Team Cinelli – Down Under!
// March 13th, 2009 // 13 Comments » // A Day Down Under
Well there is heaps to report in on with me. I am in Belgium now, to spend the year racing for Team Cinelli – Down Under! Everything happened in a very short amount of time, and since I was down in Portarlington for the Oceanias, things have just been a blur. After some help from team mechanic Mark, I booked a flight, and just days later was on the plane for Brussels, was meeting the new team mates, having team presentation, and then racing in the Three Days of West Flanders! What a great experience! Three days of West Flanders was awesome. Day one was very tough, and just my third ride on the new bike. It took a bit of getting used to, and some sore muscles, but by day two I started to come around a bit. Day three, and we rode up the famous (or infamous) Kemmelberg – what an experience that was! I was in the main front group over that, and it didn’t matter that my legs were screaming like they never have before, I was just covered in goosebumps thinking about all the legends of the sport that have just smashed it over that climb before!
So enough about racing stuff, here is the cool stuff. I have a couple of photos for now, but plenty more to come. For starters, at the team presentation, our famous team director Nico Mattan told us about this small bus we would have for the races. Well, this is it, a full RV!
One of our team sponsors is this bad-ass clothing sponsor. Here my team mate Nick Mitchell, a Brad McGee look-a-like, and I decided to pose in our pimping real fur Winter coats. They couldn’t have come at a better time either, as it is freezing over here!
Here are a couple of pictures of the nearby town, Leuven. It is quite stunning with the old buildings and architecture. It is just a short ride away, and definitely worth a regular visit because it is so nice to look at.
Amazing buildings like these ones are just everywhere. Belgium has so many nice buildings, and their houses are really nice too. I really love this place, and I have only been here just over a week!
We have a small town just a short ride away, and it is great for a coffee shop ride. This is the first ride I did here in Belgium, and took this picture so you can get a glimpse of the great Cinelli Bikes we are riding for this season. I will do a more detailed update on all of our equipment in the next couple of posts.
I am basically done on my write-up on track cycling, but just waiting on a couple of comments from some of our club’s riders before it is complete. It should be up in the coming days. For now, I hope you have a bit of an idea of what I am up to, and you can be sure the updates will be happening a lot more frequently from now on! I am already doing a ton of racing, and can be sure there is plenty of blogging ammo for the coming months!
Despite being over 27 times smaller, Norway’s total coastline is longer than the USA’s.
