Hola! Saludos de Argentina!!
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| Just one more flight to go and still smiling! |
After enduring 4 flights with enough layover time to add up to over a 2 days of travel Mike and I made it to our little cabin in the mountains outside of San Miguel de Tucuman, Argentina. Badly Jet lagged from the exhausting travel and glad we decided to arrive early enough to recover and settle in for our first big XC race of the year: Pan American Championships.
We spent our first few hours here unpacking and building up bikes before a jet lag induced fatigue hit and we were lulled into the first of many mini naps aimed at trying to bring ourselves back around to some semblance of the people we were before the travel. We managed to force ourselves out on the bike in the last 45 minutes of light to spin the legs out a bit on top of the 7000 ft hill above our cabin and were rewarded with stunning views all around!
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| First ride in Tafi de Valle, Argentina |
Mike and I are excited to be running SRAM's XX1 on our now freshly built up Seven IMX 29ers. For those not familiar - XX1 is a new concept in bike drive train technology built around a single front chainring with 11 gears in back. Simple, efficient and about a pound lighter than our already ultra light build!
The engineers at Stan's NoTubes designed a slick new freehub body that conveniently allows a conversion to this new XX1 system with our existing wheel sets. The combination is really stunning and allows the full potential of this build to shine! As I was tightening rotor bolts I could not stop marveling at our bikes. We are SO grateful and excited to race these incredible machines!!
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| Thumbs up on the fresh build!! |
So far our time in Argentina has been pretty wild as It is Holy Week and it just so happens that Tafi de Valle is a hot spot for this Catholic holiday. Thousands come here to celebrate and town way over capacity with people with an unmistakeable good vibe of people on vacation and partying like you would on the biggest holiday of the year.
We went into town last night to get a bite to eat and find some supplies and it was pumping with energy of the the festivities - music, street vendors, jugglers, families and friends, enjoying strolling the streets and spending time together. As we stood in line to get hand made empanadas from a nice lady baking her goods in a portable gas stove in the town park, the kid in line behind us was surely intrigued by us and asked where we were from. They were really surprised to hear California and His auntie exclaimed "Bikinis! We all laughed as I tried to describe that not all california fits in with that stereotype.
We told our new friends that we came all the way to this part of the world for the Campeonatos de Pan Americanos and they were visibly impressed to know that people would Travel so far in the name of sport. I can only imagine the impression we made to this nice family, hopefully a positive one! Traveling is such an amazing way to gain perspective and understand a little something of the many different people in the world. We all said adios, and que te vaya bien (see you later) Good vibes all around as we settled in to enjoy our killer empanadas!
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| Empanadas are an Argentinian specialty for a good reason |
Mike and I consider it a huge honor to be selected for this National Team event and we are happy to have this opportunity to represent all our sponsors and our country at this exciting event! The adventures continues...
Mas tarde!
Mary y Miguel
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| Not quite the red carpet club but any relief is welcome from airline seats |
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| Ran out of the airport to get our steak on at the Buenos Aires stop over |
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