Another shortish ride yesterday with Keith, HYG and Chi Lye (sp?) around Churchill and Lysterfield Parks. No crashes or falls, no chucks, just a few steep hills and Chi Lye showing us his big steel balls at the rock garden.

Nice ride. Looking forward to Keith finding some trails for us at Donna Buang.

What a terrible result for the Aussies on Stage 8. O’Grady and Rogers both withdrew after sustaining injuries in separate crashes, while McEwen was outside the time limit. Meanwhile…

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Came to work today and the first case was a shocker.

18 year old passenger in a car that crashed into a tree. The passenger was drunk. Not sure about the driver - maybe I’m just assuming that he was drunk.

Regardless, he had, what we call, a ‘degloving’ injury to his right foot. It’s exactly what you imagine it to be. The skin from the ankle down had been stripped off like a sock. Remember Terminator 2 where Arnie took off the skin from his forearm? Similar to that. The skin which was stripped off was the whole sole and still had his big and little toes attached. It was found in his shoe which was in the car.

Took some photos of his foot with the skin beside it. Decided against posting it!!!

We performed a below knee amputation on him this morning. A tragedy in an 18 year old!

Moral: we have to be very careful before being a passenger in a car, especially after a night out!

Belated but worthwhile!

H. birthday!

Those of you in London, let him know that this post exists.

Barely worthy of a YPR but Keith, HYG and I had a couple of laps around Ruffey Lake Park this morning. Conditions were very slippery with the constant rain making the ground very soft and grass easily torn up.

I just spent 125 pounds today on doonas (they call them duvets here), a pillow, pillow cases, sheets and duvet covers. And this is just average cotton stuff on sale marked down 50% too!

I’ve gotta get myself a job and start earning the pound….

My maiden London post… it’s kinda like your first time, but not…
Anyhow, this post was written throughout my 39 hr epic to kill time, so some of it is interesting, some of it not.

Waiting…

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First we decided Lysterfield for the Sunday MTB ride. Then we changed to Churchill. Then changed again to You Yangs. Finally on the Friday, we managed to settle on Mount Dandy to do some real climbs instead of that piddly little hill at Churchill. After a solid day of rain on Saturday (actually, the BOM classified that as “showers”), the track at Mount Dandy was *sloppy*. That had to be the dirtiest ride I’ve ever done. I’m still finding bits of mud stuck everywhere all over my bike. Norm would have had a heart-attack with the number of lint-free clothes we would have needed to clean the bikes.

The initial uphill fire trails were good lung-busting fun. That is until I spent two or three minutes regurgitating the banana and fruit bar I ate right before we rolled out of the carpark. After that, I was good to go. More climbing, then a scary looking bit of downhill which Matt made look easy on his Cannondale. Andrew made a very stylish cartwheel dismount to land on his feet - spectacular! The rest of the singletrack was a good mix of climbing and negotiating twisty downhill sections. I managed to pop a few large logs, going uphill what’s more! Pretty happy with that.

No idea how far we rode because we don’t have GPS data from HYG, but Matt says his Polar HRM reports around 450m of climbing.

A picture speaks a thousand words.

Thanks guys… I had fun tonight. I’ll certainly miss you all with all the shenanigans.

See you next year!

Just had to get a post in because it’s 07/07/07 today.