Cool Sculpture.

Found the coolest sculpture, not far from where we are staying in a little town called Loul'e. Just as you come into the town, it's the first thing you see as you drive up to the main street. We kept on passing through this town as we headed for the hills every day. I kept on hanging out the window trying to get the ultimate shot, but it was not happening. There was a big carnival on in the town as it was a 100yr anniversary or something, most of the streets were closed, so navigating through them was a nightmare in the car. Of course the girls could just cruise through the traffic and we had to fight our way through it. Most of the main streets were closed off with the party, and it's on for three days, so we were getting stressed in the car. Not me, but the boss, he freaks, as we can loose the girls real quick in such a mess. My job is to try and find a way out of the mess, with two maps, and my hand held GPS (this one does not talk to me for some reason, maybe I pressed her buttons too many times). Some times it can be a real problem as one map is quite different than the other, but the GPS is on the money, but a little slow is such small streets, we have to make decisions real quick. But when we come out the other side, and race up the road to the girls we both sigh with relief. And my heart rate drops considerably..

So I got a little time this afternoon for a ride in the sun, and it was warm, no leggings or arm warmers. The first thing I did was head to this sculpture with my camera for a few shots. I have learnt from many trips to wonderful places, that to leave the pictures to say, 'I'll come back' is asking for it. Guaranteed that you will never, ever be in the same town at the same place ever again to get the shot you wanted. This year I will make a real effort to get everything I can, and never let a chance go by, no matter what the cost.

So here you are, a nice little photo essay on a wicked sculpture. As to who made it or what it symbolizes, well I didn't get that organized today, the riding was too good to look it that, but I will find out, just to give the artist credit where it is due.

This is the first one out of the car, it's not bad. And the below is also out of the car as well..

Corker place to ride.

Getting ready to leave.

Portugal and the sun is shining as expected, but it’s crazy to try to understand the weather here that’s for sure. During the day the sun is up, stay in it and you can be quite warm, with ambient temperatures of around 15-18’c, move out of it and you can be freezing. A little bit of work before breakfast is almost out of the question, so I find myself working into the night as is a lot warmer, and I get more done as there is less people bothering me. Only the really keen girls come out to advise me on the changes they need for the next day.

Training starts at ten everyday, which gives me a chance to get the bikes ready, bit of spit and polish and a little bit of lube. Thank god I packed the compressor, as I don’t fancy pumping about thirty tires every morning. Heading out of town to the hills we have found some pretty cool little towns, some old and some new. There are orange groves littering the countryside, some of them providing some excellent patterns on otherwise pretty boring hillsides. Oranges are everywhere, some of the trees just loaded, ready to fall over, and yes it does make you want to eat them, my intake of oranges is up about 400%.

The countryside looks pretty unique, we were riding in the mountains behind the town that we are staying in. Some of the roads have just had a ‘Pro Tour’ race through them, so it looks like they have been laid with smooth bitumen again, and they are fast. The hills are littered with what looks like old Olive tree groves. It looks like they have been left to ruin, wasting away with not a person caring about them. I couldn’t work out why it looked like the bark had been systematically peeled off the bottom 3m or so. Almost as if someone wanted them to die a slow, horrible death. After three days of the same looking trees, we stopped for a rest stop, I was helping to hydrate one of the trees when I saw the reason for the stripping of all the bark. The trees were not in fact Olive trees, but cork trees. This is the Cork capital of the world for sure, there are hundreds of hectares of these trees, and now they look pretty cool. On the ground is the odd slab of discarded cork, it feels and looks just like you expect, almost a good as some of the synthetic stuff we get now. Then I started seeing huge piles of half round cork bark stacked in the odd front yard. Who would have thought it grows on trees, I always thought it grew in trees, like rolling pins and pencils.


Nice little town.

