So after such a long time making the team house my very own house, I will be packing most of my stuff up tonight and moving out tomorrow. The time here has had it’s high’s and it’s low’s, but I know as a whole, the trip has been really fun. A life experience in which I am extremely lucky to have had the chance to live.

Yesterday, NIck and I went on a really nice training ride and rode some new roads and simply got lost. If we had not traveled back on the farmroads with Noel after the race on Saturday, I think Nick and I would still be out there. We still got lost anyway and a really nice woman at a quiet bakery gave us directions back to Izegem. I love all the nice people you get to meet when you are lost.

So tomorrow, we’re going to Hoogerheide. Big time.

So I’m making the final preparations for Worlds right now. Just doing some resting, catching up with those back in the States, and mentally preparing myself for Saturday. I’ve been enjoying a  daily afternoon nap and everything is pretty swell.

The weather was nice today and riding is enjoyable. I still am enjoying new roads to ride on around the HQ. There are just so many roads to ride. I thought by now I would have gotten to know them like the back of my hand, but I guess not so.

On Wednesday, Joe Sales and I took Nick out motorpacing and then spent the day in Bruges. This time around it was sooo much nicer. It was still only 3 degree celsius out, but I’ll take it over -3 any day of the week. We enjoyed a nice lunch and climbed the bell tower to the main church in town and saw Bruges and beyond. It was quite amazing. There were even arrows pointing to towns and countries with their distance in Kilometers all around the perimeter. We got caught up there at 2, and endured 10 solid minutes of bells before we got to the two dings for 2′O clock. The system was impressive. To get to the top, we climbed something like 500 veritcal on these winding stairs. Even my legs were quite tired, but it was well worth it.

                                                 Nick out on the Roads

I raced last Saturday in Zonnebeke, a town 25 minutes away by car. It was a really nice town and the race was appopriately named Kasteelcross or Castle Cross for it was held all within these tall walls. The start was over a km of road before a 90 degree right to an uphill road section to bam! mud. I had a good start for me and the traffic was horrendous upon hitting the mud. It wasn’t a friendly mud, but a sticky, goopy kind. I rode a solid race for me and enjoyed no mechanical mishaps and finished in 18th.

Sunday was spent taking it easy and trying to figure out how I recieved so many cuts and marks on my body I had recieved from the race the day before.

Today, I enjoyed a nice easy spin and went to three bike shops, but all were closed. The Monday blues! It would have been icing on the cake if they had been open. I wasn’t really expecting them to be open, so I wasn’t bummed.

I finally captured the cat on film after many unsuccessful attempts. The beast has been tamed!

                            I wouldn’t be surprised if it were half raccoon. Take a look at that tail!

The pre-world’s camp has officially started, so we are doing these morning walks starting at 7:45. They are nice since you get some fresh air, stretch the legs, and wake up a bit in the morning’s crispness.

Across the street, the sidewalk is being torn up and I found it funny that our neighboor set up so he made sure the worker made absolutely no mistakes in tearing up his front doorstep.

                          I don’t really see the need to dig it all up, but whatever!

I rolled around Izegem today. I now know it inside and out!

I decided to ride a cruiser to the bike shop and I hit up some organic food stores today.

Not too much else to report, but I’m having a good time!

Wow, the past two days have been an absolute blast.

Yesterday, Joe took Nick, Luke, Zach, and I out on quite the fieldtrip. First off, we went to a World War 1 museum which had some really corny sides to it, but had a ton of authentic war artifacts and struck a real personal note with me. I had seen some very graphic photos of these wars, but never really have I ever imagined that I would be walking over the same land that these wars were once fought on. The museum was on “Hill 62″. That just hit me strange. “Hill 62″ wasn’t a hill at all, more like a rise and within 1 kilometer, there was a real hill. Just to think that so many people busted their asses to gain the strategic position of this hill blows my mind. Once “Hill 62″ was gained, they would just have to fight over the next hill, which was a much better strategic postion. War is terrible.

                                          This is the slightly taller hill.

                                                 The Canadian Memorial on Top of the Hill

Many commonwealth soldiers lost their lives fighting over this hill and this area. Right down the road, there was this somber cemetary:

At one point in time, we all fought on the battlefied, now I am happy that all the countries can fight it out on the race course. Almost too happy.

After we left the museum and cemetary, we made our way to Dunkirk, France. On our way there, I was amazed by the pure number and disturbing frequency of the cemetaries lining the side of the road. Too many men lost their lives.

After arriving in France, and getting lost among many oil refineries, we finally found our way to a beach.

 It was starting to get dark, but we enjoyed seeing the ocean. The parking lot ran way in to the ocean, it must have been a huge boat launch in the summer.

We didn’t stay too long for it was cold and quite windy outside, but the whole experience was great!

I have finally got a great cultural experience for the first time I have been here. I feel like I got so much accomplished today!

 To look at the rest of the photos I took of the day, go here

http://cid-8d10f3b963ad57da.skydrive.live.com/browse.aspx/Adventure!

It was a fun course out there today, reminded me a lot of World’s last year minus the super-steep drops. It had rained the night before, so the course was nice and muddy, a nice change from previous days.

