Hello and welcome to King of the Ride podcast, episode 174.

Let's call this the European edition, the classics edition.

I'm recording this in the days leading up to Perry Rube.

I'm in Corkeric, Belgium, a place that I spent many nights, weeks on end, year over year, as we race the classics on liquid gas.

It's also a place that I spent a heck of a lot of time living in Izigham.

My U23 days, and Izegam was the home of the U23 national team, and Corktrick was the city down the road, or bigger village.

So here I am outside of Corktric, just taking it all in.

It's a beautiful evening.

We are between Tour of Flanders and Perry Rube, a race or a pair of races,

very well known by our guest today at George Hinkapi.

So I got here a couple days ago so that I could take in all of Holy Week.

Two of the monuments, two of the biggest raises of the calendar, the aforementioned Flanders Andrew Bay.

Spring is in the air.

You can hear birds chirping in the background maybe.

Easter was just two days ago.

It's a sign of rebirth, a new

fresh start. The flowers are blooming here. The grass is turning green. Every chocolatier has

Easter stuff in the window. It is such an amazing time and place. It's such an exciting time of

year and its most anticipated time of the cycling season.

So, to that point, I'm doing a really fun project here with Cannondale because, like I said,

I raced those races, tour of Flanders and Urugu, four or five times each, but always with this sense of dread.

And certainly with lots of excitement, lots of eagerness, but with just loads of angst,

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