April

Again a full mont passed since I posted anything here. I do not have the same motivation as before (to write regularly), but still, I would like to remember what happened with me, and my – built in – memory is not sufficient to handle all the information. So I write a post every month – at least. Now I am flying over Spain towards La Palma, with the clouds below, so I have time again :) Pictures are slightly randomly spread over this time. Figure out what is what ;)

First of all, this month, I have biked a lot. And when I say a lot, I really mean it. If I look at my calendar on Garmin Connect, it is full of rides. There were times when I rode too much, I could tell it from the way my legs denied to move as fast as my mind requested them to do. So with all the KUL trainings, the Brabantse Pijl (the sportive version, not the Race – which was the first out of the four wins for Gilbert early in the season, making him the ‘Armstrong of the spring classics’ this year), the first ever AstroTeam ride (with colleagues), the usual lonely rides to Mechelen, and a really good day to the citadel of Namur, I rode 885.44 kilometres (spent 29h 28m 08 s in the saddle, and burned ~25000 Calories), which made this April my best month on the racing bike ever. And I could have done more if I wanted, but there are other things in life, not just cycling. (Yeah, shocking statement, I know :D) But I enjoy every second on the road. I really fly on the bike :)

Work is OK, but a bit slow. Sometimes I have my ideas but I don’t feel like woking them out. I know the road which leads to the solution, but I don’t want to walk along it. And then it is sometimes really hard to force myself to stay concentrated on the details… But after Easter, we had a four day workshop at the Institute on binary stars and the Kepler satellite, and it was really good, I have learned a lot of useful and new stuff, which I will be able to use probably very soon.

Thanks to the workshop, I have met some old friends, and we had great dinners all week long. Just to mention one from the many, I had the best salmon of my life in the Lodge in Heverlee. Also, I served as the official photographer of the event, taking not just a series of static, but a full HD group ‘picture’ too ;) Everyone liked the idea – you can check it out for yourself on YouTube.

Just like last year, my mother came for a visit – and brought cake, wine, and Túró Rudi with herself :) Everyone asks the same question, so I have to make it clear, that I would have been happy to have her around even without these nice add-ons ;) But I would be a terrible liar if I were to deny that this way it was even better :D We had a nice weekend together, and this time the weather was also fine. In general, the weather in April was almost unbelievably sunny, warm and dry. Belgium is not a rainy place at all, the two years I have spent here really forces me to draw this conclusion.

And at last, but definitely not least, I spent three great days with Elise, whom I got to know last month in the Stuk. First, on the 20th after a morning meeting with my supervisor, I went to Antwerpen, where she gave me a tour around the city, but avoiding all the shopping streets :)

This really improved my opinion about the city a lot! Then on the last day of April, we went to Den Haag to the Netherlands – again for a picturesque city trip. It was the Queen’s birthday, so the abundance of people dressed in orange was extremely high.

We took quite a large amount of pictures too! Oh, and just to mention one special thing, I sat in the drivers seat of a tram – which we later took to just go around the city. And we ate delicious bread and cheese :) Then, to close the day we went back to Antwerpen to a nice Italian restaurant, where they served the best pizza of the city.

Finally – when I was almost on the train back to Leuven (I have already filled out my Rail Pass for the trip), we decided to have another trip on the following day (and be surprised, I was happy to cancel my cycling plans without any doubt), as the ticket inspectors were not too active on the trains that day (it might have something to do with the fact that crowd dressed in orange were blocking the aisle…), and our weekend ticket to the Netherlands stayed untouched ;) So I slept on the couch at Elise’s place (though I almost had to fight for it with her cat :D), then after a delicious breakfast (what a smoothie she made!), we left to Rotterdam.

I have seen some parts of the city when I was there last year to photograph the Tour de France and I already liked it a lot, but now it was even better. We walked around a much bigger area (so I have seen things a have not seen before), had an amazing clear and sunny – but not too warm – weather (perfect to lie or sit down on a square or at the river banks and just enjoy being there), and – the most important of all – I was not alone.

I really like the city, it is modern (has amazing architecture) but with a lot of green, and some well preserved and integrated older parts too… This was my best weekend for quite a long time. (We are just leaving the coast of the continental Europe behind while I am writing these words.) I really enjoyed taking pictures and talking with Elise, and then checking out our images on the trains back to Belgium. We had a wonderful time.

