The time has come to do what I’ve been saying for along time. Anyone who knows me probably won’t believe me because I’ve been saying it for so long. But the time is now. If you don’t know me, you won’t know what the hell I’m talking about. Sweet justice isn’t it. Stay tuned.

A while ago I was going to put my fairly large post up about the internet filtering stuff, but I couldn’t quite complete my argument for my point of view without seeming to support dodgy stuff. So instead I’ll just link to it’s time to tell mum because that’s got the same point of view put up way better.

So the Menzies classic was fun. Somehow I managed to get second place in the D grade Criterium and actually won money. About 8-10 minutes in I got frustrated with being blocked and kept mostly at the back of the group by the other riders and somehow managed to find enough energy to not only pass one or two, but to pass the whole pack, and launch off towards the break away where Matt was at the time. That little manoeuvre nearly burnt me out so a lap or 2 of recovery behind Matt and we went to work on it. After quite a few laps Matt was dropping back and somehow I managed to stay out there, solo, chasing after the leader, for what seemed like an eternity. Another rider managed to escape the pack and bridge to Matt and then eventually to me, she passed me for a lap or 2 which gave me a much needed rest but I was able to regain second place. Between us it was a sprint finish for second/third and I managed a 1 second lead by the official timings, but it was surely less and wasn’t much more than a bike length or so. The data logged off the Garmin was amazing, apart from it lapping on the up and back not just the up of the course. Note: Average HR: 186 bpm for nearly 29 minutes. Wot tha !

The following day was the actual Menzies classic race. Basically a 132km sprint. We left Kalgoorlie on the bus with a wet forecast and someone on the bus said they’d done the ride 15 times and it had never rained. That clearly jinxed it, because from at least half way to Menzies it was wet, and it was raining in Menzies on arrival, and didn’t stop while we were there. The gutters were flowing and there were pools of water in the road. It was cold and wet. So we spent an hour or so sitting on the bus to keep warm and out of the rain, before setting off at 10am. Thoughts running through my mind over the first 5 km where along the lines of what the hell have I done, why am I here, what am I doing and so on. Before the official start on the neutral section lead out, we got splashed with red mud (Kalgoorlie White as its known) all over our glasses, computers and what was clean team kit. I don’t exactly remember when it stopped raining and when I stopped being cold (fingertips especially), but by about 30km out we were working quite well as a group, cruising at about 40km/hr. The pace granularly slowed slightly as we went and it bumped up about 5km/hr back to 40 around the time C grade caught us at about the 75km mark. When B grade caught us at about the 95km mark the speed jumped again. From when C caught us, I was just able to hang on the back, and with B it was even harder. The group was surging to try to shake us off, and it very nearly succeeded, but with the slow downs between various inclines (there’s no hills out there) we were able to grab the tail of the group again. If it wasn’t for a guy crashing into a road sign about 1-2 km from the finish I would have been in the first main pack across the line, instead I was about 10 seconds behind. Still I was 39th across the line, and 16th for D grade. Not bad for a first go. Matt managed to win one of the interim sprints and got cash for that too. I’ve got no doubt that this would have made a nice bump to my average speed for the year. Averaging over 40km/hr for 132km is no easy task. So for what started out with me in a never again mood I finished quite pleased and will return next year to try to improve my result.

Now for an iinet support update. Reporting a no dial tone fault resulted in it being resolved for less than 5 days before the fault reoccurred. Of course I was not informed when it was fixed; we wouldn’t want to communicate with the customer after all. Logged the fault again, and after a few more phone calls they were able to fix it on the second go however the Telstra tech booked for 8-12 arrived after 12 and took quite a while to trace the fault and fix it. Epic fail, but it is iinet.

The Tour de France is on again, and to make sure I didn’t miss any of it, I setup a quick mythtv box. Using the PlayTV usb dual HD tuner on Fedora 13 was remarkably easy, and the box is running mostly ok. I still heavily dislike the overly complicated application that myth has become, to me it’s gone down the same bad road that poopnuke and so on did. Way too many modular features of varying quality. Poopnukes issue was poorly (insecurely) written modules and overly complicated design to support these modules. On the surface myth looks the same. Perhaps I’ll dig deeper; really all I want is a basic PVR (record, watch, schedule, EPG etc) and local media playback (video, music). Local – none of this DLNA bullshit, just plain NFS mounts from my NAS box. Really I don’t even care much about the PVR bit, it’s a nice to have. First off I’d ditch all this BS about weather, applications and so on. Reminds me of an old African saying my Dad told me; The more you have; the move problems you have.

