melburn roobaix - the hell of northcote

My weekend has been great so far. I can sit down again today, so that’s a bonus!

I had a “not a race, it’s a ride” race yesterday. Basically that means that it’s a race, but there is no insurance, so they can’t give prizes for places, so they just have a big raffle. It was the Melburn-Roubaix which is based on the Paris-Roubaix so it tries to link up as many of the cobbled laneways as possible, so on a track bike, that’s pretty punishing. it was awesome fun though! after the race the weather was glorious, and we nipped off to the local drive though bottle-o and i stuck a slab of coopers in my bag, and headed back to the velodrome and watched the rest of the field come in. so after sinking half of that and watching the raffle, we headed over to the opening of a new hot rod studio in Collingwood. so imagine 30 odd of the fastest and most reckless couriers and assorted bike scum, blazing through Saturday soccer mum traffic.

Heaps of fun - until someone looses an eye!

I was pulling out to pass a mum in her imprezza (what you need a wrc car to take your kids to the oval is beyond be, but it’s not relevant to the story) and the guy in front of me started to cut at exactly the same time, but as he was closer to the car, he had to cut harder. There was a terrifying second when his back wheel hit my front, and then my memory goes blurry (it always does, my brain is busy dealing with more pressing things)

The guy in front of me said that he looked up to see me unclipping and flying off the back of my bike and then as I hit the ground there was a big explosion and then my brain kicked back in.

My first thought was a terrific blend of shit, my arse hurts, and shit, I’m in the middle of loads of traffic, so I popped up like a shot and got out of the road!

It turns out that the explosion was me landing on 2 six packs and killing all but four of them! It looks like someone has vomited broken glass into my bag now, which is a bit crap, but it makes me remember that I’m still alive! (and I landed on my left buttock, not my coccyx, so I’m super pleased)

I’m not sure if you’ll like this, it took me a couple of listens to get into it, but it’s a lot of fun

http://www.myspace.com/toddlat

download the ghettoblaster mix, but you can listen to the ‘do u know medley’ to check it out first.

and here is a link to the high bit rate version of the excellent OptiK remix of Imogen heap’s hide and seek