More downtown Melbourne pictures. Horses and cart for hire and actually some of that wrought iron I was writing about a few days ago.

Out scouting the road course with Colavita team mate and Jamaician national Iona Wynter Parks.



Our road coach here with us in Melbourne, Vincent Jourdain, and downtown Melbourne in the background.

This is one of the juggling guys and I juggling as a team. It was fun and anyone can get a lesson on how to do it. My goal is 4. I also tried juggling with the pins (like skinny bowling pins). I managed a few and Erinne got video of it.



These are the juggling pros doing some team juggling with 6 pins. Cool. They were good! Man, it takes forever to upload a photo. Actually I think I'm going to have to try again tomorrow with the pics.

Today we went to check out the road course. There's 3 180 degree turns and many corners. It's a bit ridiculous, like they wanted inner city in as little area as possible. Anyway, it's going to be a tough day at the office cause there are 3 hills on the course which today felt like mountains. I shouldn't feel so bad on sunday but I was tired today from the time trial so the hills were no fun.

We were going to go to the Victoria market today too but Wed is the one day it's closed. Bummer. We'll pencil that in for Friday. Erinne and I stopped at the zoo on the way back too. We can get in free with our credentials and I'm happy to say I've finally seen some Australian wildlife. Sad I had to go to the zoo to see it. I may see some tomorrow in the wild as I've got a longer day planned on the bike but I won't hold my breath.

The best food in the village besides the endless strawberries is the ice cream bar, thick chocolate covering yummy ice cream. The raspberrry/strawberry sorbet from the Movenpick cart is right up there too.

These are some giants from Geelong. Pretty tall eh?


These would be fat giants. Lots of entertainment in the village.



what's up with the finicky photo uploading?? Half the time it doesn't work. Anyway, this is the balloon man and I. He made my balloon hat and a kangaroo balloon. Unfortunately neither will survive for me to take home to trinity. That's okay cause I have the GIANT PINK balloon (among other colours).

Since my TT I've just been wandering through the village, doing laundry, eating. I see Erinne has some popcorn and I need to go get some.

I just had a juggling lesson. I already know how to juggle with three items but I asked them to teach me how to do four...it's gonna take a while. I used to be able to juggle and ride a unicycle but I'm really rusty at that since I can't find my unicycle anymore. I'd like to get another one so Chris, if you're reading this, can I have one as a retirement present?? ha ha. I'm serious though. maybe I could get a job when I'm done cycling...

Anyway, Trinity will be happy to know that the four juggling balls I have are all PINK. And, I know how to make more. It's easy, it's just bird seed inside a balloon with more balloons over top, like 3 balloons. It also doubles as a stressball. Very handy. I took some pictures so I'll post those soon.

I'm off to get some popcorn.

Well, my legs are tired and sore. That was a tough time trial. I gave it all I had and it was half decent for me but I need more serious power to get a medal. Those Aussies were very fast, not to mention the English and Meshy Holt! So, Australia remains a powerhouse in the cycling events (two Australians on the men's podium as well). I hope that our Mountain bikers can represent. I'm sure they will.

I was planning to take some photos of some of the architecture here as I rode back to the village from the time trial venue. But, i got lost a little bit and ended up riding the bike path back and missed the residential sections. In the next few days I'll get some.

Back to the time trial. The wind was different today than yesterday. It was in the opposite direction and not nearly as strong. I was happy that it had died down and it was only slightly harder coming back. I was just so desperate coming back knowing I needed to go faster that I ended up pushing a bigger gear than I should have. I got caught by both Meshy Holt and Kathy Watt. I was Meshy's minute rider. I guess that Sarah Ulmer wasn't feeling too well. Apparently she warmed up but didn't take the start. I thought she was looking a little casual (not in riding gear) when I went to the toilet just 15min before my start. My bike was awesome I just wish I could have made it go faster. I'm goign to pack it tomorrow and that will give the feeling of getting closer to going home. Only 6 more sleeps Trinity!!

I think that's all. I have to go finish my laundry.

