Back to the present

Okay, before I continue with the ketchups, I'm going to post about the here and now. I am in Holland with the national team. Here is a picture of us before pre-riding today's world cup (courtesy of Leigh Hobson's Picasa site ).Umm, I think we're lost again...where's Vincent?Okay, so the roads aren't too wide here, just a little wider than Gina and I are tall If you'd like to look at some more of Leigh photos you can access them here
Leigh's Pics

So, I have to say, Holland is very nice and clean. We actually saw a women dusting the "outside" of her house!! We were all like "wow, I've never seen that before". So, the tulips aren't out yet, it's still too cold but everybody's yard and house are pristine. But, I'll tell you, the air quality ain't so hot. Most of the time it smells like poop (there are other 4 letter words I could use but this is a family friendly blog). Yesterday while riding, a farmer was spraying his field with mist of poop, I swear. It smelled so bad. Today the air just had a general 'eau de poop'. I've figured it out though. See, there are all these horses here, especially a lot with those short little legs (like in that picture for Trinity two posts below). We were wondering why they have them. Surely you don't ride them and it's not like they need them for work horses. Today it clicked. They keep them for the poop! Here's some of those poopers hereI'm so glad I figured that out! I should sleep tonight. BTW, I didn't race today but I am racing tomorrow. It's on some of the same parts as today's race but no landfill hill and hopefully, no Paris-Roubaix type cobbles either (they had about 8km of that today).