Schauinslandkönig

In English Schauinslandkönig means the most expensive t-shirt you've ever bought. That's not quite true. It's actually a charity race from the bottom to the top of the Schauinsland, an 11.5 km 800 m climb. I had considered competing a number of times but wasn't even sure when it was. The night before the race, Ossi saw on some website mention that the race was on Sunday. We discussed it and decided it was worth a shot if the timing worked out. So the next morning Ossi, my team manager, drove me through Freiburg to the Schauinsland. Registration was incredibly simple consisting of no liability forms or countless signatures like in the US, and came with yet one more cycling t-shirt to bring the count to 8-2 of cycling vs non cycling t-shirts. My team manager then left and I settled in to wait a couple hours till my start time.
There were a wide range of people getting ready from those who looked semi-professional to a team all in yellow who all had yellow balloons. After sending my bag to the top via gondola, I slowly started warming up. When it was close to my start time I got in line and waited through the large crowd. They weighed my bike, presumably to make sure it was over the 6.8 kg limit which it was by far, and I got closer to the start house. When I reached the front, they had a platform with a small start ramp. Two people held my bike as I got clipped in and gave me a countdown and then I was on my way! It started off at around 12% and then dropped down to average around 8% for the rest of the way. All kinds of people were participating ranging from inline skaters, roller skiers, people on tandems, people on 5dems (one driver and two sets of two next to each other), unicyclers, and apparently someone in a wheelchair. After passing a bunch of people and being passed by a few as well a guy who looked about my age caught up to me a little bit after the 4 km to go sign. I decided to stick with him, and after he mumbled something in German we stayed together until 1km to go at which point he dropped me saying something in German that I'd assume meant hurry up.
I made it to the top shortly after him and after getting some to drink and eat we talked for a bit. It was his 4th time doing this race, and he was from a town about 80 km away. As I was recovering another person came up to me and asked if I was from SLO, referring to my Cal Poly jersey. We talked for a while and it turns out that his family used to live in Palo Alto. He is in Germany to write some sort of history book. After enjoying the festivities for a while and deciding that this would be a bad time for a beer, as tempting as it was, I got back on my bike and rode home.
By the evening they had already posted results which is quite impressive as this race had almost 1000 participants! I completed the hill climb in 42 minutes putting me at 64th out of 118 in the open men's category. The winning time was around 31 minutes, a time I'm sure I will beat when I race next year. This was an excellent first race in Europe and I'm planning on doing more before I leave.