Curacao has been quite different from expected. Yes, the resort has clear blue water, lovely sand beaches, palm trees and gorgeous girls wearing almost nothing. Its a Dutch colony, so everything and everyone is European..the currency, the plugs, the language. But as soon as you leave the resorts gate, dirty streets, poverty and scary looking people are everywhere. Most people here are black, not to be raciest, but us whities stand out! The contrast between rich and poor is crazy, so its no wonder there is crime. Earlier this week my friend from the Bianchi team, Emil Lindgren, got knocked over and his bike stolen while training on the course. He's okay, thank god, and eventually got his bike back. Scary.

The course is flat and skittery.. loose sharp lava rocks are not nice to crash on as I found out on my first training lap! Its also super hot and humid. There are bugs, lizards, ants everywhere. Peter and Jocob had a nice surprise to find a cockroach in there bag of nuts the other day. Its been great to see the team again and all the other riders. Kind of like a huge family reunion catching up on winter stories.. mostly about all the snow screwing up their training.. full of excuses already these Euros!

The field was amazingly strong, with 120 on the start and almost all the top 30. Considering the course, I was very happy to finish in 12th place. I made one bad mistake after 1/2 lap, going over the handlebars, but luckily landing on my feet. I could hardly believe it, as my front wheel locked up on a tight rock drop off, I flew for a while then ran about 10m before turning around, to find about 10 riders very pissed off with my bike blocking the track :) Ops. My chain had gotten badly tangled so I had to spend 30sec to fix it.. slipping back around 15 places. Otherwise the legs were good and I managed alright considering the course suited a fully much better then my hardtail. I'll definitely be back on the Scalpel once I get home next week.

1996 Olympic winner, Bart Brentjens won the race. He is Dutch and was the one that convinced UCI to come to Curacao and also designed the course... so now he'll probably now be King of Curacao and have a life time of free holidays. Good for him. Everyone else is quite pissed about the race here.. there were no spectators (well maybe 1000 at tops), no sponsors are interested in the region, its darn expensive for all the teams and crazy long travel times. And now they are talking about making a contract to hold races here for the next 5 years! Free holidays to all UCI officials too I guess.

Now, after 3 months on the road, I'm finally going home !!! Annecy here I come :) Hopefully there will still be snow on the hills for some spring skiing!  ¶ 12:40 AM