May Belgium Updates

How not to race - First race back - decided to try a new strategy. Get into the first break - Ok, first 3k - went with the first attacks and helped establish a pretty good front group - Second lap - Get dropped from front group, second group, third group - too embarrassed to continue! Lasted about 15km. Sure went darn fast for a little bit... Better luck Saturday - 7 KOM (King of the Mountain competetion) climbs of 1-2km. This outta be a tough one. Hope that 15 minutes of speed work was effective!

The other residents figured out how to hook up the Playstation... Now we have 15 hours a day of grand theft auto... There are usually a few that actually sit around and watch somebody else play?!?!? Hope this wears off soon - I don't know how long I can handle car crashes, people screaming, machine guns and giggling cheering section... I will turn up my Slayer CD!

Jim - Keep your eyes out for Jim Wagner - That guy stiffed me on a bit of rent money. Heard that he did the same thing to Procon Bob. Not too cool - Going to run out of uninformed dupes in Arizona eventually Jim... Word is that he also is quite the slob. Get your rent ahead of time if this guys knocks on your door.

16 year-olds can drink at the bars here - Now I know what AJ feels like - We went to a local bar the other night and there was a group of very young girls there - one had braces... wow. One of them came up to Mike (young, goofy-looking) and said that her friend thought he was cute - Like a high school dance with beer! Well, good for Mike - I guess she has a moped that goes 80...

Today is the first race since the tendonitis hit - A kermis in the next town over - The clouds are rolling in. I may skip if it is cold and rainy. I'm not going to ride in the damn cold rain unless I have to! We have another guy coming in this week - Guess he will stay in a hostel until we get rid of a couple - Austin and Corey are supposed to leave after Paris-Roubaix on Sunday. Corey got some of that special Euro-Jager... Gotta see if that college-legend about the extra stuff in Euro-Jager is really true. I will experiment on the amateur-partiers.

Changed the links on the left - If they don't look different, do a 'shift-reload' on your web browser! (Hit reload while pressing the shift key)

Just hanging out nowadays - Trying not to fire up the tendonitis too much. Hopefully will get to do a little racing next week... We've got wind and rain today - good day for a break, I suppose. Yesterday, we went into town to the farmers' market - Best one I have been to. Lots of cheese dealers, butchers, vegetable stands. All kinds of cool, fresh foods at a low price. The eggs around here sometimes have feathers stuck to the shells! We found a nice bar the other day with 150 different beers from the local area - Had a Liefmans Kriekbier... That's a really good cherry beer. Kind of a mixture of cherry cider and beer. The head is red.

On the bench - Not allowed to race for two weeks... Tendonitis flared up the second day at Flech du Sud and now I have to sit out a couple. Too bad - I think I am ready to go for the podium. Fitness is coming around and I have a better idea of how to get involved in the right attacks. Got ninth in the first stage of Flech du Sud. Got away with a group of around 6 with 40km or so to go. We got within 1:36 of 2 remaining breakaways and sprinted for third with about another 6 that bridged up to us. It was a great result for me and the team. Top-ten results in interclub races get the team invited to other interclubs - We have a new invite to some races in Luxembourg, and possibly a Switzerland race if the team can afford it. Got dropped at the end of the second day on a pretty fast climb and them dropped out of the race the third day with the tendonitis. Bummer being 6000 or something miles from home and not being able to do I came for! I have been wandering around town aimlessly for the last two days. Found the local coffee roaster! Anyway, made the top-10 on a left-column cyclingnews race... Tour of Italy stage 3 finished in the same town as Fleche du Sud - Esch sur Alzette - Luxembourg is very nice.

Looks like the Tour of Belgium starts in Oostende on 5/22. That will be cool to see. I should be able to race a couple of days after that. So, I'm about to post a bunch more photos - Fleche du Sud, Church in Oostende, some kermis... Check them out!

Mother's Day - Happens every year - off in some other state (or country) for a race and don't call mom on mothers day..... Race organizers are out to get us all into trouble. Ooops - Hope you all are better kids than me. I actually had 5/17 listed as mothers day on my calendar - And my sister even gave me a list of important dates to remember!

Wednesday... Had a tough weekend - It was COLD! Jacob and I missed the main split in the Saturday kermis - Our group wasn't really making any progress and was just waiting for the finish, so we split. Sunday's kermis was supposed to be an hour or so ride down to Ardooie and then a good, aggressive kermis. The rain started about 10k from home and the weather gradually turned colder and wetter. I got a flat in Torhout. Turned out that the race was a bit outside of Ardooie - so we were lost for a while in downtown Ardooie. We noticed all of the cars with bikes going the other way, so we turned around and started heading back the way we came. Got another flat at that point. We had no more tubes, so I rolled along on the flat until a Belgian guy we know named Frankie came by - He loaned me a wheel and then waited for us at the turnoff to the race - If he hadn't done that, we would have been totally lost again! The dressing room was kind of a makeshift shed thing with some wooden divider-deals to keep some of the wind out. Needless to say, I was shivering on the line and did not even survive the first lap! So - 50km ride to the kermis and 9km of "racing"... I guess that quite a few ended up dropping out of that race. Jacob and I borrowed a cell phone to call home for a ride from Ann - Our saviour!

Taking it easy this week - we leave early tomorrow for Luxembourg to start Fleche de Sud. That's supposed to be a really tough stage race. Guess it has quite a few climbs - Hope the legs are ready! Today, I'm getting the bike cleaned up and waiting for this fog to burn off a bit. It's a bit damp out there. Have a swell weekend - I imagine that I'll be back at the computer on Monday morning.

Happy May... Did a pretty boring kermesse on Wednesday - Tried to sit in and wait for the second hour - Unfortunetly, by that time the race was 3 minutes up the road and we were in danger of being stopped - Started working and doing some attacks - We ended up doing around 80km. I got 29th and 12 euros for my trouble... Have to find a little more aggressive medium for the next race. We are doing the countdown to Fleche de Sud. That starts next Thursday. Supposed to be a real tough race. Its 4 days in Luxembourg - one day is 90km in the morning and 100km in the afternoon! Two kermesses to warm up this weekend. Some of the boys are complaining about sickness and are acting a bit tired - Everybody sleeps later than me now!

Coffee hint for Belgium - If you want an Italian style espresso in Belgium, you have to order "Een mokka"... "Een expresso" is drawn a bit long. Have a nice weekend everybody...