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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.)
Our American friends Tiffany and Zack paying a visit to Tyne Cot Cemetery, Britain’s greatest military cemetery on the European mainland, a pretty day late spring/early summer 2009, near Passendale, the Westhoek, Belgium.
I get a slight voyeur kick out of being able to read through the various wacky combinations people input into search engines, and which eventually make those people wash upon the rocky shores of the Mountaintop, that small hidden island in the middle of cyberspace, known only to a few good men and women.
Below is an extract of all such wacky combinations, ever since having migrated to the great WordPress engine. The clear winner, apart from the obvious ‘mountaintop.be’, is the ‘Mountain Crutches’ post (i.e. in having the most searches against it), especially since winter began.
| mountaintop.be | 92 |
| crutch crampons | 9 |
| crampons for crutches | 5 |
| stephen roche | 4 |
| michael herr | 4 |
| crutches crampons | 3 |
| stephen roche pictures | 3 |
| parijs-roubaix toertocht 2010 | 3 |
| drhardie2003 | 3 |
| www.mountaintop.be | 3 |
| autographed cycling postcards | 2 |
| breedhout mountain bike 4 juillet 2010 | 2 |
| podenco ibicenco | 2 |
| bruno schulz kaneelwinkel | 2 |
| jimi hendrix fringe | 2 |
| piene haute | 2 |
| bruno schulz | 2 |
| coetzee john maxwell | 2 |
| freelance “project manager ” -verzekeringservaring, -infrastructure | 2 |
| pieter lajares | 2 |
| freelance contract project program manager site:be | 2 |
| priester muzikant piloot | 2 |
| flanders summer | 2 |
| bruno schulz paintings | 2 |
| mtb dworp | 2 |
| podengo galego | 2 |
| rudolf steiner | 2 |
| how do i drop one line from my phone contract | 2 |
| belgium countryside | 2 |
| sad pisces | 2 |
| bruno schulz sanatorium | 2 |
| hippies monterey pop | 2 |
| octavio paz het labyrinth der eenzaamheid | 1 |
| mountaintop blog | 1 |
| het labyrinth van de eenzaamheid octavio paz | 1 |
| maurice potteke pis potje kak almanak | 1 |
| thomas blondeau | 1 |
| drhardie2003@yahoo.com | 1 |
| gary lachman | 1 |
| the ground was like iron with sharp rocks sticking up out of it. we started to blow up our air beds. “god, you must be a couple of pansies,” said thesiger. | 1 |
| high on the mountaintop blog carruth | 1 |
| kristien dehollander | 1 |
| the border trilogy: all the pretty horses / the crossing / cities of the plain | 1 |
| thomas blondeau geike | 1 |
| “mountaintop” | 1 |
| podengo kookie | 1 |
| indian summer schelde mighty river | 1 |
| what i talk when i talk about running | 1 |
| unik bikes | 1 |
I told you earlier the lady is on her way to becoming a chocolatier, which includes the study of all things marzipan, the fruits of which I get to eat late every Monday.
Someone’s got to be the last one…
A hard week of work has me reeling a bit this Saturday morning, over a cup of tea, and I just de-activated my Facebook account – we’ll see how long I’ll last without it. I spent five long years working for the flagship of the Flemish pharmaceutical industry, and I’m getting close now to entering my fifth month at the flagship of the Walloon pharmaceutical industry, and I must say, there’s no two ways about it, Belgium consists of two different countries, and I’m not just talking about the Walloon men kissing each other in the morning, a habit I stay away from, the dislike of stinking coffee breaths in the morning. Mars Volta is a great band.
