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…

Supposedly old news is not good news. Luckily, with the stuff you will find here in this blog, the date is irrelevant, and i more or less just include (what i think are) cool photos and other cycling associated entertainment! I must be honest, this post was started just after returning from my last road trip (two weeks ago), and this is actually my sixth time sitting down to try and get it done. There are all sorts of reasons why it has taken so long, and one of the main reasons is my laziness! Another big reason is that now that University has finished for the Summer, everyone seems to have left the apartment complex, and there is no more wireless for me to use. We had to go and buy a router two days ago!

So anyway, these photos below are old now, but still have a good enough story behind them… Well, i am not sure about a story, but maybe something entertaining!

South Carolina has a great feeling when you are travelling through it. I am not sure if it is the really flat, sandy landscape, or the nice warm air, or possibly my love of explosives? Every time i arrive in South Carolina i start to wonder if i am dreaming:

I can just see right now how Mum would just be shaking her head, yelling, “how do you think that’s funny!?”

Here is Keith, posing with one of the few advertisements for the great man when we were out for a morning ride in Beaufort. It was crazy, we just kept passing all these signs advertising Keith.

Here he is again…

Unfortunately, i didn’t take a photo of the other business we passed, but it was Keith’s Billiard Hall and Games Room. It isn’t all that funny i guess, but seeing three “Keith” things in the space of about 500 metres was quite entertaining for us, on an otherwise uneventful morning!

After racing in a few criteriums in South Carolina, a few of us headed up to Washington DC to race in the US Air Force Classic. On the way we stayed with the big man, Mark Hekman, at his place in Winston Salem. Mark is a champion, and it was really nice of him to let us stay with him at his house. Some of us stayed in the cottage out the back, which was built before Australia was even settled! It was amazing, and full of antiques. The craftsmanship that went into building the cottages here is amazing, just so perfect, and made to stand the test of time.

Here is a motor bike we passed on the highway. There was a truck and trailer following him with another identical bike on the back. Check it out, he saw me taking the photo so gave me the thumbs up! I wonder if he realises he is probably world-famous now?

The race up in DC started right here by the US Air Force Memorial. It, like all of the other monuments in the area, is quite stunning.

We raced by the Memorial every lap, and while the hill up to it didn’t seem like much, it hurt! I think we went by it twelve times, and i think i took the photo on lap four, when we went a bit slower up the climb…

Here is a classic blog photo. I haven’t had many opportunities to get any snaps like this lately, so i had to jump on the opportunity, and the plane, when i got the chance!

In other news, Melbourne finally won a game last time they played! I have a feeling by the time anyone reads this, they will be back on the losing list, but it has given me a glimmer of hope that they can make the finals, and i can get to see them play when i get home at the end of the year!

The Wright Brother’s first flight covered a distance equal to only half the length of the wingspan of a Boeing 747.

This update is a little late, but i got halfway through before i could get to the internet for long enough to finish it!
Athens Twilight, my hometown race of the last two seasons, was held on the weekend. The race itself was it’s usual carnage, with a number of crashes having an outcome on the race. Our team had a number of crashes, and i was unfortunate enough to go down again (for the second year in a row) too. Hekman went down and broke his forks, and finished the race without realising, and Frank hurt his wrist pretty bad, and has not ridden since.

We finished the race without a good result, which is a bit disappointing, and it sucks to have so many injuries after just our first pro race of the season! I have heard a lot of the spectators come to watch Twilight specifically for the crashes, but to those people, please spare a thought for the riders, we actually do get hurt!

The week leading up to Twilight our team did a couple of school visits. It was a good experience to get on the microphone, and some of us, like Shagman, had a bit of talent for busting out some freestyling:

Others, like Danny, were a bit more timid, and looked a little more uncomfortable when it came to singing for the crowd:

If you click on the link above, to Dan Vaillancourt’s website, you will see that it is not quite finished yet. I included a link to his page so that maybe he will get his arse into gear and get it rolling!

The coolest thing about the school visits, was that one of the schools had a rock climbing wall. You might not realise it, and the photo may be a little misleading, but i am actually ten metres high when this photo was taken! Check out my new rock climbing shoes; Louis Garneau with Shimano cleats!

My Outdoor Eduaction teachers from school will be pleased to know that those rock climbing camps we did in VCE stood me in good stead; check it out, no harness or anything!

So since Twilight, we have done three other sketchy crits; Tuesday in Beaufort, Wednesday in Walterboro, and Thursday in Greenwood. These first two were won by lone Toyota representitive, Hilton Clarke, while Thursday was won by Alex Candelario, seeing as Hiltz left to go home! For us guys, Hekman and Keith have been our best performers, getting us a few top tens. We are getting better each day, as the racing we are finally doing is bringing us up well!

I will get up a few photos from our trip through the crit series in the next few days.

While the Speedweek series is still going on, I am on the way up to Virginia for a UCI sanctioned race, the US Airforce Classic, on Sunday. I am really looking forward to doing a pro road race for the first time this year, it is going to be a welcome change not having to slam the brakes on, then sprint out of a corner each time we get up to speed! It is going to be a great test, and i am excited to see where i am at compared to the big hitters of the USA racing scene…

Laters dudes.

Beaufort, SC, where we raced the crit on Tuesday, is the place where Forrest Gump jumps off his fishing boat, into the water, to swim over to Lieutenant Dan...