I missed the cheerful atmosphere a lot when I finally went home to Leuven, especially because I had to spend the next day with preparing and packing for La Palma, but I was very happy about the time we spent together. And for a side note, I really hate packing. And even though I really wanted to finish in time now, it was 2 AM when I finally closed my bike box. I have no idea how can I pack for such a long time… And now comes the funny part of the story. As usual, I have asked for a cab for the morning (5:15) from the same taxi company I always use, but it did not show up… I was waiting with my 60 kilograms of luggage in front of the house, and nothing… I tried to call them, but there was only voicemail. As I did not know any other companies, and it was pretty much too early to try to phone someone for help, I walked (rushed/struggled) to the station with all my stuff (I think I was quite a sight on the streets of Leuven – even for people who are used to see students travel with their suitcases every Friday and Sunday evening – with my backpack in front, the huge – and I am not kidding here – North Face XL travel duffel on my back, and pulling the bike box next to me – thank God it has wheels…), and took a taxi there. Luckily I was still in time, so if everything goes well, I will land on La Palma in one and a half hour :) Now it is two weeks of work and a week of holiday (cycling up and down) on the Canaries. This is the part of my job I like the most ;)

March

Hey, I know, I know, it’s been a while since I wrote anything here, but I had no time to do it. Or maybe I just did not devote time for it… Anyway, lets see what happened in the last weeks. (I am watching the Ronde van Vlaanderen, so I have some time to write finally…)

First of all, I am working on my second article (it looks very interesting), while my first one is already out on paper in the April 2011 issue of Astronomy and Astrophysics. Also, when I was observing on La Palma in October, I discovered a new variable star (while monitoring a list of candidates, so it is not that special before you start asking), which turned out to be a rather interesting one, and resulted in a publication (a Letter in The Astrophysical Journal), on which I am the second author. And there are other ongoing collaborations, which will result in a co-authorships… Fulfilling the official requirements of the PhD won’t be a problem :) And to make things even better, my KEPLER Guest Observer Proposal was accepted, which means that I will have enough data for the rest of my PhD. And extremely good data! It happens once or twice in a while, that I think about what if I did not make the right choice when I went for being an astronomer (ok, this never happens while I am observing), but when I got the email about the acceptance, I became so happy, that I knew immediately from the feeling, that I am doing what I should do. Being happy always means that you are doing the right thing :)

As spring came into Belgium, flowers started to bloom, leaves started to grow on the trees, and I was finally able to leave the indoor trainer and go cycling outside again (but I will come back to this later). And besides cycling, we started to play soccer again (and after spending two hours sliding around the artificial grass field I decided to buy real soccer shoes for the first time in my life – and they are great). I made my travel arrangements for my upcoming observing run (and cycling holiday) on La Palma (in May), and for the CoRoT Symposium in Marseille (in June), and as my travel bag started to show serious signs of falling apart, I bought a TNF Base Camp Duffel (red, XL, capable of carrying 140 liters of gear, two years of all-around guarantee), which should serve me well in the following years, and survive even the rough handling of the airport staff of IBERIA :D And now I feel the urge to travel to the North, to Iceland or Scandinavia, and – among others – watch the northern lights.

To make myself useful, I assembled some IKEA furniture and helped a colleague/friend with doing electric assembly in his future house too on two days. Once we were there from 5 PM to 4 AM, but I really enjoyed it, because first of all it was something I have never done before, and on the other hand, I had some very good ideas (especially about arranging the cable-chaos into a nice order – as it can be seen above -, and about things which involve symmetry), and it was great to see them coming true (getting up the next morning was not that great, but we had fun, and that’s the important thing). Sometimes it is really relieving to do something different.

And now about cycling. As I have already told you, there was no need to ride on the indoor trainer this month, because the weather was generally (surprisingly for this time of the year) nice, dry and relatively warm. This – and being quite motivated – resulted in my best month on the racing bike ever (so since last year February) with 673 kilometers. Of course this is nothing exceptional even on an amateur level, but I am happy with it (given the conditions). As you can see on the picture above (notice the typical Flemish bricks and cobblestones :D), now I use my new aero wheels, and I also bought a 2cm longer stem (for better position), and a new saddle (a fi’zi:k Antares for comfort). The combination is pretty sweet, I expect some very good times coming up this season ;) I started working on a python script for automatically plotting my workouts along with providing detailed statistics (much more useful than the tools on Garmin Connect), but I will write about this later in a separate post. Very early into the season, I have already done a more than 200 km ride (to be precise, this was my longest ride ever, with 213 km), and just before the end of the month, I joined the K.U.Leuven University Cycling Team (it might sound serious, but it is far from that) for a training (which was pretty OK, I had no trouble keeping up with their pace, and I even felt strong in the last 20 km in pouring rain, and gave some really strong pulls for the team)… As there are some colleagues at the Institute who like cycling, we decided to participate in a 24 hour race during the summer, and to design our own AstroTeam cycling kit :) It will be very cool to ride in such a jersey on La Palma while working at the Observatory :D

Then, the month ended with a very nice evening – having dinner and watching a theatrical play (in English!!!) in the Stuk… Let’s see what April brings!

