Hello everyone! I have been pretty busy of late, catching up with my friends and stuff like that, which wouldn’t usually be a reason for lack of posts, but they were visiting from Australia, so i had to commit more time to them! James came back, after his trip around the States and South America, and brought our friend Chris with him this time. I hadn’t seen Chris for ages, although the three of us have been very close since we were five years old!

Here is a picture of us on our first communion, in 1991! Chris is on the left, James in the middle, and me on the right!

This is what we look like now, sixteen years on:

We had such a great time catching up, and it was as though we had never been away from each other on the opposite sides of the world! Funnily enough, their visit coincided with the first UGA Bulldogs football of the season, so the two of them got their first ever tailgating experience! It is crazy, for those of you who haven’t been tailgating before. This is the best i could show what it is like in just one photo, the thing is though, this is just a small section of North Campus of UGA, and it is like this everywhere within a mile of the ground, in all directions! It is basically bigger than the AFL grand final in Australia, and it is like this for every game of the season! No wonder college footballers think they are rockstars!

Here is the aftermath of the tailgate! Everyone leaves their picnic set-up, and heads into the ground to watch the game. They just lower their ‘easy-ups’, put all their stuff under them, and leave it all there, hoping nobody wanders through and takes anything. There are still some people who couldn’t get a ticket to the game, who sit around and watch the game on a 50 inch plasma screen they have brought down to campus, and a satellite dish too, so they can get reception for the TV!!!!

Ever since we have known each other, Chris has been a then WWF, now WWE wrestling fanatic. The coolest thing is, he is pursuing his dream of being a professional wrestler, and is about to begin a three month, intense training course specifically for the WWE! He will likely be Australia’s first ever WWE representative, and i wish him all the best in his dream to achieve that. You should see the arms on him! Here he is showing how to lift Tyler’s sister Julie above his head, before throwing her out of the ring (if they were in a wrestling ring that is)!

When we were in downtown Athens on game day, we saw some cops on bikes, so we asked them to pretend to arrest James so as we could get a photo of it. They were very kind, and didn’t hesitate to join in the fun! It would have been funny if a divvy van drove past or something, and thought James had done something wrong, and threw him in the back of it!

For the first time since we were about ten or something like that, the three of us were able to go for a ride together. It was pretty good fun, and we were able to get up to Jittery Joe’s and have a good coffee there. The cool thing here is, the last three photos have shown what the three of us do best; Chris with his wrestling, me with my cycling, and James getting arrested! haha!

My wonderful Mum sent me a cricket bat so i could teach Americans how to play cricket, even though i suck at it myself! It arrived in time for James and Chris and I to show some people how to play at a BBQ, so i am sure there will be many more fun times had with cricket games - it will probably make for a good tailgating activity! We got Keally to show us her style, so here it is:

Does anything look strange in the photo?! It is very funny to watch how someone who has never seen anyone play cricket, guess how the bat is meant to be held!

So that has been some of the fun things that has happened in the last couple of weeks for me. We raced the Atlanta 100k race last Monday, and started at 7 am, so that was not much fun. Hoppy came 6th in that, and then led us in the inaugural Tour Decatur pub crawl, of his hometown of Decatur. The flyer for the event was brilliant, including the planned stops, feed zones, and even an altitude/distance chart!

I am currently in Michigan, back up here to see all of my good friends i met last year. Bob Hughes, who i lived with last year, helped put on a great criterium in downtown Grand Rapids, and i raced up there on Saturday. The Priority Health boys definitely had the strength in numbers, but Menzies is just a machine, and rode away with the win. I probably lost my chance to win when i followed Kirk O’bee when he attacked with 6 to go, and we smashed ourselves till we got caught just after 2 to go. I got into the field, and was able to hang on for 6th, so that wasn’t too bad a result, it just would have been nice to podium in my home town of 2006!

Coming up this weekend, we have the Tour de Leelanau, and are spending the week up here in North-Western Michigan, by the water in a really nice host house. It is just amazing up here, and i really miss the Michigan coast! Last year i got 2nd in this race behind my team mate Eddy Hilger, so i hope i can go one better this time round! The other cool thing up here, is it is a few degrees cooler that Georgia; it is around 60 during the days here, as opposed to 90-100 down there, so the cool change is very nice - we even trained in leg warmers and jackets today! Wicked!

Well dudes, i hope everyone is doing well, and i will do my best to get some pictures up of the area we are in, up here in Leland, Michigan in the next few days.

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Laters… Wicked!