I seriously cannot believe this is happening!!!

First, I would like to kiss every single one of you who voted on the mouth, but since I'm not sure everyone would be comfortable with that and it would take the rest of my life, a giant THANK YOU will have to do...for now at least, maybe I can work in the mouth kissing periodically throughout my lifetime. We seriously could NOT have won without all of your votes. We had so many people vote multiple times and many even reposted our video link on their pages for their friends to vote. We are only going because you all were kind enough to either (1) believe in us and vote or (2) you got sick of seeing us post it and you voted to get us off your back. Either way, I don't really care which was your motivation at this point, we are indebted to all of you and have no way to pay you back for your votes except to keep you updated on the trip and post pictures like crazy. Thank you again so much. This will be the trip of a lifetime.

We don't have all the details yet, but we do know some. First our trip will be May 24th-27th. We will fly out on the 24th, watch stage 19 on the 25th  (for those not so up on cycling terms I'll explain what that means in a sec), stage 20 on the 26th, and then fly home on the 27th. I'm sure it will be completely exhausting, but oh so worth it. We will have round trip airfare paid for as well as a 3 night hotel stay, transportation while in Italy, and food (yes they are paying for breakfast, lunch and dinner with a $40 limit...per meal per person...wow!). We do have to pay the taxes on the trip, which is a bummer, but we knew it when we signed up. We thought about trying to see if we could extend our stay in Italy and go see a few more cities since we would already be in the country, but that isn't allowed. Pretty much our entire trip is planned out for us. We will have VIP treatment, meaning that a Santini rep (one of the sponsors of the contest--a cycling clothing company) will be taking us around to meet people. WHOA!!! We don't just get to go, we get to be VIP's! Holy Smokes! We did have to sign our life away to them i.e. they have permission from now until forever to use our video, as well as our voices and any photographs or videos that may be taken while we are in Italy, but lets be honest...I'm okay with that. It is still all very surreal and I can't believe we actually won!

For those of you still wondering what exactly we won, besides a trip to Italy. We get to go watch two stages (or legs--you get to learn as you read!) of a pro cycling race. This race is very similar to the Tour de France, which hopefully you've heard of =). The Giro d'Italia has 21 Stages so we won't get to see the very last stage, but the 2nd & 3rd to last stages. The race begins on May 5th so by the time we see it these guys will have been racing for 20 days. They don't race the entire time, each day they race a different distance/difficulty level--this helps show that they are good at all sorts of different cycling events--long distance as well as sprinting. The first day they only go about 5.5 miles, which is the shortest distance they will go. The longest distance they will ride in 1 day is 151 miles! Most of the days they ride between 60-120 miles and they can get going up to 60 miles per hour on the downhill races, and from what I've read they average around 23-28 mph. What an incredible show of athleticism! 

Our last day we will get to watch stage 20, which ends at the Passo dello Stelvio--see picture on the left. The Stelvio (another learning experience here--this is what all the cool kids call it) is an insane mountain that they cycle up!! It has a 7.8% grade for 14 miles (which is classified as such as intense climb that it is in a category all itself!!). It is the highest paved mountain pass in the Eastern Alps and the second highest in the Alps, with an elevation of 9045 ft (thank you Wikipedia). 

Anyway, this is about all the information I have so far, I'm sure we will know more in the coming weeks and I will definitely post more updates as soon as I know! Thank you all again so much for helping us have this wonderful opportunity!