Where last week I couldn’t remember many of the bad things about the project I was returning to… they slowly came back to me during the first meeting on Tuesday… At some point I was really thinking to myself: “What was I thinking to return here?!”. Especially when they mentioned that the work we had to do had to be “seamless” for the customer. Seamless had been the keyword in the last project I did at Ericsson. At the start of the project Ericsson was promised a seamless migration. But from day one it would turn out to be anything but seamless… And the word turned out to hunt us throughout the project. As with every little issue we raised, it became less and less seamless, finally resulting in a huge amount of extra work for the customer and something as far from seamless as you ever could imagine! And now they mentioned the same thing again… You would think people would learn from the mistakes in the past, but no no no no, not here! :-)
Good thing is that the project won’t be as complex as the last one. Or at least I will try and do everything that is within my powers to keep it as simple as possible! And luckily being back in Stockholm is truely great fun again! Almost felt like going home when I arrived here on Monday evening! Strange but true. Things just feel so familiar again… So with seeing so many great people here again, and the many more I still have to go meet up with I am sure I will have great time here again! :-)

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The Grand Prix at Imola was just great fun! Ok, the driving down there and back was a bit to much for me, but being at the Grand Prix was quite relax and fun! We drove to Milan on Friday, stayed at a porn-motel along the highway… well, maybe not officially a porn-motel, but sleeping in a room with mirrors on every wall and on the ceiling (!!) and lots of people dropping by to rent a room for just an hour does make one wonder… :-)
Anyways, Saturday morning we drove to the Imola circuit. And to our great surprise we got there quite quickly… we expected big traffic jams towards the circuit, but non whatsoever! It might have been because it was Saturday and most people often only show up at the race on Sunday. We found a nice spot on the stand at the corner of the track we would be sitting the next day as well and watched the first qualification training, which showed us an hour of something like this:

Saturday Qualification (1.8 MB)		Räikkönen		Schumacher

Quite nice! Lot’s of noise, but as only one car at the time passed us, it was bearable and I didn’t need my earplugs. After this there were some less interesting races and we walked around the circuit for a bit. Quite a nice place, with one really extraordinary place, the memorial statue for Ayrton Senna. Very nice statue and also very confrontation… This was the place the good man died in 1994… I still remember seeing the horrible pictures on TV that day… the waiting for news… is he still alive? How could someone be after such a crash… It was a weird feeling being at that place, seeing the flowers in front of the statue and a crying fan in a Brazilian shirt… Touching…

That evening we found an hotel at about an hours drive from the circuit. The plan was to go to bed early, get up early and drive to the circuit early, so we would beat the traffic to the circuit again. Two out of the three plans worked out fine… going to bed early didn’t… We had a really fun evening and ended up drinking in the hotel bar so I didn’t get to bed until 02:00 AM… Luckily I didn’t feel to hangover when we got up at 06:00… No need to say I felt tired…

When we arrived at the circuit after another smooth ride in, the air didn’t look very promising… or maybe I should say it did look promising! Races with some rain are almost always more fun then “dry” races, so some part of me was hoping for a little rain, but at the same time I wasn’t looking forward to sit in the pouring rain for 8 hours… My hope and worry were for no reason; there were a few drops of rain, but the whole race was dry as could be. One thing was very different from the day before… our place in the stand. The first day we had a perfect spot in the corner, but when we tried to get to the same place on Sunday, we were told our spot was somewhere else… Our place was on top of a hill, with small seats, a slippery long steep stairway and packed with Ferrari fans…

Promising sky!		To many Ferrari fans…		Kimi fast in qualification (0.6 MB)

After the 2nd qualification and the Porsche race it was finally time for the GP to start! Exciting stuff! We could see the start of the race on the big screen in front of the stand and before we know it we could see the whole pact fly by! WHAT A NOISE! :-) Unbelievable!! The race turned out to be a bit boring, but seeing the cars fly by made up for a lot! Quite annoying moment in the race was when Kimi… that’s a funny thing by the way, how fast you turn to talking about the drivers and using their first names! :-) *hahaha* it’s almost like I have been to school with them! :-) Anyways, annoying moment when Kimi’s McLaren broke down and all the Ferrari fans started cheering when he was slowly passing us… Bastardo’s! :-)

What a noise! (8.1 MB)		Big screen close-up		Kimi breaks down… (2.9 MB)

