This is exclusive, Tim has made a new discovery. When the T.V says 60% chance of rain…that actually translates to ‘it will rain 60% of the time during through out the day. Not, a chance of rain, like your led to believe. Thanks to Patagonia to giving us all our rain gear this year, Belgium would have cracked me long ago with out it. Our main man Stu from cyclocrossworld.com has arrived and is in the building! Thats a nice feeling, having someone so meticulous working on the bikes and equipment is awesome. Anyone who’s had someone as good as Stu working on bikes knows… a mechanic that knows each riders little particular things like how the hoods should be angled, making sure the tension is perfect on the brakes and having just the right amount of pull on the brakes, all those things make such a difference. He’s that good and I owe a lot to him for his effort this year. It’s always harder to write a good update when you get your can kicked all over France and Belgium like I did on Sunday at the world cup. I’ve been training hard and I know where I’m at, I’m not going to focus on one result over the weekend, I’m more concerned with getting a good result in Italy in two weeks and I think thats going to be the objective for the coming days and I’m on track for that. Basically I’ve been riding and training which has been keeping me busy. The weather in Belgium at this time of the year isn’t luxurious as you can imagine. It’s been raining a lot and today there were 100k winds coming over from the UK today. I managed to get out for a while, but it took a lot out of my tank just fighting the wind. Last night Tim, Lyne, Stu and I went into Brussels, we hit the english book store and got some good reading material for the next cpl weeks. Also migghhht have ate a waffle and even found Mr. Jelly Belly at ‘chocopolis’ in Brussels! I’ve given away plently of Jelly Belly’s in Belgium but I hadn’t actually seen them for sale, so it was a surprise for me to see the man over here, he’s everywhere! Lyne even actually had some sport beans with her and we showed those to the owner, but he didn’t think Belgians would enjoy them! He’s crazy, of course they’d like them! They are delicious! Last week we headed out to lunch with our man David from Ridley. He let me take a mountain bike from a photo shoot he had just finished up. Word on the street is that Ridley just developed an extremely light carbon single speed mtb. As for my experience, It was cool to be back on the mtn. bike. It was a blast from the past. Check this beast out. SRAM equipt’d, rock shox, the whole shabanga bang. The trails out here in the forests of Belgium are cool, the town actually cuts out all the brush in the forests here. No thorn bushes and old trees layin’ on the ground, its like a manicured forest, makes it look cool when your riding, kept me entertained thats for sure. Alright, looking forward to getting out there this weekend and I hope I can report back with some better results and some good stories! Seeya!