Fast Eddy's Wielercafé

After being close to a terrible week in and around Boston, the news from Liege Bastogne Liege Sunday comes to a lot of us around here as a welcome treat! As my greater-Boston expat-paddy mobile phone and email network buzzed with the news from Liege yesterday morning, a certain subject came up.   So let's put any lingering doubt to bed right now: Dan Martin is Irish . I know sure, he may have grown up in Liverpool, have a dad with a UK passport, and not that much of a brogue, but bah ... technicalities jongen .   The Irish Diaspora has ruled geography a mere technicality.   As the Irish constitution states: "The Irish nation cherishes its special affinity with people of Irish ancestry living abroad who share its cultural identity and heritage."     And like that old joke says, 'an Irishman? That's a man who gets more Irish the further he gets from Ireland.'    Girona?  Liverpool?  Liege?  Nice?  Vilvoord...

Had to miss Tour of Battenkill this year.    Other commitments. Not enough training anyway.  Blah blah blah ...no whining.  And enough about me.   Way better we talk about the guys who were there.   One warrior's tale in particular.. Battenkill Full Time Score:  Trojan warrior 1 - Whitetail deer 0. Our Flandria Cafe-Bikeworks-Flandria Master's team is lucky to have our own 'Spartacus':  Jay Trojan:   Jay's got a great 'warrior' surname that's only matched by his toughness and aggression on the bike. Jay drove out to America's 'spring classic'  in Cambridge NY to fly the Flandria Cafe flag.  He had designs on a class win... and the form to pull it off!    He was already strong in January, trained hard through all the cold this tough winter.  And got stronger through the spring.   Intervals.   Leading up the northern RI climbs on tough group weekend rides.  Lean, ripped, flying. Bet...

Hoi jongens! I'm calling 2013 a better than average spring classics season so far.    It's showed that despite attempts to modernize pro cycling (whatever that means) 'old time cycling' is still alive and well. It was a 'spring'  (I use the term loosely), when well laid plans were laid waste by cycling's gods of tradition.   Somewhere up there, Henri Desgrange, Karel Van Wijendale and a bunch of old-school scammers who built the sport were pulling levers behind the scene, unleashing the cold and precipitation that reminded us all that the spring classics remain timeless tests of hardness,  resistant to the progressive forces of modernization that conspire to take all the unpredictability out of the proceedings. After a few warm up races in a Disneyesque, warm desert moonscape - with riders enjoying luxury hotels before sub-baked races over pristine and empty roads -  tradition kicked modernization's behind.  The weather back in cycling's home...

Today I had a 2 week-old (brand new) laptop computer crash, and die.   I spent too many hours at Best Buy getting a replacement, instead of working.   Forget about riding... lost training day today.  I should be enjoying this new Macbook.   I just see it as dollars that could have bought that power meter... Despite the loss of productivity and aggravation dealing with chain stores and remote corporations whose idea of customer service is based on the ' greater fool theory' (e.g. when something goes wrong, get someone who can barely speak English to try to charge you as much as possible, and only retreat when faced with an almightly indignant rant), I can console myself that my day was not as painful as that of Walter Godefroot in this shot of him in full cry during his victorious ride in Paris Roubaix.   I was definitely this tenacious locking horns at Best Buy today.   Walter would have approved.  Probably would have thrown in a few expletives to...