Random Stuff

On the weekend three of us; Grant, myself and Del went for a paddle. It was an average weekend weather wise, but I took the opportunioty to try out a sea kayak, cause I don't have enough boats and I need one of these to add to the stable. Del and I planned to take the MTB's out before hand and my hard tail sitting on the roof reminded me that I still haven't got my duallie back from the shop.

Our MTB's were freighted back from Africa to avoid the ridiculous excess baggage fees we would have been slugged if we tried to bring them with us. During the race we were forced to swim with our bikes across a salt water river. So when we finished the race we carefully rinsed them, sprayed them liberally with WD40 before packing them away in their bike boxes. We finally picked them up from Aus customs some three weeks later. Customs and quarantine were as big an epic as any all day ride in the bush with no compass. In summary:
Join a queue
Fill out a form and rejoin the queue
Hand in the form and join join a queue to take a number
Take a number
Join a queue
Be told you can't get your bikes inspected; come back in two days
Argue
Join queue
Get another form
Fill it in and rejoin queue
Hand it in
Get another number
Join the second queue
It's too late to get your bikes inspected
Argue
Wait
Go pick up your bikes
Computer systems down come back tomorrow
Argue
Wait
Get bikes
Join queue
Get bikes inpsected;

You get the picture, if you ever find yourself in the same situation, persevere, don't stop smiling, flirt where possible and don't take 'come back tomorrow' as an answer.

Anyway looking at bike # 2 was a sad reminder that salt water, three weeks in a box and another week before getting to the bike shop is not good for your bike. The guys at the shop tell me that there is salt crystals in my bottom braket, my frame is full of oxidised aluminium and every bit that could rust, has, The pivots are OK though. Looks like I'll be paying for this race for a while yet.

Regardless of that sob story, the weekend paddle was awesome. We went through the shore break, straight into a pod of dolphins, paddled along in close proximity to them for 20 minutes or so, then paddled back and played in a nice 2-4 foot break for another hour, trying desperately not to murder young children learning to surf with 25kg of out of control, rampaging sea kayak. Great fun!!

Stew