Amazing documentary on TV tonight. A sports documentary about the cycling life of Lance Armstrong. Who is on the doorstep of winning his 7th consecutive Tour de France. An amazing story. I read the book about his story, so seeing the pictures with the story was quite impressive. But what was even more impressive was something Hein Verbruggen, the International Cycling Union (UCI) chairman, had to say… Apparently Armstrong has been donating money to the UCI for many years, to support their quest to end the use of doping in the cycling sport. Just recently Armstrong even bought a new blood testing machine for the UCI. Using his own money…

What makes this even more amazing is the fact that Armstrong is seen as one of the cyclists most likely to be using doping, as he survived cancer, and how can a cancer-survivor win the Tour de France without using doping? Well it can. Armstrong is the living proof for that. But even though he is by far the most tested cyclist for doping, many people, especially the French, still regard to him as a person who does use it. I am a bit skeptical, but I am that with all cyclist. Not just Lance Armstrong. And as long as they answer questions about doping with “I have never been caught“, I will stay that little bit skeptical. But when a cyclist is funding doping research, what can you say?

When I will be watching the Tour on Saturday there is no room for doping in my little world. Just 189 hero’s. One a bit more hero then others, but initially all hero’s. And after 3 weeks, Armstrong will be the biggest hero of them all again. It will be interesting to see how fans and press react to this news. Hopefully like me, and become a little bit bigger fan of Armstrong! :-)

Posted in News & media, Cycling | No Comments »

A flat tire is never really welcome. A flat tire with a Nissan Micra is really not welcome! I didn’t notice it while driving, but I must have driven through some glass as not long after I got home the right front tire was totally empty… Not a real problem. This can happen, and ever since I spend a full afternoon with Bastiaan changing tires just for the fun of it many years ago, I am a star at changing them. :-)

The Micra doesn’t have a “real” spare tire. Only a “home-comer”… I don’t know what the correct English word for it is, but “home comer” is the directly translated from the Dutch word for a small spare tire. One you can only drive a maximum of 80km/h on, so it just seems to be for driving to the first nearby garage to get the real tire fixed. I never really understood the purpose of the “home-comer”… Maybe because in general I hardly ever support these kinda temporary solutions. If you put a wheel in the back of the car, why not just a normal one… This stupid little wheel just brings so much extra discomfort. First with the driving, where the right front side of the car is now “dipping down” quite a bit, as the tire is so small… you can’t drive faster then 80km/h, so together with the car hanging to one side, this can’t be a really safe solution… then I need to drive to the garage, pray for them to have time for me, sit there and wait until they have time for me and the time it takes for them to fix the real tire… *Arggggg* so much hassle for no reason, as if they would have put a “real” wheel in the back, I could have safely driven to the garage, left the flat tire there and pick it up whenever it suits me…

But that’s not the case, so I had to put the “home-comer” on. And I knew it was small… but it’s much smaller then just small! It’s like a Mickey Mouse wheel, something that would almost fit on a big toy-car!! Ok, if I was a rapper and had some bad ass 26 inch rims under the car, I could understand they put a somewhat smaller wheel in the back, but on the Nissan Micra?!?! There are “fifteens” under there… Tiny car, tiny wheels!! One of those should easily fit any trunk! :-)

I will measure the “home-comer” tomorrow, but for now my wild guess is that it’s about an “eleven”… I will also try to make a picture with the little one next to the real wheel. Then you can be amazed by the size as well! ;-)

Update (June 27, 2005):
Well, a very early visit to the garage didn’t bring anything… after 30 minutes waiting they figured out they didn’t have the correct Micra tire to replace the flat one… So now they ordered it and I will have to go back to the garage again tomorrow morning… :-|
But well, not much I can do about that… Did make the picture! (see below) and measured the tire. Only the measuring wasn’t much of a success… the wheel should have been 15 inch… so 38.1 cm… only the wheel doesn’t measure that… it’s bigger… Weirdness… the small one actually does measure that distance, which makes it even more confusing. But the little wheel seems even smaller as the tire ain’t as thick as the real tire… confusing… well, what I am trying to say: it’s really a lot smaller! :-)

Micra wheels

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Do you know the feeling? Let me paint the situation. You are driving in a car. Listening to a CD. You feel the urge coming up to listen to a particular song on the CD. You get the CD cover. Look on the back to see what track it is and… NO TRACK NUMBERS! *Arggggg*
Why dear music artists? Why? It ain’t that much trouble to put the track number before the track… or after… or at least close to it for all I care… but give us something! Now am handling the steering wheel with my knee, holding the CD in one hand and going down the track numbers with the other hand… and when I am looking at the CD cover, I ain’t looking where I should be looking, the road (!!!), so a dangerous situation could occur! If something would happen and I was living in America, I could probably sue the band and become a millionaire… but I ain’t, so I just have to be friendly and ask… Please! Please put some numbers with the songs!!!

