Right, lets see. Monday was fairly uneventful bar the incident with the Chicken Curry.. Ask Hannah how her Dutch is coming along, and what "Kip Kurrie" could possibly mean?
Tuesday proved to set the trend for the rest of the week with an eventful and memorable ride, and not the good kind of memorable. We found ourselves lost. again. in the cats and dogs. and 123,123,123 windmill speed. sigh. But this time we were lead astray by the Club trainer on the Club ride. But! "Wait! Theres more! We know what to do in this situation!! We know how to become un-lost! We are indeed fimiliar with this scenario." Needless to say we are significanlty more popular than we were this time last week.
The nice man let us into his tractor and took us for ride. On Wednesday we set a record for the slowest trip down the Belkmerweg. We saw Cousin Engle in his tractor in the feilds, and he let us take it up and down so we could see the flowers from a different veiw. The best bit was cranking up the Shania Twain that occupied the stereo. There may or may not be several (10's) of photos of flowers heading towards facebook. Continuing on the photo frenzy we found a Bunny Home. We punctured (Suprise Suprise) and it happened to be next to a wee feild home to 15 little, and some not so little bunnies!! Awwwwwww. *in high pitched tones*. That and a base ride sumes up the day.
Thursday we discovered what hard workers the Dutch are. We drove 2 hours South and then enjoyed a well deserved break. After an hour we actually began the actual work. We had the job of peeling all the white frost cloth from the feilds of lillies.. easy. Surely? In the same way doing reps til failure up Te Mata Peak would be easy. Joy. But after 2 hours of hard work, well Hannah and I and the Polish man worked hard.. you could use the term "spectate" appropriately to describe the input of the others... After an hour we were refreshed again and ready for another 2 hours before our hour break to prepare us for the 2 hours home..
Hannah made the big mistake of lending Ashleigh her Cappos on Friday. Lets just say, I-BEAT-HANNAH-IN-A-SPRINT! HECK-YEAH-I-DID! The perfect end to this day was dinner at the neighbours. We had a beautiful meal with some beautiful people. We learnt that the house was an old farm house from back in the day, back in the day being in fact 1640.
Saturday was another mission bike clean, sand and more sand.. We also took the bikes to the shop, where Marco looked after us so well. Setting some high standards for you Hub Boys! We trucked ourselves to the weekly mens crit, literally trucked. (We have been drving a very big car!) We made it to the race but not the sign on, thanks to a puncture (another) incident between the car park and the start line. After 3 laps of pleading with the jury we were allowed to jump in! Yus! Althoguh we were told we had to stay in the back of the race. We learnt very quickly how hard it is to jump into a race with the men at 45km/h without a warm up. Not that it mattered to Ashleigh, a can of beans would have been faster than her that day, but at least she did as she was told. Hannah was a rebel. She tucked herself into the front third of the bunch, causing much controversy and uproar in the back of the pack. This is Ashleighs' translation of the drama..
Upset Rider: "They shouldn't be able to race! They missed the start"
Good Guy: "It's ok, let them race"
Upset Rider: "No, why should they be allowed to race when they missed the start"
Good Guy: "Let them race, they are English"
Upset Rider: "No they are not English, They do not sound English"
Good Guy: "Well, they are American then. Just let them race. They are Dames, what's the problem??"
Upset Rider: *Attacks*
Sunday we found ourselves at Ronde van Noord Holland. They planned the course so well, managing to fit the 80 starters on an 800m course including cobbles, 2 bridges, 3 speed bumps, 6 corners and a bit of a hill in the circuit. Ashleigh raced like the beans from the previous day had been thrown on the floor and were now in the bargain bin. After being run into a barrier on a corner by a, let's call her a, silly girl to keep it nice. She lost her nerve a bit and rode last wheel eventually being dropped as the bunch split 40 laps into the race. 15 solo laps later she got lapped and was given 34th in the results. Not a bad TT session. Hannah was armed with the Cappos and smashed the circuit to finish 13th and bring home a 50euro pay day. Woohoo!! Such happy faces. Not a bad interval session.
Sunday night we packed our bags and caught the train to Amsterdam. Where we are crashing for the night before rocking off to Belgium for the week for a change of scenery and some fluent Kiwi. The train was an interesting trip, having insufficent coins we chose to purchase a dicount ticket, despite not having a discount card (we later found out that this was a 70Euro fine each). We also failed to purchase train tickets for our bikes (We later found out that this was a 35Euro fine for each bike).. Fortunatley the clueless forigner card and some more of Ashleigh's perfectly on cue tears were enough to get us out of the fine, so long as we never did it again. So we got off the train and went to get onto another, purchased ligit tickets this time but were assured we could get away nothing for the bikes. HOWEVER just as we were about to get on the train.. Who should appear on the platform? The same ticket checker man! Run! Don't get on the train! Go go! Needless to say we purchased correct tickets and waited for the next train.
So here we are, ready to use our international travel skills, and whisk ourselves off to Belgium. Hope all the training for nationals is going well. GO RAMBLERS!!
Ashleigh and Hannah.