Some of the smaller towns are a blast from the past, and certainly hard to navigate through as they don’t feature on the GPS, or some of the maps we have. We got lost a good one yesterday, ended going up a real steep section of road which just seemed to disappear. Looked like we were heading up a real long driveway of one of the locals. Upon realising that the two houses we were looking at were indeed the town we were looking for, we continued. To the disgust of a few of the girls (it was pretty steep, thought some of them were going to slap me one later). I kicked my self for not taking any pictures of this real cool looking old lady that came out of her house to have a little look. She looked like she had be living there for at least a hundred years, with wicked looking braids in her hair, and olive brown skin glistening in the sunlight. Her skin and facial features reminded me of one of those old ladies that they pull up out of those old peat bogs, maybe she was, and they brought her to life and are hiding her in the hills, who knows, looks like crazy stuff happens around here. And dogs, man, a dog catchers dream, I am just waiting for one of them to actually take the team out in one foul swoop. It’s been close, and it always freaks me out as they have come so close at times, I thought their mangy faces would get caught in the spokes. Little mongrels, we’ll get one soon in the car.


Nice big town.

Must get some pics of the cork trees, now you can see where that cork you pull out the bottle, twice a night, comes from…. Righto, got to go and thaw out my wet feet.

Some random shots.

Trucking along.

Well, as you can imagine it was a long drive, it took a couple and a half days and felt a lot longer. After leaving The Netherlands I was looking at the temperature gauge on the truck and it was reading a cool 0’c and it was raining hard. Travelling through to Belgium and the rain was still strong and I was glad to be heading south to warmer weather. I had to pick up our German Soiegnier Nicole, (masseuse, hotel, food and girl wrangler) at the airport in Paris about lunchtime, the traffic in that city is worse than Auckland so I timed her flights around the quietest time that I could find. After travelling the length of Belgium the temperature had risen all the way to 3’c and was getting warmer.

Paris was busy as usual, and trying to keep my eyes on the nine lanes of traffic while trying to get the good shot of the Eiffel Tower is always difficult, I missed it for the third time, but will be back in a week or two for another try. Our destination for the day was the Bordeaux region on the southern border of France. This is where a collection of cheaper hotels hang out, so finding somewhere to sleep is easy, finding something in Spain, 200km later, at night was pushing it.

Out director Jean-Paul was following in the new team car which we had picked up just the day before. He was watching his son race the last Cyclocross race for the season, and was going to try to catch us up before Bordeaux. His son had won the Junior World Championships in the CX the week before so he was pretty stoked, so his last race was important as he was wearing the rainbow jersey for the first time. I had left at 9am, he was hitting the road about 1pm, and we were taking bets as to when he might catch us. The roads in Belgium were pretty slow and there was rain, but when you hit France you can drive almost as fast as you want. We had a limit of about 130km/hr in the truck so our trip was always going to be a lot slower. He, on the other hand had a maximum of about 200km/hr so it was going to be interesting if he caught us.

Through France we started to see the sun come out, almost the first time that I had seen it for a week since arriving in Europe. From what I had been hearing, most of the girls had been having a rather harsh winter, so they were looking forward to a little sunshine and some warmer temperatures. Where we were heading was almost the bottom of the whole continent, so you can’t get any further. (Look up Faro, Portugal on the fantastic Google Earth, if you have not seen it yet you will love it, watch out as you can waste a lot of time if your not careful). The temperature was starting to come up to double figures, and the countryside was changing into some cool vineyards and orchards. And as always, it was good to see some hills again, after the flats of The Netherlands.

We were about 120km from Bordeaux when JP came screaming past us with a big smile on his face. He had caught us way earlier than both of us in the truck predicted. We find out later, he had reached speeds of up to 210km/hr and had managed to gain almost five hours on our 1000km journey. It would have been great to have the same speed….

