Nick Bain Cycling: A Pretty Sweet Week

Well the good news is that I'm feeling good again. After going on the red meat and spinach diet, I feel heaps better. I think I even feel better than I did before. We had a Kermesse on Friday night that started at about 6 O'clock. It was one hell of a windy day with mega crosswinds all around the course. I would say there were about 120 starters at this race and I think after the first lap the field was cut down to nearly half that. The aim for this race was to always be near the front because most of the time we were riding single file. There was one section of the course that was cross tail wind so everybody was sitting in the gutter on the left hand side of the road. This road was a main road too so there were oncoming cars that had been pulled off to the side of the road while we came through but they weren't completely off the road and it was shit scary trying to hold the wheel in front of you because you were almost riding on the grass trying to get protection from the wind and there were parked cars you had to keep an eye out for. We were doing over 50kph on this section, it was all single file and all of a sudden I see the rider in front of me swing out to the right and I'm heading straight for a parked car so I swing right too and just miss this car so now I'm just waiting for the sound of a bike hitting a car. And BANG! There's that sound. It sounded nasty as and I made the mistake of turning around to see the carnage and by doing that I drop the wheel in front of me. It was bloody hard to get back on with the mighty crosswind blowing a gale but I managed to get back on. It was a bloody hard race. It wasn't a Under 23 race so there were some older guys racing which made it that much more difficult. I got dropped with 6 laps to go out of the 16 lap race and I felt pretty good which I was happy about. It was a real hard race with the windy conditions and the amount of good riders that were racing. I was pretty happy that I wasn't just hiding in the bunch the whole time too, I tried a couple times to bridge across to break-aways and drove on the front probably too many times to try and catch a big break-away of riders. All in all I'm feeling pretty good on the bike now. Boiled spinach with a little bit of butter and pepper is my new favorite meal now.
Taylor's girlfriend, Madison, is over here for about a week so we've gone a done some sightseeing. On Saturday, it was a rainy cold day so we decided to go catch the train up to Bruge (The Chocolate Capital). Bruge is a pretty cool town, it was packed, especially with tourists. The have heaps of old buildings and canals and chocolate shops. This one street was covered in chocolate shops. We went into all the chocolate shops and wow! So much chocolate! We just wandered around the place and looked at all the old buildings and we got fresh waffles with cream on top. You could easily put 5kg on if you spent a whole day in Bruge, it was so tempting to buy all this bad food that they had on offer. They had a triathlon on so we sat down at a cafe and got ourselves a cherry flavored beer and watched the triathlon on the big screen. It was a good way to kill a rainy cold day.
Today, Taylor and I decided to go for a ride earlyish so we could catch the train back into Ghent. We were pretty desperate to go back to that nice cafe that sells all the good coffee and have a flat white. That was the first thing we did as soon as we got off the train and then afterwards we were buzzing because that was the first coffee we had had in a while. We explored the town a little bit more because it wasn't raining like the last time we were there. We walked along the canal and found this big old castle that was built I think in the 1100's. We went inside a very old church as well which was pretty amazing with all the marble art and the stained glass windows. It was a huge building and there are heaps of big churches all around Ghent. Everywhere is really busy now because it is the school summer holidays so there are heaps of kids out now. Just had a look around the shops as well and then headed home. Pretty fun day out, a lot better than sitting around inside.
We went into Kortrijk the other day with Andrew and we popped into Andrew's work (it's called Sports Direct which is basically a Rebel Sport and they are opening a Sports Direct back home in NZ) and we saw a rugby ball so Taylor and I went half on it, only payed about 3.50 euro each for it. Bargain! We had our first mini touch game yesterday in the backyard until the rain had stopped play. We saw a poster in Bruge advertising a Beach Rugby tournament so we might have to head back to Bruge when it's on and watch. I think it might be a bad idea to play because I've already pulled a muscle in my ass from playing touch yesterday.
Went a different way on our ride on Sunday and headed towards Ieper which is a famous war town. In the area surrounding Ieper are heaps of World War 1 cemeteries. There are so many scattered around the area, it's really cool to see so when mum and dad come over we'll have to drive around and have a look at some of them.
It's been a pretty good week, sleeping well, riding well, doing stuff outside like going to different towns. Made some banana bread the other day but it didn't turn out too well. The sides and bottom were burnt, especially the bottom, because we have a gas oven so the heat is all from the bottom so I think next time I won't put the heat on full blast and I'll slowly cook it. The middle was still pretty good so I just chopped the bottom and sides off. So yea that's about it. The weather has changed again, just windy and quite cold now, it's going down to single digits at night but yea all is good. Supposed to warm up in the weekend. So yea. I chuck some photos up.

Thanks for reading

Nick