Week One in italy Failed!

My bike was lost. Then I crashed. No TT bike for 2 weeks.
In Episode 2 of The Long Route to Nice, training in Italy threw everything at me: culture shock, broken gear, and a steep mental climb. But I’m not here for the easy road. I’m here to get better for the IRONMAN World Champs in Nice.
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All right, Samuel, what have we been doing? Finally, the saga can come to an end. I needed this tool, the Torx Venty Chinquay tool, which the only thing that it works on is this brake lever. And so we had to run all the way around Italy to fix the brakes like that. And even Leo’s pissed. Even Leo’s pissed. I had a complete mental breakdown. Unfortunately, I started kind of not yelling, but just getting upset in front of Leo even, which I never try to do. But I’ve just had to use so much patience all week. And then at the end, I lost my patience. Here we are. Sam Long in the house in Italy. episode two of the series. Let’s jump right in. My bike, my bicycle. I was updating you all on Straa and Instagram and then the saga got too big to even keep discussing it on there and it requires a full story. So, here’s what happened with my bicycle. Flew in on American Airlines, did not arrive obviously. So, then go in at that point. Pretty typical stuff. got to tell the baggage people that it’s lost and fill it in and do this in Italian. But pretty typical stuff. So then I have an air tag. So I’m watching it. It’s supposed to come in the next day basically be delivered in 24 hours, which is the information I’m being given. Okay, it’s going to be given 24 hours. So then I’m watching it does not come in the next day. And the reason was very made a lot of sense. It didn’t come in the next day because of the floods there in Dallas. Basically, the plane did not leave from Dallas to Venice for 30 hours. So, it did not leave the next day and it was still even delayed the following day. And then it was on. I got to see it. I got to see it come in and land. So, now I’m seeing it there and I’m going, “Okay, cool. I should have it now. I I arrive Tuesday. This is now Thursday afternoon.” I’m like, “Oh, maybe not Thursday night. They might not drop it off, but for sure by Friday morning, I should indeed have it. So then I got to see. I’m watching. I’m watching. I’m watching. Sure enough, it’s kind of moving around in the airport a little from one spot to the next. And I’m like, “This is good progress.” And then I see it starts to move on Friday afternoon, Friday mid midm morning, basically around noon. And I’m like, “Oh, thank God. Here it is. This is it. It’s coming. It’s going to be here today, Friday night. It’s perfect because then I can get it set up in time and do a nice long ride on Saturday and nothing’s going to be too big of a deal. So, I was starting to get quite optimistic. Well, I’m watching on the tracker. First, it goes the Venice airport’s inland. It goes out to the actual island of Venice, then comes back, then goes kind of more around the airport, and then it stops. And I’m like, what what’s going on with this? Maybe the guy’s getting dinner, and then it’s coming up. I mean, for like 2 hours the guy had been out. Well, it turns out it was I could see I started zooming in as it stuck there for a while. It it looked like a residential area. So, it stayed there all night. It was at the guy’s house, the delivery guy’s house. Um, which you definitely would never see that in the United States that they would take the whole van with all the people’s stuff and leave it at their house. So, it’s sitting at his house. Of course, sometimes you’re like, maybe it’s getting stolen. But anyways, at his house, okay, wake up Saturday morning about 7 7:30 and I can see the guy’s already on the road. So, I’m like, this is awesome. He’s coming up. He’s coming to a town called Udin, which is pretty close away. He’s there at about 9 in the morning. So, I go, great, next stop should be us. It’s right on the way. So, I’m watching and I’m watching and I’m trying to make my plan for the day. I’m like, oh, should I run? Should I not run? Because by the way, what I was doing for this plan because I didn’t have my bike is I was running a lot even though I had just taken a a break. So I was ramping up the running quite significantly and the swimming which which worked well. Anyways, I got to see he’s about 5 kilometers away going great. I should have my bike right now. I haven’t done anything yet for the day. I can still get it set up, have my nice long ride. Boom. Straight past the house and up to a town called Trieste, which is farther north. And I’m like, what in the world? And then I I thought about I’m like, oh, they’re probably delivering the bike last because they don’t want to get all the bags out. So up there in Trieste, stops for breakfast at a cafe for a couple hours, but I’m like, well, still should come back. Then after that, he went into Croatia. So then my bike’s into Croatia. And I’m like, oh my gosh. So at this point, I go for a swim down at the sea. And I’m like, “Oh, I guess I’ll be riding later in the day. European hours. I’m going to ride later in the day.” Then he stops for lunch. Finally stops for lunch. And then finally, he starts to deliver the bike. He calls. And while we’re calling, I’m having Lars’s uncles and aunts talk to him. And he says, “Okay, I should be there at about 1:00.” And finally, alas, at 100 p.m., the bike is delivered. And I am overjoyed and overstatic. And I thought this was the end of my saga. It was not. The saga got worse here. So then set the bike up. For the most part, everything goes smooth. As it’s brand new, the world championship bike. The rotor wasn’t fixed yet. And I had forgotten