We slept, and then left for Spain, then down through to Portugal, only about 1500km to go, yeha. Just in case you need to know, we are travelling from Auckland to all the way to Wellington, then back to Auckland and then once again to Wellington and Back again. Spain was only a couple of hundred km’s away and already we could see the sun beaming our way. The temperature had reached up to 12.5’c and was climbing. The roads were getting quiet through Spain and the trucks on the road were getting thicker. Of course you always know when you are in Spain as there is the huge metal Bulls on the side of the road, these are always in the coolest places, and they make the coolest photos. But travelling by yourself, trying to dodge trucks, listening to loud music on the ipod, keeping your speed at 130km/hr with the truck is getting blown across the road in the wind while trying to get the perfect shot is always fun. I managed to get three out of the seven bulls that I saw, and a couple of cool shots in there as well. I will get the lot soon. It certainly makes the trip more fun when you see these targets in the distance and struggle to make the cut off. Ahh, things to keep you mind active when you have many miles to go.


Another classic Toro, southern Spain.



Well to cut a long trip short. On the way to Madrid it started snowing, bit of a change from the last time I was there with 30’c in the sun. The snow on the mountains was awesome to see falling, but the temperature had dropped back to 2.5’c, hey I thought it was supposed to be getting warmer in Spain? We continued on to the bottom of Spain, here I found the best coffee so far. It was good to see when I ordered in broken Spanish, three short espressos in a row, they were not looking at me funny like most other places in the world. Soon after hitting the traffic in Madrid, I was extolling the virtues of my GPS once again. There is no way anyone could have found the way through the mass of spaghetti they call roads here. I have, over time learnt to trust my GPS in the truck, when it tells me to do turns, take off ramps, etc, that otherwise goes against every instinct you have as far as the right direction to drive. I love her, her voice is so soothing when there is nine lanes of rush hour traffic, her words are so clear, ‘in 400m take the left hand lane, and in 1km turn left’, she’s like a guardian angel in your ear. Every now and again I change the language into something more pleasing, then it makes something as simple ‘take a left at the next intersection’, sound like she is whispering sweet nothings in your ear. Oops, might be giving a little too much information away here, but it sure makes a long trip more fun…and she has never been wrong yet, makes a change from some of the map readers I have had over the years.

Seeing the signs for Portugal was great, almost like seeing your house and fridge after a 150km road ride. The sun was up, the temperature was up, almost 17’c, things were looking good, now for a few hours off, then the girls will arrive, and the hard work will begin..


All lined up and ready for action.

Ahh, Portugal

No time to write..

Sorry but not a single spare moment to write, seem to be busy with a few new bikes, 11 riders, four to six hour rides daily. The hard work will be over in a few day, when I have the problem setups organized, so might be able to fill you in on a bit more info.
Portugal is pretty cool still, with 2-5'c in the nights and about 15-18'c in the day. Everyone seems happy with the increase in temperature, but they have not come from 30'c................ But I should be happy, at least I get to see the sun again.
Righto, more later.

Getting ready for the sun

Only 2564km to go, that will be my call in the morning. I got all the bikes built, got he truck all packed up rearing to leave. Think I am looking forward to seeing what another part of Europe has to offer in the way of riding. Not sure what to expect from the terrain really, so I have packed all the bigger cassettes for the trip.

We have nine of our riders coming, the Director, his son and friend, and one of the sponsors and me. A few bikes to look after and a few girls to set-up on their new bikes. Should be a bit of fun for ten days in the sun. I have been checking out some of the rides we might be doing, and looks like I will have my work cut out for me If I’m going to keep up with the riding and the working, but I will give it a shot.

The truck is looking good for this season, if you remember it turn up at the end of the season, but was empty inside. During the winter it’s had a nice fit out with all that I may need to hang the bikes, store the equipment, and keep things safe while travelling. Now we are starting to look really professional in comparison to some of the teams. Someone has to set the standard, we do it in the race and we do it in the car park afterwards.

Heres a few picks of my days work getting ready to leave..


Waiting..


Ready..


Steady..


GO!!

Snow, snow, glorious snow...

