I then headed back out to Tom's place (old german friend) near Stuttgart to catch up with him and his youngster Luke who is a real character and a typical 2.5 year old! It was good to chill out there, the weather was KAK but I still managed a 3hr ride in the rain... GPS is a wonderful thing when you are in another country! Tom suggested a route and I took to the hills donning a rain jacket and GPS... its awesome to just go exploring trails without worrying about not finding your way home... especially when the sun is in the wrong hemisphere!
Mad Tom took me for a flip in his YAK 52 – an old aerobatic plane... its a good thing I know him otherwise I would have been kakking in my broek... we arrive at the hangar and the engine cowlings are off. Tom puts on his work jacket, out with the pliers, hammer and takes to fixing the engine! At this point, its good to know some of Tom's history – he has flown down through africa from Europe in his Antonov WW2 cargo plane... TWICE ! So he should know what he is doing with the engine covers off.... hopefully!!Unfortunately there are no pics of our flight – tried to take some before takeoff but they were severely blurred due to engine vibration (or shaking terrified hand!). I thought that I had a strong stomach... before I got into a stunt plane! We pulled 4G's through the bottom of a loop, flew inverted, couple of loops, Axle roll (he flew 2 of them and I flew the other 1 !!) It was all good until about 10 min into the session, you know when you feel flushed and get all hot? Even when its 5 degrees C ? Yip, one of those. I don't know how those jet fighter pilots do it... evidently you get used to it.
Then it was off to Houffalize... sans booked accommodation :-) The accommodation online was either super expensive or full – so it was better to just wing it when I got there... Things worked out in the end – after a lot of searching and asking around, I found a Guest House about 15km out of town with some Dutch speaking hosts. There are 9 kids running around and the little 1 year old has a cold – so its all fun and games! Lots of action and laughter with the kids – speaking zulu and entertaining them... I even had a conversation with the one kid in Chinese !!??!?!!
On the racing side, I did a practice lap with Burry on Friday – he is looking strong, Todd is sick so I think he is a little concerned that he is going to catch it too.... but so far so good. It was lekker to catch up and ride with our local WC superstar!
Today, I did one loop with Hannes Metzler, then managed to shadow Absalon for a lap – its a real privilege to ride amongst these guys – hopefully more South Africans will get inspired to greater heights and come and join in the action! Houffalize is a crazy place – the town is in a valley and the course weaves up and down, in and out cobbled streets, along the river and its pretty technical too. Usually it rains for Houffalize but this year it looks like we are going to have fine weather, Murphy's law now that I have bought a set of mud tires ! :-(
Anyway, its time to hit the hay... life is good here in Belgium – check out my Yoga spot... somewhere near Houffalize !
