adventure and it may lead to good footballing experiences or it may just lead me to the next stop but I was happy to have no ties. I like to make sure I'm on the right path and the next stop on my list is the next sign ill see when I wake up the next day. I got to this situation at about 6pm and knowing I wasn't going to make it all the way to Vaduz in Liechtenstein I decided to find a house to knock and camp near their front garden. Again the land opened up to reveal beautiful mountains, lush green grass and rolling fields. I knocked on the door of a tiny little house next to some cow fields and an elderly couple opened the door. Unfortunately neither could understand English but I got the thumbs up to camp after explaining what I was doing with the little German I know. The man was trying to say something along the lines of don't blame us if the police come I thought but I wasn't to worried about that, I've dealt with police before. I just said to him, "you gefahrlich?" Which means, you dangerous? He said no so that was alright with me!
As I relieved Nigel from his duties I noticed a mini disaster had struck. Ever since day one the front racks have been a right pain and after just two weeks, both racks have broken each with a different type of break. I'm so annoyed, I have at least 22 more weeks and the weights of both front panniers are nowhere near the maximum of 10kg that the racks can supposedly handle. One break i fixed quite convincingly with a cable tie and duct tape and shouldn't really pose a problem with regards to carrying the pannier. The other rack however which I previously supported, has half split where a bolt screws in and if it fails all the way around which is just a matter of time then I could be in trouble! Now I have to ask the question do I go for as long as I can with the sort of fixed rack or do I change them fe new ones straight away. I can't keep changing things if they break as I may not be able to find replacements. For the time being I will keep an eye out for cycle shops and see how they hold up. This all happens just as I begin to tackle the hardest section of cycling that I will probably do in the whole of Europe over the next three days. From here in Rapperswil to Vaduz then onto Davos and Moreno via the Stelvio Pass. This should be pretty spectacular!
No comments:
Post a Comment