Border Ride (special velo edition)

Aachen is one of my favortie cities, but until a few days ago, I had never actually been there. So why is it one of my favorite cities? 3 of my favorite bands are from Aachen, all of which are signed to Van Records, my favorite record label, surprisingly also from Aachen. My adventure played out like this...

12:30pm, pick up by the CoffeeRide crew.
2pm, arrive in Aachen.
2:01pm, begin looking for Alexander von Meilenwald of The Ruins of Beverast.
2:05pm, have student 2Euro coffee & muffin deal.
2:20pm, begin looking for Zorn of Nagelfar.
2:31pm, move to different cafe, have another coffee.
3pm, loiter Aachen and get some lunch.
3:59pm, begin looking for Gnarl of Verdunkeln.
4pm, head to student dorms, drop off gear, suit up.
5:30pm, cross Netherlands border like it was 1939.
7pm, crit start.
8:30pm, crit finish.
9pm, cross the German border like it was 1944.
9:30pm, arrive at student dorms to clean up.
10pm, student dinner in Aachen.
12:30am, home.

Above is the loop with the country borders in yellow. I hacked a 55min effort off the front with a few guys in the crit, then bowed out citing pedantic Triathlete training theory. I have actually felt rather good since riding the crit, and am thinking about doing a lot more crit work, even for the non-drafting. I might even do this all over again next week, considering TT bike are permitted!!!!

Here you can see how techincal the track was...

Dutch Border

Plenty more riding is being done in North Western Germany, and Tuesday's ride was the second ride I had done in 3 days where I had been riding past 9:30pm. Where else in the world would this ever happen??? Oh and when I say plenty of riding, I also mean plenty of coffee too :)