Spring Cycling Classics

Today was one of the big spring cycling classics, the Ronde van Vlaanderen, or Tour of Flanders in the Flanders region of Belgium. This is one of professional cycling’s “monuments”, along with next weekend’s Paris-Roubaix, are two of European bicycle racing’s cobbled classics, named after the ancient cobblestone roads, or pave, the cyclists must negotiate during the course of the race. These races are huge in Belgium and the rest of Europe, every professional cyclist dreams of winning one of these legendary races. Today’s race was the 100th edition of the Tour of Flanders. It was an exciting race, filled with drama, won by Peter Sagan over Fabian Cancellara and Sep Vanmarcke.

We got up at 5:00AM to watch the race live on the internet and it was totally worth it. After the race was over, the sun had come up, it was getting warmer and we just had to go for a bike ride. We are starting to get into a little better shape, still have plenty of excess winter poundage to burn off, but the rides are getting a little longer every day. When you live in the mountains, there are hardly any flat roads, so when you’re out of shape you can’t go to far, so there’s plenty of incentive to get off the couch and on the bike.

A view of Mt. Adams from a farm road in the Cascade Mountain foothills

The pear trees in the Hood River valley are in bloom, all next week should be quite spectacular. There is nothing quite like it. In the span of a couple weeks, the valley goes from bright green, to pure white and back to green again. With the snow capped Mt. Hood and Mt. Adams in the distance, there really is no place else like it.

Hood River valley pear orchards with Mt. Hood in the distance

There will be some great bike riding in the next week or so and we are hoping the smallmouth bass fishing will start to heat up so keep checking in for more good stuff.

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