oops, nevermind

Burnie was cold. That is the one statement that will stick in my mind when I remember the carnivals this year. Cold. Last year we were trying to escape the oppressive heat and lack of ozone, but this year it was shivering to death on the start line, praying for everyone to get thier sh!t together so we could hurry up and go.

I managed to make it into the sprints this time (finally) and found out that our sprint rounds were four-ups. I had Scott Sunderland, Rizal Tisin and Kelyn. Sunderland's a Aussie World Cup rider, Tisin's a Malaysian World Cup winner and Kelyn's my teammate. So what to do. I sat at the back with Tisin we wound up, and with a half lap to go Tisin and I jumped at the very same moment to go flying over the top. So I'm on his wheel at the blue line, never gone so fast in my life, when he cuts downtrack, hits the front and eases off. Without ever considering my actions, I kept the gas on, cut down track with my hips overlapping his bars and sent him off the track. Sunderland and Kelyn made it around by the end but I was pretty happy nonetheless.

The lightning wheelrace was a classic example of shitluck not working out in favor of the foriegners. Every day the start lists show how many riders will get through the heats to the final. Not complicated, it's either 3 or 4, and in heats of 30 riders that's a massive task. This particular set of heats was listed as 4 go through. So I line up, gun goes, get to the front, bleeding out of my eyeballs and see that I can get 4th without wasting too much energy. Save some for the final. Kelyn makes it through his heat as well, and for the second time we have 2 riders in the final and a shot at making some scratch. Then about 10 minutes before the final the announcers says, "yeah, well actually we've decided now to take only the first 3 from the previous heats instead of the first 4." I wasn't in the mood to stir up some shit with the people who paid me to go race, but I wasn't to psyched that they decided to tell us this AFTER the race, instead of before it. WTF.

So that was the end of Burnie for me. There was a kierin in there somewhere too, but I was so exhausted by that point I don't remember what happend, except that I rode in legwarmers and a jacket.

And now I'm in Auckland. Sleeping 13 hours a night the last 2 nights in a row. Trying to get back to normal. Can't wait to get back to Colorado, into the mountains and back in my apartment. There's a new mountain bike waiting for me at the shop, calling my name.

DT