It's that time...

To head home... I started packing up my stuff today so I can leave bright and early tomorrow morning. I'm bummed to be leaving all these great people I've met here, I feel like I now have family in Belgium. At the same time though, I've been away from family back home and my girlfriend for a while. I am really looking forward to taking a little holiday to California with the Girlfriend to race nationals and visit with some family.

I did my last race on Saturday and didn't exactly finish the day in the manner I was hoping to... It started off well, with instigating a break that stayed away for several laps. Then things got a bit harder when we got brought back, the counter attack came right away and I was still redline and couldn't go with it. I was hanging on for dear life in the break, I couldn't really recover from the initial attack to get the gap. So... I was in the second group which started to break apart and pretty soon became the third group. For whatever reason, my legs just went from feeling great to bad after that attack and would not come around. Things were looking like they were going to come back together between the second and third group when I took a spill in one of the corners. Small farm road+dirt+struggling= biting the dust... Yea, I slid out on the dirt... It was my fault, I wasn't paying full atttention and hit the dirt on the inside causing my front wheel to wash out from underneath me, sending me sliding into a cornfield... I got back on my bike, but the derailer was pretty bent and I couldn't get it to stay in gear... No chasing, I packed it in, got patched up, then went and hung with Jan and his family and watched the finish.

Colt, one of the guys I race with at MSU, was there and riding pretty well. He made that first break with me and was pushing the pace. He planned on doing all 3 days of this series of races, but after he finished the race (in 20th) he cruised into a bakery to grab some rice cakes when someone took off with his bike... I saw this older guy walk past me with his bike, then hop on it and start riding towards the cycling center's van... I figured, maybe they had someone there helping them out and didn't think anything of it. It turned out the dude took off with the bike... No good... Hope you find you a bike Colt!

alright, that's it for now... gotta go to the national team house to pack up my bike...

J signing off...