I got off to a slow start and really never recovered. I found that if I “red-zoned” it, I would make small mistakes and lose time that way, so I pulled the throttle back a little bit and focused on cleaning everything, running the sections that would be faster to run, and other small discrepancies. I feel I rode smoother and faster in the latter laps of my race, but I won’t really know until I can get some lap times, we were wearing ankle transponders. It was one of those courses that it was better to properly set up for a corner, or else you would bog down and just lose time in stopping and running, or worse, falling on your tail as I found myself doing one lap. I dismounted on an off-camber and both my feet slipped out from under me and I slid on my chest downhill. Embarrassing! I made sure not to do that again!

Even though I finished up in a disappointing 47th, I had a lot of fun out there. It’s been a while since I have seen mud!

I found myself out in the garage this morning making some final preparations to my bikes for tomorrow. For both of my bikes, this meant getting both the positions dialed to be exactly the same. It sounds easy, but it is not!

For a while now, I have been needing to put some new tape on my A bike. Luckily, I brought along some nice, brand-spankin’ new white bar tape. Why does this really matter? The rain is pitter-patting on the roof and we are to go pre-ride the muddy course in Roubaix this afternoon. Whoops! Whatver though, it feels good to finally get some nice, plush tape on those bars and the set-ups are now dialed cockpit-wise.

Check out my sick lounge I’ve got rolling in the living room. Pretty sweet eh?

It’s perfect, I know

I went out on yet another nice ride today. It was really fun and the weather was favorable for riding in.

I’m finding all sorts of good loops to ride in. No more of this “left turn, right turn” stuff for me!

I found myself close to the windmill and immediately thought of the fun rides Ian, Steve, and I did during camp last year. We had some good times.

Life around the house has been nice. Yet another face has piled into the big house, good ol’ Joey Sales. I was happy to see him roll up this afternoon. So now we’ve got a grand total of five under the roof. Getting rediculous up in here!

So, I made my own version of the koogle today, this time with just the egg noodles, eggs, cinnamon, and raisins. I microwaved it for ease and the end product was quite nice and tasty. I put more egg in this time, so it was more of a quiche. Good stuff! I just remembered how much I enjoy eating eggs.

The cinnamon makes it look gnarly, but the opposite was true.

We’re going to do some recon of the course in Roubaix tomorrow afternoon. I’m getting nervous thinking about it right now! I want Sunday to come so I can just throw down and have a good ride that I can be really happy with.

Mo fo later

E

Today was gorgeous. 5 degrees celsius and visiblity over 15 miles when Nick and I were riding on a ridge. It was awesome. I rode a new route with him today and riding with somebody who knows where they are going certainly helps on a ride. I’m a little tired of choosing “left or right” every intersection I run into and then ending up right where I started.

I just forgot to bring along the camera! I was debating it before we left, but lugging the SLR around isn’t so much fun.

The rest of the day was good. Zach Mcdonald flew in today so we know have a house of four. 

For dinner, Nick got a recipe called Koogle from his mom. It was wonderful. Consists of egg noodles, eggs, raisins, apples, butter, brown sugar, and cinnamon. All thrown into a pan, baked at 350 for 40 and served best over some milk. Delicious!

Anybody have any easy nutritious and delicous recipes they would like to share?

Thanks!

Nick and I went to this sweet B Ball game in Oostende last night.The drive was a nice change of pace. It is really fun to ride in a car after being stuck to transportation by bike and by foot for the past couple of weeks. It all went by so fast, like a blur.

  The game being played was between the Oostende Base and the Tartu Rock, an Estonian Team. Oostende had 4 of its 5 starters American and Tartu had an American on the team, but the rest of the players were Estonian. From the beginning,Oostende took the lead and never looked back.  In the last two minutes,both teams drained many consecutive, back-to-back three balls. There must have been six shots in a row, it was pretty sweet.

                                                        The Stadium

                                              The Mascot

                                                     The Essential Basketball Fanatic

  The guy whose job was to tell you to take your feet off of the seat in front of you. No Joke, that’s all he did!

Take it Easy

E

I awoke this morning to a nice amount of rain already on the roads, but I didn’t let it get to me. I’ll take a wet tail to frozen lungs any day of the week. At least I could ride outside. Things are pretty smooth sailing around the house. I’ve been doing a lot of writing recently, so I’m sorry about the short post, I think I may just get some carpal tunnel soon!

                                         Oh yeah! Positives again!

On Saturday, We’ll be making a field trip to Roubaix to preview the World Cup course we will be racing on Sunday. As of right now, my legs are feeling up to the challenge and I can’t really wait for the chance to get out there and butt some heads with the World’s best riders again. Time to make up for my disappointing race in Zolder. I want to make this one count.

Luke Keough arrived at the house today. He doesn’t appear to be too jet-lagged from his travels. Apparently, he had a sweet set up like me and was able to sleep on his flight over and he arrived this morning in Brussels. Zach will be here within a couple of days too, so all of us racing the World Cup will be here. Nick will be the only U-23 racing for America and Nick, Zach, and I will be representing the Juniors.

Thanks for reading and what do you guys want to hear more about? Give me a shout out!

E