Okay, back from the TT course. It is kind of boring. No real landmarks to let me know how much longer I must suffer before the finish line. It was really windy too. Nice that it was a head wind out and tail wind back. Apparently it's usually the other way around. That would suck. It was pretty tough going out, I did two efforts and felt like Trinity would be faster on her single speed coaster brake bike (that day WILL come I'm sure, probably soon). So, it's going to be tough. Coming back though was fast. However, I don't think that's ideal for me. I don't seem to be able to use tailwinds as well as other people. Probably cause I tend to be lazy at times and when I have one I think 'Ah, this is nice, I'll just cruise for a bit...'

It shouldn't be quite as windy as that for us because we start at 10:30am and the wind hasn't fully pick-upped by then, at least I'm hoping.

I wish I could come back here as a tourist someday. On the way back to the village we drove through downtown. Great people watching, there were heaps of people down there (notice the insertion of a popular Aussie word 'heaps'). I'd like to do some shopping. I noticed two curious things. One, there's a fast food place here called Hungry Jacks. It's their Burger King. And, as a bonus (or not) all athletes received a card that gives us 20% off of anything we buy at Hungry Jacks. Second, a typical liquor store here is called a "Bottle shop". Pretty funny but makes sense. Let's duck into the bottle shop and get a bottle.

The architecture here is pretty cool too. They have heaps of decorative wrought iron railings and stuff. Usually the buildings you find them on are reminiscent (did I spell that right?) of something East Indian. It's pretty neat. I will take a picture and post it eventually. For the most part, the stuff along the TT course reminds me of southern California, especially cause the ocean is right there on one side. It's really beautiful.

On another note, mostly to Trinity, I was thinking of going into a McDonald's and seeing if they have any neat toys in their Happy Meals. Also, I've been pinching (aussie word for stealing, I'm so bad) these little bags of gummy dinosaurs from the residence centres. I will bring them home for you. They have candy bowls on every table. One time we watched these two guys go through two whole bowls of candy in less than an hour!! Also, on the topic of the residence centres and pinching, when you do your laundry there you must keep an eye on it because apparently some people have had some of their kit "pinched". But Gina didn't, she thought she did but it was just misplaced for a while thank goodness.

I think that's enough for today. I should go rest for the race tomrorow.

Hey Colavita teammates, great job in visalia and good luck in Redlands!

Oops, I didn't realize it would load sideways and now I can't rotate it. These computers will not let me even view the photos on the CD so I had to calculate and count which image might be the one I want.

Anyway, turn your head sideways and it'll be better. This is Trinity doing her own little time trial before ours at Central Valley. She's wearing a skinsuit over her clothes.

The top one is funny I think. Look at that BIG bottle of Olive Oil!!

I'm just rying to relax a little before the big race tomorrow. I'm getting a little nervous and I don't usually get nervous, I just want to feel good and have a good ride. I've sure been resting enough. I've wanted to check out some other events but I'm holding off until after the TT.

We are going to check out the TT course today so I'll post comments on that later but Svein said it's pretty straight forward, out and back, good pavement. So, there may not be much to report.

Hey Trinity, will you make me some of your Play-doh fries and chicken nuggets when I get home? Be nice to Ace and Grandma (not particularly in that order though).

Brooke...anyone? bueller? You are so off the back with the blog. ketchup.

Memories. The photos above are some window art I didn't have the heart to clean off. So they stayed there for a while until we had to get a new window. This is Trinity's work and probably much better than I could ever muster. She was in her late happy face phase and had just progressed to adding in tears. Why tears I don't know but it was pretty cute. She was probably somewhere around 3yrs old. I'm just a stupid sentimental mom I guess but I thought they were quite good for her age.

I'm taking pictures of the goings on in the village today. I'll post those soon. The time trial is in 2 days so I just trying to conserve some energy, reading lots and listening to some music. I've also been taking in some of the track cycling events via the TV in the residence centre. It was pretty exciting to see Travis win two medals! It's been a while for the canadian guys on the track and it was inspiring to watch him just go do it. It seems like the Aussies are cleaning up in everything, especially swimming but also track cycling. They also have so many track facilities here so it makes sense. I'm making a prediction that the Aussies could take home half the total medals handed out at these games.

Big hey to the Colavita girls at the Sequoia cycling classic, good job in the TT and good luck in the crit.

Above is a picture of our dorm style rooms. We can take the comforter home if we want.

