b's occasional blog
A place to put pages with stories - very occasionally
Saturday, April 02, 2011
Tuesday, December 28, 2010
Resurrection
Sunday, July 22, 2007
Wednesday, May 23, 2007
Friday, May 18, 2007
Some Drivl
Giro
Doesn't the Flandisgate thing just suck?
Here are some good places to get your Giro news:
Pez - the best pro-cycling site out there
Cycling News - made in Aussie, but probably the most viewed pro-cycling site
VeloNews - a bit to US focussed for me, but their photo competitions are good. There's a fair bit of video on their site if that's your thing. They even have a podcast that occasionally worth a listen.
Podium Cafe - small, indepdendent, and often interesting.
Have fun.
A little bit of wahooooo
I wish I was there now...
Wednesday, November 01, 2006
Monday, September 25, 2006
A Sunday Epic
I can’t believe it’s Monday already! How was your weekend?
By the time I got to Toolangi, a substantial (though beautiful), climb later, it was about 8 degrees and hard rain interspersed with hail. I was wearing all my clothing – which was just a vest, short pants, arm warmers and undershirt, and I was cold. I had to wear my sun glasses to keep the hail off my face, but it was dark and they were wet so I couldn’t see much. The high winds of the storm were blowing big branches off the trees so I had to dodge around those – hoping all the while that one wouldn’t actually hit me! My cold legs were still driving me pretty well so I made reasonable time up the hill. I had to in order to stay warm.
At Toolangi there was a sign saying 2km to
A detached part of my brain was observing myself going through the stages of hypothermia but I knew that a) there wasn’t much I could do about it here, b) when I got to King Lake I could go into a café and warm up again, and c) if I got too bad I’d flag down a passing car (hopefully not one of the rally cars since they don’t have a rear seat) and get a lift. My criteria for “too bad” was if I fell off the bike because I couldn’t steer anymore. I was in a bad way.
Finally I reached
As I was thinking this, a party of 5 elderly hikers came in, and one came over to the fire to dry herself off. We started chatting a bit and I enthusiastically agreed that I was pretty cold (this was probably very obvious anyway!). She eventually went back to have coffee with her friends and then came back a bit later and said “can you take your bike apart?” Gears whirred and clicked in my brain and I said “If you’re offering me a lift, then the answer is yes please!”. Sure enough, they were heading for Eltham and were offering to drive me there. I jumped at the chance and ordered another hot chocolate while they finished their coffee.
We got the 4 of us and my bike into one of their cars (a Subaru Legacy wagon - yay for the suby!) and headed off. It turned out that the driver – who’s name I have completely forgotten to my shame – didn’t like the King Lake–St. Andrews road so she was going via Whittlesea. That route takes us much closer to my place than Eltham, so somewhere around Mernda I asked them to drop me off, and after checking that I really was in a fit state to ride again, they went on their way.
By that time, the rain had stopped and there were actually patches of blue sky (typically changeable
All in all, one of the least fun rides I’ve done, but the route was superb and I can’t wait to try it again in good weather! Without the hypothermia and rescue that is.
Saturday, July 15, 2006
Best Ads on TV
Friday, July 14, 2006
Team Phreddie reunion at Shannons
Cheers,
Brendan
The Fat Cyclist Blog
Sunday, July 09, 2006
MTB reunion at Hitachi
Also Phreddie managed to touch some moss on the peach (or plum) trees that he is alergic to - and broke out in lots of spots! Itchy!
Wednesday, May 17, 2006
Friday, November 18, 2005
Auckland MTB XC Chapionship - Race 3
Here are some photos that Yoshiko took.
What's the last one? That green bike? Well, I finally bit the bullet and bought a new bike. It's a Specialized Epic Comp - though this particular bike was built for a tradeshow (to show the new 2006 lineup) so it's not exactly the same as what you can buy in the shops. In fact, it hasn't even got a serial number - so I hope no-one steals it! It has Fox F100RL forks, and a Brain Lite on the back. The group set is a strange mix of LX (shifters, cranks), XT (disk brakes, front mech) , and XTR (rear mech). The colour is GREEN (in case you didn't notice...)
Thursday, November 10, 2005
Rodney Coast Challenge
It was a short multisport event with 10km run, 30 km road bike, 24 km MTB, and 8km paddle. The run and MTB were on gravel roads (so not that challenging or interesting) and the paddle was on the totally flat Puhoi river. The road bike was probably the most fun of the event, with reasonably flat roads (except for a BIG hill at the end) and a gentle tail wind. The speeds were really high, and I greatly enjoyed my new aerobars.
Results: I ended up 11th in the open men division in a time of 3:49:20 - which I was pretty pleased with. One of the guys I paddle with - James Peacock - got 3rd - which was an awesome result.
I can't wait until next year! :-)