This is the story about how a great plan turned into a briljant plan. The great plan was born a couple of weeks ago… the foundation of the plan was found in the following one-liner: “wouldn’t it be great if we could cycle in the sun…”
From that start the plan quickly grew hands and feet: one week, sleep late each morning, nice breakfast, bit of cycling in the afternoon, lunch at a nice terrace in the sun, late afternoon a dip in the pool or ocean, dinner at a nice restaurant or a barbeque with a good bottle of wine… With these ingredients it must be a winning recipe! ;-)
Quite often Bastiaan and I have these kind of plans, but unfortunately it usually doesn’t go beyond the point of a great plan. But as you could guess, or already did guess correctly, not this time! :-)
So this morning the great plan was picked up again, the first little dust whipped off, and this afternoon already success was there!! Our first choice holiday-house just outside St. Tropez on the Cote d’Azur was available, and besides a couple of minor details like payment, it’s ours for the first week of May! :-) Just briljant!! And at the beginning of May the weather must be nice down there! Hopefully nice and sunny with about 25 degrees? Mmmm… doesn’t that sound nice? To make you even more jealous, here are some pictures! ;-)

But!! Don’t be to jealous sweet friends!! As we will also be on a little mission. A mission to find out if this trip will actually be fun. Well, how could it not be… but could it be fun enough to do it again on the end of the summer?!? And then with some more people! So yes, it’s time to ask yourself if you could do with a week in the sun at the end of the summer! :-)

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I have been off for 4 days now. But for the same 4 days I have not been able to sleep later then 06:30 in the morning… my usual time for getting up for work was 06:15, so all bad eyes are on the biological clock. Also because there doesn’t seem much else to turn to… It most definitely is not the end of the world, as if the weather was a bit better, I probably wouldn’t mind starting the day early, but on days like today… where rain and fog don’t make a very appealing combination to go out and have fun, I strongly prefer sleeping some extra hours. And I don’t mind the indoor life so much, but I would prefer the indoor life to start at a reasonable hour…
As a partly experiment I stayed up late the last 2 days, but so far that has not effect what so ever. Well, on sleeping later… It does make me feel quite tired in the evening, but that is just seen and dealt with as a temporary side-effect! ;-) So still searching for the perfect solution here.
It’s a weird thing that biological clock… when working it’s rather handy, as I almost never oversleep my time in the morning, but in the weekend and when having time off like now it’s rather frustrating… I guess eventually mother Time will show up and save the day by fixing the problem with my biological clock. So mother Time. If you are reading this, I am looking forward to your visit and please feel free to hurry! :-)

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Well, we don’t got it yet… but I ordered it today! :-) It’s a race bike. The Koga Miyata RoadWinner. It should be at the bicycle shop next Friday. I can’t wait! My mountainbike is still a great bike, but not ideal when biking in a road race. Last year we did a 100km cycle tour and I borrowed my dad’s race bike, which was great, but he was a straight handlebar… he likes that. I don’t.
So with the race only being 3 weeks away, I had to be quick. And quick I was! :-)
Quite a strange feeling when leaving the bicycle shop, as I never spend so much money on a bike before, but at the same time it’s also very exciting! Next week I will be sitting on a great new bike! Crazy idea! It also gives me great motivation to keep up the training! As now, I can’t blame a bad performance at the Amstel Gold Race on my bike anymore! :-)

RoadWinner	San Marco

Posted in Cycling | 1 Comment »

At the point where all hope seemed gone, the tied has finally turned!! Early February I went a bit wild with the big beautiful front garden plant. A bit to wild maybe. But, I kept holding on to the thought that the “new” plant had all the potential to grow big again! Potential yes, only nothing happened… for a long one and a half month nothing happened. I checked the plant every now and then, but never noticed any improvement what so ever… very disappointing, as I would have been very sad if it would have come to the point where I had to throw the whole plant away as it refused to grow…
BUT! Probably supported by the lovely weather the last week (temperatures up to +18 degrees!) the plant has come alive again!!! Two little new green leaves have broken free from the sand! Ok, maybe not so much yet, but the plant grows again!!! Now we just need time to make it a big beautiful plant again! :-)

Alive again!

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12 days ago the first chick hatched. Today 11 big chickens went to their new home; a nice farm in the countryside. We couldn’t keep them much longer as they were getting way to big! This morning I took the two pictures below and as soon as I removed the cover on top of the aquarium, the chicks started to run and fly! Where they happy I removed the cover? Or were they excited to be on a photo again? :-)
Either way, their first home was really getting to small so now they have a ton of space to play around in!

