The Real Life and Times of Hubert Ice

Some of your may wonder what I do all day. Some of you may wonder what I do all night. The second group I can't help too much, but if you want a rough schedule of the average weekday of a finely tuned international athlete, then here it is.

7:00am Wake up a little, think about waking up completely, then go back to sleep.

8:00am Dogs barking, bed too hot, time to get up.

8:07am Inspect how much of my cereal Brei's brother Saul has eaten. Eat the rest of the box, read the paper.

8:30am Emails, blogging, etc.

9:30am Saul crawls in, showers, checks if any of my cereal is left, then we discuss a plan for the rest of the day. Should we ride early? Should we surf first? Should we lay on the beach for a couple of hours, then surf, then ride? Should we go into town an laugh at people? So many choices.

9:40am Watch soccer or cricket or whatever happens to be on the sports channel.

10:30am Surf, beach, swim, bum around town etc.

11:30am Brei calls to finalize lunch plans. Cafe? Home sandwich? Kebab? Deciding factor is how thick the wallet is, so usually we either stay in, or go out and have nothing but coffee madness.

1:00 pm Shimmy into a chamois and head out into the forests, hills and empty roads around Wanganui. Spend some good hours hurting myself.

4 to 6:00pm Roll home, have a feed and contemplate the evening. If it's Wednesday we follow much the same procedure as the lunch discussion with the same parameters. If the wallet isn't bulging (which is most of the time), it's a night of more cricket, a bad movie and emails. Otherwise we are children of the night.

Weekends are a different story. Weekends are for racing. Every single week there's something going on somewhere on the island. Somewhere to sink some more money into gas and entry fees and stage race food. This weekend will be my first weekend off in a long time, and I'll still be racing, just not out of a hotel room. Maybe someday I could write a weekend schedule but for now they're too chaotic and unbalanced. Everyone knows road trips have to logic, you just have to go with the flow. Go with the flow. Not a bad mantra at all. (Unless the flow = The Man, of course). DT