Successful Medical

It's official. My body has been approved to take on the immense challenge of climbing the Alpe d'Huez 6 times in one day. Yesterday I had the Sports Medical test to check overall health, lung function, heart function, fitness, weight, body fat etc.

So, I have been cleared. After going all out in 12 minutes in the exercise test, upping 15 Watts every minute, I gave out at 255 Watts. On average, I can put out 3.5 Watt per kilo. That's such a cool statistic. Apparently it's not enough to get to the top 6 times and the sports physician told me that with these numbers it would be unlikely I would get to the top that many times. Even with training. I still have time though, and am definitely not giving up. Just a few extra miles here and there. Keeping up with the new training Teun is setting up for me. Tomorrow morning, first on the bike to the fitness (45 minutes) then training (2 hours) that should count for something, should have some effect. The more I think about people telling me I won't make it or it can't be done, the more I feel challenged to prove them wrong!!!! Maybe, I just realized, it was the best pep talk the guy could have given me effectively LOL!

sun o sun

Why we think in Holland that great weather is sunny weather, I don't know. Well... what I mean to say is, actually it would be more effective to define rainy and windy weather as good weather. Or great weather. Because that's actually the weather we have most often. We would be able to enjoy more of the days that way. Would it work? Would be cool though :D

Nah... didn't think so either...

Cho-Co-Late!

Chocolate is your friend. My friend. Or obsession. Or whatever. I just sort of kinda like it sometimes. Whenever I'm in a big city, I try and find out where the best bakers and the best chocolatiers are. Here's some Düsseldorf, some Paris and some Utrecht. The jars are beautiful, amazing, addicting guandija's that you can spread on your toast or a slice of bread or... just take a spoon and scoop it out. It's amazingAMAZING! The tin box in the middle is actually from Paris, Jaques Genin (Whom we now call affectionately "Jaques Ganache") as this place is packed with people, waiting patiently in line to either drink a cup of hot chocolate, tea or coffee with a very special treat or to get their hands on amazing bonbons, filled with all sorts of ganaches. Different spices, fruits, chocolates... They just taste amazing, more amazing and most amazing. Also, the different flavors that you can find in the supermarkets of different countries is interesting to try out. Sometimes one bite is enough to know you need more of that particular flavor. That you are going to eat this in one or maximum two days. The upside to that is that there are actually good things hiding in chocolate. That's to say, if you buy the right kind, the kind that actually doesn't have "sugar" listed as it's first ingredient. So that's why I'm checking out all different kinds of shops in different cities and countries. Next stop: Bruges, Belgium The chocolate line. Anyone every snorted chocolate? It's possible and supposedly VERY intense!!!!

Lance Armstrong

At this moment I've got a poster on my door. It shows Lance Armstrong on a golden bike, on the Champs Elysees with the line "it takes two to win six". A shimano poster. I'm not sure about letting it hang there as a reminder of something that could have been a perfect story but that a perfect story is highly unlikely, so there's no need or use in striving for it, or to just take it down, tear it up and throw it away. I do know I will still be wearing my LiveStrong bracelet. But now only one at a time. 

More than enough has been said already about Lance Armstrong. We all know what he did. And I guess it's only fair to say: we all know what actually the entire peleton has done. Let's be honest. Professional cyclists doped. Period. 

On the off chance there's one out there that didn't... Good for you, you won the Tour de France and most likely a lot of other races! Ask Lance to send out some shirts, he's still got some hanging around. He's now dedicating his life to telling everyone he's sorry and making it up to people. You've been a victim of his defiance and cheating. You earned those shirts!

On the more likely possibility that actually all professional cyclists that competed in the Tour de France doped... Well... I'd say Lance was still the best, wasn't he? And ... again... on the off chance that Lance indeed didn't dope on the tours he did after his come back, and came in 3rd, he might actually have been able to win without the dope, several times in the period he won his 7 tours. Right? Says enough about the culture in cycling I'd say. So yeah... He's a great sportsman, but definitely just a tiny bit twisted. His life long ban from professional sports strikes me as a bit extreme. He's not got a very likable character if you see how he treated people. Definitely he deserves to get punished. But given the fact we "know" that "everyone" doped, how is it he's so different? He lied but so did almost everybody else. Everybody else until they got caught themselves. The difference is he survived cancer and continued to be successful, he won and became a world wide icon. Now he still is a world wide icon, but in a very different light. Let's hope he can give us back something of what he took. 

Did he bribe the UCI? Maybe. I don't know. Right now, it doesn't really matter any more. I don't trust professional cyclists anymore. Not at this moment. I actually don't really trust any professional sports anymore. At this moment. I do hope cycling survives all this sh*t, because it's a great sport. But at this moment, I think people riding for fun, cycling the roads with a group, having little competitions, riding to raise money, are way more real. Tougher, harder, cooler and more interesting. Let's get our bikes out and ride. Enjoy the feel, enjoy the moment that we are in fact living. 

