D&F 4/28/25
This 'letter is sending a day late because I forgot that April ends in a few days. Since I last sent you a missive I've been busy going to race and ride around Belgium, and continuing to train 12 hours a week on the bike. All the work is paying off, as the riding in Europe felt great, and I've gotten a ton of personal records since returning. Highlights from my trip include:
- Delicious, inexpensive sandwiches
- Inexplicably California-like weather
- Good beer
- New friends
- Surviving the cobbles of Paris Roubaix without injury (and a pretty fast time)
- Seeing some of the coolest pros race in person - Riding from Belgium to France and the Netherlands without noticing we'd crossed a border
- Meeting and riding with Johan Museauw
- Hanging with the Escape Collective crew
I don't spend much time in Europe, as the flights tend to be longer than ones to Japan, with less chance to speak a language I'm confident in, but after this trip to Belgium (and a bonus day in Denmark) I can't wait to go back. For cycling, Europe is super fun, especially when the weather behaves. I'm curious about going back again soon to see some of the Tour de France, Giro Di Italia, or even next year for the Ronde van Vlanderen. If you see me in person, I'm going to show you photos of me ripping around West Vlaams. Next up? A trip to the desert for a wedding.
Links
- One of the wilder days of my trip included a lot of sightseeing of gravesites, trenches, and hospitals from WW1. At the end of the day, we listened to the last post at the Menin Gate. I didn't spend much time in school learning about WW1, outside of the trench warfare being horrific, and the introduction of mustard gas, but now that I've been to one of the most horrible battlefields, I have a lot more understanding. My takeaway is that war is awful and stupid, and we should do everything in our power to resolve differences and build relationships between nations without it.
- The city we stayed in, Kortrijk, was also pretty sick. In addition to having an excellent coffee shop next to our hotel, they have a monument to one time they killed a bunch of French soldiers, a rare-enough event they make a big thing out of it. It was a wild thing to see while being led around by new pal Dane Cash.
- Dane also led our group on an unofficial tour of cathedrals in Bruges. I was raised protestant in churches that looked more like offices or strip malls than gothic masterpieces, but even I can appreciate a wild Catholic building. Do they actually have the blood of Christ or the bones of various saints in them? Who knows? It makes a good story though. Major Dark Souls vibes all over the city of Bruges.
Closing
Next month I'll post about something other than Belgium, but to be honest, I'm still vibrating with stoked-ness from my trip. I never expected to vibe so strongly with a sleepy farmland-strewn country, but here we are. It's likely my impression of the country was strongly colored by all the cycling and pro-cycling exposure while I was there though. On a bike, I saw so much of the countryside—way more than I would have if I had driven around—that I felt like a got a distinct feel of a few cities, and even the differences in vibe between West Vlaams, Northern France, and the southern bit of the Netherlands (which we rode to in a headwind). The attitude of the people I talked to in Belgium was also understated and chill—something I really dug. If you get a chance to visit, especially with a bicycle, I cannot recommend Kortijk, Ourdenarde, and Bruges enough. Now, I'm back to my latest obsession: Blue Prince. Until next month, get some sun and spend some time with yourself, space cowgirls~