Massimo Jaboffo

Great question there, Dr. Jaboffo. First off, I have to admit that I didn’t see that particular part of the race live. One of my most favorite spots on the RvV course happens to be the Eikenberg, which finishes about 5 km from the Molenberg, so while the dudes were making history, my crew and I were capturing a few more photos and making friends with race fans and locals alike on the Eikenberg.

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For the first time in nearly 20 years I am back in Belgium. I probably don’t need to point out that the 94^th edition of the Ronde van Vlaanderen was a good one — perhaps one of the best I can remember. The two top favorites fought it out to the end, giving the thousands of rabid fans a great show. Perhaps the best thing I was reminded of, however, was that the Belgian fans simply respect the sport. The average old granny knows more about cycling than your garden variety American Tour de France watcher. As Cancellara crossed the line yesterday, the café in which we watched the last 40km filled with applause — not golf-clap applause either, but honest, heartfelt appreciation kind of applause.

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Being absent from this here web-log for the past few weeks (and scarce for the past few months) has been an exciting, but lonely time for me. Lonely because I truly enjoy chatting with you fine people, but exciting because I have been living life on the rivet, to a great extent, for the past couple of months since taking the job at Bike Magazine. Learning the ins and outs, and trying to live up to the high standards left to me by my predecessors has proved no easy task.

But there’s light at the end of the tunnel.

As I write this, I am at flight level 360, or somewhere thereabouts, staring out the window at a nearly full moon, heading for BRU. That’s Brussels for those of you who do not have the entire list of airport indicators memorized. If you are reading this site in the first place, I think it is safe for me to assume you know the reason why a person like me would be headed to Belgium for Easter Sunday.

Yep. The Ronde van Vlaanderen.

As it turns out, the fine people at the magazine corporation saw fit to give the staff of Bike an extra assignment; make another magazine—just one issue—about whatever you want. We chose to do one about pavement, instead of dirt.

So hang tight sports fans, because for the next few days I’ll be coming at you direct from the place where it all started. And yes, as a matter of fact, I have been promised 6 days of rain. You can almost smell the fritjes, can’t you?

Dave Fahrner - Santa Rosa, California

That sounds like a great idea, Dave. I highly recommend it.

Personally, I think that for the real Classics experience you should try and check out at least one of the three races of what I like to call The Classics Week. It all starts with the Ronde van Vlaanderen on April 4th - Easter Sunday. If you can only take in one event and are looking for the crazed Euro-fan, knock-down, drag-out bike race experience, this is the one to take in. The Ronde van Vlaanderen is admittedly not as much on the radar of American fans as Paris-Roubaix is, but most of us consider it to be the harder of the two. Also, without too much difficulty, you can check out at least a couple different sweet cobbled climbs without having to break too many laws. In fact, I have often talked about bringing a small group over for the Ronde and riding bikes from one cool viewing spot to the next.

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This year marks the 20 year anniversary of Greg LeMond’s 1989 amazing comeback Tour de France victory. His ADR team has long been disparaged for being too weak to help the 3-time champ. I respectfully beg to differ. The ADR team, while no great shakes in the mountains, could get the job done on the flat, rolling and windy roads.

Greg LeMond’s 1989 Tour de France squad has won the Tour of Flanders a bunch of times – before 1989 and after. Let me know how many times the 9 rider collective won the Ronde van Vlaanderen, who they were, and in what year they won their respective Rondes. The first person to “comment” the correct answer wins all 3 of the Competitive Cyclist 20-dollar gift cards that I harvested from Downieville.