Our plan for today was to head out in the morning for a few hours, visit Michael in Diest, start organizing accommodation for next year and be back in time for the chef at Martijn's restaurant to come over and cook us dinner! We got out of bed at a reasonable hour and had bit of breakfast before we jumped on our bikes and headed for Diest. The weather looked ominous for later but held off as we made our way across town. When we arrived at 'Fietsen Verhayen' we wandered around the shop like usual and filled Michael in on what we'd been up to since we last saw him on Wednesday, including Brad's great form and my latest run in with a car. Michael has a few good contacts with some teams over here so we threw some ideas around and talked bikes. We ended up lurking around the shop for awhile because the back up coffee stop we'd planned to visit in Diest (La Bas isn't open Monday) was also closed, there is something about Monday here; nothing is open! Eventually we said bye to Michael and planned to catch up with him during the week.
Our next stop was a bike shop near Westerlo where Glenn and Tim's friend Bart works. The bike shop has an apartment located above it which we've heard may be possible for us to live in next year when we come over to race the 2012 season. We did a bit of reconnaissance and found the apartment was more than we could have dreamed of with a big kitchen, bathroom, several large rooms and a loft! The owners said they'd be happy to have us stay there and we'd keep in contact over the next month or so to organize rent and what finalize dates. After we thanked the guys at the shop the weather took a turn for the worse on our way back to Mol. Matt and Glenn kept riding to get some extra kilometres and throw a few efforts in while Brad and I made our way home (Brad recovering from 2 great days of racing and my body recovering from the crash trauma). We'd discovered a very good Pastry / Lunch bar chain called Panos, so Brad and I parked up there and had a beautiful fresh salad roll while the rain really started to pour down. With nowhere to be for another few hours we were happy to sit and wait for the rain to stop before riding the last kilometre home.
Martijn and is friend 'The Chef' arrived not long after we got home and took off again to pick up groceries for tonight's dinner. I had to send a few emails in regards to my bike insurance so that kept me occupied for awhile until Glenn and Matt returned from their ride (soaking wet). We cleaned up a bit, put some wash on and hung around until Martijn and the chef returned. Suddenly we were evacuated from the kitchen to let him do his thing! On the menu for tonight was seafood linguine (layman terms) with fresh bread rolls and a beautifully cooked fillet of fish. Just before dinner was ready we all made our way downstairs to set the table and wait eagerly on the couch. The Chef called us into the kitchen and we took a few scoops of the linguine out of the massive pot and took a piece of fish each. Amongst several other secret ingredients the linguine contained fresh prawns, scallops, tomato, fennel and capsicum. We all enjoyed a glass of red wine over dinner and sat down to a beautiful meal. Every one of us practically licked our plates clean and made several trips back to the kitchen to grab some more. The pot was huge so we actually have some left over for tomorrow (first in best dressed).
It took forever to wash all the dishes but with a 4 man Arbitrage congo line we eventually made our way through it. Glenn took off after dinner to go meet with Michael and begin organizing Matt and my contracts for next year. We thanked the chef and Martijn as they headed out also to go have some drinks at a local bar. The 3 of us left at the house made our way upstairs and put a movie on to unwind before bed. Tomorrow's race is in Booischot-Pijpelheide which is just around the corner from where we had our first race and very likely the same course as Brett, Glenn and I raced on last year. As always we hope you have your fingers crossed for us and we look forward to keep you updated as soon as possible!
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