After about 25 laps out of the 62 I had a little problem… I had to pee… Well peeing is not a problem of course, but getting off the stand was! Our seats were quite in the middle of the stand, so after getting up (the easy part) it was about 20 meters of rather heroic (if I may say so myself) and acrobatic balancing on a very small and slippery wooden underground between two very closely situated rows of rather angry looking race-fans… I was happy to survive! :-) But scared to go back… so after, what at that moment was definitely named, “the best pee ever” I decided to walk around a bit … a smart decision!!! I walked around the stand and got to the fence close to the track! WOW!!! I should have done that much earlier!!! Ok, you miss a lot of the race there, you can hardly see the big screen, just a very small section of the track, but WOW!!!! A truely amazing feeling to stand so close to the track when a Formula 1 car passes by! It’s not just the sound, or that close I should talk about pure noise! :-), but it’s also the feeling! You can feel the cars drive by! They go so fast that they seem to move a lot of air as well! So exciting! I think I stayed close to the fence for about 25 laps or so! :-)

Cars in the corner		Close to the track! (8.7 MB)		Williams

The last laps of the race I saw on top of the mountain again. Alonso had the lead and Schumacher was faster and pushing to pass him. To my great joy he didn’t! :-) After the race it was a long crowded walk back to the car. We turned out to be very lucky as the car was quite close to the circuit and we were able to leave Imola quite fast. A fun weekend was over, just a long ride home left…

Alonso and Schumacher		The crowd leaving

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Pffff… finally some time to write in the blog again! After the long drive home from the GrandPrix in Italy, I had to fly in the evening straight to Stockholm, as my work there finally got confirmed! Crazy schedule… especially as the ride home was a challenging 14 hours straight… We were with four people in the car, of which two got to sleep quite fast when the clock hit 2300… So I decided to stay awake to keep the driver company and keep him from falling asleep as well. Well, mainly the first thing, as I wasn’t afraid he would fall asleep, but it surely was a challenge to stay awake and keep talking… When we got to Belgium I finally broke after 11 hours… Somebody else took over the driving and I took a little nap in the back of the car. Although an hour later I was already awake again. After we got home at 0700, I was able to sleep for another two hours, before starting to pack up and finish some things I had to do before leaving to Stockholm. At 1855 I was on the plane over there. At 2130 I was finally in my room and not long after I was (finally) sleeping like a baby…

Besides arriving back from Italy feeling very tired, I also managed to pick up a very nasty throat ache… For some reason the air in the car was so incredibly dry, my throat started hurting just a couple of hours after we left Italy… not good. I tried to “fix” the problem by drinking a lot of water… that helped somewhat, but mainly only caused two unforeseen stops so I could pee….

Have to go meet up with some new people from work now… something so not to look forward to… it most likely will mean talking about work all night… I sure hope not! I couldn’t handle that now! ;-) Have some fun movies and images from the GrandPrix weekend, so hope to share those with you soon!

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Today the weather was as beautiful as could be! Clear blue sky, not much wind and temperatures up to 17 degrees. A lovely spring day that screamed for cycling! I hadn’t cycled since the race last Saturday. Main reason for that was to get some rest, but the main reason was closely followed by another reason: the bad weather… I think we had enough rain during the race, so I had no interest what so ever to go out again with bad weather. But this morning, while doing some last minute preparations for the journey tomorrow, I got very itchy to go cycle in the afternoon! Beside the lovely weather, it’s also one of the best times to cycle in and around the area where I live, as all flower fields are fully blossoming at the moment! So things look like this:

Flower field

Pretty, plus it smells very nice as well! So all in all it was great fun to go for a ride. Especially knowing it could be my last ride in a while… Still haven’t gotten a confirmation for the work in Stockholm though, so I might have to take those words back… It was looking good but I needed a confirmation today to be able to arrange flights and accommodation, as tomorrow and the weekend I won’t have time to do that. And the clock almost says 1700 hour, which means “close of business” for my company. So everything after that time, will be handled on Monday morning on a “first come, first served” basis! ;-)
Might be good for me as well actually, to start a day later, as for now we seem to be returning around 7 o’clock in the morning on Monday… so it could be a bit wild to fly to Stockholm just 3 hours later… Especially as I usually don’t sleep that well in a car…

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This weekend I will be in Italy to watch the Formula 1 Grand Prix of San Marino. Great fun. There is only one thing I am not so much looking forward to, and that’s the long drive down to Italy and back… I don’t mind sitting in the car for a long time, but I do mind the pace my friends have in mind… the plan is to get there as quick as possible, and drive back as quick as possible. That means two times 13 hours in the car with the most minimal amount of breaks possible… probably only to put in gas… but well, most likely I will find a nice place in the back of the car and try to make myself comfortable… Although comfortable after 13 hours will probably prove to be quite a speculative opinion! :-)
A big thing to look forward to, are the first couple of laps of the Grand Prix on Sunday! I remember from the last Grand Prix we went to (GP of Austria in 2003, red.) that I managed to listen to the cars come by for about 3 laps before putting in my earplugs. The noise was just sensational! Very special! But after about 3 laps it also feels like permanent ear damage can’t be far away either! :-) To my stunning surprise there was a family in front of us last time, that didn’t use earplugs at all! The entire race they took the noise straight on the eardrums! Mad!!! Simply mad! Especially the young children of the family… Why would any parent willingly let their children challenge their eardrums like that for one and a half hours?! Strange…
I wonder what the weekend will bring this time. I guess you can expect many pictures and text on Monday!

