Q-Tip? No thanks, pass the Min Pin.

Pinker, the dog here, is an ear licking fiend. Her tongue is just ear-canal sized and she uses it with gusto. For some reason she prefers the left ear.

Update 11/25

While riding last night I crashed on an icy railroad crossing and hit my hip pretty hard, so that's a bummer. I've been icing and hopefully it will be OK for cyclocross this weekend. I hurts less to ride than walk but I think dismounting/remounting could be bad.
I had lunch just now with my hosts parents who live down the road. It was fun because neither of them speak English so I got some real adventure travel sign language practice. Of course this is sign language lite, because half their words are like English with an odd accent: I is Ik, good sounds like houd, street is straat and so on. It's almost worse that I am familiar with German because the Dutch pronunciation is much closer to English. ST is pronounce the same as English, W and V is the same and the vowels all have pretty much the same shape in the mouth. The sentence order or structure is similar to German though, so I feel like if I can learn the accent and a few words and put into German structure I'll be speaking Dutch, easier said than done.
For Lunch we ate boiled potatoes, creamed cheesy leeks and hamburgers that come wrapped in bacon, pretty hearty fare. Like a good mother, Annamarie force fed me. It was great. I brought an apple pie that I whipped up. Apparently our taste buds are compatible, they liked it. The man of the house is very nice. He has a forklift garage in the back yard. The difference between an American guy with a forklift garage and a Belgian with same is that the American probably drives a forklift and the Belge drives a Mercedes, literally. The house and garage were very neat, and the mini forklift on a pole in the front yard was pretty cool.
I'm gonna go try out my new hip implant, heh, I should get some rehab tips grampa. Wish me luck.

Victims of Racial Profiling: The Belgians

I think it's time I address all the emails I've been getting about the accuracy of stereotypes and the "hotness" of the assorted European peoples. I will be posting on this subject occasionally, we'll start today with the Belgians. Let's get this out of the way first: the French have big, weird noses. Not all of them are large or exotic, but when they are... wow.
So far I've spent time in Paris, Lyon, and Gent. Paris wins the hotness contest, and Belgium doesn't. I spent the evening today in the infield of the track at the Gent Sixday race, so I spent a lot of time face to face with Belgians. This was a good cross section of the general public; there were children, young couples, old men and dolled up/bejeweled ladies. It's easier for me to judge hotness in 'the ladies,' but I did make an effort to grade the gents as well (I made my conclusion with the men quickly, though, when I saw a guy with a Hitler mustache - not hot).
Inbreeding, Diet, Kools:
Like American's, who are on average a pretty hideous breed, I think the appearance of a people is related to lifestyle. In the case of the Belgians there are three prime factors:
Over homogenation - not quite inbreeding, but almost. People here don't move around much, maybe 5 km from their birthplace, family trees look more like family rootballs. Also, other ethnicities aren't in the mix, so people are reeeally white (blinding).
Next, Belgium's most famous food is french fries, so... What isn't so well known is the amazing variety of other fried stuff they eat here. It's well known that Trappist Monks spent their spare time experimenting with fry techniques. As the Flemish saying goes, "Brew beer for safe measure, fry everything else for sheer pleasure." There are about a dozen different korndoggish thinks, deep fried hamburgers, shishkebab. You name it, they fry it. So people look sort of deep fried, you know, puffy and oily.
Smoking is legal in bars that don't serve food, so if you go out, you get to smoke along with everyone else. As everyone knows, smokers are uglier.
In conclusion, my informal survey has developed this description of the Belgians I've seen: deep fried / smoked white mystery meat.

Update 11/23

I'm in Belgium, Deinze specifically. It's a little town 10 miles away from gent.



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I went for my first ride in Belgium today, it was way too cold and crappy, so I didn't ride far. It's been snowing off and on here for the last two days, I guess I came just in time.
I did ride the Koppenberg today, a famous "climb" in the tour of flanders (a prestigious race). ( http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Koppenberg ) It's not what I would call a climb, more like a steep hill, but it is paved with cobblestones and there was snow on it, so it was challenging.
This evening I went to the final day of the 'Gent Segsdag,' or sixday. A Sixday is a kind of track cycling event, they're held indoors throughout the winter, riders are paired into teams and they compete for about 5 hours a day for 6 days. There's crappy music, beer, fries, fried meats and fried ?!?. (See more at http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Six-day_racing ). I saw the final three hours. A local won so the audience was stoked. Eric Zabel, a well known German sprinter retiring this year, was there. It was cool to see him, he looks, well, exactly like Eric Zabel.

