Lummen Toertocht!!!!!

Yeah, it's that time of year again, or it was just after Christmas anyway - the lummen toer tocht.  It's a good one, some of the best trails in Limburg (I suppose) and anyway I can ride there from my house.  A few days before it got suuuuuuper cold in Belgium which meant that the trails were basically like concrete.

A couple of real Belgian good ol' boys...

I left home on the single speed and met up wit Jan V and his buddy Wouter at the start,  the Lummen swimming pool; we set off for 40km of cold mtbing.  Already some km in I had problems with my rear wheel, I hadn't touched it in about a year and it had always been fine, but suddenly in a steep climb out of the big pit the wheel slipped in the dropout and I had to stop and adjust it.

I then decided to hustle to try and catch Jan, when I was almost there, once again, issues, the chain came off and I had to again adjust the wheel.  Damn.  I caught Jan and Wouter at the halfway food station, had 2 cups of warm soup, and off we went.  

The beloved half-way feed tent...
...with its mountain of waffles...
...and its cups of warm, salty, flavorless soup...

The next section was the very very flat section, and the single speed was no match for Wouter, who apparently was in training for the paris-roubaix, sooooo.....i figuratively shifted down a couple gears and watched them disappear into the horizion.  Lucky for them I suppose, since I was to have 2 more nagging wheel issues...I guess there's something to be said for bike maintenance.

Some graffiti on the course - punk rock is alive and well in Belgium

In the end the Lummen tocht was rad, fun trails, kinda crazy with the frozen dirt and mud so you had to be on your toes.  In total 50k on the single speed was pretty meaty, the 29er would have been a better option that day in retrospect.  For the most part it picked up all my favorite trails and took some in different directions to give me some new ideas.  

The bar in the Lummen pool after the ride