People

Firstly, want to apologize, I have been away for a bit. It all started around a week back when I got myself a bloody nose. If you know me, you know that these happen pretty frequently in my life and I normally have one bad one a year. Normally, run in to see my doc, get it cauterized and I am all peachy. Now, things are a bit different. For about 4-5 days have been having bloody noses and 3 days were just continuous. So, needless to say, my race on Monday was a wash, and doing much of anything else was just a joke.

Back to the race, I did try and start and whenever I would go hard, well I would bleed. So, I DNF'ed and spent the rest of the day watching the race I was just in. I have not done this too much and I have to say, it can be pretty darn fun. I stopped on the side of the road and ran into some fans that I know out on course. For the following 3 hours I drank good wine, ate bread and amazing Normandy cheese and generally had a pretty rocking time.

Back to normal life now, I am hoping that the bloody noses have stopped long enough for the 3 months until I get home. Frankly, I just do not trust the whole socialized medicine over here and am quite scared to have to go to a hospital here. God Bless America.

I also would like to report that Corey, Dylan and Marcel arrived in France and it has been nice to have some English spoken to me a bit. But, as I had mentioned in a previous post, over my vacation I met some unique characters and I want you to know a bit about them. On Sunday afternoon when I was ready to leave, I headed to the train station to grab a ticket home but was kindly told I had 2 more hours until the next train left as Sunday night, not too many trains run, so what did I do? Like any good Euro person, I headed off to the nearest cafe. Sat down at the bar and was generally just taking it all in. Watching World Cup on the Tele and talking to folks. A nice gentlemen decided to sit next to me and start talking to me and trying to be a friendly guy I talked back. Well, as the conversation kept on going, I was asked if I was alone, where was my girlfriend and where I live normally. None of these seemed to be redflags but when asked what I was doing that day I mentioned my train was leaving in an hour. Seizing the opportunity, he just straight out of the blue asked if I wanted to hurry back to his place and have sex before I left. WHAT? Yes I know. Upon rejection, I inquired as to why he may have thought I would want to do such a thing upon which I was told that I was in a bar, by myself in a heavy gay area, thin and clean cut. Whoops, guess from now on, need to find myself a gal around here or something. Pretty funny now that I think about it.

I also want to leave you with a photo of a gal that was in the city of Rouen, France. Once again I had about an hour and a half in between trains the same night so I decided to walk around town to get a feel for the culture. She was trying to get money out of everyone she could and I am said to say, she asked me too. I had to be a mean guy and say no. I just cannot support this habit.














Going to try and race tomorrow night if I can. I have a night time crit in my hometown over here and am just praying I can pull it together. Lets see.