Síhétvége (Winterberg)

Valahogy most nincs kedvem angolul írni, szóval következzék egy kis magyar szöveg (a helyesírási hibákért nem vállalok felelősséget)! Mivel már emberemlékezet óta nem voltam síelni (az elmúlt 3 évben tuti nem volt léc a lábam alatt, pedig előtte minden télen legalább egy hetet a lejtőkön töltöttem, és bizony már a nyolcosztályos gimi előtt is koptattam a Budapesti Síiskola műanyag pályáját a János-hegyen…), így végül csak úgy döntöttem, hogy csatlakozom az egyik kolléga által szervezett síelős hosszú hétvégére. Ennek szellemében a síruházatomat, a sisakom és szemüvegemet karácsony után magammal is hoztam Budapestről, a bakanycsot, lécet és botot viszont nem, főleg mivel repülővel macerás és sokba is kerül…

Választásunk végül a németországi Winterberg síterepre esett, mivel alig négy órás autóútra fekszik Leuventől, így kora reggeli indulásal már első nap lehet síelni, és pályazárás utáni hazaindulással még emberi időben haza lehet érni. Sajnos mivel a pályák csupán nagyjából 650-810 méteres magasságban fekszenek, így kissé feszülten figyeltük a hóhelyzet alakulásást másfél héttel a “start” előtt, mikor is Belgiumban 15°C volt, kibújtak a hóvirágok, én pedig már kint tekertem az országúti biciklit… Szerencsére péntekre megérkezett a hideg, így ottlétünk alatt már egyáltalán nem olvadt, sőt az utolsó két napon már hóágyúzni is tudtak. Hivatalosan 40-90 centi hó volt (a lejtőkön, mivel mellettük már egy centi sem, leszámítva azt a réteget, ami az első napokban kifagyott a sűrű ködből – mondjuk így legalább a fák szép fehérek voltak a zúzmarától) és a 23 liftből 17 működött, és az első másfél napot leszámítva a hó minőségére sem lehetett túl sok panaszunk.

A pályarendszer eléggé kiterjedt (az első napok szürkeségében – lásd fenn – nem egyszer vesztettük el az irányérzetünket), csak éppen rövid, így egy lesiklás jó ha egy percig tartott (1 km-nél hosszabb pálya nem volt), pedig nem csak egyenesen zúgtunk lefelé… Így azért a hétvége egyértelmű sikere mellett megegyeztünk abban is, hogy jövőre egy hétre, és az Alpokba megyünk. Viszont itt is mindenütt modern ülőliftek voltak, érintés nélküli jegyrendszerrel! A bérlet három napra 58 € (plusz egy fél napra 16 €), a felszerelés négy napra 48 € volt, és teljesen kényelmes négycsatos cipőt kaptam, továbbá a lécre sem volt panaszom. Egyszerűbb volt ez így, mint saját cuccot cipelni ide oda, aztán még Leuven-ben is tárolni valahol…

Szállásunk Winterbergtől negyed órányi autóútra, a Park Hochsauerland egyik apartmanháza volt. Itt különféle kártyajátékokkal, és evéssel – meg némi alvással persze – töltöttük a síelés utáni időt. Minden este magunk főztünk valamit, így volt wok, hús fondue és paella is (meg persze ilyen-olyan alkoholos italok). Őszintén szólva én már a síelés felénél tudtam, hogy ennek a hétvégének nem fogyás lesz a következménye :) Olyan jókat ettünk, hogy már csak ezért is megérte volna elmenni, még ha síelni nem is tudtunk volna az esetleges hóhiány miatt :D

Szerencsére hétfőre kiderült az idő (lásd fotók fent és lent), és ragyogó napsütésben is síelhettünk egy napot. Persze ez azzal járt, hogy hajnalban -10°C-ra ébredtünk, és napközben sem lett melegebb -6°C-nál, de ez senkit sem zavart túlságosan. Sőt, az utolsó ebédünket a teraszon fogyasztottuk el :)

A négy nap második felét főleg formációs sízéssel és annak videózásával töltöttük (négyzet sarkaiban egy-egy síző, és szinkronban ment a rövidlendület), ami bizony más sízők tetszését is elnyerte (még egy síoktató is megdícsért minket :D). Ha nem rövidlendület ment, akkor szép hosszú íveket síeltem, élről élre dőlve (és lehetőleg gyorsan, bár ezt az engem ismerőknek talán nem is kell mondanom). Örömmel nyugtáztam, hogy nem felejtettem el síelni. Sőt :P

