Bike D. Eisenhower

Three weeks tomorrow (but who's counting?) marks the first day of my first major holiday of the year.  The missus and I are off to The Netherlands for a week's bike touring.  The Tour de France starts there this year, so they're going to get motivated by watching the shaven, oiled pros do their thang first.  Thereafter, it's a joyous week of pootling along well-appointed and safe cycleways from city to city, stopping only en route for excellent Dutch coffee and cinnamon biscuits.

There is nothing on Earth as enjoyable as arriving at your destination under your own steam, carrying your own luggage on the bike.  You feel tired, yes, but not jaded or disspirited.  On the contrary, you feel absolutely alive - your senses singing with information.  A quick shower the slough off the muck and it's on to the hors d'oeuvres and drinks.  And they, believe me, never tasted better.

Before I can enjoy the genteel face of bike culture, I must endure a few more weeks of racing.  I say 'endure', but the truth is I'm enjoying it more and more as the weeks go by.  It's always like this, competitive cycling.  It's miserable when you're not fit enough, and one always begins the season not fit enough.  It's nigh on impossible to recreate the intensity of racing when training.  But I'm finally starting to feel some power in the legs.  Also, the mental aspect of the game is sharpening up too.  My concentration is must better, as is evidenced by my changing perception of the length of each race.  At first they appear to last for months, but as you get more and more in the zone, the duration drops dramatically.  Last week's race was over before it began.

I'm hoping to get so fit I forget the whole thing one week.

Ambre Solaire and lager

There's another mini-break looming on the horizon this weekend.  The missus and I are off to Belgium tomorrow for a couple of nights.  We're heading east to catch a bike race, Liège-Bastogne-Liège.  I appreciate that this is some (i.e., most) people's idea of hell, and I understand and celebrate that stance on the subject.  Imagine what the world would be like if we all enjoyed the same things: that's right, even duller than it currently is.  I'm all for diversity of opinion.

Anyways, I'm really looking forward to it.  Belgium is the spiritual home of road racing.  It is to them what football is to the English, or rugby to the Kiwis.  Everyone there understands the sport, and has forthright opinions on it.  No such thing as neutral in these matters.  The Scottish pro rider David Millar once observed that he particularly enjoyed racing in Belgium because "it's so damn...well, Belgian."  

I concur.  Yes, Belgium isn't the most beautiful country on Earth, or the most exciting, but it is its own man.  It's happy in its own skin.  It cares not two hoots if you enjoy or even understand its ways. But if you take pains to study the place and understand its people, your efforts will be met with open arms and a winning smile.

It's strange how difference nations hold different opinions of each other.  Apparently the Dutch think the Belgians rather "other" and exotic although they only live about 50 miles away.  For example I was once on a cycling holiday in The Netherlands and spotted a Belgian restaurant.  I couldn't resist a closer look, so that evening Mrs O and I booked a table.  We didn't know what to expect.  I'd never been particularly bowled over by the cuisine in Belgium, save for the hand-wrought chocolates, which are rather good. 

The food was fairly workaday if I'm honest: fine but not brilliant, but the decor of the restaurant was a work of art.  It was kitted-out in dark wood panelling, heavy 19th century furniture and doilies, billions of doilies.  It was like being inside the drawer of a giant Welsh dresser.  This is at odds with the prevailing Dutch aesthetic, which is functional and easy-wide.  This contrast in visual sensibilities and the tradition of dangerous monastic beer gave the Belgians a romantic and wild-eyed quality that the Dutch felt they rather lacked.  I couldn't see it, myself.  

I suppose we're all guilty of this to some extent.  The English tend to think of the west of Ireland as a cross between Middle Earth and Cornwall.  The truth, I can tell you from family experience, is rather more prosaic: ill-fitting jeans on ill-fitting buttocks, sat in Hiace vans outside supermarkets, and drizzle...plenty of drizzle.