Oh, the CD that caused the problems this afternoon was the new one from Kane, Fearless. A Dutch rock band, but as I was told, “every country has it’s own Kane”, so not well known around Europe… But they make quite ok music. Their new CD is reasonably good, but I must say I expected it to be a bit better after reading some reviews about it… So I wasn’t jumping about it, and the missing track numbers didn’t help much! ;-)

PS. For all you people out there who got their driving license today, please know it’s NOT ok to drive with your knee, NOT ok to play with CD’s while driving and NOT ok to pay attention to anything other then the road!! Experience is required there, and even then it’s somewhat stupid! But that’s what you get when they don’t put on the track numbers! ;-)

Update (June 24, 2005):
Ok, I must say the CD does get better and better if you listen to it more often… My first opinion wasn’t correct. The CD is actually much better then just “reasonably good”!!

Posted in Music | 1 Comment »

And fresh not just for the salmon but fresh for the dish in general as well! Very fresh! So quite lovely on a warm summer day as today. I must say it was a bit of a gamble making this, as I searched for nice recipes with salmon, but couldn’t find any that pleased me enough to actually make it… So I kinda gathered some bits here and there from different recipes and made it into something I thought would taste well. And it did. There is still room for improvement on this one though. I went a bit to wild on the lemon skin, so next time I definitely need less of that and less cream as well. But for a first time it wasn’t bad at all! :-)

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The weather was just briljant yesterday. At least 30°. Maybe a bit to briljant… To avoid the most heat and highest temperatures during the day, I decided to go cycling early. So on a Sunday morning, I climbed onto my bike at the somewhat crazy time of 09:00… What was I thinking?! But it turned out to be quite ok. After just a little bit I was enjoying myself with the exercise.

Enjoying was a great description until I got to a long open stretch with the wind full in the face… Where the wind wasn’t the real problem, but my knees started hurting… Badly… The knee pain (Osgood-Schlatter) I have had ever since I was a kid, started bugging both my knees again… Strange, as I haven’t had real problems with it for a very long time now. Every now and then when there is a lot of impact on my knees (either by tough exercise, or by sitting on my knees for any time longer then a couple of minutes) it still hurts, but it’s been a while since it as painful as yesterday… :-( Not good… I didn’t feel I was totally going over the max. I rode an ok gear, had a good pace, but still it was hurting. Strange. And annoying, as cycling with pain in both knees ain’t much fun.

I was trying to do some on the bike stretching and thinking of going back when I was passed by two other cyclists… Even though they had a much quicker pace then me, I decided to accelerate and cycle behind them, or in cycling terms: “sit in the last wheel”. Amazing! I had to cycle quicker to stay behind them, but because I was behind them I wasn’t struggling through the wind anymore and could follow the quicker pace easily! Even the Osgood-Schlatter pain in knees went away quite quickly! :-)

Lovely stuff, but after sitting in last position for about 10 minutes I started feeling a bit guilty… Cycling along like that is a bit “not done”… the “sticking” in the last wheel and making use of other peoples efforts. So to relieve my sense of guilt I decided to take the lead in our little group of three for a bit. Outch… That took a lot more effort then riding along in last position… But I wouldn’t let go that easily and was fully committed to return the favor. So I struggled on for about 6 or 7 minutes on first position of the group until the guy behind me took the lead again. Also started to feel my knees a little, so it was good to be able to catch my breath in last position.

It turned out that the two people I passed had exactly the same route in mind as me. So I took my share of work in the lead of the group on the way back as well. Especially after they expressed there annoyens of people “sticking” behind them for the entire ride and not helping out at all… But I managed to keep up and do my work. Besides the last 5km, the complete ride home was in the little group, resulting in a rather mad and record breaking (for me) 33.5 km/h average for the 70km I cycled… The wonders a little group can do… especially on a ride that started out with a bad knee pain…

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Saturday morning. A quiet morning. Reading the newspaper. 10:23. *BANG*
Well… it’s hard to make the sound of a big bang in writing, but just imagine a big bang! Like a thunder very close by. The big bang scared me of course, as it came out of nowhere. It was even more scary as the bang was closely followed by loud clapping of wings and peeping (both coming from my birdy)…