Getting curious	All eyes on me

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Yes, I am a short timer again! I was told last Monday my contract will be cut a week short. Development went quicker then expected and all of a sudden they have run out of money. Strange, but everybody has been only positive about my contributions the last 6 weeks, so it can’t all be bad. The mad thing is that I still haven’t gotten a contract. Crazy. The English company (let’s call that company “Autumn”) Shell wanted my contract to run through, still hasn’t got me the final contract… It took them 4 weeks to send the initial one, but that one didn’t have the change in a section about timesheets we discussed for almost 2 days… Luckily they have paid my first invoice, so that is at least something. But sadly they forgot to pay the invoice VAT… It’s truely unbelievable I am paying 4% of my fee to the Autumn company for them to only arrange my payments. Customer service don’t seem to be in their dictionary…
But well, just two more days! No new project yet, so I can totally put my focus to getting in shape for the Amstel Gold Race! :-)

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Mysterious. That seems to be the best word I can find. Out of the blue my stomach started aching last Friday afternoon. I didn’t feel bad myself, just a great pain in my stomach… very strange, and very annoying, as it made me cancel the cycling training that was planned on Saturday. As Saturday morning there wasn’t much improvement. I was actually so bad at the time that I was seriously considering not going to my dads birthday party. Finally I decided to just go and see how long I could stand being there. If it wouldn’t get better I would just go home… luckily it got better during the evening and on Sunday it even felt so good I dared to go cycle again! My stomach didn’t feel 100% again, but well enough to not be bothered with it… same actually for Monday, until today… this afternoon it started yet again…. It’s really weird… I can’t figure out what is causing it… Last Friday I blamed the stomach pain on the sudden change in exercise. That my body needed more food as it is burning more energy because I exercise more. And my stomach was complaining because me not feeding it enough. That seemed logic… So I increased my breakfast and lunch, introduced 2 apples and a Balisto after lunch, but still I end up with a stomach ache on the way home….
*hahahaha* now I still have a stomach ache and gained a kilo! This was not a good day! :-)

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Sunday morning. 02:35. Just arrived at my brothers place after my dad’s very fun 70th birthday party. We had a last beer, turned on the TV and zapped around a bit. Then we came across a truely amazing TV show! “The sausage courier”. The whole purpose of the show is simple: sms SAUSAGE to 2200, and you will have a chance to win a sausage! :-)
Crazy stuff, as sending one sms would cost you € 1,50. Probably more then your average sausage would cost in the supermarket, but they couldn’t make it more expensive!! *hahaha* just madness! A perfect parody to all those stupid sms commercials! Also very funny, the quiz they had! So funny, I recorded it with my camera! :-) Before I show the pictures, you should know that during the whole show the text: “sms SAUSAGE to 2200″ was on the bottom of the screen… indeed, to have a chance to win that sausage!
Now the quiz! Question was simple, what building is on the picture?

sms KREMLIN to 2200, if you think it’s the Kremlin.

sms EUROMAST to 2200, if you think it’s the Euromast (big tower in Rotterdam).

sms SAUSAGE to 2200, if you think it’s the Eiffel Tower.

:-)

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Yesterday was the first real training towards the Amstel Gold Race. I was excited all day, as the weather seemed briljant for cycling! Seemed… well no, it was. Really. It was just a bit windy. That made it quite though. So I went cycling straight after I got home from work, morale was great at that time, so almost logically I went to far… didn’t feel like to far at the time, but it definitely felt to far when I was still 6 km from home and I was seriously struggling to keep peddling… My legs felt totally empty… A feeling hard to describe. I partly blamed it on the early lunch and therefore lack of available energy. That, combined with it being the first ride since January and only second one this year kinda explains it. And as my legs felt surprisingly good this morning, it doesn’t worry me so much.
I will keep track of the preparation kilometers on a temporary “events” section of the blog. Maybe not the most interesting section here, but I think it’s nice to (hopefully) see my progress as the Amstel Gold Race comes nearer. This Saturday the squash game has been cancelled in favour of some cycling training! If the wind helps a little bit and comes from the right (north-west, north or north-east) direction, we will most likely cycle towards the highest dune in Holland, ‘t kopje van Bloemendaal. There is the most challenging climb in the neighborhood. Total distance, about 55km if I remember correct. Seeing I was without energy after 30km yesterday, it could prove yet again to be to far… But as before, I will gamble again on the “shape of the day” and make sure to carry along enough energy! That has proved to be a successful gamble each time so far, so why would it fail now?! :-)

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Bastiaan has registered himself and me for the Amstel Gold Race! A bit out of the blue at this point, as the registration had already closed and he had not registered us in time… That wasn’t the worst thing at the time, as there hadn’t been any opportunity to go out and practice when Holland was covered under a thick white blanket. But, with the quite change of the weather, the relief of not having to cycle turned more and more into a sad feeling about being to late to register… the weather is getting more and more nice for cycling so it would have been great fun… well, tonight the backdoor opened and we found a way into the race! :-)
Bastiaan has a T-Mobile phone subscription and T-Mobile offers her customers the opportunity to enter in the Amstel Gold Race! Very cool! And even more, as they offer quite a nice package! You get a T-Mobile team shirt and cycling pants as a present, there is a supply post along the way and old Dutch cycling champion Steven Rooks will be the road captain during the race! All in all a much better deal then when we would have registered the “normal’ way. It got me really excited again! :-) Just need to find some time to practice, but when we find some time for that, I am sure we will do just fine! :-)
Only little issue could be that we both need a T-Mobile subscription, and I don’t have one… don’t have a Dutch one that is… so now I am entered on my English T-Mobile subscription. But to be sure I will buy myself a € 9,95 T-Mobile SIM card tomorrow. I don’t wanne be taking any chances!! :-)