Today was an easy day for most of us, except Erinne who had some intervals to do. We rode down to see the end of the women's triathlon. There were a ton of people down there, it was awesome. The Aussie public values sport so much more than canadians. To them these games are HUGE, they always are even when they are not in their own country. At home, there is minimum coverage, mostly because of fan fatgiue with the winter olympics. But even with the olympics happening 3-4 weeks before these games we never see the enthusiasm in Canada like I have seen here.

In the village everyday they have some kind of entertainment or street performers. There was a gold victorian dressed lady today. I thought I had taken a picture but my memory card must have been full cause when I put them on CD it wasn't there. The picture of the Cook Island dancers wasn't there either. Too bad cause that was really cool with their traditional dress and everything. I got video of them though so that's probably why the memory card was full. I'll clear the card and hopefully be able to post some more pictures.

Amy, Gina and Erinne. We're on our way down to check out the triathlon which shares a start finish with the time trial.

I'm tired. More motor pacing today but it was great. I had Francois Parisien (current Nat. road champ) come with me. Poor Francois. He was second rider on the moto... that is REALLY hard. He basically did a 45km TT today. It was nice to have company riding there and back though I was happy to be the first rider on the bike!

I don't really think Australia is bike friendly. Many close calls today. I know it doesn't help to be in a city of about 3 million people but some drivers really don't like cyclists.

The only different wildlife to see today was a Cockatoo, white noisy ones. In Canada you only see those in the pet store. Apparently though, Wallabies and Wombats get struck by cars quite a bit. Makes sense, kind of like Raccoons and squirrells at home. I have yet to see that on the side of the road but then again I've been riding a lot behind the moto so I'm paying more attention to that then what's on the side of the road.

I have my little 2MP kodak camera here and I'm going to take some pictures then have them put on CD so I can post a few here.

Shout out to Giuseppe back home in the Hammer. Thanks for the encouragment.

And to my girl Trinity, I'm going to find some more GIANT pink balloons for us to have some fun with when I get home.

Hey Trinity, if your reading this I miss you lots!! I bought us some GIANT balloons to have some fun with when I get home and there's even a PINK one!!

I haven't seen any Kangaroos ,Wallabies or Koala Bears yet but I'm still looking. My roomie Kiara saw some Wallabies out at the mountain bike venue today.

Brooke, if your reading update your blog already.

I'm settling into village now. Slept great last night even if it mean't missing the opening ceremonies.

Did I mention the food here rocks? Everyday I'm filling up on some great tasting strawberries, I can't resist them. And they have one section called the "sizzling salad". That rocks!. You pick your salad ingredients and then add some sort of sizzling meat to it. Yesterday I had the chicken, today I had the beef. Plus, there's a whole pizza section. Ah, life is good. It's pretty amazing cause it's got to be difficult to mass produce food and make it good, although, there are always people going through the dining hall. It's open 24hrs/day. I'm thinking of going there some night just to see who goes there in the middle of the night.

The volunteers are EXTREMELY friendly and some of us are wondering if it will last the whole games. I mean they are really enthusiastic. It's great though. They call these the friendly games and they really are.

Today I was one of 20 lucky athletes to attend a breakfast with some heavy hitting sponsors of the canadian commonwealth team. Charles Allen (110m hurdles) and I were matched up with Brad and Donna from PCL Construction Leaders in Toronto. It really is a small world because when Donna mentioned that PCL built the Air Canada centre in T.O., I mentioned that my husband drives a truck for a company that made some of the joist for the centre. He said they use Canam all the time for steel joists. Freaky. What are the chances? Anyway, we athletes really appreciate all the support these corporate sponsors give for the games and it was a fun time to talk to them and let them know in person.

After breakfast, road coach, Vincent, and I got a ride to a house of a guy (Jacob) who has a moto we can can use for motorpacing. The house was amazing, built with canadian timber and totally unique. But what made my day was the cat 'rattles' that is the spitting image of my own cat Ace. He was so friendly too, I wanted to take him back to the village so I could get my cat fix everyday. Anyway, it was a great training session and I felt good, even though it's easy to get killed here. The opposite road system here is dangerous if you not used to it. You have to look to the right when you cross a road, not the left. I alomost forgot and would have been killed had I not remembered at the last second. Phew, gotta remember that.

