Are you kidding me... Europe again. Honestly, I love my life right now .com.
John Barnet and I arrived in Geneva on July 8th, 2010 to a dream with open arms. John is a friend I hold dear, who I haven't spent time with since I moved from Toronto, other than Christmas time visits. Amazing it is when time means nothing with the true people in your life you haven't seen in ages. I get this feeling so much in our community.
John and I were greeted with a pickup from a nice French man at the airport who took us to pickup our Renault Grand Scenic, the seven seater “Orangatang car” for our European adventures. After the man heckled us for being Canadian and not speaking fluent French we were off!
With difficulties at the gas station, weird as it is, diesel in french is “Gazole” and 40's of 'Yop' yogurt for dinner, three hours later we arrived at Ramón Königshausen's house in Samstagern, Switzerland. With energy to burn we quickly unloaded and took our introductory ride down Ramón's home hill to the lake. Hilarity ensued...
On our second day we were itching for hairpins and Ramón knew just the spot. Zugerberg near the town of Zug has a funicular which is similar to a gondola, but much the same as a train it being on tracks with a cable pulling it up the steep incline, and I mean steeeeeeep!
There are a number of these access routes all over Switzerland which are usually used to get to a restaurant, small community or a look out. The joy of the funicular is we can park at the bottom and skate together all day for a moderate fee. Definitely the closest thing to a longboarding chairlift. What makes this spot even more enjoyable is the fresh cold mountain water taps in multiple locations to cool off at on the way down. We skated for a few hours on this narrow road with features such as a beautiful view with paraglider's off in the distance, a tall crown the middle of sections of the road, cattle guards to early grab over, taming the local cows adding the much needed “cow bell” to our day and “buildering” on the funicular station wall at the bottom.
