Much has happened in the last week, not all of it being good. Hence the title. I've spent the last 20 or so hours confined to the immediate area surrounding my hotel room bed, nursing what I hope is not a broken hip. But, in the interest of continuity, let me start from the start, that being Atlanta.

It was a week ago yesterday that we finished up the Tour of Georgia. As I anticipated, I was far too busy afterward to post anything here. I did, however, plan to post a GPS file online. That plan was scuttled when I managed to discharge the battery in my backpack the night before the stage. So all of you fellow tech-nerds out there are out of luck. You'll have to take my word for it when I say it was hard and fast. Uncomfortably so. In the end, Gord just missed out on the stage win that we had been chasing all week.

Adrienne came out to Atlanta for the weekend and, after she talked me into a few cannonballs in the hotel pool, we headed to the post race party. On Monday, we spent the whole day acting like tourists with a ride on the MARTA and some extended wandering downtown. It was a much needed bit of relaxation.

After that, it was off to Belgium. The trip itself was fairly uneventful, but certainly not short. It wasn't until Thursday that we were able to get some real training rides in. The roads around here are great for bike riding and we even got to ride a few of the famous cobbled climbs from the big Classics. As I mentioned in the last brief post, we're staying in Kortrijk, which is near the French border about an hour's drive southwest of Brussels. We're in an old bed and breakfast about 5km from the city center. The place is pretty nice, but the innkeeper is a little nuts. Among other quirks, she has a rather fearsome looking german shephard that barks, growls, and generally intimidates everybody, guest or otherwise, whom it encounters. I think there's good reason why every Holiday Express doesn't employ one of these. It does little for the ambiance. Otherwise though, there's little to complain about. Our rooms for the first few days didn't have internet, but after our weekend trip to Paris we've moved to different rooms with ethernet. So I'm now free to get back to wasting hours online. Just like home.

There's plenty more I could type about the last week in Belgium, but Paris is where things get interesting, and much less positive. We travelled down there, about 3 hours by car, for the Trophee des Grimpeurs. It's a one day race with a 1.1 UCI ranking. For those that don't know, the first number in the UCI rankings signify whether it's a one day race (1), or a stage race (2). The second number signifies prestige, with the highest being ProTour (PT), then HC, then 1 and 2. Most races in the US don't even bother with UCI classification, but over here a 1.1 means that some of the big teams will show up with their secondary guys. But second-stringers or not, there's a reason they're on ProTour teams: they're fast.

The race itself is a bit of blur in my mind. It was no more than 40 degrees fahrenhiet and raining heavily. The first 4 or 5 laps, of a total of 15, were harder than anything I've ever experienced as a bike racer. But just past the halfway point, with the winning break already up the road, I was finally beginning to settle in a bit. Finishing started to seem less impossible. Then, around one of the many roundabouts on the course, a Cofidis rider went down in front of me on the slick pavement and I ended up in a tangled pile of bikes and bodies. I made no attempt whatsoever to extricate myself; I knew it was over. The medics got me on my feet and, due mostly to the adrenaline coursing through me, I was convinced that I was alright. Not alright enough to get back on the bike, but not so bad that I needed any sort of attention. But because the team car was full, I got a ride in the ambulance anyway. Upon getting out of the ambulance though, it became clear that all was not well. I couldn't support my own body weight on my right leg. I had to be helped over the van by two teammates, all the while shivering convulsively from the cold. But still, the best course of action seemed to be to wait for the race to finish, then get back to Belgium to take stock of everything. My two remaining teammates in the race, Garrett and Karl, both held on for top-ten finishes. Quite respectable.

After returning to Belgium, I got a first hand demonstration of how well socialized medicine can work. With little fuss and in barely an hour's time, I was out of the hospital with the following diagnosis: no fractures evident in the x-ray, probably a deep contusion, take three days of rest and if it hasn't improved, come back for a more thorough bone scan. So that's where I stand (not literally of course, I can't really do much of that right now). That means that Dunkurque is out. I'll be staying in Avelgem, about 15km from here, while the rest of the team races. If things improve, I'll be back on the bike in a day or two and still on track for the Peace Race. I'm obviously hoping that's the case. With plenty of time on my hands for the immediate future, updates here are sure to be more frequent. In the meantime, a few more rides are up at ollerend.motionbased.com and some pictures follow.