In May I had a 3 week trip to Europe. We flew to our house in Belgium, stayed there
for a night before driving 2 hours hour to Arnhem, Holland. While in Arnhem I went on a bike ride from
our hotel to a WWII memorial site and an airborne landing site.
The trip was going well until the finals when Tory crashed
hard. Tory had to spend the next 2 weeks
in hospital and therefore would miss Worlds.
With Worlds being the final Olympic qualifier this put a lot of stress on
the rest of the trip. Had Tory not
crashed we would have been very close to qualifying 2 spots for the games, now
we were stuck sitting on our hands hoping we wouldn’t fall out of the top 11
countries, which earn 1 spot to the games.
After Holland we drove to London via the Chunnel. It was an easy 6 hour drive. I wasn’t aware that you actually don’t drive
through the Chunnel, but you drive onto train and it takes you. The challenge was now driving our left hand
drive van on the left in England.
In
London we stayed at a hotel in the new mall on the Olympic park site. I heard it was the biggest mall in
Europe. It had a massive food selection
with many international restaurants to keep us satisfied. My hotel room offered me a great view of the
Olympic stadium. We stayed in London for
6 days and had 3 days of training on the Olympic track. They made some changes after the test event
and wanted to give the athletes sometime on it to test it. In the evenings we went to the movies and
went bowling, all in the mall.  |
| Olympic BMX track |
On our drive from London to Birmingham we took a little
detour to Stonehenge. I was pretty
impressed with the size of it. I thought
it would be smaller.
The World Championships were in Birmingham. I would describe Birmingham as a blue-collar
city and not the nicest of places. We
stayed there for a week. Outside the
city hall I found these measurements on the ground so I took a picture. They reminded me of all the crazy
measurements dad would talk about, polls, links, etc…
The Worlds were a good event and but its hard to remember
much of what happened as we were all to stressed about the qualifying. I had all the calculations down and know
exactly what the countries had to not do to pass us. As time trails went on I scratched off the
countries out of the ranking. Italy and
Argentine passed us moving us to 11th, Ecuador was in 12th
and only qualified 1 athlete. In doing
the math I know he had to make the semi finals to pass us. On the following day was the race, we had
some juniors and an elite female racing.
They raced well but didn’t move passed the motos. The Ecuador rider didn’t’ qualify for the ¼
finals and we know we were in! We
qualified our 1 spots for London. There
was some celebrating to be had and Worlds were done. While I was packing to leaving I became
dizzy and sick, I had a 10 hour drive home to Belgium and then a long flight
home. I still didn’t feel well when I
got home, our team doctor said it was probably stress related. Needless to say I spent a couple of days
resting but had lots of work to do and events to run the next weekend. I was feeling better after a couple of days.
Overall euro-trip driving stats.
One of the pricks of flying so much is the occasional
upgrade to a pod.
When I got home all
the leaves were in full bloom and we noticed our backyard was very shady. So I fired up our electric chain saw and cut
down 2 small trees. Well they looked
small when they were standing, not so much on the ground. Now we have a lot more light and my grass may
actually grow. 
Lastly, the other day when I had some time I cut down the
giant cedar bush in front of our house and made a new garden with canna lilies
and petunia’s
Right now I am on my way to Quebec City for a race this
weekend.
