What happened to logic?

Gotta say, Erik is really starting to get tired of stupid french logic that he does not know where to even start. Shall we begin?

Yesterday was set to be a shit show of shit shows. I headed off to do a night time crit (remember that it is dark at night) on cobblestones. Thankfully only half of the course was cobbled, but the other half of the race was on a road under construction. Once I got to the course, I saw nothing in the way of lights on the course, nor did I see the organizers making any attempt to get rid of the cars that were parked on the course. Upon further inquiring I was told to be aware and just swerve around the cars. Nice. Thankfully it was a full moon last night and we had some light from that and some light from all the cafes and bar lining the course, but nothing else in the way of lights. Certainly made it interesting.

For the racing I was pretty content in the fact that I knew most of everyone there and knew that I was stronger than most of them. Schweet. Given what had happened the day before with cars, it was pretty funny to hear people at the start saying "hey, there is no cars to use today." However, this only added fuel to the fire from the emotions of the day before. This is where french logic or lack of really starts to kill me. In the race no matter what I did, there was a plethora of racers that would just follow me, not work, just sit on my wheel. Be it in a breakaway-no working. Be it pulling a break back-no working. Apparently orders are to not work with the American I have been told. We let 2 guys go up the road and with 10 teams in the race, that leaves 8 to pull it back. Nope. The french have this love affair with arriving at the finish solo and not working. Whatever I did on the day, nothing would work. Riders would just try and attack by themselves, flame out come back and try again, again and again. Had they worked with me, they could have had a shot at the win. The worst part is that they probably do not see that at all. And so the day went, lots of yelling, hand gesturing and general mayhem pouring over from the day before. Back stateside this is called negative racing and well, here its just called normal.

My frustration levels are pretty darn high with these people and my reserves that I have to tap into to deal with them are quickly dwindling. But, I was happy to see that the guy who won is a good mate of mine over here and I had no issues with that. The 2 eventually lapped the field and I helped him out a bit in the finale. Next weekend, he and his director said the favor will be paid back. Unfortunately, I got my ass chewed out after the race for this. Apparently, the French can make deals, but I am not allowed to. If I couldn't win on the night, I wanted to at least secure some help in some upcoming races.

Oh and those cars on course. Some people are going to be quite surprised to find some dents in their cars as people traveling at high rates of speed on bikes leave quite a mark when nailing a car dead on. But, I guess that the bright spot might be that it did not rain heavily on us or the night would have been even crazier. Alright, bring on this weekend and some climbs so I can do my thing. And so go another unique race over here.