Teresa and I found ourselves unable to travel to the 2004 National Cyclocross Championship due to her work projects. We were both disappointed.
Some few days later she called me from her work, asking, “Isn’t there a Masters World Championship for Cyclocross?” I was aware of the event, but knew few details, other than it was held in Europe in January.
We both began scouring the limited information available for details. Location, eligibility, course, and travel logistics were explored.
The race that season (and many others) was to be held in Belgium. The host city was called Mol, and the venue Zilvermeer. We found a date on the UCI calendar, but other information was very limited at several months out from the January date. I managed to track down a Canadian website that had race reports from the prior year and video of the course. That was the shocker.
Sand. We had ridden sand in local CX events, but nothing like the amount shown in the video. I had watched Belgian ‘cross races my friends had pirated off the web, but had not viewed any with a similar challenge (we would later learn that Zilvermeer is one of several classic courses for the specialists).
Meanwhile Teresa worked on our travel arrangements. Airline tickets were relatively inexpensive since this was the tourism ‘off-season’. It was to be our first trip abroad, so we did a modicum of research about Belgium. In our naivete we assumed her basic French language skills, and my History degree would be adequate. We very much intended for this to be a vacation after the bike race.
There was a certain amount of bureaucracy to be navigated with passports, UCI International race licenses, and booking our housing. Interestingly there was no pre-registration offered for the event, only day of race. We managed to secure one of the limited holiday cabins at the venue (located within a couple of hundred meters of the start). At that time the reservation desk was unable to process American credit cards, so it was an honor system that we would show up with Euros in hand.
We arrived. The flight was surprisingly easy eight hours of overnight and over water with few passengers. We both slept. At the Brussels Airport we waited at the baggage carousel for our bikes, packed in soft cases. We chatted with a few other racers arriving that morning, mostly Elite riders that would be competing in the Netherlands the day after our event.
Teresa and I knew that Belgium had an excellent rail system. However, I struggled reading the time tables online, and was a bit nervous. She assured me that the train went to our destination. We also planned to do this vacation car-free.
Conveniently, the Zaventem airport has a train terminal. Tickets were purchased and we found our platform. We were travelling with a minimum of baggage. A soft back pack, a soft day pack over a shoulder, and a single bike each in a soft case with a carry strap. The naivete again. We knew that Belgians really liked bikes and trains. We knew that folks traveled with their bikes on trains. What we didn’t know was “how” that was done. We boarded, took seats near the end of a car with a vestibule (which it turns out is close to protocol) and enjoyed a few tuts and glares. A sympathetic Belgian struck up a conversation, asked us our destination, and offered a bit of assistance. It was the first of many friendly encounters on the journey. The man guided us to the correct platform when we needed to change trains and recruited a conductor to chaperone us after he exited at his stop.
We arrived in Mol. Mol is a small city (they say “village”) on the East side of Belgium. The conductor asked us where we needed to go, we explained where we had reserved housing and chatted about our bike race. Naivete. We hadn’t grasped the scale of where the train station was (in the center of town) and where the venue was (a water park probably 10km away). Fortunately the conductor was willing to lead us to a small city bus and a willing driver to transport us (even though it was off season for his line). While bike racing is a big deal in Belgium, a Masters event is mostly off the radar for the everyday folks. The bus driver dropped us at the main entrance to Provinciaal Domein Zilvermeer. We thanked and tipped him.
National Lampoon’s Vacation. We were standing in front of a deserted water park with locked gates. Yeah, the moose should have told us. The temperature was dropping, we had been traveling non-stop for 12 hours or so and we’re standing in front of a closed theme park. We knew the race was to be held on the grounds, we knew we had reservations for a cute cabin on the grounds, we knew we were in the right place. We had a phone that worked in Europe (that was a challenge we anticipated). I called the number we used to make reservations. I used what I still believe to be the most important phrase an American can know in Flanders, “Spreek je Engels?”
The reply, as in nearly every case, was “Ja, a little.” Flanders is a swath from the coast to the little hook of the Netherlands where Maastricht is located. Mol is near that eastern edge called the Kempen. Lots of tourists from the Netherlands and Germany take holidays in the area. Lakes and canals, pine forests and trails are abundant. While nearly all the locals speak English, it’s not often to Americans.
I told the woman on the phone that we were at the gate and confused. She gave a friendly laugh and explained that the bus had dropped us off at the wrong gate, that the housing entrance was the correct location, and most importantly they would send a golf cart to rescue us. Another kind indulgence.
We were taken to the park office, signed in, and paid our Euros. This was the first of several trips that the only contact information that the park used for me was “Mark from America.”
To be continued….