Dec. 20/08

Canada House in Holland #1

 

Hello fellow champions,

 

Well after a two hour delay aboard the plane in Chicago and eight hour plane ride, I finally arrived in the Amsterdam airport. Upon arrival I was met by heavy fog, and by heavy fog I mean; don’t go out side because, for one, you can’t see ten feet, so your wasting your time and two, you’d just get wet from the air. But luckily it was very warm compared to the -30o  temperatures I was had enjoyed back home.

I was picked by Tim Heemskerk, this project’s organizer and my coach, and I hopped aboard the Jan Terpstra team VW bus, which is an amazing unit….. I’ve never seen and six speed manual van that gets up to 140 kph in a very short period of time. This alarming speed is, by the way, not out of the ordinary, it is actually quite passive compared to the formula one style every other driver on the road seems to use. I found my self grabbing for the ‘holy s*** handle’ on more than one occasion. Eventually we arrived at our place in Drachten (northern Holland) and I was finally able to check my pants, as the drive here left some doubt in my mind to the cleanliness on my aforementioned pants….. calm down, they were clean!

For the rest of the day I kept trying to sneak off to bed, but Tim wouldn’t stand for it. I had to get over the 7 hour difference jetlag, and get used to this time zone. I also got all my new equipment that day! This obviously perked me right up. I got two, carbon Ridley X-Night’s, with Campy Chorus and 4ZA carbon tubulars. So I was quite happy with those, but unfortunately, just looking them doesn’t get the job done. That night we went to the team manager’s house for dinner and enjoyed a great meal of sauerkraut, potatoes and some type of mysterious meat… it was good!

 Now, on to more important issues, but a lot less enjoyable:  My first race is this Sunday close to where we live, and then it’s off to the World Cup in Heusden-Zolder, NED on Dec. 26th. Then a Super Prestige in Diegem, BEL on Dec. 28 and finally were off to a GVA race in Loenhout, BEL on Dec. 30. But then we get a little break to celebrate New Years, which I’ve been told is quite an event in Holland. Stay tuned for stories about that!

You can catch clips of these races on www.crosstube.net, stay updated at the Facebook group, Canada House in Holland and find any other info on the Jan Terpstra website: www.cyclocrossteam.nl

 

-over

Big Andrew Thomas