Ok, here is another post that should have been up a while back! It is a week late, but it is all good, because the second half of the year is just a week away, and i have set myself a “second-half-of-year’s” or “old-year’s” resolution, to be a good blog-updater! I have been way too slack this first half of the year, so that is all going to change, and hopefully i will regain some of my faithful readers and comment writers!

So there has been a heap going on for Keally and me. We got a U-Haul van last week, and loaded all of our stuff from the apartment, and drove back to Roswell. We were very efficient workers, and by 10.30 am, we had everything loaded up and were on our way!

Here is the U-Haul van out the front of our apartment.

And here is Keally on the back of the truck with all of the stuff in it. We really don’t have a lot of stuff, as you can probably tell…

So that was it, everything in. Scooter, matress, couch, couple of bikes, drawers, suitcases… Not a whole lot, as the studio apartment doesn’t hold a lot of stuff! It is pretty crazy that we barely had enough stuff to fill the small moving van, but also a good sign that if we do need to get it all over to Australia, it can be done!

So that was the move. Keally just got some work in Roswell, so it worked out really well. We have come back to her parent’s place, and it has been good timing, as her Dad, Oldy Dave, just got work out in Seattle, Washington, so he is off to the other side of the country, and we are here with her Mum and brother to give them company, and help get the house ready to sell.

Everything is changing here and it is all for the better! Keally has finished school and has her degree, Oldy Dave got a new job, I got a new team, and Keally and i have moved houses! All that in a two week period!

So last weekend Keally and i headed up to Nashville, Tennesse, for the Edgar Soto Memorial bike race. Spencer Beamer and i were the two who made the trek from our team, DLP Racing. It was a good time, and we went pretty well too; Spencer won the stage one time trial, and i won the stage two criterium on the nascar track! Wicked! About time i had a win, and what better way to come to the new team than with a win in my second week! Spencer and i raced really well together, and did well the following two stages also.

We got a good morning ride in on the Saturday, and cruised along a really nice bike path. It was a great way to roll the legs out in the morning, and this photo is pretty cool, so i thought i had better put it up!

Keally was on hand to get some race photos for us too, and i thought this one should go up, because it has Spencer and i in it, and i don’t get too many race photos to post up on here either.

So do you see the bike i am racing on there? Well, it is smashed now! On Tuesday, i headed out for a ride, and got run off the road by some car, hit the curb, slammed into the ground, and pretty much folded the down tube of the frame. The wheels both have huge dints in them too, and most things got pretty well trashed. I hit my shoulder and wrist pretty hard, and it all happened so fast i didn’t even get to try and jump the curb. Pretty crazy i didn’t do more damage, but i really thought i must have broken my collarbone… So now i have to be done with crashing for the year! Each time i have crashed this season, i still have skin trying to heal from the previous crash! Its all good now, i am back on the bike and training as usual, exploring my new training roads, of Roswell.

The training here is really quite good. I have found the river ride, which is nice and relatively flat, to give a break from the constantly rolling, undulating terrain. I have also found a really cool climb, really steep too. It took me 8 minutes to get to the top, and its only about 2 kilometres long! That was going really hard too, pretty much flat out (400 watts) all the way!

So things are looking good here, and i have a few races coming up. Also, it is about to turn into the second half of the year, so i am going to be a diligent blog-updater, and more successful, winning, crash free cyclist!

Anyway dudes, i hope everyone is well, and i look forward to hearing from you, or reading some comments, if you remember how to do it… I need to know i still have a few loyal readers!!!!

Fact: It is not possible to tickle yourself. The cerebellum, a part of the brain, warns the rest of the brain that you are about to tickle yourself. Since your brain knows this, it ignores the resulting sensation. Interesting huh?!

Howdy readers!

As you may have noticed, i have been very slack about writing a post. There has been plenty going on, and i will try and fill you in on a little bit.

June 1 saw me transfer to a new team! I am now racing for a North Carolina based team, DLP Racing. I will get all of the colours and links on the web page changed shortly, and give a write up on my new machines! All that will come soon, but for now, i will just get a few photos up and update briefly…

Here are most of my new team mates, on the steps out the front of one of our hosts’ houses for Philly Week. Kevin is on the left with his daughter Maya, and most of us the day before Philly. Huge thanks to the two hosts we had for the week, it was nice to get settled in somewhere instead of hopping around hotels till the big race! We were based literally one kilometre from the start…

Cool looking team kit too!

So Philadelphia is pretty crowded! Check out how all of the houses are just stacked into the streets to fit more people in a small space! Finding a car park was ridiculous, it would take up to twenty minutes at times. It is quite amazing how so many people choose to live in such a confined place!

This is what the back yards of all those houses look like. Not much room for a cricket pitch in these yards!

This is what Philly looks like in the day time, driving in on one of the highways…

… and this is what it looks like in the night, from the top of Kevin’s place! Pretty spectacular hey?! A lot of the buildings have really cool light shows and stuff on them too, so you can just sit and watch for hours. We ate dinner up here nearly every night, so we were very lucky! The weather was great too, and up on top of all the houses we got a nice breeze to help cool us down from the ridiculous humidity!

Here is the fountain in the round-a-bout that we pass sixteen times in the Philly race. I put this up because i am sure that not really any riders in the race got a good look at it, and i took this photo on lap eight…! Not really, its from the day before - I am not as good as Teddy King yet!

Here is one of my team mates, Charlie, catching up on some news from an interesting paper! Check it out, i didn’t even know something like this existed!

