Figure 8 On A Bike

View from the train

Round 2 of our transatlantic travel started with a flight to London , but in a nice change of pace our flight left late on a Tuesday afternoon instead of early in the morning. I got to replace some broken gauges for my ears, and even convinced Susan to run a few more laps at the Norris Hill in an effort to scrounge up training time in the face of a hectic travel schedule. Luckily we had enough time left over to shower before squeezing into a metal tube for hours. With the white Subaru crammed full of us and our dedicated entourage of bags, Susan's dad drove us to Eppley and said a sweet goodbye to Maureen. Uneventful flights took us through Chicago and then to London and none of us managed to get much sleep in the accelerated overnight schedule of the plane. All our bags rolled off the carousel and Susan wrangled the heavy grey backpack while I plopped the bright purple giant suitcase (courtesy of Scott's parents) on the floor and Maureen shouldered her own load. Grateful not...

We woke up at Ben's mom's. She had made us a welcome home basket complete with Nebraska themed t-shirts which meant we had something clean to wear! Which was great as our travel clothes reeked. We enjoyed delicious waffles for breakfast with Greg and Sue and then borrowed their car to head to my parents'. My dad was home with the littles and between hugs and conversation and entertaining children we managed to do a load of laundry, add our luggage to the our hoard in the basement and locate some respectable looking clothes for Easter the next day. On Sunday we made it to Easter service with Ben's mom and Greg and Jacob. We were offered coffee at the entrance, and my raised Catholic self was very confused and said "no, thank you" and thinking 'that's allowed!?!'. We probably could have used the coffee as we were still fighting jet lag. After the service, the family converged at Greg and Sue's and we got to see most of Ben's family. T...

Saying we had "a final leg to Omaha" is a bit of an over-simplification, though. Step 1 - get back to Sofia. We saddled ourselves with all the bags but only had to walk as far as the curb, since we cheated a little and called a cab to take us the half-mile to the office where our transfer would pick us up; my back had been feeling kind of unhappy for a bit so I didn't relish the idea of waddling the whole way. We left Bansko and after another hot few hours in a Bulgarian shuttle van we spilled out back at the Cathedral of Alexander Nevsky too early for check in at our hotel in Sofia . So we had a perfect amount of time to picnic on the benches and feed the pigeons a few crumbs. Selfie of us laden down with all the bags

After struggling to meet our winter sports ambitions in Romania, Susan and I were wishing for a few last days of decent skiing in Bansko, one of the largest ski resorts in Bulgaria. We hauled our bags up out of the cave apartment into the bright sunshine, and despite the mid-morning warmth in Sofia the slopes of Vitosha mountain to the south still shone white with snow. We remained hopeful that the online reports of a decent snowpack up high would bear out and that, even without any powder, some nice, consistent pistes would hold on against the heat. Our bus to Bansko (there is a train but true to stereotypes the Bulgarian train takes longer than the bus) didn't leave until about lunchtime, so despite Susan's antsy-ness I dawdled in the apartment and we left about 10 minutes later than intended. This wouldn't have mattered much, except that finding the bus that goes to Bansko turned out to be a bit of a scavenger hunt. First, we'd asked our taxi driver to drop us off...

At this point in the trip we were feeling a little discouraged, a little gray, a little tired of packing, and a little ready to relax. We couldn't quite start this second round in Brașov relaxing; however, as we had to check out of the hotel and check into the Airbnb where we had left our stuff. Our host wasn't getting back to us, so when we checked out of our hotel, we used the codes from the last time to get into the complex. We snatched some shoes from our pile of stuff in the laundry room and left our mountaineering gear in the pile. Unburdened, we headed out for another day of sightseeing in Brașov. We checked out some places we hadn't seen during our first stay in Brașov. Like Rope street which claims to be Europe's narrowest alley. We enjoyed the street art and graffiti before heading towards Biserica Ortodoxa Sfântul Nicolae and the First Roman School. It was steadily raining and we were looking forward to hiding inside the museum. Alas, when we arrived...

We knew good weather was supposed to be in store for Saturday, and woke up that morning to find the skies clearer and sun brighter than any day so far. I strolled out into the sunroom to appreciate the full view of the mountains, when something a bit off in color against the cliffs and snow caught my eye. There in the distance, exactly where our internet resource had said - icefalls! Water frozen blue against the dark rocks, inviting us out to come test our picks and crampons. What did those people in Bucharest and Brasov know? Here was the climbing we'd hoped for since first landing in Romania. I rushed to grab Susan and we stared out the window together, casting aside all our other plans and reorganizing to head up the valley again. The view from the sun deck at the cabana - spot the ice!