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@youramericanlover
**RIDE REPORT - Day 1
**
Oh hai.
7 a.m. the Euro-crew amass at St Pancras, minus Bernie and the vansters who have been drinking Schnapps out of the bottle since 5 and are now playing 10p slots on the ferry and have nearly won their weekend budget once over. Braker hasn’t been to bed since Wednesday because basically fuck that, he said.
Cava and orange juice are mixed and drank once on board the train. Soon, knowledge is shared. French trains are fast, Eurotunnel is engineering feat etc. but:
Fact: Lille is one of the largest sock producers in Western Europe due mainly to the large elasticene deposits which are extracted via fracking. Somehow the trampoline industry remains a minor player in the region.
Fact 2: Female ducks have eight vaginas. This allows them to deflect male frottage and to deploy only the ‘real fanny’ when they’ve found the male duck they prefer.
Euro-crew arrives in awful Brussell-Zuid and it’s pissing down. Euro-crew board the train to Bruges flawlessly and arrive in another, more hammering rainstorm. Meanwhile the van has been stopped for 3 hours on the French side for the border after Matt insults a Gendarme’s tracksuit. The van make up the time on the E40 but refuse to elaborate. There is a rumour Tanya drafted the van for 90 minutes in the big ring, but again, further elaboration is refused.
The reunion in Bruges is joyful despite the fact that now every object and its underside is completely soaked. Belgian beers are shared, a wised Tibetan man is paid-off to watch the bikes and we drink more beers (and eat). It continues to piss down with rain. A ride to the coast is proposed, which hangs in the air like fart in an elevator; sniffed distastefully then silently ignored. Proposed once more.
40 minutes later 11 riders depart for the coast in a heretofor uknown torrential rain, hail and rushing wind. Once at the beach (the sun is shining now that we’ve stopped riding) Bernie and Matt strip to James Brown’s Please Please Please and run into the North Sea to investigate. In the end, two of the floundering seals died, one was saved and one was killed for meat.
At a cafe, the grumpiest woman in Belgium serves us coffee.
An easy few miles back to Bruges and then a dip in the naturally occurring volcanic springs to cleanse the pores and we head off into town. First a couple jagerbombs to set the spirits high. 3 bottles of vodka, 46 beers and 8 kgs of mussels later and we hit the karaoke bar where Braker brings out cluster of jimson weed, which is nice but a bit pricey (he made us pay up front). Fortunately Almac had travelled in Mexico and Norwich extensively and so knew how to ‘backstop a ride’ as it were. Call it 1 a.m. and 60 euro lighter each we found ourselves back in the hotel bar, singing songs, talking about bikes and nary a memory of the assaulted Japanese tourists or the break-in at the local C&A. Off to bed, I look around at the empty tables at the bar and see only half a coconut, a stinky Campangnolo cap and a dirty playing card as evidence to what had happened. Bed.