Our back yard

One week down and already feels like I’ve been here a month or two, and what a week it’s been. Well for all of you at home, sweltering in the heat and humidity, enjoy it, as it’s been pretty damn cold here the last few days. I thought the first couple of days were pretty sweet, even I could handle this sort of weather, then it turned real bad. The temperature drops fairly quick at night, but I am normally at the team house by then, and you kind of forget how cold it is as it’s really warm inside. Step outside for a minute and you really get quite a kick, try riding and then you can certainly be sure that’s is winter here alright.

After getting prepared with as much Merino wool clothes as I could afford, I thought I could head off any bout of winter this place could throw at me. Things were looking good until Tuesday. Getting in the car and setting off, I happened to notice the temp gauge, it was reading cool 0’c, but by the time I was half way to work, it was reading in the minuses. After getting into my workshop and starting the little heater we have up, I noticed a real drop in the temperature. Looking outside I noticed snow falling from the sky. Now you would think a man of my worldly travels and wild experiences that I would have seen snow fall from the sky before, well you are wrong. It was pretty cool (no pun intended, oh ok, it was deliberate) to finally see it falling. Some how, with many trips to the snow I had managed to miss it actually falling. It was always there, waiting for me. I had a theory, one ski trip, that the more I got drunk, the more the snow fell, that year we had a metre of snow fall almost every night. Skiing while drunk is a lot harder than riding a bike in the same state, just in case you are wondering.

Watching the snow fall all day was getting me excited to go riding in the stuff, a new experience for me, I had to do it. It just so happened that the Boss needed the car, and I had my excuse. He was keen to drop me home, as he was worried about how cold I might get, I talked him out of it. I had always wondered what these huge gloves and hats in our cupboards were for, now I have my answers. I put as much warm stuff on as I could and hit the road. Now, call me romantic, or call me stupid, what ever you may think, the ideas that I had about snow falling, changed pretty quickly…. I think it was about three minutes from memory, then I had had enough.

Some facts you might like to know about snow that I discovered in 7km on the bike. Snow is not that fluffy, (yeah there is the odd fluffy stuff) in fact it’s like small blocks of ice. These small blocks of ice hit your eyes with such power every few seconds with such vigour it feels like someone is constantly poking you in the eyes with a stick. Snow is very wet, in fact my jeans (first time in long pants in years) were soaked to the bone in a matter of minutes, oh and did I mention that it was freaking freezing. Wet cold jeans are not my favourite riding attire, but that was sweet compared to my head. Shaving my head in summer was a great idea, shaving my head in winter was pretty damn stupid, even a little hair would have changed things immensely. The hat, that I had never managed to wear (because it was far too hot) in NZ seemed to be very wet, and very cold, so pulling it over the top of my eyes to stop the ice cubes poking me in the eyes seemed to be making even colder. Ah, but all of this seemed bliss compared to my toes, these I forgot about pretty soon as they had lost all the feeling in them soon after they were soaked with frozen ice cube water coming off the road. Oh, I couldn’t even think about the toes for long, as my hands seemed to take precedence over the lot. Wet, freezing cold hands, don’t like to do anything when they are treated this way I found out. Stopping was out of the question, this required you actually moving the hands, which by the 5th km was getting impossible. Man I can’t believe people ride in this shit.

Now you think 7km on a bike is not far, hey it’s not when it’s pleasant outside, put yourself fully clothed, in the bath, get nice and wet then jump in the freezer for a while then give jump on a bike and get someone to throw sand and ice in your face. I have heard of pain, on the bike before, but this was ridiculous. Roll on summer, that’s what I say. Lucky we are leaving for Portugal for two weeks training, a little better at mid twenties, time for a little riding I think…..

Leaving and arriving almost in the same day.

