The cafe plan

As mentioned, Reinhard and I plan to visit all 288 cafes in Gent, although most likely we won't get that far. The count is now at 10 after we went to Charlatan (small, smoky student bar near Sint Jacobs) and then to the Dulle Griet in the Vridagmarkt - a somewhat over the top 'traditional?' cafe. I tried Achel - one of the six trappists - in the latter, and it was very strong, but not bad. Lots of sediment in it too, but Guido tells me that this is normal. I just need to try West Vleteren now, and apparently there is a cafe in Drongen where they serve it...

We also went back to the Vooruit on Wednesday for a free 'concert', but it was essentially just a jam session, which became somewhat tiresome after 15 minutes. Beer and nachos were better.

Commonwealth Games. Hmm. Well, it's lost some of its lustre since when I was a kiddie. Australia does well enough at the Olympics, so when you take out all the competition and split up Great Britain into X countries, it becomes a bit of a walkover. Still, it was good to see Benny get up in the kilo and Ryan is great to watch when he is in form. He was unstoppable in the keirin.

It has still been chilly here, so the battle is to keep warm while outside. One trick is to ride faster, because producing more power also produces more heat (a lot more, as your body is about 25 percent efficient). Better to ride at 200W than 150W, because then you'll have another 600W keeping you warm instead of 450W. But you'll run out of gas quicker, I suppose.

I put the theory to the test today as I hammered around the Saturday parcours. Trap Op in 5'18 was a minute quicker than I did on my own last week, and 20 seconds quicker than we did with the bunch on the weekend. I had a nice tailwind, but I wasn't going flat out either. Roll on spring.

Saw The Green Mile on TV. Plenty of religious overtones, as it's about a big black guy who is wrongly put on death row, and turns out to have healing powers, a la Jesus. Tom Hanks, Michael Clarke Duncan and others. Surprisingly good.