This past was quite the norm and the monotonous sleep ... eat ... ride ... recover ... eat ... sleep then repeat seven times has become the theme of my life. It seems to be a very boring life yet this week wasn't really that boring. This week I'm going to go thorough the small intricacies that make my days here in Belgium so much fun.

    I guess I will start off with the race we did last Monday. We arrived very early to pre-ride the course and had a lot of time to kill before we had to be ready. I don't know the reasons why but my teammate Ben just started to sing the US national anthem while we are surrounded by at least six other Belgian teams. I turned out to the funniest thing to happen all day and left the Belgians with a great laugh out of the Ben's serenade.

    Wednesday here in Oostende we had the start of the Tour of Belgium. I was very cool to be able to see the pro riders and cars in town. I stopped by the start/finish after my ride that day to check out the course and watch some of the riders. The best part of the day though was when it was reported to me by a reliable source that a team car (name withheld to protect the possibly innocent) was seen parked directly in front of a house for "working women" in the red light district. I also didn't ask why my source was in that area.

    We celebrated Brian Adams birthday this week. A big happy birthday to him. He had the fun task of trying to blow out some trick candles a teammate placed on his cake. Also at the birthday dinner was RJ's friend Jason from Arizona. He stopped by the Cycling Center while on his cycling trip across Europe. It was great to exchange stories with him about his travels so far.

    Lately there has been a ton of cycling on TV here lately. On Sunday I came back from a ride to see the final stage of the Tour of Belgium. I watch for a minute and notice a Colnago-Landbouwkrediet rider was off the front. It turned out to be none other than Jeff Louder, a fellow American who lives only two blocks from the Cycling Center. He broke off the front solo after 25 kilometers and stayed off the front for about 3 hours before being caught on the local laps of the race. It was a good for him to pull off such great move and I hope his form will follow him to Philly for the USPRO Championships.

    After the Tour of Belgium we watched the end of the Giro time trial stage and saw Tyler Hamilton cruse to his first Grand Tour victory. That was a great ride on his part and he was pushing it the whole time. By now you would think this would be all the cycling one could get in one day, but nope, there was still more to come. We changed to a French channel and watched Lance Armstrong at the Midi Libre defend his leaders jersey. He is looking like it's going to the another "Tour de Lance" this year. Sunday was defiantly a great day for American's racing here in Europe.

    So I guess in the end this week wasn't very boring, but a series of funny incidents and good times to break the monotonous training cycle.

    -Gregg Germer-