Yeah, Merry Xmas fellas. Sooooo looking forward to overeating due to boredom tomorrow with one family and the day after with the next. Remind me afterwards to book a holiday somewhere for this time next year.

Maybe Tahiti?

merry Xmas lads.....Hitchy's xmas lunch will be spent with "the outlaws" & memebers of the Mrs' extended family...oh joy!....Still, I get on Ok with the brother-in -law, so we'll probably sit in the corner & polish off a bottle of Grampa's 12 YO single malt...makes the day bearable!

Hitchy

Merry Xmas Scumbags!!!

Southerly buster has come through after starting out in 30deg heat before 6:00am like was_bmxer. Coffee ride was converted into a "let's find ice" ride, and later a "coke" ride. Funny.

Kids are so hyped up now. There's no point trying to get them to behave, so I've taken to the bottle to wash all their indiscretions away. Even crap beer tastes good on a hot day, especially if you've been off it for a while.

Have a bloody brilliant Christmas Day guys and gals, and make sure you return from your adventures in "Liver Damage Land" with plenty of sordid stories to tell!

Yep. Merry Christmas bastids. Hope you all get sick from eating and drinking to much, and make members of the extended family hate you for another year.

BTW, just have to vote "stick on" puncture repair patches the worst invention ever. Give me glue and a bit of rubber any day. Spending 2 hours trying to fix a flat in the middle of a 232 km ride sucks.

yeah, merry Christmas.

If anyone has doubted that I have no life, Christmas day for me is all about finding the right time to sneak off for a ride.

I once snuck off for a ride on the day of one of my mate's weddings (the marriage didn't last, anyway !)! I had my stuff in the boot, so, straight after the service, I did the 'Superman'; got changed behind a tree, then disappeared for about 90 mins. When I got to the reception I just said I got lost. I could help it; the wedding was out past Frankston (nice beaches), and the weather was fantastic.

G'day fellas.....


did we all eat/drink too much? My work slacks seem to have shrunk this morning.....very odd.


KFBP-RIP big fella. Thanks for re-inventing cricket!

It was all good. By the way boys, go to FOO and find the Boxing Day thread. That kid needs some educating.

Foo coming up....watch out Dave Grohl.

Can't find it.....took me bloody 10 minutes to find "Foo"....

Here is the boxing day thread.

took me a minute to figure out what that guy meant by "man u". I thought he was talking to "u, man", but he was talking about soccer

OH NO!!! Roy got a wicket

'Bucher', LBW

added my jingoistic 2 cents...

oh BUGGER!

Roy bowled Gibbs. Looks like he'll get another game

hey Ed, when you were are neo pro, did you have more than 1 pair of shoes?

I'm looking for an excuse to buy a spare pair

Not really.....was always frowned upon due to the slight differences between any two pairs, no matter how close you get the cleat set up, etc, etc. may cause problems. Plus both pairs would have to be same brand, same model.

I had a pair of Tecnos and Genius 3 going at one stage....only coz the 2nd pair were "warmish" and cost about $50, no questions asked.


Short answer is no for bike racers, but would pose no real problem to the majority.

Just buy the new pair and keep the oldies for rides in the rain or a fallback pair.

yeah, I reckon I will buy some, mainly coz I think I bought the wrong size in the first place: I should've bought 43s instead of 44s.

What if someone busts a ratchet or something? Does that mean no riding??!!
Or are ratchets indestructable?

Well yes....assuming you have the right size.

Most of the ratchets are replaceable, but I never broke a Sidi one. I did mangle one nicely in a crash once.....but it still worked, just looked liek the dog had chewed it.


If you're worried, just get those Northwaves Boonen likes that are still velcro only.

Did a very hard 88km today. If ever any of you poor bastids find yourselves around Sofala with a bike, make sure you ride out on both sides of the river. One side has to be just about the steepest hill anybody's ever tried to tow a caravan up. The other side would have to be the steepest and longest. My the graph from my hrm made for some interesting reading though. Never knew being lazy could be so tiring.

Now for the real eye opener of the ride though. Thinking about it for a while made me about the scardest I'd ever been on a bike. Not long after heading out on the Sofala road, I hear this big banging and scraping sound behind me coming up at a rate of knotts. Just something about it made the hairs on the back of my neck stand up. Of course I didn't look around since nothing you can't see can hurt you, but I saw what was making that hideos sound soon enough. It was a flatbed truck. You know how a lot of those trucks have a box under the tray on the passenger side of tools and ****. Well the cover of this box was only attached by it's bottom edge, making the rest of it (about 2 foot's worth) stick straight out to the side of the road. The side of the road I was riding on. It was banging on the corners and the bumps, and luckily the truck past me on a right hand corner so with him hugging the center line, he missed me by a bit. But I could see that as he travelled up the road, the cover was scything along over the very path I was about to ride.

Now thinking about this freaked me out. Getting run over by said truck I can almost handle. Should be quick. But getting a leg amputated by that bludy cover, then lying by the side of the road bleeding to death... **** that.

It's scary how much riding on the road seems like a lottery sometimes.

I just spent a few days in Bathurst, got some family there. I gotta take a bike up there soon! I lived there years ago, but only got into riding recently. Bathurst has some great roads! It had never occurred to me just how wide all the streets are. I drove out past O'Connell today, that looks like a great road to ride on.

I once drove around Mt Panorama. That would be ok to cycle around except the straights would be rather dull.

I'm going to do that too next time I'm there

Very steep.


Anyway....Happy New Year lads. Have a great 06!