For you out there who will be watching the GP, I will be sitting in the “Curva Della Tosa” on stand “P” on the top right if you click the image to open the flash movie of the track. I won’t promise to wave though! Or well, let’s say I will wave on lap 20! ;-)

Imola curcuit

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Yesterday I had a job interview. A job interview with a company I already worked for. A company I worked for, for more then 13 months in the last 2 years… Sounds weird? Well, it feels weird as well. It’s a new project, but very closely related to the project I worked on last time. And the main thing I fail to understand, is why they need to hear from me what I have done in those 13 months?! They have direct access to the best possible inside information they could ever get: The people who sat besides me during that time! They know exactly what I did and how I do my work, plus they work for the same company that interviewed me, so who better to give an honest opinion about me?!?!
I didn’t mind the interview at all, but I think I would have preferred them to check internally first, to get a recommendation from the people I worked with. Or maybe not. But that would mean I wouldn’t be the right person for the job! Or that the people I worked with didn’t have much confidence in me. Either way, it felt very weird explaining what I had done for their company the last 2 years. Even more, as the people I was talking to had no clue about what we had done in the last project… But well, apparently they liked what I had to say. Just waiting for their confirmation now and if it comes, I could be in Stockholm again on Monday! As always time will tell…

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I was puzzled by a message on the news today. Our queen Beatrix has to go to the hospital for surgery on her worn out knee. That didn’t make much sense. How can a queen have a worn out knee? I would expect worn out knees with people who do work that is hard on the knees, or maybe athletes that demand a lot from their knees, but a queen? What would she do that could ever hurt her knees? I don’t think she would sit on her knees all day to clean up the royal gardens, or try to get that nasty stain out of the royal carpet! :-)
Puzzled I went to google to find some answers. And I did. Apparently it comes with age. That worries me a bit, as my own knees are not the best in the world… thanks to long time friend Osgood-Schlatter. But well, back to the queen. Apparently age wears out knees, some quicker then others, and as queens don’t do have to do heavy work nor are found to be great athletes, time seems to be all she can fall back on. But there is another interesting thing. She had a meniscus (or “cartilage”) removed a couple of years ago. And that seems to have a bad effect on the health of the knee. Or with other words, it wears out much quicker! Interesting stuff. Still this leads to even more questions, as how could it be that her meniscus had to be removed? Because loosing a meniscus seems like something for professional football players, not for queens… that makes me wonder what kind of hobbies our queen has? :-)

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Mmmmm… 2 days after the race today. I feel remarkably good. Some little pains left, but non really worth mentioning. Well, maybe only the painful shoulders… the cold really got to me there.
Luckily being unemployed really pays off these days after the race! *hahaha* it was just briljant to just take a little nap this afternoon. Felt reborn after having closed my eyes for a little hour! :-)
Today it also became clear we were chokingly underdressed… the man from my bicycle shop also did the race and wore 4 (!!!) shirts! A long sleeve undershirt, a long sleeve bike shirt, a long sleeve wind breaker and a raincoat! We wore 2 shirts… a sleeveless undershirt and the T-Mobile short sleeve bike shirt… He was warm, we were freezing… it seems we still have quite a lot to win in our preparation! :-)
Although next time I don’t think I will start if it’s raining… I ride my bike for fun, and riding in the rain ain’t that much fun… Although it did make quite an heroic story… Can’t wait to go cycling in the south of France! That must be just briljant! Cycling how cycling was meant to be. Under a sunny sky with a lovely 25 degrees! Doesn’t that sound nice?

