the birm*

Not one but two!

So I was bidding on an ibook for my cousins and, by mistake, put a bid on 2…which I both won. It was lookin ok for a while, I thought I was gonna get the 2^nd for 100 bucks cheaper than the first, until someone put a bid in that shot it up just under mine, thus making me pay the highest I’d bid…spewen! BUT I emailed the company and they cancelled my second one for free. Cool! So there you go!

SCUM BAGS and other not so nice words come to mind for the desperate morons who tried to flog my bike a few minutes ago. It gets tied up inside the gate at school everyday with 2 locks, one for the seat, one for the frame and wheels. Thanks to a fellow teacher who scared them off they only got through the flimsy seat one, but they hacked at my good Kevlar lined one, thus making it unsafe now. PUNKS! So my bike is now in the shed where it will stay. I guess I need a new flimsy lock and a new good one…

10 hour drive, 8 hour race, 2 tanks of fuel, 100 MP3 songs, 6 liters of water, 5 laps each, a flat tire, GT in Canberra and more about the FINAL 8 HOUR WORKING WEEK SERIES’ RACE, read details below…

God is good!

So we needed an economic car to drive down to the race in Canberra… and he provided! I just said I needed one out loud in the staffroom and andi, the chem teacher, said I could have his! So it took 2 tanks instead of 5! (which is nice, considering fuel is out of price in this day and age!)

The track was FANTASTIC!! Mostly all windy smooth-ish pine forest single track with a few parts of fire road (mostly grueling greasy uphills). The laps were about 45 mins (14.6 kms) and very nice….unless you got stuck behind a group of tourists…

The drive down was good (4 and a half hours), we hang out in Canberra on sat night, slept on the floor of a classy hotel-apartment with another team (beats putting up the tent at night!).

I started with the pros at the first bike start of the series (as opposed to run start) and was going real well until a rough rutty section busted my back tire… I fixed it in a few minutes but I was then stuck behind a bunch of slow riders and lost about 10 minutes…

The rest of the day was excellent, I pulled some nice times (all between 45 and 50 minutes) and was feeling OK, but I cramped up pretty bad on laps 3 and 4. Freemo, who was replacing Adski, did real well, almost getting his best time in the top 10 fastest laps.

We came in 9^th just before the 8 hour cut off… but neither of us was up for another lap!

We waited in the darkening cold and wet for the prize “ceremony”. We finally got called up “for the 2 male team category series point score, in third place…Cranky Brothers”. So there you go! I was considering not doing the series again next year, but since we got HALF PRICE VOUCHERS as a prize, I think we’ll be back!

Drove home via Macca’s for a big mac and was in bed by 1am, feeling pretty good.

Bring on the next series!

So i had some late lunch and some soy crisps on Sunday. All was good, we were watching a combination of AFL and “dirty rotten scoundrels”. A few hours later I was feeling quite sick…that ol’ feeling I haven’t felt since being in the Ukraine… and then, a couple of hours later…relief. I absolutely emptied myself! My gut was still in all sorts of trouble and I kept waking up during the night, praying that it would come out the derriere (not the top). But then at about 3am I woke up, shivering and almost fainting with that sick feeling…it was coming. Without warning I was sick twice before I made it to the toilet (only across the hall). 45 minutes later, after I cleaned it all up, I was better, put a bucket next to the bed and slept til the morning. I stayed home in bed and on the couch all day… back to school on tues!

So I went to the dentist again for some more work… all I can say is I hate having a numb mouth, tongue, cheek, nose, lips, ear…