4th of July

Happy 4th of July to yall!! It is certainly a bit of a bummer to not be back home in the states celebrating on OUR day, but what can I do? To all back home, enjoy your fireworks, barbeques and beer for me, what do I eat on this sacred American day you ask? A nice french baguette and quiche. Pretty backwards eh? To touch my American roots though I am watching some U.S. Dirt track racing on Discovery channel, the only thing I now need is some PBR to watch too.

I have got some exciting news for this week as my coach Corey Hart is going to be arriving in France on Tuesday and he is bringing 2 other riders with him to get their feet wet in Europe. The 2 riders coming with Corey are Dylan Jones and Marce Delisser.This is a part of the BODE or Boise Development cycling program and is a great way to help under 23 riders along the cycling path. I owe a lot to this program as it has been a huge help in getting me to Europe and follow my dream. Some nice things about their arrival are that I am going to have an outlet to speak some English with fellow Americans around and get to show some visitors around giving me a little bit of a feeling of a "local"

I also have some other news to report. I have had quite a few breakthroughs this year with my French language skills from when I first arrived. My first 2 months were pretty awful honestly, but things got much better and I and others became quite complacent with the level that I was at. That stage is long gone and now on multiple occasions daily, those who I have lots of contact with are continually upping the French that they use with me and I am back to learning lots of new words and phrases. So the downfall to all of this, what I do know, I can speak with conviction luring those around me into a sense that I have a much larger grasp of the language, which I do not. This results in even more chances to learn and hopefully less fatigue when speaking down the road.

First week back training has been great and I am off to go and see how my legs like me tomorrow on race day. Good times are waiting to be had and looking forward to a great week.