I finally talked to my fam this morning too. with the time change it's difficult because they are 16hrs behind. I didn't get to talk to trinity and that was sad. she wasn't home. I hope to get to chat with her tomorrrow. It's so hard being so far away but it'll go fast I hope.

Well, I made it to Melbourne, intact, with luggage. You never know. It took just over 24hours to get here from california and I think about going home all the way to Ontario, Canada and it will be longer.

So far, everything is awesome. cool games kit, lots of clothes and stuff. I managed to get out for a ride today on a bike path, slow and short with Erinne W. Good food in the village, waaay better than athens. And, I rode in a jersey and shorts today. SWEET!

I miss the team chicks and staff already. We had a great outing on sunday night with the guys from the men's team. It was a blast! I'm not writing about it or posting pictures (cause I can't but if you hop over to Brooke's blog she's got some up there. Hopefully we can do it again sometime soon. Maybe they'll go out again at Redlands.

More to come later, time to go eat.

Now that my hands have fine motor control again, I can type.

Today was cold and wet. I am so sick of being cold and wet. Driving to the race we saw a sign that said "RAIN FOR HIRE". Umm, no thanks.

Bloody hail too. That's twice in one week I''ve been hailed on. I think it's me. Seriously, every time I tried to x-c ski this year it would rain, except for the last two days I skied about two weeks ago. I am so looking forward to Australia. I will be sad to leave our incredible multi-tasking soigneur, Tim. If you haven't heard out team van has been on the way here for almost two weeks. Two engines later we will finally see Doug tonight or tomorrow morning. You should go read his blog about his adventures in Atlantic, Iowa and Grand Junction, CO. I would bet that it's tim who is the happiest to see him.

So, superstar of the day goes to Sarah T. who was representing all day long at the front then leads herself out to take 2nd place today. Way to rock n' roll Sarah! Tool of the day goes to the non-existant neutral support at the beginning of our race. Sima flatted about a mile into the race and there was absolutely no support to give her a wheel so her day was finished.

That's all. Pray to the sun gods.

R-E-S-P-E-C-T

Where to start? We awoke this morning to learn they were moving the time trial from the hill climb to a flat 16mile TT course. 16 miles? did they have to make it that long? Big difference between the two and I was not a happy camper. I love hill climbs. It got even more complicated when the organization asked that we respect the spirit of fair play and use the same bike setup we would have used in the hillclimb for the flat 16miler (regular road bike for most people). Let me say there are quite a few out there who have no respect for the spirit of fair play.

All it takes is one to decide to use the advantage of aero equipment then it just snowballs. Our director wanted us to respect the race organization wishes and we did. We didn't use any aero equipment. But it is a really grey area to begin with, if you ride a regular road bike with a TT helmet, is that fair? We also rode regular bikes because TEAm Lipton didn't have any aero equipment at all, no TT bikes. Kristen Armstrong kicked some ass to get 2nd and props to her, had she had full-on aero she would have won easily.

The thing that was really annoying was when our director asked the Victory director if he was using aero equipment (our director made a valiant effort to unify the teams in terms of respecting the promoter's wishes) he said "oh yeah, we were planning on using TT bikes for the hillclimb"...WHATEVER MIKE TOMATO! How lame.

Anyway, It's a long year ahead with a lot of racing. It was a good effort to practice that distance for a TT, the sme as the upcoming Commonwealth Games TT. I am bummed that I couldn't capitalise on the opportunity to do a full on TT effort on my TT bike but I'll get over it. I'm already over it.

Looking forward to the race tomorrow.

Picture Day

Today we spent some time getting mugshots done for promotional purposes. It was actually painless for once.

We are all steeling ourselves for this impending hillclimb. Rumor has it it's supposed to be cold and wet tomorrow. Also, cold and wet for the flat circuit race on Saturday. I so desperately want it to be HOT and sunny. I was a little wishy washy about travelling all the way to Australia, it seems so far away. But after checking out the forecast for Melbourne (70's, 80's and a bit 90's and total sun) I'm feeling better about it.

It was an easy ride today and that was nice. Plus, We only got sprinkled on at the end of the ride so we stayed mostly dry for 2 days in row now!! As you can tell I really don't have much to say but it is driving Brooke NUTS that I'm blogging everyday, being an overachieving blogger so to speak. I'm only doing to make her feel guilty she's not updating her blog. But really, I need to post some pictures at some point to make it better. I might not get to that until the end of March when I get home. I have a camera but no way to download them. Oh Well.