I’m still watching a fair bit of TV too. Curb Your Enthusiasm has grown on me. New seasons of Eureka and Warehouse 13 have started; I’m yet to start watching either. Top Gear is awesome as usual. I’m slowly working my way through Treme, it’s good, but hard to explain why. I’m hoping it comes together towards the season end like The Wire did.

Oh one last thing. I made the team for the Tour de Timor. So I went out and bought a mountain bike for riding on dirt. Only taken it out a few times so far, and it feels like driving a big rig or a boat. I’m trying to come up with a suitably nautical name. Something like the SS Wally.

PS: word of the year so far, by a very long shot is: Credenza.

We managed to ride from Esperance to Perth over 5 days, not going the shortest way, and had a whole lot of fun doing it. We even arrived at Parliament House early and had to wait for them to be ready for us to cross the finish line.

It was definitely one of those personal challenges people talk about, because it was really taxing on both mind and body. I find that my mind plays tricks on me and tries to tell me that I can’t do something when if you just ignore it and push on, you can achieve amazing things, just like this. A year ago I wouldn’t have thought I would be capable of ever doing something as out there and dare I say crazy as this.

Our team of 26 riders from many varied backgrounds and ages all managed to work together to make this possible, and without our support team it wouldn’t have been anyway near as easy or safe to do. Teen Challenge WA is a really worthy cause and I hope our efforts raised awareness of the excellent work they do piecing lives back together and funds for them to continue. We had the pleasure of visiting their facility north of Esperance and having a meal there the evening before we left.

Day 1: 140/188km

Leaving Esperance on bike was just surreal, so many of the people from the Saturday ride were there, and it started off just like that, except we were on the main road out of Esperance. Unfortunately we were greeted by a strong NW wind which made it difficult to maintain the pace, and after lunch this wind picked up even more. About an hour after lunch I was totally exhausted and got on the bus, which was such a strong feeling crossed between defeat and shame yet by the time we arrived in Ravensthorpe there were 9 of us on the bus, we were not alone. We stayed at the Palace Motor/Hotel.

Day 2: 212/208km

After an evening of contemplation, and checking the elevation profile and wind forecast online (I travel prepared – my internet worked fine, other peoples phones didn’t even work *grin*) we’d managed to convince the tour leaders that the pace the day before was not sustainable and seriously damaged morale. So today started off slightly more relaxed which was great, I was able to spend about an hour warming up before the pace started picking up. As the day progressed the wind picked up too but we were more sheltered than the day before and progressed well. About 20km out of Gnowangerup the lead vehicle got a bit close, and the eager beavers on the front of the peloton managed to hop on, and drag the pace quickly past 45km/hr. This split the peloton with me at the rear of the front bunch drastically trying to hold on. It was nearly the end of me, and fortunately they slowed down and let us continue at our previous pace, though now much more tired than before. I was able to complete this whole day, which was a serious boost to my spirits after the previous smashing. We stayed at the Gnowangerup Ag School/Training centre facility which was just out of town.

Day 3: 165/215km

The previous evening it was noticed that a miscalculation had been made on the distance for day 4, rather than being a tame 189km it was actually closer to 250km, with hills. The laptop came out again and we went to work looking for shortcuts to get us back closer to what we wanted. The night was cool and I used my arm warmers this morning when we rolled out of Gnowangerup, at a pace a bit higher than the day before. Being cooler and now moving faster, and not having warmed up enough I was struggling early on, the first 30km was nearly the end of me, but fortunately after that either the pace changed or I warmed up and had more food or something and I was able to hang on. The first rest stop couldn’t come soon enough, as we were going up and down over small rises all day (not quite hills obviously, but enough of them strung together may as well be a hill). I was probably among the heaviest riders there, and us bigger boys don’t go up hills as fast as the smaller blokes, but we had to keep the peloton together so we struggled up the hills only to sit on the brakes the whole way down because the smaller guys don’t descend as fast as us. Frustrating. By about 30km before lunch I was just about ready to throw in the towel, but Wayne kept saying it’s only another 10minutes, then 10kms then 10 minutes again, and do on for about an hour. I hung on until lunch but I don’t think we stopped long enough for me to recover and take on the food necessary, so I hopped on the bus for the next leg. When we got to Boyup Brook, I got out and rode the last 30km home to Bridgetown. This being all downhill according to Gav which turned out to be only slightly incorrect, the first 25km was undulating like before, but ending on a nice 5km run down into Bridgetown. Only to be greeted in town by a climb up a steep street to the Bridgetown Camp School where we were to spend the night.