Egyébkét kilencen utaztunk, három hódeszkás és hat síző (a fotókról hiányoznak azok akiknek már vasárnap este haza kellett menni). Utóbbiak közül négyen nagyjából ugyan azon a szinten síeltünk, így nem volt gond végig együtt maradni. Nagyon jól éreztem magam, sőt bátran mondhatom hogy mind nagyon jól éreztük magunkat, biztos vagyok benne, hogy jövőre lesz ismétlés. Addig is jó lenne ha most már beköszöntene az igazi tavasz, mert ma este már megint csak egy helyben tudtam tekerni…

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Riding the indoor trainer

So let’s suppose that you don’t want to stop training in the cold and wet winter months, but you have no access to a nice indoor velodrome. In this case, you can ride an indoor trainer. It is also the cheapest way to get to know the wattage levels you maintain while cycling…

Riding the indoor trainer is fun! It is warm and cosy inside, you don’t need to put on all your fancy cycling equipment, you don’t have to make sure that you take the matching jersey and the matching socks, you don’t have to clean your bike after every ride, you will never have a flat tire, nor a broken spoke, you can always stop if you really feel the need (and without searching for bushes or trees), you don’t have to carry all the food in your jersey, you will never get lost on the road, there will be no headwind, no sidewind, no rain, no snow, no burning sun, no wheel-suckers. Just you and the bike, and the wattage level on the display :) You can listen to music without blocking out all the noises (or you can even block the noise of the trainer without risking your life with the use of in ear noise cancellation earphones…), you can watch TV or a DVD (or a BD) meanwhile doing your exercise, and so on. You see, it is so much fun!

Riding the indoor trainer sucks… And it sucks a lot. It is boring. Very monotone. It is too warm inside, so you sweat and there is no wind evaporating it (some people tend to use a fan, but then think of the noise again…), hence after one hour there will be a nice little lake below you (or a completely wet towel on your handlebars). If you do interval training, then the electromagnetic brakes are so loud during the high intensity parts, that there is no way you could watch TV in the meantime without loosing track of what is happening on the screen. You lose the feeling of speed, because even if you are pedaling with 40 km/h, you will be standing still in your room, with no trees passing by, no whistling sound of the air around you, no weak cyclists passed and wheel-suckers dropped… Non cyclists also tend to think you are crazy… But again, did I already mention, that it was boring???

But in my opinion, riding is still better than not riding :) So keep rollin’!

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Riding the velodrome in Gent

In the cold and wet months during winter, it is really unpleasant to ride the road bike outside, so you are left with three choices: 1) stop training (but come on, for three months? no…), 2) ride the indoor trainer (I will cover this in the next post), or 3) switch to track cycling indoors. I have never ridden on a proper indoor track before, though I rode one of the oldest (but outdoor) velodromes of Europe in 2009, just before I left to Belgium. But riding indoors, on a shorter, steeper track with wooden surface is really different. That’s why we (myself, plus Tijl and Kristof – the same colleagues who joined me when I rode to catch the Tour de France last summer) decided to go for a ride in the Vlaams Wielercentrum Eddy Merckx in Gent. They have specific hours, when “recreational” cyclists can just go there, rent track bikes (fixed gear bicycles, with only one gear ratio and no brakes), and ride for two hours (15 €, everything included). We had fixed this Monday evening (8-10 PM) in our calendars already a month ago, so we were quite excited about the ride.

In one word, it was awesome. We got a 5 minute introduction about the rules of the track (Tijl translated for me), and then we were free to ride. Usually we just joined a group whose speed was comfortable for us, and rode with them for some time (as it is much faster and less tiring than riding alone, and it gives you the real feeling of the track). Of course we did some individual sprints too :) Unluckily, at the beginning, I had some problems with hydration levels and the amount – or lack – of food in my stomach, but I managed to overcome these for the second part of the ride. The best part – for me – was my last 35 minutes (you can see the beginning of it on the last scene of the video below), when I rode with a group which maintained a pace of 21-23 seconds / lap on the blue line (the length is 250 meters on the white line, so on the blue it is a bit longer). This gives an average speed of at least 42 km/h! During this time, I was in front twice (as the riders rotate, because the first one in the line always has to work much more, as he/she has to ride against the “wind”, while the rest is pedaling in the slipstream), and by the time it was my third turn, everyone else was dropped :) I also had my DSLR with me, so we shot some Full HD footage of the action too (all the three of us is visible, but you can easily spot me, just search for the same guy who is on the picture above):

After the ride, we had a beer (Keizer Karel Blond) – which is really typical for Belgians… You really can’t find a sports hall without a bar :D