Uncle Biek

First of all my apologies for the lack of updates over the past weeks, the only excuse I have (if needed) is that I have been busy moving. ‘Very’ busy moving even.

But the good news (yes, yes) is that last weekend Bas and I took care of getting the last load out of the apartment in Boxmeer and after getting half of that to the garbage dump and the other, good, half to the new home the physical part of the move is over.

Over. Done. Finished. And I’m so glad it is because it was getting pretty tiresome to be dragging stuff all over the place for the past couple of weeks, believe me.

Now ‘all’ that needs to be done is to do some final cleaning up in there and after that I’m completely gone from that apartment.

This doesn’t mean I’m completely finished then, because all I’ve done so far is move stuff from one place to another but I didn’t have the time yet to put everything where I want it to end up so that’ll be part two of the whole operation.

But that’s by far the nicer part, in every way possible. As I’ve come to discover it’s actually quite a lot of fun to put stuff all over the place, specially when I’m walking into so much more room to maneuver. It’s just awesome.

Speaking of walking … In my old apartment I walked in, took about six steps and was at the end of it. Maybe also took a couple to the left and right and that basically covered the whole place.

Now when I’m in the living room and want to get something from the bedroom it’s a three mile hike … okay, maybe a little less but I need to walk through my to-be computer room, go up the stairs, across the hallway and then I’m in the bedroom.

If I do that for a couple of weeks I’m practically ready to do a marathon :-)

Whenever someone asks me what I think is the most beautiful movie ever, usually ‘My Life’ starring Michael Keaton and Nicole Kidman comes up. Can you spell ‘feel good movie’? That’s the one, right there.

But after yesterday evening I think I have a new number one movie in that category.

No matter how beautiful a story the guys in Hollywood come up with, and no matter how real it sometimes may seem, there is just no way they can ever beat a movie that has it’s foundations based on one simple feeling: love.

And I’m talking about the unconditional love from parents for their daughter this time. It’s stronger than anything else in this world.

What I watched last night, together with Karlijn and Stevie, was such a sweet overview of roughly the first week of my niece Eva Jolie, starting from minutes after she was born and until everyone of the family had met her in her first week in this big ol’ world.

I tell you folks, the combination of the pictures and the music that accompanied them made tears come up more than once during that movie. It’s a good thing the room was darkened a lot so I could enjoy it silently in the corner of the couch.

It was like reliving those first moments, days and impressions all over again and it touches you so deep inside, making you remember how special those moments were. I feel so privileged to have watched this, both live and on DvD, and though I’m usually not that big a fan of sequels, I hope that there are much, much more episodes to come from this filmmaker.

You rock Bro!

Is has come to my attention that some of you readers might still be using the direct link to my ‘old’ Blogger website but I’d like to urge you all to use the one and only address that will always point you to the website I’m using or updating at that moment.

And that address is http://www.biek.net

So for all of you not using this address please update your bookmarks and use only that address from now on. Should there ever be the need to change this then I’ll let you know. Right here, on Biek.net. :-)

Oh I really whish mine was. Over. Now that my own personal d-day is slowly getting closer it seems that there is a little mountain to climb in terms of what needs to be done. I’ve done most of the paperwork now (I hope) so now it should be ‘only’ a matter of simply doing a lot of packing and then getting the hell out of there.

Tomorrow they are coming for an inspection of the apartment and I’m a little curious what they might come up with. I haven’t changed anything to the apartment over the past ten years but who knows, maybe I should have … Anyway, I’ll be glad when that’s behind me so I can focus on packing up the rest.

Watching an A1GP series race is always a good thing. This great new open wheel racing class is a absolute winner. All teams get the same material and basically all that decides who wins and who doesn’t is the setup of the car and the quality of it’s driver.

Watching this fantastic show live, including a brand new Dutch driver, on a Dutch circuit is awesome, absolutely awesome. And boy did we watch it live. Over the past weekend we got spoiled with two whole days filled to the top with superb motor sport events, live at the track of Zandvoort.

Team Netherlands had a last minute driver change when their number one driver, from now on referred to as ‘looser’, decided to screw all his fans over and stay away. To hell with him, never liked him anyway.

Their (or rather: our ;-) new number one driver was Jeroen Bleekemolen who more than proved to be the right man for the job. That guy is my new hero, it was such an absolute joy watching this man at work.

This series is divided into 2 races: one short sprint race and one longer race, called the feature race. I’m still not entirely sure on how the qualifying system works but the results of the sprint race count for the starting order of the feature race.

Our guy Jeroen was starting the feature race from tenth position and finished in an amazing fourth place. But it wasn’t the final results that will stay in everybody’s mind, it was the way how he did it. I don’t think I’ll ever forget watching this one. It was fantastic to watch.

In the old days when you watched a race live you could see the cars go by and than had to wait until they passed again to see what happened that lap. Nowadays we have the aid of big screens around the circuit which allows us to see just about everything that happens.

So whenever Jeroen overtook a car (and he did so a lot folks :-) simply everybody could see it and at those moments all hell broke loose on all the stands around the track. The roar of the cheering crowd was sometimes even louder than the noise the race cars made. It gave me goose bumps all over, I’ve never experienced something like this. The sound then thousands of people make when they cheer on their favorite driver is very intimidating.

After a number of laps he worked his way through to second place and when he then passed the car in front of him to take the first position they must have been able to hear the cheering all the way in that TV helicopter. That was such a incredibly cool moment. Every time he passed by everyone was at their feet and cheering him on.

In the end it was an unfortunate tire choice that prevented Team Netherlands from winning the race but it was a brilliant drive from Jeroen nonetheless. And boy did he get his share of applause and cheering when he stepped out of the car. It couldn’t have been any better when he had actually won the race. The crowd went nuts, completely nuts.

Apart from the A1 there also were a couple of other racing lasses present from which the Porsche GT3’s and the BLR class were my favorite. Specially the last one was fun to watch. They had no less than thirty seven cars on the grid, divided over two types of chassis.

When that many cars come storming over a hill towards both you and a pretty tight corner you have trouble deciding where to look, there’s just so much happening at once. And I’m such a big fan of large grids. When after a couple of laps the field spreads over the track a bit there are cars passing by constantly. It’s great to watch.

Looking back on the weekend the only thing that wasn’t too much fun is me straining a muscle early Saturday morning causing me to limp around the place during the entire weekend. Walking from the camping to the track and back again at the end of the day, and doing that again the next day. Right now I’m completely busted. Yesterday my right leg hurts just about as much as the left one, from trying to spare the other. It’s getting slightly better though, all I need is to take it easy a bit … I hope. ;-)