Day 24 - Seedy Saturday

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

As the saying goes ‘Athletes can’t drink’ and after a big night partying in Mol the whole team would agree with it. We all slept in late and felt like hell when we finally woke. Martijn managed to get us up and out of the house to go visit his parent’s place and go for a swim. It was a particularly warm day here with the temperature reaching 27 degrees.  Martijn’s parents were heading off on a family vacation so we didn’t stay for too long, just splashed around the pool a bit and had a coke. We were all treated when Martijn returned from the house with some cycling memorabilia. Martijn is a good personal friend of Tom Boonen so he had a few jerseys ‘laying around’ including Tom’s silver jersey from the Tour of Qatar (for Glenn to auction back home for charity) and a long sleeved QuickStep jersey with the world bands on the cuff from the 2006 World Championships.

A nearby sandwich bar hosted lunch where we sat down and planned the rest of our day. We made a list of people we have to say goodbye to before we leave. First on the list was Stijn, Brenda and the crew at La Bas so we changed back at the house and were on the road shortly after. Although the very sight of alcohol turned mine and Brad’s stomach the rest of the guys including Stijn enjoyed a bottle of wine over a light meal. Stijn got us to sign an Australian flag he had at the shop so he would remember ‘the crazy Australians.’ Martijn had made plans for us to visit his good friend Gunter’s vintage car yard at 6pm so we eventually had to say our goodbyes. Both Matt and I assured the staff we’ll be back enjoying their coffee first thing April 2012. On our way out of Diest we stopped at Michael’s shop to say thanks for all his help but the shop was busy so we didn’t stay for long.

We relaxed at home for twenty minutes or so before following Martijn to Gunter’s caryard/showroom. Gunter owned the 60,000 euro watch we were playing with yesterday so we knew we were going to be treated by some luxury cars. With an estimated value of over 6 million euro even someone with little interest in cars could appreciate the spectacle. Included in the garage were Ferrari’s (Daytona, 512, 328), Lamborghini (Countach), Mercedes (SL280), Shelby (GT350, GT500) and the main attraction a 1960’s Racing Series AC Cobra (worth between 3-4 million euros). We played around in the cars for awhile and snapped a few photos. Most of us excepting it will probably be the closest we will ever get to 4 million euros!

After the car yard we went out for dinner with Martijn as we have a pretty busy schedule tomorrow and may not get to see each other much before we leave Monday morning. We enjoyed our last meal together joking and telling war stories as the sun set in Mol. Most of us crashed shortly after we got home but we made sure to set our alarms before we slept. 4 simultaneous alarms will be ringing 6am tomorrow for us to get up and pile in the van to go watch Tony Anderson (our team owner) compete in the Masters World Road Race Championships in the French-speaking region of Belgium in town called Stavelot. Following the race we plan to zip over to Rotselaar to visit Wim, clean the team van and pack our bikes. Our flight from Paris leaves at 2pm Monday so we will have to leave very early in the morning to ensure we don’t get caught in any traffic and risk missing our flight. Good luck to the rest of the WA riders we will be cheering on the side of the road with our Australia flag!