New Toys

Well, after a really busy year, and deciding 2009 is going to be my year of racing (note, only about 10% chance at best I'll get to Italy with the boys in 2009), I went out and bought myself a set of racing wheels. It wasn't that hard a decision with all the saved money from working plenty of long hours and therefore very little time for spending anything. After the world "financial crisis", the price of everything took off in Australia as the Aussie dollar took a major dive, so I bought these from the UK as they were the cheapest by far. Cunning plan I thought. After buying them on the 19th November, they arrived in Oz on the 25th November, and sat there. Oops, caught in Customs. Waited until the 28th to receive my Customs notice, filled out the forms to register myself as an importer, and paid the GST, they were released on the 3rd December. Friday 5th of December, they were finally delivered, still $300 under the best price I could buy them here after all the fees, GST, shipping and purchase. Enough said.

Anyway, Saturday was supposed to be a 3 Valleys ride with Dave, BTi and Knappster starting at about 7:30am. I wasn't going to have time to get these new wheels built up overnight (I needed rim tape and tyres etc), so was looking forward to giving them a test ride either late Saturday or on Sunday. So what happened next?

I missed Saturday purely due to fatigue, sleeping in and a migraine. All of which had been building for a few days/weeks. Late in the afternoon I forced myself out and got the gear for the new wheels, and did a lazy 40km in the Park hoping to clear my head, and to back up my 50km ride to work on Friday while my car was still being serviced. I felt guilty missing the ride with the guys. Then BTi called me Saturday night saying he wasn't riding Sunday because he has a fractured eye socket, and bruised shoulder - caused on Cervelo corner (see http://langles.blogspot.com/2008/12/grazed-anatomy.html for details). But not to be outdone, Knappster had earlier come-a-cropper courtesy of another misfortune after only 300m! Gerard smashed a brand new helmet and ended his ride there a little worse for wear, and BTi crashed his new month old Titanium bike - luckily without and serious damage to it, but an ambulance ride to hospital for himself! Anyway, seems both BTi and Knappster are in good spirits and should be back in action shortly.

I am so thankful that I slept through my alarm and had a migraine, otherwise this comedy of crashes could have been far worse. And more so if we had decided to ride Sunday as per normal when these new toys could have been out on the maiden journey! We could have had the trifecta! But 2 out of 3 aint bad....

Saturday night, and the migraine really kicked in. So much so I couldn't even look at the wheels to get them setup. And Sunday was no better, when I missed my planned long ride for the week and didn't see daylight at all. All-in-all, a very eventful weekend for some, and not so for others.

So here we are, Tuesday evening and the wheels have just been taken out of the boxes. Really looking forward to giving them a spin this weekend - weather and mates permitting.