The first week

As I write this, it's snowing outside and I have just spent a chilly 30 minutes walking home in it from The Great Australian Bite, a certain cafe that I have been frequenting of late. I enclose a photo, which includes the proprietor Reinhard Van Speybroeck, with whom I've been staying. He actually works more than me, so it's a good match.
The Great Australian Bite and Reinhard
© Jeff Jones
I didn't have much jetlag at all, apart from that weird feeling of being totally displaced. Took me a few days to get reoriented again and get used to the cold and gloom that is Belgium in February. I was a good choice not to ride, although when I wanted to start again this week, the weather turned pretty ordinary. I got a couple of hours in the dry on Monday, then today it was snowing off and on all day, so I hopped on Reinhard's home trainer for an hour and a bit. I might even do a spinning class or two if it stays like this. It is really not good.

We managed to venture out on Friday night to the Vooruit for a drink or two. Despite living here for quite a few years, I've never been there. It's one hell of a building and has to be seen from the inside and outside to be appreciated. One facade fronts onto the canal, and I guess it would be possible to have theatre performances there, like there are in other bits of the building. Then we went across the road to Stereo, where a friend of Reinhard's was having her 25th birthday. But we were a bit past it by then, despite blue-coloured cocktails.

Het Volk and Kuurne-Brussels-Kuurne were good season starters, but jeez it was cold taking pics at the start. I was working with Brecht Decaluwe, our work experience student, and I thought we did a good job. I've never been to the start of KBK before, and it was interesting in that they had it in the Hippodrome. What would have been more interesting is if they'd finished on the Hippodrome. Sort of like the velodrome finish in Paris-Roubaix, but on mud and horse manure.

Tom Boonen's a champ, but hats off to Philippe Gilbert and Nick Nuyens, who took the wins on the weekend.

Finished Brideshead (good book) and started Freakonomics, which promises to be fascinating. Thanks cousin Ant for that. There's some public recognition for you.

Dat is alles.

Wie spät ist es?

Firstly, happy birthday to Jim and Joan!

I'm at Kuala Lumpur International Airport and it's sometime after 2:30am, Sydney time, which answers the question that I posed in my best Austrian just now. So far it has been a fun flight with much entertainment. After watching Skeleton Key (ordinary, but the end was at least different), the end of The Island (seen it already), and 40 Year-Old Virgin (strangely amusing), I decided to play chess against the inflight entertainment.

I started off on the "easy" level, and thrashed the computer. So I moved to "medium" and also thrashed the computer, although the computer took longer to think about it. With great trepidation, I tried the "hard" level, and noticed that it took much longer to think about its moves. But it can't have been thinking very hard, because after four moves it had lost its queen in exchange for my pawn. After that, I ended up with a fairly hefty advantage, taking all of its pieces save for one rook, one bishop, four pawns and the king, with the loss of a couple of pawns and a knight at my end. The end was nigh, and after putting it into "check" for the nth time, the computer decided that it had enough and froze, denying me the chance to seal a glorious victory.

So much for the inflight entertainment. Deep Blue it ain't. Deep Brown, maybe. I hope I didn't take too much CPU power away from the onboard navigation.

The other thing of interest that happened was a woman two rows in front chundered all over the seat, and the flight steward said: "That's the second time today." I'm glad I didn't have the chicken.

Dinner at Angelo's

So this week, being my last in Sydney, me, maaa and dad decided to go out to Angelo's restauraaaaa, which is located at the edge of the water in Cabarita Bay, or Cape Cabarita, as it is called. The architecture around that area resembles the Sydney equivalent of Cape Cod. It lacks verisimilitude, but there are worse places you could live. Angelo's is a rather nice spot, and it's not crowded with tables, so we could enjoy a post-Valentine's Day dinner (Feb. 15 for the unbelievers) in peace and quiet.