The bang came from our outside area where one of the grapevines (thank you E) had given way under a heavy load of grapes, broke the iron little wires which were holding it up, lost contact with the class roof and crashed down on the floor with a big bang. My birdy was either very close to the grapevine when it came down, or actually in it, like he often is, just chilling… seeing how shocked he was, he was most likely in it… about 15 minutes after the big bang, when we managed with a lot of joined effort to get the grapevine back up, he was still looking so frightened… Nothing seemed to cool it down… He was constantly peeping and looked very scared… Now, a good hour later he is all relaxed again! Can’t be more happy and relieved! :-)

How scary it was? Well, I can’t show it better by showing you my birdy. Before and after. So please judge for yourself.

Birdy as his normal self	Birdy in shock

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Panic. There is a puma running loose in Holland! The puma has been seen yesterday and now police and hunters are hunting it down. It has to die. As a police official said:
“No, we won’t shoot it with a tranquilizer arrow. We are afraid it [the puma] will run away when we hit it. [???] We don’t want to take any chances.”

I am amazed… They make it seem like this puma is a serious thread to us! But the big pussy-cat has only one confirmed kill on his name so far, and that was a deer… And that seems quite a natural animal for a puma to kill… He or she needs to eat, and as all cats, the puma also seems to like meat. But the fact that a puma eats meat, doesn’t automatically say it will eat humans… As all wild animals, the first reaction for the puma will most likely to run away when people enter the forest and come to near.

I do understand that there is a small, tiny, little chance the puma will actually hurt someone, so let’s catch it. Catch it. Don’t kill it. Luckily the Dutch Animal Protection has now told the authorities to not kill the animal, just approach it quietly, use the tranquilizer gun and catch it. Not hunt it down like a runaway criminal with helicopters and trigger happy cops! As that makes it more scared and more likely to actually do something bad… Let’s hope they get smart and don’t just kill the poor animal…

Oh, if like me you wonder what a puma looks like, besides the sporting brand symbol on shirt or shoes, click on the picture below!

Puma

Posted in News & media, Animals | 2 Comments »

Just returned from a visit to the Nissan car dealer. Some little plastic thing was a bit loose near the emergency break. Not a big deal, but on a “new” car that is just a year old at least not expected. I usually have great faith in people, but the people from the car dealer are definitely the exception that confirms that rule… I just have no faith nor trust in them at all. Nothing. None whatsoever.
I must admit that I don’t really have a clear reason for that, but I guess the stories about dodgy car dealers combined with little things about this car dealer that annoy me, add up to that result. And the little things are things like: initially it would take an hour to fix the little plastic thing. One phone call later it was 45 minutes… it turned out to be less then 20… That doesn’t really make sense to me. But well, if you are not sure how to fix it, I can understand that you plan in a bit more time…

Mmmmmm… now that I think of it, for most of my “little complains” I can actually find a logic explanation… *hahaha* weird stuff… it’s definitely strange, because if I bring my bike to the bikeshop, to fix something, I don’t care much about what he does with it, as long as he fixes it. But with the car I want to know in detail what they will be doing! If the lady at the counter tries to comfort me with: “They will fix it.” my direct and default question back is: “Who is “they”? And how will they fix it?”. When she replies: “I don’t know, but the mechanic knows.” I say: “Then you need to get the mechanic because I wanne know how.” I guess they don’t really like me there! :-)

It’s actually very strange behavior, as I know hardly anything about cars! :-) I am the typical guy who would open the hood of the car when there is a problem and stand in front of it with my arms in the side staring at the engine. Looking interesting but can’t really do more then making sure all fluids make it up to the correct level. But still when I am at the car dealer, I want to know the tiniest details. It’s purely because I don’t trust them, as when the guy from my bike shop makes up the bill for a small repair and puts on 6 euro for putting some grease on a couple of parts I don’t even question it, but with the car dealer I wonder about the 30 eurocent for extra unknown fluid! :-)

Plus I wanne question them to see if they know what they are doing. And they usually do. That’s a good thing. So I got the car back and the first thing I did after checking it was alright is pulling, pushing and wiggling the little plastic thing, to see if it could come loose again! I refused to except any duck-tape or glue solution, and I couldn’t see any other solution work, so I was quite skeptical when I saw it fixed… But I wiggled, I pushed and I pulled… but it’s still in place… Guess I need to have a little more faith in my car dealer… But I probably have to wiggle, push and pull it for at least a week more to give him that! ;-)

