Picking up the Spoils

Usually, I take the Chain Stay "clunker" bike to the train station, hop on the train from Oudenaarde to Ghent St. Peters, then take the bus to the university and finally walk from the bus stop to the lab. This has been taking about 60-70 min. Today I decided to ride my bike to work along the N60 highway, which is the most direct way, about 24 km and it took 45 min. This 90 km/h traffic route has a dedicated bike lane on the right side with a 2 meter "empty lane" left of that than 2 traffic lanes. Needless to say I feel very safe cycling here and it will be hard to go back to cycling on Hwy 15 or Hwy 2 when I return to Kingston. I didn't take a picture of this but here's just a common example of a bike lane on a major road with a barrier in between.





On my way home I decided to go back along the canal. It's a bit longer but more scenic. I decided to stop off at Asper-Gavere where the Super Prestige CX race was on Sunday to see if I could ride the course. The course was in the midst of being "disassembled". There was garbage everywhere and a crew of about 50 guys cleaning up the mess. Nonetheless, I rode around the course and got to feel what the pros were up to.

The Spoils from the race











Below is the picture of the 90 degree right turn up a nearly 2 foot ramp from a long straightaway on the bottom part of the course. I got up to 42 km/h and wasn't even forcing it. I'm sure Kevin Pauwels, Stybar and Nys were doing 50+ along here during the race.

On my way home in Oudenaarde I stopped at a few bike shops to check out the gear. Surprisingly, there are nearly no CX bikes on display; mainly commuter bikes, nice road bikes, kids bikes and some mountain bikes. One of the places builds custom made CX Lindor bikes (Lindor is the name of the shop). Back at the Chain Stay, Belle keeps us all company looking for handouts of food, foraging in our rooms or under the table for crumbs and scraps.