sunshine alleycat

i remember it as one of the first days of summer here, even though spring only officially started a couple weeks earlier. there i was just sitting around in scheveningen when i got a little facebook message from guilio checking if i was coming thru to amsterdam for the alleycat. what alleycat? the second in the series being organised by pristine. seemed like a good excuse to go show of my new pink bike with all its shiny brooks and sram bits in the sunshine so i set off.



the good thing about promising prizes is that people show up. add sunshine into the mix and everyone is having a good time. so, bring on the alleycat. the rules were simple, we were put into teams of six, you had to finish together, and you had to have all the answers, correct. as luck would have it, i ended up in a team with pierski and jur, and 3 other amsterdam locals. there were 6 checkpoints and 6 of us in each team. seemed logical that we each take a checkpoint, and meet on the park bench down the road from the finish.



as it turned out, we were the only team to split up, and we finished the alleycat in 37minutes. 2nd place arrived in some time over an hour. to the other teams' credit, there wasnt too much complaining. i guess it was a nice sunny day for a social group ride. anyway, we won! here is me holding up some of the aforementioned prizes :-) thanks to mirandawrites10 for the photos

track fix

its been a while since my last visit to the track, but i think im still addicted. thanks to anke and the other organisers of the track clinic, i think there might well be a few more addicts out there now too. my bike got a little spring clean (actually this is a euphemism, i had almost forgotted i had pink hubs under all that dirt), the track bars went on, a nice big gear appeared from the spares box, and some faster looking pedals took the place of the hard working guys.



just cleaning my bike would have been a well spent saturday morning, but there was still the road trip, the sugar fest, the track buzz and the warm fuzzy feeling to come. thanks to akos for being the only one of us responsible enough to own a car, thanks to keelie for being the only one of us irresponsible enough to buy sooo much sugar, and to the track, well, thanks for being there. pity they dont keep the amsterdam track open thru the summer as now im working there a couple days a week... anyway, i was so inspired by saturdays activites, that this is what i woke up to on sunday morning :-)