Posted in Personal | 1 Comment »

Well… the white Kenyan… maybe that is a bit to much credit for a nickname for my brother. But his 337th place in the 10km run in Leiden today together with his respectable time of 00:46:41 gets him closer to earning that nickname then ever! :-)
Although… it must be said that never ever have I seen any “regular” Kenyan drink beer straight after running a marathon! My brother drank two classes of beer straight after the finish and was well on his way on his third when we found him after the finish… A true athlete! :-)
It won’t take long anymore before he will be trying out his first marathon, I wonder how much beer he will drink after finishing that one! :-)

Run Forrest! Run!	Medal and beer

Posted in Sport | 4 Comments »

As you can see, the limecrush blog doesn’t look like it should at the moment… Peter has updated the WordPress software to the new version 1.5.1.2 tonight and that went very smoothly (big thank you Peter!!), but that’s about the only thing that went smoothly… to get the limecrush to appear as I wanted to, I went quite wild in hacking into the old version (1.2) of the WordPress software. All great fun at the time and not a problem at all, until the upgrade… I already spend almost 2 hours trying to get the blog to look & feel back to how it was… and I am not even close yet… But I am to tired to continue now, so the blog will appear with somewhat limited functionality for now. Hopefully I will get everything back to work as it should tomorrow! :-)

Update (June 12, 2005):
Well, still not completely done yet… it was way more work then I expected… plus with the relatively nice weather the last days I didn’t spend that much time indoors to work on it… but it’s getting pretty alright again now! :-)

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After a rather failed attempt to bake a Dutch apple pie for Martin last year, today was the day for the apple pie rematch! Home game, so no problem finding the right ingredients this time, which caused so many problems at the last failed attempt in Sweden. Greatly motivated as well, as I was very inspired by Johanna to make one myself, after all that talking about apple pies and recipes! :-)
So I went wild this afternoon, almost screwing it up by heating the butter… big mistake… but after putting the dough for half an hour in the fridge it got ok to work with again… pfffff… Close call, but the result turned out great!! First there was the sweet smell for an hour while the pie was in the oven! And, Oh my lord!!! What a lovely smell that is! Mmmmmmmm… Just great! :-)
So it smelled great, looked great and I just ate the first piece and my, my! I must have done something right because it was delicious! Or… to put it more popular: “That shit was the bomb!” :-)
I wish I could share a piece with all of you… but for now you will have to do with some pictures…

“Jammie” :-)	Smell that!	Don’t forget the whipped cream!

Posted in Food & drink | No Comments »

I was quite stunned when I read the Saturday newspaper this morning. Prison guards had mishandled copies of the Koran some time ago and now the investigation results were published. First off, the investigation was done by the US military themselves… Very questionable if you ask me, but I guess they don’t like independent people to do the investigations at Guantanamo Bay…
The report they made “confirmed that five of these alleged mishandling incidents by US guards did take place”. The most insane one was described as follows:

It can’t be just me that doesn’t believe this right?!?! There is just so many things that doesn’t make sense… Of course the most logic explanation would be that the guard just urinated over the Koran, but I guess they are just to afraid to say that. But well, we will work a bit with the given story. “The guard urinated near an air vent”… Ok, if nature calls… it could happen. Apparently in Guantanamo air vents are build just above the ground. That sounds weird, as escaping through the air vent sounds quite doable when the air vent is just above the floor and not just below the roof… but that could easily be seen as a construction error…

But then “the wind blew his urine through the vent”… Ok, simple lesson one: don’t pee against the wind. So I understand the wind must have been either from the left or right, as the guard wasn’t standing in front of the air vent, but near by. Strange. Also because he must have been close to the wall… No man stands more then a meter away from the wall he is peeing against. Well… a meter… that already sounds quite far… but anyway, close to the wall and “near a air vent”… well, let’s just speak of a talented guard…

But we are not there yet!!! Because the pee ends up on “one detainee and his Koran”… strange, as the detainee must have been lying on the floor in front of the air vent for that to happen… then it’s only logic he tried to block the incoming urine with his Koran… I think I would have done the same… Still doesn’t make sense though. Why would a detainee lie on the floor with his Koran close to the air vent… They got me curious now! :-) So I did a little research and found a picture of a Guantanamo Bay prison cell. It has to look something like this:

“A detainee sleeps inside his cell at Camp 5, a maximum-security detention and interrogation facility in Guantanamo Bay Naval Base, Cuba. His prosthetic leg lies on the floor.” - AP