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Friday evening we arrive at my cousin Karin’s place in the south of the country. We figured it’s good save ourselves getting up really early to have a 3 hour drive down south and want to get a good nights sleep before the race.
We slept terrible.
After a great struggle to get through my breakfast of 2 banana’s, cruesly, yogurt and about 6 of Bastiaans magic “vitamin” pills, we head for the start. We arrived and with our number we got our T-Mobile team shirt and pants, as well as a chip for the bike to record our race-time. Then while having an orange juice and piece of pie we listened to a short talk from some T-Mobile representative and some very disappointing tips from Dutch cycling legend Steven Rooks, like: “remember to eat and drink” and “don’t drink from your water bottle in a fast descent”…
Finally we got onto our bikes and that was the start of the following heroic 125 kilometer:

The real impact of the race to Bastiaans physical state shows almost directly after the shower when he almost fails to put on his left sock because he can’t bend his left knee anymore… besides that, we both experienced general pain in numerous body parts, especially in the shoulder area… only Bastiaan seemed to suffer a bit more then me, as he had all day. The drive back home goes quickly and when getting home the first thing to do was unfortunately not lying down on the couch… the bikes are totally wet and dirty and to prevent them from rusting away, they need a quick cleaning. A small hour of cleaning later I could finally collapse on the couch. A great feeling after a long, wet, cold, and heroic day! :-)

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Two days ago I was asked if I wanted to return to Stockholm, to work on another project for Ericsson. Funny enough I agreed. Funny because when I left there I was happy my time was up, as I had a lot of negative feelings towards the project. Things did not go, as I thought they should go. But weird enough I can hardly remember the bad things anymore… Very strange… The solution we build was very shaky, and it wasn’t something I would proudly hand over to the customer. But as often my opinion didn’t really count. I do remember the last months having lots of fun with my own little project, within the big project: “The left-hand navigation”. I was very determined to make that little piece of the project the highlight of the solution. Spending way to many hours, not following anything that was written in the design document, doing it the way I thought it had to be done, and guided by endless discussions about tiny details with Peter J., Mia, Peter B., Stuart, Eva, Helena, Louise, the Go-Go-Girls and all other people I could find to bother with my questions! :-)
For some reason the things I enjoyed stayed in my memory and almost all bad things have disappeared as snow before the sun… Maybe that’s why I agreed so easily to return to Stockholm… Just so I can meet up again with all the lovely people I met there last time! And that joy makes me not think or care much about the work at all. Strange. And maybe not good, but it’s a great feeling work is not the primary thing I am going back to Stockholm! :-)
But, as always it seems, things are not 100% sure yet. I demanded to have the first week of May of, as of the cycling holiday in the south of France! No way I am going to work that week! I am just to excited to go there! 2 days ago I was told I would get my confirmation yesterday. Yesterday I was told I would get the confirmation this morning. And indeed, still no confirmation…
But even if it turns out the work is not going through, returning to Stockholm is just a matter of time… I just hope when I do, I have time to meet all those lovely people in person! :-)

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Life is strange these days. Very surreal. All things evolve around cycling at the moment. Nothing else to worry about, just cycling. Did a 100km ride yesterday, took my rest today. Well, it’s not really true I don’t worry about things, I actually have a lot of tiny worries, but about the weirdest things… Like food. I am suddenly very aware of what I am eating and drinking. I never had this kind of detailed awareness about my food. And if there was any awareness, it normally didn’t go much further then: to much fat = bad. So the simple rule used to be, don’t eat to many fat things. But the last couple of days I actually started to look on the labels! :-)

I even put myself on some kind of diet until Saturday. Well, diet is a big word. I don’t need to get heavier, so I try to stay away from the fat things. Instead the focus is on carbohydrates. Pasta. It’s not based on something scientific, but I am going blind on my idea that professional cyclist eat pasta. And if they eat pasta, I eat pasta. I like pasta, but pasta for three days in a row is pushing it a bit… But well, I will manage as long as it will pay off on Saturday! :-)

Last thing to worry a little bit about are the little pains… my knees, the back of my left knee, my lower back and in general stiff muscles all over the place… again, not big things, and I guess they come naturally as my body isn’t used to this every second day exercise… *hahaha* the life of an athlete is quite hard! :-) Well… athlete… to use my name and “athlete” in one sentence is a bit to optimistic… maybe enthusiastic person that cycles is a better comparison! :-)

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After my desperate and failed attempt to feel somewhat like a cycling hero yesterday, today was the day where the true cycling hero’s rode their bike. Today they rode their bike through “The Hell”. Today was Paris-Roubaix. 259km with 54,7 km of cobblestones. For you out there that wonder about what cobblestones are, they look like this:

Cobblestones

On the picture they might look quite nice, in real life you need to be a circus-acrobat to ride over them. Fascinating.
As I told Peter last week, Paris-Roubaix and the cobblestones take me back to one of my earliest cycling memories. We go back to 1983. Little Bert was just 6 years old and watching Paris-Roubaix on TV with his daddy. Dutch cyclist Hennie Kuiper had a great day and was riding solo to the finish line until, at one of the last cobblestone sections, he busted his rear wheel tire… Panic! He stood on the side of the road with his bike, waiting for a new wheel. It seemed to take forever. Seconds felt like minutes, and he was only leading by about 20 seconds or so. My dad and I were screaming in front of the TV! Truely great historic cycling moments… Finally he got the new wheel and won, giving a happy ending to a heroic story.

