It was meant to be a bachelor party. Harris, Jake and I have been talking for years about going to the Tour of Flanders to celebrate Harris’ impending wedding. Harris has for years now been in a relationship that always felt like it would lead to marriage. And any time one of us would see a clip of the race on Instagram, some domestique tipping over on the Koppenberg or Mathieu van der Poel on cruise control, or when the race came around every April, one of us would pitch it.
It was an idea that felt fresh and exciting every time: Harris’ bachelor party at the Tour of Flanders. How nerdy, how unique, how lame, how it’s-not-lame-it’ll-be-amazing? It was exhilarating, just the thought.
“We gotta go.”
“Yeah dude, it looks insane.”
“Fuck Vegas. Flanders.”
But it never felt real. It was easily something that could be talked about every 8-12 months, pitched and considered and reconsidered. And always too much real life in the way to actually do it.
And then Harris called in the fall of 2024 to tell me he and his girlfriend were pregnant. And that the wedding was moving to, well that would be figured out. And then he called me again on Christmas to say this was the year. His fiancé was due at the end of May. And whatever life had already gotten in the way of our long-discussed adventure was about to become even more imposing. Jake had already had two kids, making the trip all but impossible for him. That meant for us, the easy-travel years were coming to a close. “I’ll try to get some others but I wanted to start with you," Harris said. "If you’re down, we should do it.” I was, indeed, down.
Harris and I had traveled together before. A week-long hike in the Tetons in the summer of twenty-something. That trip, we had only a vague sense of what we’d do and went with what felt right. We approached this Flanders trip the same way. Or perhaps in an even more casual way. Between Christmas and March very little planning happened. I booked a flight. Harris locked in a flight price. We got a hotel. We booked two spots in Saturday's Flanders sportive, a ride where hobbyists like us can ride the course. And that was it. How would we get to the sportive? How would we get to the race? Where would we watch the race? When exactly were each other’s flights? What even was Flanders or Ghent for that matter? We didn’t quite know.
We packed our bikes and boarded our Thursday night redeyes. Harris from Washington, DC, mine from New York. I’m never able to sleep on redeyes and this flight was no different. I close my eyes and think about how I need to sleep on this flight but then how I can never sleep on flights but on this flight I should really try to sleep because I need to sleep on this flight but then, and so on and on for seven hours. But I deplaned with energy nonetheless.
Harris found me by the oversized luggage. We shared a big hug and found a taxi to get us from Brussels to Ghent.
Not your typical bachelor party plans
The first thing you notice about Flanders is the light. It has an extra glow or maybe a reflection or maybe the feeling that you’re a little closer to seeing each band of color. It gives the landscape a unique shade. Extra green fields and blue skies. The light peeks over the horizon in the early morning and stays up until much later than we anticipated. The days were longer, a surprise that we no doubt appreciated on such a short trip.
The driver dropped us off at our hotel, a nondescript lodging in the center of the city. We set up our bikes in the courtyard. Mine was packed in a semi-serious looking soft-shell bike bag. Harris’ was stuffed into a giant rectangular, grey hard-shell case, a case that also contained all of his clothes. At an airport, surely it would look suspicious. But no bomb would be found. Just a bike, underwear, a few shirts, some biking apparel, and more cold-weather gear than one man, except Harris, could ever need.
Another surprise was Ghent itself. We spent most of Friday walking the city, using the search for a good cup of coffee as our guide. Many of the streets had no discernible lanes or sidewalks, so people walked through them freely, occasionally speeding up to avoid a cyclist, a motorist, and even a streetcar. Perhaps that’s what put us in the mood for a wander.
Ghent. Pretty great stuff, really.
We found a cup of espresso at a little tourist trap near our hotel. And when that didn’t quite satisfy we walked to another cafe that looked more promising on Google, and when that cup of coffee turned out to be about as good as the internet promised we stopped into a bakery next door where we got a croissant and a cinnamon roll and two jars of speculoos cookies for our significant others, which we promptly lost, probably at lunch at a local, delightful-looking restaurant that was full of older folks and had exactly only one employee.
I had a beef stew that was Ghent’s signature dish, as an older gentleman who didn’t work at this establishment but nonetheless handed us a handwritten, translated menu explained.
The stew hit the spot. For the time being. We mosied back to the hotel to get our bikes and head out for a short ride to stretch our legs.
The riding in Ghent was marvelous. Leagues apart from my New York City riding. The bike paths in the city were maintained and respected by motorists. And even so the city riding is short. After riding in Ghent proper for maybe 10 minutes, suddenly fields and rural roads stretched out in front of us. The most beautiful blue sky all around. And that light. If we weren’t riding 80 km the next morning, we would have ridden all day. Smiles stapled to our faces, talking mostly about how we couldn’t believe how amazing this was.
And that mood carried us through the rest of the day. It kept the jet lag at bay. And when we got back to our room at the end of the day, after dinner and a beer at a very Flemish-looking bar on the river, we talked about the ride we’d be doing in the morning.
We'd picked the shortest version of the We Ride Flanders sportive, but it was still 80 km and more than 3,000 feet (900 meters) of climbing, over some of the most iconic climbs in the world of bike riding. We’d seen them on TV a dozen times, we’d DM’d about them on Instagram, they’d inspired this very trip, and we’d be lugging up them in a few hours. Climbs that carried grades like 15%, and 22%, and 23%, on cobbled roads no less. Climbs with actual names that people really know. The Koppenberg. The Paterberg. Oude Kwaremont.
We were here.
A nightmare inside a dream
And then I woke up. Harris was ready, but I was very nauseous. I was wondering if it was just jet lag or a hangover from the lack of sleep I’d gotten on the plane. But this was a different kind of feeling. I felt queasy on the short ride to the train station. And when we got waffles there, I could barely look at mine as I ate a few small bites, each nibble feeling like the one that would send me rushing to the garbage can. Harris, on the other hand, was having a revelatory meal: a Belgian waffle topped with bananas, chocolate and Nutella. And so, I made a silent promise to myself that, whatever was going on in me, I would not let it ruin Harris’ day.
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