So as far as the racing goes, Philly week went ok. I was happy with my form, considering the lack of racing in the lead-up, but luck didn’t really come my way for Philly.

Allentown was a shock to the system, and i got dropped with about 4k to go. Reading went well i thought, i have never made it over the climp in the group before, and this year, i made it over all three times, only to get dropped about 400m from the top of the KOM. I know it wasn’t a good result as such, but for me, it gave me a bunch of confidence for Philly. Philly was a scorcher, unbelievably hot! To cut a long story short, i flatted with 3 laps to go, got back on after a long chase, then started feeling really good, got over the climb no worries each lap, then on the lead in to the wall i was in a crash, and landed ribs first on someones handlebars (i think i broke them?), then chasing back on, somehow crashed again, on my own…! Figure that out, i am still try to too! The second crash sort of meant i was out of contention, and my breathing has been hampered since because of my ribs!

Oh well, off to Nashville this weekend for the Edgar Soto Memorial, so hopefully the good form can transfer into some results!

I will update after the weekend too, with some race reports or something…

In other news, Keally and I have moved to Roswell, Atlanta, with her parents. Keally got some work there, so we are no longer living in Athens, and on Thursday, we picked up a U-Haul truck, packed up everything, and moved! Done!

I will write more during the week!

Laters…

An office desk has 400 times more bacteria than a toilet.

So my good mate and team mate Danny Vaillancourt has headed back up to Maine! I am pretty sad to see him go, as we have trained and spent time together every day since the start of February. We have had such a great time together, and started a great friendship, so hopefully we will be back in the same place again soon!

I call Dan “Danny the Lion Tamer”, because there was this movie in Australia years ago called The Big Steal, and the parents, when referring to Danny, would say, “Is that Daniel the Lion Tamer, or Daniel our son?” I guess you have to have seen the movie, or even have to be me to find it funny, but for that very reason, that is why Danny is always going to be Danny the Lion Tamer!

Danny the Lion Tamer bacame Danny the Snake Tamer on our last ride together in Athens. Check it out! This snake was on the road so we stopped to throw sticks at it and stuff, when Dan decided to ride up pretty close to it and pick it up…

Well, he didn’t pick it up, but the photo made it look like he was about to!

Now that Summer is creeping in, there have been so many snakes on the roads. I guess i am seeing up near ten on each ride, depending on how many quieter roads i take; the less cars on the road, the more snakes there are, dead and alive… Scary huh! Indiana Jones and I both hate snakes! By the way, Keally and i went to see the new Indiana Jones on Friday.

Here is the Mexican Bakery Thingy we stop at on training rides. It has the best cakes and pastries, and they are only 60 cents each! Perfect for recovery rides, or at the end of a long day, or for any time we pass it! It is so bad ass! This photo was perfect, bacause it meant i got another picture of Danny for the “Farewell Danny” blog post, and also it kind of looks like Jay and Silent Bob, just with bikes included!

Happy Birthday to my beautiful fiancee Keally, who turned 23 on Thursday! Feel free to write birthday comments on this blog… Actually, feel free (that means please write comments!) to make comments of any description!

Keally and I went back to her parents house for a very nice birthday dinner, and her birthday cake was made of cup cakes, to save dirtying dishes like knives and forks. It was a great idea!

Happy Birthday Keally!

There was a storm in Atlanta last week, and i think there was a tornado near Keally’s oldy’s place too. Oldy Dave saved some of the hail that fell on their house, which has supposedly shrunk a lot since it first landed! Whether it has or not doesn’t really matter, i wouldn’t want to get hit by one of these suckers out training!

It might be Keally’s birthday, but i am definitely getting older! Check it out, i am like an old man:

Multi-tasking while sitting in a grandpa chair, complete with a lamp, and, a cup of tea. Yes, that is tea in that mug! Awesome!

Here is a typical Georgia house. For some reason, when you get up to the Georgia mountains, there is a need to collect rusty old cars and things like that. I know this photo doesn’t do this guy’s collection justice, but it is incredible! There must be more than 100 metres of junk in this guy’s front yard. Maybe i might have to film it one time, it is on the way up to where we train in the hills.

So anyway, there’s a bit of an update on some of my happenings. Training for Philly Week is going well. I had a good long day today, and Keally motor paced me too - she is so good at it! I have been training heaps, and have started training with an SRM too. I have Gord Fraser guiding me along, and i am sure that if i am going to set the world on fire, it is because of the new training programs!

I will get out more news later in the week hopefully. I will do some searching for some new blog photos, and find something to report on. It is pretty quiet right now, just a lot of training getting ready for the big races coming up…

The Indianapolis 500 was today, so here is a fact from that:
A long-standing tradition of the Indianapolis 500 is for the victor to drink a bottle of milk immediately after the race. This practice first began in 1936 after Victor Louis Meyer asked for a glass of buttermilk, something his mother had encouraged him to drink on hot days. Afterward it became a ritual as milk companies became sponsors of the race purse and handed a bottle of milk to the winner to promote their product. A sponsorship of currently $10,000 now paid out by the American Dairy Association if the winner swigs the milk in victory lane. Among Indycar drivers, Emerson Fittipaldi is infamous for drinking orange juice instead after his 1993 victory, before he drank the customary milk. Fittipaldi owned citrus farms in Brazil, and wished to promote his industry. He was promptly booed in driver’s introductions the following week by the crowd in Milwaukee, Wisconsin, in the heart of “America’s Dairyland.”

Also, for a bit of a laugh, click here and then click on “view gallery”. I hope it works, for those who bother to try…