the torque T25 wrench to loosen that. So I thought, okay, by the way, now it’s lunchtime, so nothing opens till 3:30. So I now had to wait from 1 until 3:30 until go. So, I drive down into the closest shop in town. No big deal. 5. Last but not least, here it is. 3:33 p.m. And the shop is not yet open. So, going to get my bike ride in eventually, I guess. One week without my bike. Minutes away. The shop the one Saturday of the month they’re closed. Happened to be today. So, they’re closed. So, then we go to another have to come back up. The brakes are [Music] [Laughter] screeching and screeching and screeching. Then we drive into another shop, also closed on Saturday. And then finally, we try just like a convenience, not convenience store. This is not a Home Depot, by the way. It’s definitely not Home Depot. A little convenience store. The sweet lady has a tool. I get the tool. I get it fixed. And I think all the drama is over. But the energy was not meant to be. It was not meant to be. Because through all this, the lesson is one, this isn’t just a lesson for bikes. This is a lesson for life. Bad things can cause more bad things to happen. And no one thing on itself is bad. But as bad things stack up on itself, it can be the devil of performance and it can it can then it’s the domino theory, right? And so the cold war, so the US used this in the cold war with the communists. And so the theory is that as one country fell to communism, it would get progressively and progressively easier for each other country to fall to communism. And so I had the domino theory at play with me with my bicycle this week. One little bad thing led to the next bad thing led to another bad thing until it was enough bad things that the entire system broke. And so what happened is because of this rush, because of rushing, I did not I forgot to put extra sealant. Okay? And then with all this time passing, there was a slow leak and the tire was at 40, 30, even less, 25, 30 PSI. So then as I went out for my ride and as I was descending down a tight switch back, it lost traction and I fell and I crashed. And I was so mad, so embarrassed of myself, I almost thought I I can’t even tell everyone the bike story, the bike saga. So then thankfully I’m all okay. Okay. I mean, I had a little dings here, here, my whole right side, but the handlebar cracked. And so, because the handlebar cracked, I now still don’t have a bike. I’ve now been here 10 days. I had to get a rental bike, train on a bike with no power meter, and just be adaptable and be flexible and multiple different shops, having to deal with driving. And and I’m I’m hoping for the next video I’ll have a bike. And so, this brings me, we dealt with culture shock this week. We had hardship this week because here’s the thing, right? I’m not here on vacation. I’m here to train for the Iron Man World Championships. I’m here for work. And so basically not having my bike meant I’m not able I’m motivated and I’m excited and I’m unable to work and perform my job working. So it was extremely stressful. And this is why I want to ask this question for you guys. Do you think it’s easier for a European to go to America and race or for an American to come to Europe and race? Because this week we dealt as I was sitting on the plane with Leo, he’s on my lap and we’re looking out the window and we’re kind of seeing like I’m pointing out, whoa, that’s the highway. That’s the major road and it’s weaving all the way around like this and through cities and the city’s got roads going every which way. And and then the guy, he’s seeing us do this and he says, you know, everything is bigger in America. And isn’t that true? Getting your bike from the airport is easier because you can get a big rental truck or rent a big Uber, which the beds are bigger. Me and Laura, we were sleeping in a in a full bed as she’s 24 weeks pregnant. There’s no AC. You don’t have the same type of convenience stores. Things close for 3 hours at lunch. Nothing’s open on Sunday. Amazon doesn’t work. [Music] So, we were honestly in a bit of culture shock combined with the jet lag and just really struggling to adjust that I had a brief moment where I said I I I think I should go home. Maybe it’s a mistake, you know, and and that’s the thing as you spend more time at home, it gets harder to leave because you get used to all the comforts, you know, all the comforts. I’ve got my treadmill. I’ve got my whole training room with my Garmin trainers and AC and Ruby and I I’ve got everything there. I’ve got multiple bikes. So, if something happens, well, boom, I’m back on. I’ve got my pool right there. And I get so used to all this that it gets harder and harder for me to leave. But well, I have to leave. I have to be more adaptable. And then I remember this is the whole reason I came because Americans, we often struggle to race well here. And so I’m offering you my experience here so that the Americans can come over. I got adjusted to the roads. I got adjusted to the culture. I got adjusted to the food. I got adjusted to the time change. I got adjusted to not having my own comforts. And I get used to it. Right. And so that’s that’s been the first week. I know next week it’s going to look up. I’m going to hopefully get the bike fixed. My next video, which should come out in 10 days, will be a day in the life here in Italy. A full day of training as I start to really prepare and I start to nail things down. And uh obviously, if I could go back in a foreign country, even though you don’t know ahead of time, I would have just rented a bike straight away. That way, I would have missed no time. So, please like, comment, subscribe. Let’s give this series some love. And uh we’re going to keep it rolling.