Land of the Rain

I can now check an item off my bucket list. - Race a wet kermess in Belgium and feel pain in my eye balls in the process. After many hours of travel and days of jet-lag, i have touched back down to earth in small Tielt-Winge Belgium. I payed the price of a 12 hour flight with muscle stiffness you would never believe and i'm about 89% sure that the ninety year old man sitting beside me on the plane had swine flu. The cobwebs were shaken off pretty fast after doing a local kermess. The local bar was home to the sign in so not only could you chug a beer while signing in, you could also get second hand cancer from the thick cloud of smoke clinging to the ceiling of the bar. As the gun went off, the skies spit down more rain than i have ever seen and the field of about 150 riders was stretched longer than a cp rail train. Seeing as my luck has not been the best in the rain (see crash pictures from last year), i decided i would try and at least get in some sort of break to navigate the wet corners with the least amount of people around me. I rode the first 8km loop completely solo gaining about 30 seconds over the rest of the field. I was hoping that someone would bridge up to me so that we could get things rolling but no one ever came and i was soon swallowed up by the mob of riders. I hung in till about 25 km to go where i was about eighty percent sure i was hypothermic and retreated back to the team van. Welcome to Belgium.

I also just returned from Cote Picard Nations cup in Northen France. After being introduced by the announcer of the tour de france i promptly strung together some of the worst luck i have ever had in a bike race. After surviving the first two hours ( the first of which was spent covering 48km) i dropped back to the team car to grab some food. I was making my way through the caravan and as i approached the back of the peloton, the road seemed to explode with bodies and bikes. I was stuck behind a huge crash and after mangled bodies were moved off the road i had lost about a minute to the lead group. Hanging on the the back of a chase group we got to about 15-20 seconds of the lead group where i promptly flatted and flew off the back. With many gaskets blown it was time to call it a day and hope for better luck this saturday where we will be attacking another nations cup in the Netherlands.

On other news, i put together a small video of team camp 2012 that you can view here and i have uploaded all my pictures to facebook for all your viewing pleasure. Hope to keep you posted as much as possible. Till next time!