the night kbk and tommeke saved my life

There has been a general lack of interesting stuff going on in my life [I know, I’m clearly doing this unemployment thing, wrong]. Other than the fact that I’ve been eating cookies professionally, and barely riding, absolutely nothing has been going on. There was an outdoor ride last Friday but I’ve been trapped inside, since, reluctantly playing the waiting game with winter. The temptation to throw my trainer out the window has been growing by the day…and I usually fucking love that thing.

The subsequent inability to write has given birth to Blog Doubts, which are actually worse than Writer’s Block, because at least with the latter, you can say something like “well, it takes a while to write a real book/essay/short story.” With a blog, a week without an update signifies impending death. As everyone knows, the Internet does not fucking wait. [Unless, of course, you are famous, in which case, I’ve seen the Internet actually temporarily stop functioning.]

So while I was stuffing my face with cookies, because I’m aware my fame is limited to being blacklisted by cycling news sites because I complain too much about grammatical mistakes and typos, I was freaking out. I’ve been doing this for a while, but surviving a winter still leaves deep, traumatic, scars from throwing myself around my apartment due to boredom for about three months. Let’s not discuss that plummeting power to weight ratio, either.

This past weekend, I’d been so busy staring at a blank Word document in guilt that I completely missed Omloop Het Nieuwsblad [but Lotto didn’t do so well anyway so I was okay with pretending it didn’t happen]. I snapped out of it the next day for Kuurne-Brussels-Kuurne on a beautiful Belgian afternoon. With Boonen, who sort of saved my blog.

My thoughts and feelings on Boonen, like any attractive male not on Lotto-Belisol, are complex. I had a fleeting crush on Tom when I was first introduced to pro cycling. He was easy to like: tall, talented, and absolutely delicious-looking; people even expected me to swoon and drop my panties for the guy. A few years later, when I actually got into pro cycling, I re-tested my crush on the infamous Tommeke. But depressingly, in those few short years, Boonen had cut off the Euro-mullet [those adorable, curly, dirty-blonde locks!]. I mean, he still looks better than 98% of the population; I just didn’t want to hit it that much anymore.

Despite the general lack of sexual attraction, I still like the guy. Like a lot more than I should. He’s amazing [2005, 2007, 2009, 2012] when he’s not sucking [2013]. I want him to be on form; mostly to satisfy my bloodlust for a showdown between an equally healthy Boonen and Cancellara, but maybe a little bit because of that panty-dropping smile, too. So when Boonen sprinted to the finish against Moreno Hofland last night, I – consciously cheating on Lotto and feeling appropriately guilty about it – held my breath for Tornado Tom.

I still think it would have been different if race radios had been involved. I still think Lotto could have reeled that breakaway in, and I still think if that had happened, Greipel would have won.

But with Tommeke back, Lotto loss or not, I think it’s going to be a great classics season. And because of that, I also think that last night, Tom might just have saved my blog from dying a slow, silent death.