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This morning I was reading the free Metro newspaper in the train. Not much interesting news in there, until I got to page 6! Page 6 had the 5 most wanted men on them. Disappointed came fast when it came clear that these where the 5 most wanted from the US government… Isn’t it more interesting to publish our own 5 most wanted? But well, that’s besides the point, it proved to be interesting reading. The 5 men were broken down by the following points: “Wanted for”, “Also known as”, “Hiding place”, “Details” and “Reward”. The number one on the list was, who else could it be, Osama. A couple of things made the overview quite remarkable… “Hiding place” was the most questionable section. It’s a bit like predicting the weather in Holland. From 1 to 5 they were: “they think he could be in Afghanistan”, “likely to be in Iraq”, “probably where Osama is”, “no idea” and again “they think he is in Afghanistan”… well, like the weather forecast, they clearly don’t know! :-)
Then there was the “Details” section. It sounds promising, it was not… The only detail they could found about Osama, was the following:
“Bin Laden has trouble walking and moves around with a stick.”
?!?!?! *hahaha* I just had to laugh! :-) Is that truly the only detail they know about him?!? Very weird… It’s such a strange detail… almost like: “Osama prefers to drive around in a BMW” or “Osama loves to trim his beard with a Philips beard-trimmer”… they can’t possibly think that a detail like this can help lead to his arrest? That if we see an old man walking on the street, with a beard and a stick we should wonder: “Could it be him…???”
Then there was the reward. Osama now “does” 25 million US$… only 25 million I must say, as number 2 and 3 of the list “go” for the same amount! Very strange… If I would be the one to catch Osama I would never hand him in for that amount! I am sure the amount must be negotiable! :-)

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Anouk’s latest album: Hotel New York. I finally bought it 2 weeks ago, and have been listening to it quite a lot now. So much that it must be said: it’s good!!!! No, not just being patriotic here! ;-) It’s actually really good! I can really recommend it to all you people out there! But I do think it might be a bit hard finding it in your local music store… Not sure how fast an album gets distributed all over Europe. I guess they usually would first release a single, before going wild on the distribution of the complete album. So finally this whole Internet-idea is starting to pay off! :-) It took a while, but now we found some real useful usage! As there must be some online shops where you can find the album, if your local Swedish, Danish, Polish, English, Norwegian or “wherever you are from” music store hasn’t got it yet, or is to lazy to order it for you! This is your chance to be the first sheep in your country to go over the dam! :-)

At Anouk’s website you can listen to parts of the songs, if you got curious!

Anouk - Hotel New York

Posted in Music | 1 Comment »

This afternoon I inserted a little punishment training for loosing the squash game yesterday. Well, punishment training is a strong term… the sun was shining, the sky as blue as could be, so I decided to take out the bike for a little spin! After feeling my legs this morning when getting out of bed, quite a surprising change of events! My muscles felt very stiff… but I guess my muscles must be a bit surprised each Saturday when after a long week of only sitting behind a computer, all of a sudden more then their full attention is required for an exciting hour. So the first 10 minutes on the bike weren’t the most pleasant ones… but when I got warmed up a bit, it was really nice to cycle for a little hour in the sun! Could handle punishment training like this every day! :-)

Oh, a little chicken update. There are 11 now! Three more this morning, and one against all odds late this afternoon. This one I have just named Emma. Against all odds. She had some really rough moments after hatching from the egg, and we feared for her life on more then one occasion. But after putting her aside from the others for a little while, in little bucket on a warm blanket with her own warm lamp, she hung in there and looks very good again!
I named her Emma after an amazing story Jonas told me this evening. This sweet chick just couldn’t have any other name.

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And then there were 7! ;-)
When I left this morning to go play squash there where still two. When I got back after an heroic match and deserved defeat there were 7! So now it’s one big group huddle under the lamp to all stay warm. A colorful soft little blanket. Very cute. The soft peeping sound from yesterday has almost vanished. The chicks now have each other to peep to, so I guess peeping to me ain’t that much fun anymore! ;-)

Colorful blanket	Curious chicks	All together

Big chick butt	Warm lamp	In the dark

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Normally I have some strong personal issues with my biological clock whenever it lets me wake up in the weekend at a time only suited for a working day… And even that is up for debate, as no biological clock should ever go off before 0700! :-) But well, today I didn’t mind so much. I was curious to see if more chicks would have hatched! Yesterday evening number 2 already got out and most other eggs were marked with the first little cracks. A good sign, so I was expecting a couple of more chicks this morning… but no… I guess chicks also need a good night of sleep. Bless them for not having to work during the week! ;-)
So just two more pictures of Tikka and Nr. 2 this morning. For you out there who are curious, Tikka and Nr. 2 are not the same brand/type/kind (?) of chicken. My dad has put some different eggs in the machine. Big and small. White and brown. Although I must admit I am not sure if there is actually a real difference other then size and color between the chicks… they look quite similar on all the other features ;-)

Chilling	Sleepy

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