Day 4: 219/189km

More discussion occurred about the error on day 4’s route, and it was decided to bus everyone (uphill) to Boyup Brook, saving us 30km of the nearly 250km route. In addition to that we were sending a car ahead to look at a possible short cut to check out the road surface, but that turned out to be unsealed so was not an option. About 5 or 6 people decided to ride the extra 30km rather than take the bus, and met us in Boyup Brook for an 8am start. Our morning stop was to be in Collie where it was arranged to visit the Collie-Donnybrook cycle race museum. Again the day started off hard but we had a long descent towards Lyles Mill before the big climb up and over Mungalup hill into Collie. The Collie-Williams road nearly got the better of me and hill after hill I was falling off the back of the pack, spirits smashed, body suffering, mind losing it. But I kept going, and made it to lunch. As I was stopping for lunch I was planning on doing what I did the day before, and riding the bus for a leg, but I was able to recover quick enough and down some food to get back out there, with the idea of seeing how far I could get and then ride the bus. Unfortunately that plan got smashed when the bus sped off past us never to be seen again. I just had to keep going, and with a strong cross wind and foolishly being trapped on the wrong side of the group I was not doing well. Then we turned into the wind and with the drop in pace, and now being covered from the wind I recovered a bit and kept going. Hill after hill after hill all the way to Dwellingup. We stayed at some chalets which were nice.

Day 5: 107/107km

With a strong tail wind which seemed to bash us around a bit on the way down, we made it down to the South Western Highway only to get smashed again by the cross wind. We had to be at Parliament house by 11:50, and leaving later than scheduled we had to make up some time. Unfortunately for me this was during the massive cross wind where we were rotating through at 38km/hr on the protected side, and 35 on the exposed side. Today we had no bus too, so there was no option. I was convinced that I wouldn’t be able to keep going and the pace was so unsafe that I was just about done there. But we kept going until Byford where we stopped for a break. After that the pace was lower because we had 1.5hrs to cover 40km so no problem there, and despite the traffic lights, a massive tail wind up Albany Highway. At a more leisurely 35km/hr we proceeded up Albany highway, around Kings park and up into Parliament House, where we had to wait for everyone to be ready before crossing the finish line. After a few speeches we retired for a buffet lunch and then rode home.

All in all it was quite an experience, and my feelings ranged from what the hell am I doing, and never again through to next time I’ll be better prepared. We did get to see first hand much more of the countryside than normal, because cruising past at 33km/hr you see a lot more than at 110km/hr. We saw a snake, lots of sheep and cattle, some horses and many other rustlings in the bushes as we went past. Not to mention all the dead road kill to stink up the place. I’m also living proof that sun screen does work, and if you put your mind to it you can accomplish anything. Just by my efforts alone I was able to raise $1200 for the cause, with donations from Canada and Okalahoma being by far from the most distant places.

Thank you to everyone who supported me in this endeavour, it was definitely a once in a lifetime experience, unless I do it again next year of course. And if you’d like to be part of it next year, I’d recommend buying a race bike before March, because although I did quite well (nearly 850km in 5 days) if you’d like to be able to complete each day you’ll need more practice than I got, or something like that. Come along have a go.

Ok so alot of time has elapsed since my last posting. 28 months to be accurate. So much has happened in that time.

First off the obvious

• I switched from bBlog to Wordpress. bBlog served me well for several years before becoming abandoned, I was able to migrate all my blog (shudder) posts and the few comments across.

Then the less obvious

• I moved web hosts. From a colo of my own, to a vps of my own. I’m no longer offering web hosting to others because of the problems it brought with it.
• About 19 months back, I bought a bike to commute on. Since then I’ve upgraded (Feb 09) and have covered 10,000km.
• Last weekend I was in Melbourne for the Around the bay in a day ride; I think I did ok to complete the 210km event in 7hrs 22mins (moving, 8hrs53min elapsed). I’ve uploaded the full gps data.

And fineally the practically unknown

Starting Wednesday, I’ll be riding  from Esperance to Perth to raise money for Teen Challenge WA. Sponsor me. We’ll be getting into Perth on Sunday 1st, into Parliament Place West Perth, so come along and cheer us across the finish line.