Thank You

I would like to show gratitude to the people who have made this trip possible:

- My Family
- Brenna, Lynn Twin Racing, Abby the Dog
- Michele and Richard Taylor and their animal refuge (human and canine alike)
- Barack Obama
- Krom, the god of Steel
- Thomas Kincade, Painter of Light/Shit
- Great Lakes Airlines, the only way to fly! literally, if you wanna go to Moab or Silver City
- The Bosse-Platiere Family, my French Connection
- Koen and Stephanie or Deinze, and their little dog Pinker, too
- Dr. Seth Hosmer, DC, CSCS, DDS, MSNBC. He's a Business Man, a Family Man and a Ladies Man
- Rick Crenshaw, the Great Eagle Spirit/Fugitive Trucker
- Donald Reeb, Aaron Coker, Kyle Valenta, Chris Hamilton, Chris Shepard. Are there more people on the team?
- The Eugene folks, Chris Swan, Kerri Miles, Kennetron 5000, MattRitzow, Geoff Huber, Gilad Gozlan, everyone at PAUL"S BWOL, the CAT. Some day you'll all make it out of there, just keep the dream alive.
- The McDonald Clan, Emma, for all the impromptu floor space
- Kevin and James, why do you guys wanna have so much fun on your bikes?

I Better Get Some Vitamin D

I'm in Belgium, I arrived last night by train and was picked up by my couchsurfing.com host Koen (said 'coon'). It's a five hour train ride from Lyon to Gent, with one change in Brussels Midi Station. Koen lives in Deinze, 20 minutes west from Gent, with his fiancee Stephanie. I found them on couchsurfing.com, were both new to couchsurfing, me as a surfer, they as surfees. Koen in a software installer for a company that makes inventory tracking programs and Stephanie teaches English, History, and Religion to 12-15 year old Belgians. Also in the house is Pinker, meaning Blinker or turn signal, a year old miniature Pinscher. She's very sweet, doesn't bark, and, in case of a water shortage, will gladly tongue bathe any and everyone. She's energetic, to say the least.

Beginning in northern France things started to change, people around me were speaking English, French and Dutch, which for the uninitiated, sounds like a crusty brogueish Scot sailor impersonating a Nazi with salty marbles in his mouth. But they're a gentle breed.

It's a good time to be in Flanders. The Gent Kuipke (Cup) Sixday track race is happening, Zabel's there. Veldrijden, or Cyclocross, is going full swing. To get a taste of that charming Flemish Dutch and to see grown men getting silly in leotards I highly recommend www.crosstube.net. Also very exciting is the arrival of the first winter storm, due this weekend. I know I've told some you that I looked forward to a warm winter this year, but there really is something pleasant about violent hail whipping your tear stained cheeks. I think what I was missing in Eugene wasn't the sun, it was the wind ripping across the North Sea and smacking me in the face. But seriously folks, this looks like a rough place to spend a winter riding a bike outside.

Bike Shop

I'm in Lyon now, got my bikes together, just been riding around, checking things out. I have mixed feeling about France and it's people. The terrain is similar to Eugene's, except without evergreen vegetation.
I got to go to some bike shops today, I say got to because it's more of a privilege than a right here, or perhaps just a rare opportunity. Bike shops are closed Mondays, yesterday was Armistice Day, so today I got to go to the bike shops. Hours are a bit different, too - open 9:00 to 12:00, lunch, open 2:00 to 5:30. I guess that means if you work in a bike shop you work 6.5 hours per day... sign me up. And, you don't even have to help customer's. If you do see one you like and decide to help them, you don't need to be very helpful. I kept reciting my list of stuff I wanted, I tried fast, slow, I over enunciated, I even tried in a very French accent, but to no avail. They just just looked at me and said something in french that sounded like 'Ayee doan sbeeg eenglay'... it may have been an insult. I told them I don't speak french.
The good news is that I have learned, through a marathon of pantomime and gymnastics, that there will be a group-ride meeting at noon at a bike shop tomorrow. First the three shop boys formed a pace line on stationary bikes, representing a group ride. They made it clear that one must wear loud colors, preferably magenta or another purple based florescent (luckily I brought mine). Next, they produced a calender and pointed to tomorrow, clear enough, but at what time? Gymnastics! Two of the boys formed a circle by standing in crescent shapes back to back, heel to heel, hands clasped behind their heads and bowing their middles outward. The third and shortest boy, a dwarf in fact, donned a beard and robe (father time) and stood between the circle boys and showed time with his arms as hour and minute hand. I'll post the picture soon, it was amazing.