Track...

G'day y'all!

The first race we did was a scratch race, and i won - wicked! I think it was my first win since February, of any description (aside from my qualifying heat of the Athens Computrainer actually)! Next up was the keirin (motor paced lead out sprint race), where i made the final.

There are some great people involved who do a great job, I used to love track, and you can see me in the pictures above and below in the yellow helmet and red bike, racing on Melbourne's Vodafone Arena.

So what i had planned for this update was a few photos from the training roads of amazing Melbourne. Pretty much everyone in the cycling world of Melbourne knows the roads from Melbourne to Mordialloc and back, and i think i know every pothole, but one thing i haven't really ever stopped to appreciate is the great views along the way. Before, all you would have read was how great our training location is, and how lucky we are here. Below is the river in Mordialloc (Mordy), full of boats, and i am on a rock groyne with a jetty out the end of it. It has that nice quaint feeling about it, particularly by the river here, and there is a really nice restaurant on the water too, just upstream there!

Looking the other way out to the water you can see the nice long jetty, which is usually full of fishermen. You may be able to see a bit of land off to the left, across the water there? That is Arthur's Seat, which has great views, and a nice 4km climb, with ten switchbacks on it - makes for great training, but i will be avoiding it for a few weeks at least!

Below you can see a jetty off Black Rock (left), the next landmark on the way back from Mordy. Black Rock has a bg round-a-bout with a clock tower, and is the start and finish of the famed Hell Ride (more about that in a later blog). To the right of this picture you can see a ship that has been sunk, deliberately, to help save the Black Rock beach from eroding away with the current of the water. Pretty impressive, and it has become a bit of a landmark and sight seeing attraction - i can explain the reasoning behind the sinking of the ship better, but i wont go into it on the blog!

This next shot is taken from the very expensive suburb of Brighton, looking up toward downtown Melbourne, with the beach boxes of Brighton beach to the right.

Here is a close up of the beach boxes (you may need to enlarge the photo). They are owned by rich people, and are a place where they can keep their beach-going essentials like sunscreen and hats, towels, chairs, sand castle making stuff like shovels and buckets, and some of the fancy ones have barbeques too.

Here is a close up of Melbourne, including the new Eureka Tower in the middle, which has some significance, being the tallest something or other of its type of something. Could be tallest residential building maybe? I must apologise for the smog, but if there was something i could do, i would try and get rid of it!
Tuesday was a proper winter's day, complete with snow on the nearby hills, and hail in our backyard, as well as probably our neighbour's too. It was weird to have one of the coldest November days on record last Tuesday, with a few days of rain, then this week (Tuesday), have the hottest November day since 1916. I can't keep up!
Here's the newly engaged Todd (The Bus) and Nicola, cutting their engagement cake up in Horsham last weekend. Congratulations again guys, and i hope you like getting a mention here! I should also tell you Todd is in the second picture of the update, in the white helmet...

To lighten up the mood, i thought i should spice up the training ride with the boys by rocking up with streamers going on the Ridley! Talk about a trendsetter! How cool are the other things around the stem and top tube - what a princess!

I also need to send out a big birthday wish to the old boy Billy, whose birthday was on Sunday - Happy Birthday!

There is also a great deal of excitement building up in anticipation for Thanksgiving on Thursday! I am so excited! I don't even know what i am getting excited about, but we are going to have a big barbeque, and celebrate anyway. Keally has told me its the best holiday (vacation) of the year, so i hope its all she's cranked it up to be - i just hope that the vibe is going to be here like the Americans get!

Well dudes, i am looking forward to reporting on Thanksgiving in my next update, and i hope y'all are doing well.

Laters dudes...