Time for some carbo loading with some pasta...

Ramble on

Today I spent a lot of time setting up my new BLUE time trial bike. I'm still not sure I have it where I want it but I did a little TT test to check it out. It was a brutal reminder of the fun of time trialing. I did manage to get into after a bit and put in a good effort. Plus, I also found out what I want to change. It will have to wait until Australia to make any more adjustments with the race starting on friday here.

Tonight we went to a 'meet and greet' the teams at a local brew pub type place. It's always fun to see people you haven't seen since last year. We raced with most of them on the weekend but we didn't get a lot of time to talk. But the best part was dropping by the Cold Stone creamery on the way home! Tina's was so huge she could barely eat enough to get a lid on it!! Of course I finished mine off without too much stress...

I have been lucky enough to have both my husband and daughter with me since sunday night. And even luckier that Felicia and Gus Gomez have very kindly took them in for the week. Felicia rides for Webcor and is a fellow canadian from the east coast. She has a weakness for Shreddies and oatmeal muffin mix from canada. I need to send her care packages throughout the year so she doesn't forget where she came from! She also makes a wicked oatmeal chocolate chip cookie so it's probably a good thing I'm at a house with my team. However, our hosts, Nick and Becky, keep a bottomless cookie jar too. Where do those cookies go??

Anyway, back to my daughter, Trinity. She has been sleeping here with me and it's been so nice. I want to get as much time with her as possible until she goes back home because I've got the Australia trip from here for two weeks so I won't see her until March 27th. It's going to be rough and I'm going to have a BIG phone bill. Trini was a bit teary eyed leaving the house tonight, she loves to be around all the "girls". But the promise of walking Felicia and Gus' dogs was pretty enticing too.

Not much happening today as you can tell. We didn't get rained on or need to sacrifice anyone to the weather gods. Although, I am disenchanted with the weather. I mean, is this California or not?? It's freezing. So, I checked the weather back home up there in the Great White North. There's a big chance it's going to be warmer up there than here in California. That's just not fair. So to the boyz up there, Wilbur, Hammerhead and Dr. Bean, go out and get some kms cause it isn't any better here.

A bit of rambling but hey, it's a blog.

Sacrifices

So today, while we are in Fresno leading up to the central Valley Classic this weekend, we decided to check out one of the courses. On friday there is a hill climb TT, 10.5km long. It goes up pretty much constant the whole time and it's gonna hurt.

We decided to get an early start because they were calling for rain by 1pm. It started to rain on us about 5km into it but we were troopers and kept going. We had my husband, Chris driving support behind so we all put in some extra rain gear and warm stuff for the top of the mountain (what goes up must come down, usually freezing cold). The Lipton tea ladies also came with us and stowed a bunch of stuff too. It was nice to have a big group.

We had quite a few flats, Grace Fleury doubled flatted and Brooke doubled flatted too. We were running out of spare wheels. and it was getting colder and wetter. At the top, we all stopped to get warm stuff on. I had packed all dry stuff to change into at the top and my thermal jacket. I felt like I was ready to tackle the cold, wet downhill. We set out (minus Brooke and Sarah T who were just about 1/4 mile down the climb with the first flat for Brooke).

About 30 sec into the descent it starts to hail. It was painful! I had to stop even though it would prolong the cold (it felt like needles were piercing my face). When it stopped I continued on and all of us were spread out everywhere on the descent. By the time we got back to the cars I was finished. But little brooke, decided to keep going on home to get an extra hour of riding. Audrey and I were going to go with her but decided enough was enough even though the roads were dry now.

As we were heading home I didn't recall passing brooke on her way home. Then as we got home the skies looked threatening. We wondered how Brooke was fairing, tried her cell to see if she was okay, but no answer. The rain came, heavy, still no call. She finally called. She was waaay out there. When she left the parking area she went the wrong way, back up the climb!! She may be directionally challenged. But we consider her our sacrifice to the rain and hail gods. We hope they are happy with our offering and will be kind for the race this weekend. She may not be able to update her blog, the search party has not returned yet...

Just kidding, she's safe. Thanks for being sacrificed Brooke! You took one for the team.