Cottonwool needed?

Thursday, 6 July 2006

Relaxing can be, it seems, more dangerous than racing for this team.  On Wednesday we had a very easy day.  A nice gentle ride on a small map which is similar to the terrain we'll encounter.  No big hills, but what they lack in height they make up for in steepness.

The first mishap was mine.   The smallest of twigs caught in my rear derailleur, pushed it into the spokes and then the ensuing carnage, even at the incredibly slow 5 kmh I was doing, was quite impressive.  Derailleur ripped apart, but most importantly, the derailleur hanger ripped off the bike.  Actually the end of the frame ripped off.  So this means I am waiting on a new part.  Fortunately Netti/Scott in Australia have got straight onto the factory over here and organised the part to be couriered to me.  But today I just had to borrow Steve's bike for a short relay race we did on a local area.  Which incidentally had masses of tracks even at the 1:5000 scale we had to use to be able to read it.
 
Next incident, after I'd walked back to the car, rather dejectedly I might say, was AJ was there stretching.  Having bashed his knee.  It's fine fortunately.  And even though the forest floor is covered with blueberries the actual berries aren't out yet to eat and ease our pains if we have problems!

Today we thought we'd better take it easy and do some non-orienteering stuff.  So we went go-karting. 

This was quite fun, although when Crasher Cusworth went spinning off the track his cart jumped in the air when it hit the tyre barriers.  Dave was just behind him and Steve's cart landed on his shin.  He was very worried at first, but now we've checked it out, it's just a nasty graze and bruising.  So I think it's time we all wrapped ourselves up in cottonwool until the races!

More new pictures in the Gallery