Of interest was the seafood platter, which served two and cost $120. We watched several other couples getting stuck into them, and most of them struggled by the time they reached the chip mountain underneath the prawns. Some couples were straight out of Gormenghast, others were out of Monty Python's Meaning of Life. The waiter was nice and took our photo. We had a noice dinner and view, and several bottles of wine.
Me, ma, pa at Angelo's
© The waiter at Angelo's

Party at Brent's

One of my former riding colleagues, Brent McParland, turned 40 on Saturday, so he had a partay at the Bundeena Bowls Club, which went off. Brent is working in the pharmacology department at Sinney Yooney, and is now the father of two kiddies, Finn and Mathilda, to his long-suffering-time partner Kristin. It was tops to see them all again, and I indulged in a veggie burger and some bits of cake, along with a discussion about Sydney's water supply.
Brent and Kristin at his 40th
© Jeff Jones
Brent and Finn and large veggie burgers
© Jeff Jones

Heffa

The last race at Heffron was nothing out of the ordinary, in that once again, we didn't catch C grade, despite averaging 44 km/h. We didn't have any real drivers there on Tuesday, and although I felt good enough to do turns for most of it (finally), we needed a Chris Sutton or a Stuart Dangerfield or a Fleming Bros to go that extra 5 seconds quicker per lap. Oh well, I didn't fall off, so that was a plus.
Last race at Heffa
© Stuart Baker
The Giant, which I've now given back, was good, except I would have preferred the bottom bracket to be a little higher off the ground. 267mm is not quite high enough to pedal around the corners, so I scraped a few times. But its 7.1kg weight helped me to get up Garie in 10'00 and Audley in 4'30, which are pretty decent times in my book.

I actually saw a bike identical to mine in the ride on Saturday morning, which I mistakenly thought was Coluzzi when I hopped on it at 6:30 on South Dowling St.. Turns out it wasn't, but we expected to be caught. We weren't by Waterfall, so I went back through the Park, only going hard up the aforementioned hills. Then I waited five minutes at the top of Audley, but only saw the guys who I'd turned off at Waterfall with. Maybe the Coluzzi bunch vanished into the Royal National Park Bermuda Triangle^TM. One of these years, I might actually do it.

Segue

I can't wait to get to Gent. Reinhard tells me it's been as hot as 6 degrees and raining, or -2 to 2 when it's dry. But first I have to get to...ahhhh Vienna. It's now 3:20am.

Epilogue

I'm now in Vienna airport, with four and a half hours to kill until my final connection to Brussels. I think it might kill me first, as breathing in stale smoke at 6:00am, Vienna time, is not exactly my cup of tea. I moved downstairs to get away from it, but it's worse because now there's burned kerosine smell mixed in with the smoke. Vienna airport is for laying down and avoiding.
Ahh, Vienna airport
© Jeff Jones

My two travelling companions were amusing though. There was one older woman from Riga who had been visiting her son in Sydney for three months. He's got a nice looking flat in Redfern, according to the photos. Dunno where that could be though. Maybe Redfern Chase.

The other was a slightly mad German girl from Munich (where do these stereotypes come from?), who had been in Perth for 10 months. Maybe that's what cracked her. Seriously, I thought I was mad in the clothes department, but no, I clearly have some vestiges of sanity left. As it was 39 degrees when she left Perth, she was wearing shorts, fully aware of how cold it would be when she got out at the other end: "I have an extra t-shirt on," she said confidently. I had to put on my brand new Etxeondo winter training jacket because it was so damn cold in the fliegzug. I hope she didn't miss her connection.

Better get back to reading Brideshead Revisited and breathing in fumes. Oh yeah, I beat Deep Brown properly on the flight from KL to Vienna, while I wasn't sleeping.

Coma

I made it to Belgium and it's cold and grey. Apparently, it's on track to be the gloomiest February on record. I'm safely ensconced in Reinhard's flat.

T minus one week

Again, don't ask me to explain. Suffice to say that I'll be in Sunny Belgium on the 21st of Feb. I think I'll wait a week before riding though. When I got there last year, I was doing 700km per week in whatever weather there was, and I don't reckon I got fitter any quicker. At least now I have a reasonable level of condition from racing at Heffron twice per week and not falling off. The latter is quite important.

Two more second places on Saturdays, both in similar circumstances. Last week, we had our monthly handicap race, and five of us (me, Pete McDonald, Robbie Cater, Spurge, and John Kenny), averaged 43 km/h and mopped up B and C grade with about 4 laps to go. Alas, I punctured on the top corner at this point, but took a lap out and borrowed a wheel so I could jump in with 3 to go. One lap later, and I would have had to chase.

At this point in the proceedings, Pete McDonald had placed his winning attack up the back straight, and as I was forced to rejoin at the rear of the peloton, I had no chance of following him. The puncture did work a little in my favour though, as I could move up to the front and attack with 1.5 laps to go. I closed some of the gap to Pete, but there was no way I could get back the last 10-15 seconds. However, holding off the rest of the bunch was worth a nice $120, so I took that happily.