Well I did not think that I was going to make it on the plane this week. From being totally organised in my mind, reality was I was far from the truth. Having to leave a house that I had been in for almost seven years was traumatic to say the least as I realised that the bikes and parts that I had collected over the years was greater than I first had thought. Selling some of the bikes in my collection was like a child leaving home for the first time, it was not easy for me. Thank god that they were all going to good homes, I could not bear to think of my babies being abused. As for the good stuff that I had rescued over the years, some of it just looked like a pile of junk now that it had to go.

The flights were pretty sweet, long and pretty boring, I even managed to get some sleep for the first time flying that I can remember. A few hours stopover in Thailand, almost felt like home, in the heat, but the humidity was not as great. The summer in Auckland was getting too much for me, hot and sticky, it certainly makes working and sleeping difficult when it’s 30’c, sleeping in that heat can almost make you more tired. High humidity has got to be the worst kind of weather to deal with, even just sitting around you are sweating, feeling tired for no reason. Bring on the winter, at least you can put more clothes on if you are cold, instead of trying to remove your skin trying to cool down. Europe was having a pretty cold winter form what the team was telling me. Just hope that it has started to warm a little by the time that I get there, and I hope I packed enough warm stuff to wear.

Flying from a perfectly clear sky in London, with a nice 5’c outside, flying to Amsterdam the weather had deteriorated to snow and sleet, and a nice 1’c. I had arrived to what I was dreading, cold, cold and more cold. The Netherlands looked a lot different since I had left it in October last year. Almost a little washed out and everything look squashed from the snow they had over the winter. One thing I have come to realise about this country is that everyone talks about the weather, always it’s never been this bad, cold, wet, windy etc, I seemed to have missed the three weeks of summer they had last year as well. Maybe with a full season here I might get to see what its like for my self, instead of some misinformed hearsay.

I was picked up by one of my housemates, Linda our Danish rider. The team has supplied a house for a few of us that are from out of town. It’s a great idea, as most of the team will be staying here at some time or another throughout the year, and it’s nice giving them a place of their own after all the hotels we stay in during racing. The house is in a small village about 7km from the team base that I work out of most of the year. With a cool forest between them both, riddled with trails perfect for a mountainbike (which I brought with me) or a cyclocross which the team has a few of. There is two churches, three supermarkets and two bike shops that I have found so far, and that’s just riding through it twice.

The Boss has been busy during his winter, adding a few more things to the Service Course (name they use for the base, bike storage, workshop etc). He has also just been to pick up our first shipment of bikes for the girls, and they are looking good. Full carbon for us this year, Dura-ace 10 speed of course, and a nice selection of Bontrager wheels and ‘Pro’ (local brand) of bars, stems, seatposts cages etc. The bikes are all black, which won’t show the dirt up as much as last years white bikes, sweet as it makes my job a little easier as the bikes get a little bit used.


All that nice carbon...

Now the work starts for me, 14 bikes to build from scratch in the next few days. A few tubulars to glue, and a truck to finish off all before we head to Portugal at the end of the week. I will be leaving a day or two before the rest of the team, as they get the luxury of flying there in a couple of hours. Whereas the director and I get the fun of driving 2560km ASAP, with a full load of sweet new unridden (except the odd skid test I have to perform) carbon Stevens bikes all the way through most of Europe.


All that nice Dura-ace

Better get building…. Oh and it’s freaking cold. I rode to work this morning and when I arrived it was a whole 1.5’c, my toes still have not thawed out. But more about that later.

The last race.

I could not dare to leave this beautiful country without one last good mountainbike ride to see me off. We were thinking of just having a good ride in some far out and wild place, somewhere typically NZ in its terrain and trails. Somewhere that I will not find anywhere else on this earth, some wild single-track heading off into the forest, somewhere where there is no chance of it ever getting overrun with tourists or day trippers and a place you can get lost for days and no one would find you. I was planning to have a relatively safe ride, the last thing I needed to do was to turn up to work for the team injured again.