Flow

Sometimes it happens. Just... sometimes. It's the reason I ride my bike. Sometimes you get into a flow. No matter what the weather, no matter what the music playing, no matter the wind, people, traffic, things just come together perfectly and make you feel deliciously free. It's rare. It happens only once in a while. Like 3 percent of the time. But they are so worth it! Today I only rode for an hour, but it was definitely like that.

Since christmas we haven't really had any sun any more. Weather was pretty warm for the time of the year and it was either raining or drizzling, making everyone feel a little bit grumpy and a little bit out of sorts. People got sick and got colds on a massive scale which didn't help. On Thursday the sun came through for the first time and you heard a collective sigh of relief from the entire Dutch population. It came with some colder weather -5 to -2 degrees Celsius, but that's definitely okay if it means some more sunlight.

one man's death

"A single man's death is a tragedy; 
a million deaths is a statistic"

It's said to be a quote of Stalin. There might be evidence the saying already existed before that in some form though. Who knows. It's the truth though, no matter how horrific it may seem and how cruel, crazy and malicious it is for people to say this when they actually use it as a good reason or opportunity to commit mass murder. 

It's so true though. But I've been chewing on this one and after today I understood why. Why it must be like this, it has to be like this. There is no other way.

Today Elian and me went to the farewell of a sister of one of our students. Forever 21. However beautiful and appealing the idea might be, we may all rejoice in the fact that we are not and will not be "forever 21". In one hour I got an insight in the person who had been, her ability to enjoy every minute she had been given and the influence she had on people around her, the emptiness, the sense of loss she was leaving behind. A family torn with grief. All in all It was a very beautiful ceremony not only giving insight into her personality, but also in her fighting spirit and in the bravery of her as well as her entire family.

And then it struck me. This has to be why this saying is just so right and why it HAS to be like that. Every person's loss is a tragedy. Not only for the person struggling, fighting to live, but also for the people around them. It's an enormous horror, a devastation and you don't wish it upon anyone. No one. We were at the farewell and it hurt. If this is how one person's death feels like, the amount of people dying from cancer every hour, every day, every month and every year.... There's a world of pain. It's incomprehensible. It would effectively destroy you if you would be able to feel all that hurt, that devastation, that pain. It's too much. "It's a self preservation thing". 

So if we could see cancer as a person. As a dictator... His death toll would surpass all the greatest! I'll give him (yes, I made cancer a he, is that wrong?) that he seems to be indifferent to age, race, gender and wealth. But what would we be doing then, if this were a person going about crazily, randomly killing off people? Would we bring back military service, send sons and daughters into battle? Or would we accept it's ubiquitous presence and say "it's too big for us" or "we have been fighting too long and too often already". I don't think so. It doesn't numb down. We would carry on and end like David against Goliath. We have to. That's why we're riding our bikes up that bloody mountain. A looooot of times in one day. With a looooot of people. And when we do this with enough people having our backs, it will make a difference, it will count and in the end we will make it.

Happy holidays!

Finally Christmas is almost there. It means we get to take some rest after weeks of life that go mindblowingly fast and days that have waaaaaaay too little hours in them. Too little to be able to train. So no training update whatsoever. The entire month of December, we haven't set foot in the gym. Oh yeah, Elian went for an hour but was completely exhausted and didn't make it much longer than that.  Elian's knee is still not doing what it's supposed to do, so after a visit to the physiotherapist and the orthopedic surgeon, she has to take 4 weeks of rest. FOUR! That's like... quite a feat for her. Four weeks of no training, taking the easy way everywhere in order to decrease the stress on her knee... it's like a mental training. Which is good as well, but not quite the way you want it to be.

In December we managed to get our first little bit of money together. It's not quite the capital we're looking for, but it's a start. It went quite different than how we thought it would go. The Christmas markets we were at weren't really well visited or weren't real Christmas markets, but more flea market meeting christmas market or neighborhood parties. When we thought things couldn't get worse... they got worse. Every time! We actually had posters printed to tell people where the money they spend would go to. Obviously not from all people, but there were several people that were pretty tired of the idea of spending money somewhere and their money going to a charity. Taking down the posters actually ensured us of more interested people, not thinking 'oh what kind of crap do I need to spend my money on now to support another charity' but looking with a more open mind at what we were actually selling and seeing it were actually good and professional products. So in the last day we were actually seriously selling. We've now got 10% of our goal.

*learned to take panorama pictures....*

Yesterday we went to an actual serious christmas markets in Germany. That was very different from what we'd seen in Holland. There were a lot of Christmas stalls, an actual glass blower, crafting christmas ornaments, glühwein drinking people all over the city, people enjoying themselves, little stalls selling roast chestnuts, waffles, curry saucages, wooden figures, lights.... It was christmassy. The only thing we were seriously missing was Father Christmas. There was one in Holland, that definitely had the Christmas spirit and brought a happy and positive note to the market. Just a shame I forgot to take a picture of him. I was planning to, but forgot.

After our two weeks of holiday in which we're not going to do anything for this project, well, other than doing a sports medical test, we are going to sit down and think of some more ways of raising money.

For now to everyone out there: 

Merry Christmas and a happy new year!!!!!