Day 16 - Back to Basics

Written by Stephen Hall with Brett Schnitzerling and Glenn Harris

After a few days of feeling down following the 'Retie Incident' we went back to basics setting our alarms for 7.30 and out the door on the bike by 8am. We enjoyed a beautiful fresh Belgium morning and rode a solid 70km before stopping in Geel for a Cecemel. Brett found the love of his life at the cafe in the form of a French Bulldog. Our good luck ran out when the weather suddenly turned on us halfway through our second lap. As seen in the photo we could see the thick black clouds but we had no where to go but straight through it. We fought our way through the cloud and were almost through to the other side when the rain started to come down hard. Brett clicked into his 11 cog and started to wind it up preparing to time trial through to the other side. I followed suit and clicked down through my gears until a loud crunch and a snap stopped me dead in my tracks. My brand new durace chain dragged behind me on the Belgian footpath like a snake.

Glenn had decided to sleep in so our personal Garmin was 30km away leaving Brett and I with no idea how to find a bike shop. We had pretty much settled on the idea that Brett would push me the entire way home when a man riding a townie stopped to help us. In broken english he told us of a bike shop only 10km away. We were very grateful for his help and Brett was a little relived. He still had to push me up the road for 20mins around pedestrians, up hills, through round abouts and over cobbles but he managed and we arrived at the bike shop sometime later. The mechanic was very helpful replacing my chain and tuning my gears in about 5 minutes. 40 euro later we were back on the bike and heading home. Here in Belgium the majority of moped riders actually commit to the footpath instead of the road. We managed to sit in the slip stream of one for about 20 minutes before he took a wild right hand turn and almost sent us sprawling into the canal. By now the rain was bucketing so we put our head down and bum up and time trialled the remainder of the way home.

Our kits and bikes were filthy as usual so we threw them in the wash, showered and changed then head over to the super market for another shop. We actually remembered our shopping list this time so we bought some of the things we kept forgetting. After a beautiful chicken salad roll for lunch we sat down and watched a pro kermesse as it was happening on the other side of Belgium. An Australian got up for a fantastic sprint victory so we were all pretty excited about the result. Glenn took off for his training ride while Brett and I put a movie on and had some sleep intervals. By the time dinner rolled around they replayed the kermesse so we watched it again as we stocked up on tuna pasta in preparation for tomorrows race. The 120km race in Meerhout is run over a 6.3km circuit only 15mins drive from our apartment. We have checked the race time 5 times and are raring for a good performance in our 6th race since we have arrived. After some tight finishes we are really looking forward to the race with a beautiful weather forecast and fresh legs Meerhout could be the day we pull it off.