Last year, only one week from flying out, my last race saw me having to take some major moves so I didn’t run over two riders who had crashed on a tight piece of track in front of me. My options were few, ride over them and clip their heads and butts with my chainrings and pedals or head off down a steep bank. I didn’t really have any options at all, so off the bank I go. After stopping eventually, I had managed to smash my hand against a nice strong tree Lucky that we were racing in the middle of winter as it was so cold I couldn’t feel the pain in my hand for the next three hours racing. Later that night my hand was the size of a small melon, fearing the worst, a few x-rays later my mind was at ease, no broken bones, just some pretty severe bruising and a dislocated finger. With one week to go it was not looking good for my entry into the realms of a pro-team mechanic.

I tried everything to get my hand working asap, all I could do was wait it out. A few days later, packing up my bike and bags for the flight over, I was still having trouble lifting anything, let alone being able to turn an Allen key comfortably. The hand gave me plenty of grief over the next few weeks until it settled down, it was kind of a nice reminder of home and the wicked Rotorua single-track that I had left. My little finger still pops occasionally as a nice reminder why it’s a good thing to stay on your bike in a very tight forest.

Righto back to the ride.. The Coromandel’s, a wild and mean set of hills not far from Auckland, featuring some amazing vistas from the top of some very steep and knarly climbs. Some of the best singletrack a race entry can buy, and conditions that test the most experienced riders and the best bikes. As a racer it’s looked upon as the toughest MTB race in the country, beating most of the classic races by having the racecourse change in a matter of hours with the weather. I had been telling my customers leading up to the race, that the conditions were going to be hard, fast and dry. Maybe I should have found out the weather from some of the locals before I started advising on tyre choice. From the shop to the race is a two-hour drive, but only about half an hour as the crow fly’s. Who would have thought there would be much of a change in the weather, for so little distance geographically, how wrong I was…


The nice dry trails.

The day was looking omonous as we headed up the ranges to where the race was starting, low cloud and impending rain was a surprise as Auckland hand been perfect all week. We readied ourselves for some pretty trechourous riding, full of thrills and spills and magnificent views. There were many smiling faces at the start, but they would soon be covered with mud, hiding their frowns and looks of disappointment as their machines gave up underneath them. The two of us decided to not race today (trying to stop the crashing possibilities), but enter the race after all. We had some nice demo bikes that we had to try and what better place to do it.
Off we went, into the mist and rain as we climbed the first 500m climb of the day, this was going to be fun, thank god I decided to take it easy. Well, easy is fine line between busting your ass and giving everything you have for the race, and having a whole lot of fun. The speed is not so much different in the end but there is a different mindset needed as you get caught up in the moment of the race and it’s hard to back off when people are passing you (it’s a racer thing). So off we went, hooting and hollering to ourselves and ‘Tane’, God of the forest. And fun we did have, the climbs seemed fun and the downhills were more than fun. But as you can imagine, with all that fun, something had to give. And unfortunately, it was the ground from beneath me, I somehow managed to loose control on a slippery, rocky, mud filled, descent (for those that know, it’s quite a common occurrence for me).
I hit the dirt with such vigour, right onto my shoulder, which seemed to make a good popping noise as I made contact. Collar bone break, I was thinking as I lay there in the mud, writhing in pain. But no I was lucky, just a really good smack, enough to pop the bone out of its socket for a split second, wrench some essential muscles and bruise my ego. Checking to make sure that nothing was broken, I looked down the rest of the descent thinking that maybe there was a reason there was a four xxxx sign at the top. Oh well, on with the race, and man was it good, mud, mud glorious mud, some wicked native forest and some of the wildest trails I have ridden since last years race.

My nice clean legs.

Later that night the damage looked bad, I was having trouble with my shoulder as the pain was starting to set in. A few pain killers, some anti-inflammatory’s, internal and external Arnica, some massaging and a little vodka, and things were feeling great. A good sleep, and things were felling good, a little bit sore but not as bad as I thought it was. Hey I could almost lift a bike with it, and using the tools was no problems.. Europe here I come, at least I was not sporting a cast or sling, things were looking up.