Hennie Kuiper	Panic!

Today the race showed yet again some amazing things. Countless crashes and flat tires. And finally the 5 strongest men up front. Flecha, Bäckstedt, Boonen, Hincapie and Michaelsen. Flecha powers over the cobblestones 17km before the finish line and first Michaelsen and later Bäckstedt can’t follow. Briljant stuff! There is just no place to hide! As soon as they have to let go they fall a minute or more behind. In no other race you would see something like that happen. In “The Hell” it does. Finally Boonen takes an easy victory and get’s rewarded with a cobblestone!
Some day I will have to go to “The Hell” myself, make a complete fool out of myself and go home with a cobblestone… Well, maybe I should say: “make a complete fool out of myself again“. My first application to the circus will be next Saturday! :-)

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Well, looking back, I had all right to feel scared. We did the climb…. but don’t ask how… it wasn’t pretty… it wasn’t pretty at all. On the Keutenberg I used, no, had to use the smallest gear I have (30×25) on the last stretch of the steep part of the climb…. and even that was a struggle… Amazing. My breathing was extremely heavily and fast. With each peddle: breath in, breath out. My heart pounding like mad. An extraordinary feeling. Never experienced anything like that ever before! Truely amazing… Felt good to reach the top cycling though, but it was more a relief then an heroic feeling… *hahaha* I guess that must say it all! :-)

I must admit though I felt a bit better after cycling up the Keutenberg, then I felt when reaching the top of the “Cauberg” (pronounce as “cow”-berg). The Cauberg is Holland’s most famous climb and also the last climb to the finish in the Amstel Gold Race. We tried that one before we went to the Keutenberg and damn… I choose the wrong gear… I felt quite good, so picked quite a normal gear (42×19), got about halfway through my little engine started to run out of gas…. oh my lord…. got quickly down to gear 42×23 and managed to get to the top, but damn what was I thinking?!?! Well, I couldn’t know of course, only had been there as a kid, and couldn’t remember exactly how the climb was…

All in all it made great practice for the “real thing” next week. Now we at least know what to expect… Although that doesn’t make me particularly happy, as it will most likely will hurt a lot cycling up these hills after more then 100km…

In the distance	The top	Outch…	More Outch…

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The Amstel Gold Race is only one week away, and I am already getting a little nervous. Nervous because of mainly one reason. The hills. Today I did a little research about the 8 hills we will have to face during the 125km… They all seem doable, except one… “De Keutenberg”. That one will appear in front of us after 106.2 km. Reading about it scares me. Scares me a lot actually… Well this is a text and some pictures I found about the hill. So read and look for yourself:

22%…	Keutenberg	From the top

And?? Scared as well?? I guess not, as you are so smart not to try to cycle to the top…
I can’t wait until the 16th to cycle up this hill without knowing what to expect, so tomorrow that average sado-masochistic cyclist will be me. We will drive 275km (one way) to feel a pain in our legs we probably have never felt before… and damn I must be mad because I am looking forward to it! :-) *hahahaha*

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Just got home from some more cycling training, and “wow!” what a ride it was today! There was a hell of a lot of wind, up to 7 bft. (or 16 m/s) so no normal pace was possible against the wind… seriously thought about turning back twice. But didn’t in the end. Guess the little voice in the back of my mind keeps telling me I need more training before the race and for some reason that seems to keep me going! So the ride was mainly a struggle up to the half way point, but on the way back I was just flying!!! Truely amazing!! Almost constantly in the low 40 km/h!! And the best was in a little coastal town called Katwijk, were on the boulevard at the ocean the wind was full in the back and although the speed-limit on the boulevard is 30 km/h, I was flying past with speeds in the 50 km/h!!!! Crazy feeling. An adrenalin rush when passing cars at that speed but also quite demanding as at that speed it’s quite necessary to stay very focused. But all in all, great fun! :-)
I do start to feel the downside of all the cycling a bit… my lower back was seriously challenged when cycling against the wind! But with a good days rest between now and the next trainings run it should be quite ok! Plus it ain’t all bad, as I can seriously start to notice the improvement! The 50km tours are going really well. Good thing as well, as the real thing will be 125km… so there is still room for more improvement, it just needs to come fast and the race is only 9 days away! :-)

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