I guess not all cells are the same…

Of course prison shouldn’t be a lovely place to be at (like most prisons in Holland, but that’s different story), but some basic respect should be in place and it’s just crazy they get away with it like this… one stupid little “own” investigation… Madness…

Well, I am going to pee on a picture of George Bush now. If anyone has a problem with that, I will have my own little investigation which will show that the wind allegedly and accidentally blew the picture of George Bush in the toilet while I was taking a pee… What are the odds! :-)

Posted in News & media | 1 Comment »

Time passes quickly and being to lazy or to busy prevented some good stories to reach the blog… until now! :-)
Just finished the last story, follow one of the links if you are curious:

- Struggling through “the queens ride” [The longest ride in Cogolin, published 31-05-2005]

- Highlights from a fun week [All remarkable and rememberable stories from the week in Cogolin, published 01-06-2005]

- The Grand Prix at Imola [Photo’s and movies from the Formula 1, published 03-06-2005]

 
And I shouldn’t forget to mention the nice restaurants I have been to:

- Si! Tapas muy bien! [Ramblas @ Hornstull, published 02-06-2005]

- Sushi picnic [Onaka @ Stockholm city center, published 02-06-2005]

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Yesterday Dutch cyclist Marc Lotz had to come clean and let the world know he was taking doping (blood doping EPO) to improve his cycling… I was both surprised and stunned… Surprised because I would never have thought Lotz would use doping and stunned because I can’t believe he used EPO… How stupid must he be?!?! EPO has been strongly connected to cycling since the Tour de France of ‘98. And ever since there has been so many blood tests… and the one thing they seem to check for the most is EPO… so what was he thinking?!?! Besides that there was something I didn’t think about until I watched the sportnews later that evening… In my naive mind I thought or hoped it was just Lotz that did something stupid… Until old Dutch cyclist Maarten Ducrot gave his view in the sportnews… He simply stated the team Lotz was riding for had a team doctor, who monitors the riders very closely, so if Lotz was messing around with his blood, at least the team doctor must have known!
Bad… really bad… it feels like this could lead to yet another big doping thing… and the longer Lotz is quiet (he wants to be left alone now, and not talk to the press), the more speculation there will be… Are there more in the Quick-Step team that take something? Did he just started using it, or was he already using it when he was at the Rabobank team? What about the guys he trains with? They should have known…

Today the doping story continued when some stories from a new book from retired cyclist Philippe Gaumont were published. Gaumont, who was banned from the sport after admitting to using doping some years ago, now writes about all the doping stories in his former Cofidis team… Some were already known, like the classic story about Frank Vandenbroucke (who was caught using grow-hormones and EPO, but declared that the doping was not for him, but for his dog…), but it probably also contains new stories about the use of doping in the cycling sport.

Sad, because it really looked like the professional cycling was getting cleaner and cleaner the last couple of years… now it takes another big blow… What doesn’t help much is the default answer almost all cyclists give when they are asked if they use doping. It always is something like: “Well, I have never been caught.”

…

Well, at least I can finish the story on a high! I have been “clean” for almost 2 months now! Haven’t used any doping lately! :-) *hahaha* still don’t know for sure if my asthma medicine from my inhaler contains something illegal that is on any doping list, but apparently my increased level of fitness by all the cycling I have done makes me breath more easily! Now I just have to make sure I keep this level of fitness so I won’t ever have to speak those horrible words: “I have never been caught”… :-)

Posted in News & media, Cycling | No Comments »

Big day in our small country yesterday. Without any doubt the country rejected the European constitution. 62% of the population said no. I was one of them. Not because I am against the European Union, but simply because I didn’t agree with some of the things in the constitution. And if I can’t back it up for 100%, I vote no. Because why would I support something I don’t fully believe in? It seems to be the thought of most people. People has last trust in our own government after the introduction of the Euro and quick expansion of the EU the last couple of years. The gap between the politic and the population has only grew bigger the last couple of years. Now they finally ask the population what they want and the big NO vote was the logic response. 85% of the parlement was in favour of the constitution… while 62% of the country is against it… apparently the people we have chosen to represent us in the government clearly don’t have a clue what the people want… A sad situation… And as there won’t be new elections because of this, probably a situation that won’t change any time soon… Time will tell what this no-vote will mean for our country. I can’t be to worried about it. It seems England is calling of the referendum and all my money is on a Danish no-vote in September! The Danes won’t let us stand alone with France! ;-)

Maybe also a small reason the no-vote won… the no-camp showed some humor, like on this postcard :-)

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