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The Portes du Soleil region is 12 ski resorts (straddling the French-Swiss border) combined, 650 kilometers of pistes in total, with magnificent views on the Mont Blanc. Picture taken at the top of the La Rosta lift, Les Gets.
It’s been 9 weeks now since I relinquished my job to become a full-time stay-at-home dad. I felt euphoric in week 1, but a bit anguished in week 2 and 3, the question that weighed on my mind being whether my leaving wouldn’t come back to me like a boomerang when one day having to re-enter the (tough) labor market. After all, long-term freelance project management positions (which is what I was doing before) are hard to come by. Week 4 to 6 were just great, week 7 the week he had to start going to a nursery, where in the end he only stayed three half days before we pulled him out for good. He suffered through a week of diarrhea in week 8 (last week), the aftermath of his brief stint in the nursery, and I suffered with him, one day even running out of clean clothes.
This week, week 9, we’re completely on track again, solid sleeping, solid eating, all smiles.
Next week is looking good too, a ski trip to Morzine (French Alps) together with my sister (his godmother), my sister’s husband, and her kid (my godchild). Last year there was almost no snow, this year there’s supposed to be plentiful – you don’t even have to bother looking up snow reports.
Ps. The idea was for me to start looking into a few other options as of week 7 (with him in nursury) but all that has been temporarily suspended, or will be second fiddle to the kid.
Sometimes here in Belgium the clouds hang so low and thick and dark over the land that in their lowness and thickness and darkness they exert a palpable and ominous physical presence on the beings underneath. As if someone strung a giant tarpaulin over Ghent and the villages sheltering in its vicinity, a malevolent shadow to be imposed at will. Between when it rained and when it didn’t rain (the day before yesterday), the roads never really dried up; toward the evening, light started filtering back in and the edge of the tarp stood out in sharp contrast against a reddening evening sky.
Most of you probably haven’t even noticed it, but the ‘About’ section shows my real name and has been showing it for a few weeks now, instead of monikers of sorts. Folks who have known me for instance when I was doing my Ph. D. and wonder whatever happened to all that other stuff I was always doing, well LinkedIn won’t be the only hit anymore when they enter my name in Google. You may say ‘why bother’ - the thing is I always had to bother, the wrong way around. A small change, but a portentous one.
Spent the evening in Brugge (Belgium) yesterday (brilliant weather) for the opener of the new season, Club Brugge (or FCB) against VC Westerlo (the team coached by Jan Ceulemans, a former Club Brugge-great). They played bad, but won brilliant (5-0).
The two squads walking out of the catacombs and on to the pitch.
It’s a bit of a contradictory statement but of all the times in a soccer season, I like the pre-season the best, when new players are announced, arrive for their first training, and are being fit into the team. In that sense, I don’t think the many Club Brugge fans ever had more to look forward to, with a new president not playing to be second, and a host of new players as a result.
A number of youngsters too are making their first appearance in the A squad, and the one I’m keeping an eye on is Fries Deschilder, as he started his career with FC Westouter, a small village team I used to play for as well, and he thus made it all the way up the stairway to heaven. Karel Geraerts has been told to look for another team because of Fries, so he must be good, and very well he did indeed Wednesday evening in the first warm-up game leading up to the season. He played the full 90 minutes.
I’ll be in the stands comes July-31, for the season opener home against Westerlo, as my brother in law will be travelling. Great. In Deschilder who’s got soul, out Vargas who has money instead.
Not unlike Greenville, North-Carolina, which became the BMX capital of the world (‘protown’) after the Mirra brothers moved down there from New York, Girona (Spain) became a professional road cycling hotbed when Johnny Weltz left his native Denmark in the beginning of the 90s and swapped it for Girona in search of a warmer climate for winter training. It is said that upward of 35 pros currently call Girona home, most of them migratory birds of Anglo-Saxon hue. Clip-clop on their cleats they exit from their apartments in the historic centre, to sip from a latte and get underway for a training ride in the magnificent Spanish-Tuscan countryside. Armstrong prepped a few of his Tour victories in Girona and Michael Barry apparently wrote about the scene in his Le Métier.
Should you ever traipse through Cataluña (where Moorish, Jewish, and Iberian history overlay in a region that makes one think of Italy at times), don’t forget to visit Cadaqués, a bohemian fisherman’s village at the northern end of the Costa Brava. The Santa Maria church is a gem, there’s a Dali/Picasso museum, and a short walk away in Port Lligat you’ll find the Casa Dali, where the master lived with his Gala for over 40 years. Restaurant Can Rafa does a brilliant paella, and the GR 92 leading down into the village is a not to be missed piece of singletrack (it’s actually in the picture, as is the Santa Maria church), in what is in general a great mountain bike area (the wider Cap de Creus nature reserve).
All in all 2010 will have been a tremendous year during which the index of my spirit trended dramatically upward after a horrific 2009, the year in which I grew fat and had my soul turned inside out by the blind doings of the corporate machine, the jaws of which you always and invariably enter at own risk.
Blog-wise maybe the most important day came around somewhere in May when I had sat down in order to write once again an entry awash in self-analysis and for one reason or another just couldn’t do it anymore, couldn’t do the same thing – the endless Pessoa-like string of me-doodles never amounting to 1, as never anything in life does. (How can people write non-fiction in a universe they don’t understand?)
Schopenhauer is right – he’s always right – the age of 36 is the end of the beginning and the beginning of the end. I’m 38 now and things have changed indeed. I don’t longer dream the endless dreams of infinite possibility (life is a funnel, my friends), but I keep a shortlist of things still to do instead – more about that later.
Anyways, it was a great year, the absolute highlight being the May bike vacation on Mallorca, where a few guys shot past me on the first climb, although never out of sight, I closed the gap somewhat in a slightly technical small midway descent, to then power past them to the top, and so it was for the rest of the week, during which I befriended a Frenchman, Pierre from the Alps, and we could be friends for life. The lady rode with the men all week, as the only woman.
She’s just gotten back from work which is making Shasta and Kymer speed to the kitchen, and we’re all trying to get through winter, the magnificent woodpecker I spotted in the garden ‘bout half an hour ago too.
Take care.
In a dark twill suit his lanky but stately body sat, an experienced recruiter at ease with himself and choices made, his composure the embodiment of hundreds of years of Calvinism and self-assurance that comes with age, horn-rimmed glasses framing an elongated Dutch face, his hair sandy grey and mottled.
“Let’s start with going back to the results of the test you did,” he said, “I know you were bothered by a car running idly, or so I was told by my assistant, but what I want to come to is that you show an unusual result for self-confidence, let me be precise, you seem to regard yourself as very self-confident in certain respects while exhibiting doubts in others, if you don’t mind me starting the interview this way.”
“No problem,” I answered, “when two men are asked if they understand the world, is it the smartest of the two who says ‘yes’?” “That doesn’t mean I’m not able to handle situations when they come along, as is also expressed by my track record.” (I wouldn’t have spoken these words to a Catholic, but one sometimes has to take a gamble during job interviews.)
“I like what you’re saying,” he replied, “wise words is what they are.”
“Bingo,” I thought.
(I ended up not landing the job because of being overqualified.)
