Day 14 - Martijn's Birthday

Written by Stephen Hall with Glenn Harris, Matt Irvine & Brad Robson

With a few sore bodies following the Tremelo kermesse last night we opted for a bit of a sleep in and didn't wake til after 9.30am. Eventually we had a quick bite to eat and were out the door on the road to Diest. The weather was beautiful so we were all happy to take a seat outside of La Bas and enjoy the sunshine. Stijn took our standard order (we have been craving a 'Chocolate Coffee' ever since we missed out on Monday) with Brad also selecting a Quiche from the menu. The coffee was an absolute treat and Brad loved the Quiche. Whenever the bustling cafe wasn't too busy we would chat with Stijn and some of the other staff including his wife Brenda who is coming to watch us race in Rummen tomorrow. We didn't have much on for the day so we sat at La Bas for another 20min or so before we picked ourselves up and rolled around the corner to Michael's bike shop.

Michael made us an espresso and told us he'd been trying to get in contact with us for a few days now but Glenn's mobile has been offline. We hung around the shop and caught up for 30min or so, chatting about races as well as mine and Matt's plans to race for Belgian teams next year. Customers came in occasionally so we wandered around the shop and checked out his Velos Deluxe bikes. Matt was blown away by a Campagnolo Super Record group set on sale for only 1299 euro! We took down Michael's number and promised to catch up with him for dinner/drinks before we leave on the 12th of September. Somehow we made our way back to the road we came in on and set off for Mol. Only ten minutes later we bumped into Craig Johns riding the opposite direction. He turned around and joined us as we rode back into Mol (lucky we had him to guide us!). Craig didn't have much on the agenda for today either so we stopped and had a coffee around the corner from home.

When we got home both Glenn and Martijn were having an afternoon nap on the couch following Martijn's birthday celebrations from the night before. Martijn woke up soon after and took off to set up for his dinner party around the corner at his parent's place while the rest of us cleaned up then went into Mol to pick up a present for his birthday (we told him we were going grocery shopping). We searched a few shops but eventually settled on an Ikea like homes store were we found a very modern styled lamp and a clock for his house. It was starting to get chilly so we swung by the house to change before we drove a street away to Martijn's parents place to help set up. The house is located on a large property connected to Martijn's older sister's house. When we arrived most of Martijn's family were already there with a few of his friends yet to arrive. Martijn's parents were hard at work preparing fresh mussels and mouth watering fritz which kept being refilled on the table as we made our way to the bottom of the bowl!

Slowly Martijn's friends began to arrive and joined in eating and drinking at the large table. Martijn had a sophisticated 'keg on tap' set up as well as an iPad which was being passed around connected by WiFi to the sound system across the yard. Both houses and the property were amazing inside and out. Everyone thoroughly enjoyed the food and definitely ate their fair share! Their were a wide range of nationalities sitting around the table including Dutch, Belgian, Romanian, Czech and Australian! Lucky for us everyone stuck to English for most of the night so we could keep up with conversation. With the 140km Classic in Rummen set for tomorrow we made it an early night and got dropped back at Martijn's before the drinks really started to flow! The race kicks off at 4.00pm and should go for just over 3 hours. Typically a classic consists of one big lap (approx 70-80km) before finishing the remainder of the distance around a small circuit (8-10km). Winning a classic is very prestigious and is worth several hundred euros, at least 150 riders are expected to line up tomorrow. We're all very excited and can't wait to fill you in on how the race unfolded.