Last Tuesday wasn't as good, as for some reason there was an FRF implosion after we'd caught C grade the first time, and half of A grade was left behind. I was in the back half, having done a turn in front at a bad time. Or more accurately, not hopping back into the train at halfway, which I should have done. Liam Kelly was also in our group, as well as Troy Glennan, Robbie Cater, Joe McDonnell, Matt Fleming, Tim Willing and a few more. Tim managed to get across on his own, but Liam decided that he'd attack up the back and then take a shortcut to rejoin the front bit of A grade, then started doing turns with them. We weren't impressed, and Troy let him have several serves, both during and after the race. Admittedly, I did the same thing the previous week, but didn't take any further part in the race and just sat on the back.

In the end, the fast bit of A tacked onto the back of C in the last lap, but couldn't get around them.

Yesterday was, as I said, rather similar to the previous Saturday. Except this time, Pete attacked after just 4 laps (ok, so I went on lap 1...) and four of us were left chasing him. The four became two when Liam Kelly lifted the pace with me on his wheel. He kept telling me to accelerate when I came through, but this was rather hard as I was already on my limit when following his wheel. If he'd left me out there for short turns, then we might have closed to Pete. As it was, we got within 5 seconds. But I wasn't strong enough to keep that momentum going.

We caught B grade and Liam gave up. I didn't want to sit on B grade for too long, and told Liam, but he could be bothered coming with me, so I ended up with second. Pete was slowing down towards the end, even after having lapped three of the original starters, and he didn't get much further ahead. But he still had a fair chunk of the length of the straight, so it was enough. $90 this time.

Saturday racing at Heffron has been very lucrative.

Two films

I finally saw Harry Potter 4 with mum, and it was good, I reckon. It's one of my favourite books in the series, and the movie wasn't too stale. The acting was generally good, even though Emma Watson (Hermione) tends to overdo it a bit. It probably befits her character though. And it was suitably dark at the finish.

The other film was Overcoming, about Bjarne Riis and CSC team, which I saw on Thursday as part of Martin Renwick's new women's team's non-official launch. Very intense, but there were some good moments with the riders like Sastre, Voigt, Basso and Bartoli. I preferred Hell on Wheels - that was beautifully done.

More, anon.

Two things

One, we broke the Heffron record on Tuesday. 15 laps in 39'55 (and then we got an extra lap for good measure). That's 45.5 km/h, and is bloody quick for Heffron. Quickest I can remember doing before that was 40'20 in 1995.

There were no particular stars there, except for Chris Sutton. We just had 15 "regulars" and pretty much ideal conditions: a light southerly, humid, and 25 degrees. It had also been some time since we caught B and C grade on a Tuesday, so there was motivation. Easts have been trying to win the series from C grade with their designated GC rider Aaron Richardson, but really...

First lap: 2'49, two laps: 5'27, three laps: 8'04, then we sat on a consistent 2'37 / lap until we picked up B grade with about four to go and C with 3 to go. We slowed down when we caught the two grades, but still did the 15 laps in under 40 minutes. Then we were given an extra lap, but it didn't really matter. Stuart Dangerfield won it with a last lap attack.

I was liking my Conti GP4000s, and had no problems on the corners until about the 9th lap when I suddenly felt like I had a puncture. It was weird, and I pulled off the back, only to discover I didn't have one. Grr. Was doing OK before that. I chased but the pace was still on, so I ended up taking a short lap to rejoin, but of course was out of contention. Oh well.

The second thing is a recipe for Jeff's Lucky Jade Heavenly Chicken, as I have re-christened it. It was inspired by Ma, who told me what to do, and I have now shamelessly appropriated it.

To save duplication, I won't bother with a list of ingredients. First, chop up onions, garlic, ginger, shallots, and maybe a chilli if you want. Also slice some capsicum, zucchini, carrot, snow peas, baby corn, whatever. Better still, get mum to do all this.

Chop up your chicken breasts into chunks. Then stick 'em in a plastic bag with some flour and five spice powder. Shake it all around, stir fry it with the onions/garlic/ginger/shallots, then stick it in a metal bowl somewhere. Preferably out of sight.

Stir fry the rest of the veggies and at the end, bung in some soy sauce and hoi-sin sauce. This is what gives the dish its unique flavour. I call it Excellent Soy/Hoi-Sin flavour. Re-add the chicken and stuff, which is probably stone cold by now, so you'd better not turn off the gas. Sprinkle a bit of sesame oil over the top and serve with a dish of delicious noodle.