SPA Practice Day 8/25/2017

Maastricht is home to a university in which almost half of their classes are attended by Americans and taught in English. The small little city split by the Meuse River had zero problems adapting to our lack of knowing much of the Dutch tongue. The local restaurants welcomed us and we enjoyed some burgers that night, doing much to make sure the cook didn't accidentally offer up horsemeat. This offering was seemingly more popular than just a good old chicken sandwich. Walking is just dodging the hundreds and hundreds of co-eds as they blast around the city center on their bikes the night ended as it was reaching the breaking point of insomnia - but of course we finished off the night with a freshly baked Belgian waffle topped with ice cream.

Friday started with Steve picking us up at the hotel's breakfast table and taking us to Spa-Francorchamps in Belgium. It's Race Weekend! The track's original layout in the 1920s of over 9 miles for one lap has been reduced to still one of the longest on the racing calendar at just over 4 miles per lap. The most famous part of the circuit is the feared and revered Eau Rouge section. The Formula 1 machines are able to tackle this left right steep uphill left right left blind summit flat out. The 2017 cars with their new wider tires and aggressive wings torture the drives with over 6 Gs of force in the left right left succession that watching on TV doesn't do justice to the steepness of the hill or the quickness of the cars as they make the climb. The TV also doesn't give a spectator the heads up that getting into the track involves about a 1.5 mile constant downhill road that's closed for pedestrians only. This also means when the race activities are over, it's a 1.5 mile trek of sunburnt and exhausted (and inebriated) bodies uphill for the whole voyage to the parking lots.


Simi and I were refreshed by the real actual sleep the first night and got our walking shoes on. We toured a better three quarters of the circuit on Friday between the race sessions and support series' time on the track. The Ardennes Forest in which the track is located is an extensive region of massive pine trees, rough terrain, hills, and it is renowned for its own microclimate.  The saying that if it hasn't rained at Spa, it's about to. The morning weather forecast had rain ranges in the 70-80 percentages for the weekend, but it wasn't supposed to rain on Friday. Right? Well, it did, and our rain gear did a great job of keeping our hotel room dry. What better memory than hiking out of the track after Friday events completed up the long slow hill up to the city in a nice warm fat rain that all but stopped on track activities. I guess we did get our true Spa experience.

Back to Maastricht avoiding all traffic thanks to Steve's knowledge of the back roads, it was good for a  change of clothing, and dry out everything. I opted to sneak in a nap before finding fish and chips on the menu at a pub in the square and some gelato. It was Friday night and around 7pm practically every shop and most restaurants had closed already. It was not the American consumerist way of doing things.

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