back to europe and back to the cold! It was a big shock to the body after 30+ d in Curacao to arrive to freezing rain and even snow. The past week has been tough for the training! The team were all together again for the Swiss Cup in Reinach and a German Cup in Offenburg. Offenburg was a fantastic race.. they made a team presentation where we were driven into a giant beer tent in a stretched limo! We tried to pretend it wasn't our first time, but we had to feel pretty special :) They also made a super course, and despite the rain it was great fun. I can now feel all the travel and racing and I didn't do too well overall, dnf in Reinach and 5th in Offenburg.

Anyone need to practise their Dutch? There's also plenty of great photos...
The teams website... www.cannondale-vredestein.com

now i've got a few days off the bike and 3 months of paper work to catch up on! Next week I may do some road races..

Curacao has been quite different from expected. Yes, the resort has clear blue water, lovely sand beaches, palm trees and gorgeous girls wearing almost nothing. Its a Dutch colony, so everything and everyone is European..the currency, the plugs, the language. But as soon as you leave the resorts gate, dirty streets, poverty and scary looking people are everywhere. Most people here are black, not to be raciest, but us whities stand out! The contrast between rich and poor is crazy, so its no wonder there is crime. Earlier this week my friend from the Bianchi team, Emil Lindgren, got knocked over and his bike stolen while training on the course. He's okay, thank god, and eventually got his bike back. Scary.

The course is flat and skittery.. loose sharp lava rocks are not nice to crash on as I found out on my first training lap! Its also super hot and humid. There are bugs, lizards, ants everywhere. Peter and Jocob had a nice surprise to find a cockroach in there bag of nuts the other day. Its been great to see the team again and all the other riders. Kind of like a huge family reunion catching up on winter stories.. mostly about all the snow screwing up their training.. full of excuses already these Euros!

The field was amazingly strong, with 120 on the start and almost all the top 30. Considering the course, I was very happy to finish in 12th place. I made one bad mistake after 1/2 lap, going over the handlebars, but luckily landing on my feet. I could hardly believe it, as my front wheel locked up on a tight rock drop off, I flew for a while then ran about 10m before turning around, to find about 10 riders very pissed off with my bike blocking the track :) Ops. My chain had gotten badly tangled so I had to spend 30sec to fix it.. slipping back around 15 places. Otherwise the legs were good and I managed alright considering the course suited a fully much better then my hardtail. I'll definitely be back on the Scalpel once I get home next week.

1996 Olympic winner, Bart Brentjens won the race. He is Dutch and was the one that convinced UCI to come to Curacao and also designed the course... so now he'll probably now be King of Curacao and have a life time of free holidays. Good for him. Everyone else is quite pissed about the race here.. there were no spectators (well maybe 1000 at tops), no sponsors are interested in the region, its darn expensive for all the teams and crazy long travel times. And now they are talking about making a contract to hold races here for the next 5 years! Free holidays to all UCI officials too I guess.

Now, after 3 months on the road, I'm finally going home !!! Annecy here I come :) Hopefully there will still be snow on the hills for some spring skiing!

With most of the competitions over, the athletes village was relaxed by the time I got their. The only ones still left to go were the roadies, poor buggers. I went with them for some laps on their course... a tough loom lap in the centre of Melbourne. With some luck though I found someone with 2 tickets to the final night of the athletics. As an athlete I could get in for free, so Dad, Allan and I got to see a great nights action. Nick Willis won the 1500m for NZ (in the photo.. check out the 80,000 crowd!). he’s da man! The 4x 400m relays were awesome too.

Sunday I met up with Dave, Allan and Dad to watch the road race. It was around 30dC heat, so a tough job standing out on those climbs and yelling. Between the races Dave showed us some cool alleyways of the city. He seems to know the 'in' spots.. like the tiny crape cafe where we bumped into Bob, Karen and Mike (obviously very 'in' people as well ;), plus the ex Aussie DH/Trials champion, now singlespeeder/bike builder. Cruisy Singlespeeders certainly rule these parts, leaving roadies and lycra to show their stuff down StKilda and in the burbs. Just to show off, Dave took us down graffiti lane, a dirty little alley way right besides federation square that has been declared a 'tolerance zone', allowing graffiti artists to do their thing and the results were actually pretty cool.. check out some pics in the photo album.

The NZ team put on a great little get together on the last day in the backyard.. a chance to relax and honour our medallists. It was the worst performance for a long time, with only half the medals compared to Manchester. The Aussies had dominated even more then ever.. But, the important thing was that we competed and did our best.. yea right! Packing bikes and bags again, oh the joy. Am really looking forward to getting back to France and on with 'normal' life again!

But, of course home will have to wait one more week. I'm now in Curacao, in the Caribbean’s for World Cup #1. The typical flight delays resulted in a crummy hotel for the night in Miami, but that was the least of problems. Allan was stopped at the US boarder. He had had problems earlier when we worked for Trek, but thought it was all cleared up. Apparently they didn't even let him discuss his case and despite the fact he was only in US for transit, they wouldn't let him in.. so he's now back in Denmark.. poor bugger.