Apres Velo Blog

Friday afternoon is generally an afternoon of much leisure, caffeine, lying on the AV designed couch and wearing flip flops. So it came as no surprise to the production staff to see the BIG COG meditating flat out like an iguana in the sun. Me (Web Schlepper) and Sarina (Crash Test Mummy)  decided to climb the barbed wire fence that surrounds the BIG COGs expansive office and raid his hard drive in an effort to find any photographs of him in compromising situations.

Alas we were very dissapointed to find that he is a clean living man. He had NOTHING we could use to intimidate and shame. So me (Web Schlepper) and Sarina (Crash Test Mummy) had no alternative but to steal some anyway, pole vault out of there and head back to the AV Design Temple to conjure some up in Photoshop.

Whilst these don't lean toward naming or shaming anyone, let's be clear, they are not real. LIVE the RIDE people. (Apres Velo 1 - Lawyers - Nil)

BIG COG making a name for himself (or someone else at least)

The AV Man Bonding 'Arnie' Truck - parked illegaly

The AV Man Bonding 'Uber' Bike

The AV Television screen on the Main Straight

Back in Sydney yesterday @ 6:30am. I did what any normal woman would do after a 37 hour transit time with a good sleep from Frankfurt to Singapore, then awake for the rest of the trip....I scrubbed, vacuumed and cleaned my house for a day. 5 loads of washing. Normal. So good to be back home in the stinking humidity of Sydney, OH, I love it.

TEAM AV: set up a stand at ISPO at the Brand New Brands section. We took our furniture, hangers, clothing stands and products all made out of recycled Bike bits and displayed our tee shirt ranges. We're ecstatic to report we picked up many retailers and maybe some great new distributors. Everyone we met was lovely and Michael and I were so honoured that everyone seemed to love the product and humour. Fingers crossed now that our little Aussie bicycle tee company goes onto the world stage. I'm set to start painting again this arvo. Lots of people loved the helmets I paint and we're really hoping to get this product up and on people's noggin's. Below is a fairly cool bike from Ispo which is NEARLY as cool as my bike  - they'll have to try harder next time.

Munich: Food glorious food. the BEST breads, cheeses, meats....strawberries that smelt and tasted sublime. Michael and I ate a few kilos of them. Shopping, eateries, architecture and fashion to drool over...yep. i did a fair bit of dribbling, ever since I fell off my bike before Christmas I don't think my jaw has been closing right.

A picture of me below dressed as a YETI doing SHNOW-PLOUGH in the Marianplatz (the centre of the city). The Germans wondered why i was skiing thru town without skis and so did I. Sometimes i have no control over my bodily actions (see previous accounts of accidents)

So, I too stare in disbelief when I suddenly start Nordic skiing just because there is white slippery stuff below my boots.
When MTBing I seem to think I'm hot stuff on a bike and capable of WAY more technical abilities than i actually do have.
When talking, I sometimes can't believe the stuff that comes BLURTING uncontrollably out of my mouth -it was meant to be that SILENT stuff you THINK, but don't ever, EVER say. The same with writing and painting...my fingers are uncontrollable.

So, after beautiful big flakes of snow fell in Munich, Michael (my husband and Team Apres Velo's expert stationary bike rider) and I
ran around catching perfect icicles not realising those beautiful snowflakes would mean that our flight from Munich to Frankfurt would be cancelled that night along with 30,000 other people at the airport we would be stranded without our baggage into which we'd happily packed away our warm clothes. We missed our connecting flights home. Our luggage was in bag limbo.

An extremely late night train ride back into the city (first time the POLIZI had checked for tickets and of course we had none because we'd thrown them out and spent all our Euros -here my mouth was uncontrollable and the Polizi let us off maybe because they felt sorry for Michael) and a RUN back to our hotel in Apres Velo tees & jeans in -12º snow. It's funny NOW. In hindsight.
It was also funny watching Michael run - he refuses to run normally and it's such an unnatural feat anyway let alone in fresh snow to see him do it with a tee shirt wrapped around his head for warmth.

Then washing our undies, socks & tees each night and drying them on the hot towel rack. You know that old boy scout rule "Be prepared?" Yeah well, stuff that, we adhered to the other one "Turn your undies inside out". That's what I did when we got to Singapore after 30 hours on the go and 7hrs to get back to Sydney. After eating such superb food in Munich it was very hard to deal with Qantas Economy "food". I'm still not sure what that stuff was and why do you get so hungry sitting there reading/watching movies for hours on end? Below is a photo of a parked bike at the train station the morning we were running to the train station in our tee shirts to go into town and buy some warm clothes:

WE'd love to thank Glen for helping us on the stand at Ispo.
 Also to thank the lovely man who helped us at Munich Airport, Arun.
He spent endless time patiently trying to find phone numbers for Qantas - a booking office number that runs Mon-Fri 9-5pm doesn't help much at 10pm Friday night when your flight has been cancelled and you need help. He helped us lodge a lost property notice for our baggage also which arrived home the day we did. Thanks Arun and Lufthansa. German precision.

Things we LOVED:
an emporium called MANUFACTUM www.manufactum.de

this is the most wonderful shop/cafe and has the best of everything you can imagine and you wander around saying WOW, feeling, touching and lusting over products. These are delivery bikes parked just inside the entrance. Check out the website and if you want to buy me a present I can give you a compendium of my wish list.

BRENNER www.brennergrill.de
our favourite restaurant we found on Maximilianstrabe -which is the MOST expensive shopping street and this is the ONLY affordable thing to buy there. We ate at this grill 3 times in our short stay and each mouthful was an orgasmic delight.

The Central food markets:
Below is a picture of Michael eating a fresh crusty roll with something in it which we pointed at and nodded enthusiastically at in the deli behind. He is speechless with pleasure at the taste sensation and when he could speak, in perfect German he said "Shitz, thiz iz bluudy unroool". The markets have amazing displays of every sort of food and we took it as a personal challenge to try and eat our way around them. Sadly, they were bigger and better than us and we had to concede a sorry & bloated defeat. Burp.
 
Hazta La Vizta (my German haz rooly improved too).
 Can you believe at Ispo I was trying to interpret German for Michael?
OMG. I'm SO embarrassing when I remember some of the things I do.....seriously, WHERE does it come from?

I first saw a big red shiny cog while waiting in a 20min queue to get across the River during the Dirtworks100km MTB race. It's @ the 70km mark and there's all these kayaks with timber planks strapped across them that wobble and throw people off into the water below. One of the guys from Australian Mountain Bike magazine had one on the bike he was testing and it looked mighty pretty. It looked fast, sleek & speedy. The red did something to me, sorta like it affects bulls. I just HAD to beat the guy with the red bling -i took off up the big hill climb knowing i'd left him WAY behind. Satisfaction.

Then, in Adelaide last week: very expensive bikes with beautiful red anodised wheels, red spokes, red hubs, red Quick release, chains and the ultimate..... shiny red cassettes. They're SO, SO beautiful. Is this the new thing to buy when hit by a midlife crisis? It used to be a red cabriolet sports car once you hit 40...but now it's the swanky designer bike all accessorised to the hilt in red. It's better for you, healthier for your body (maybe not your wallet) so I think it's great and it's so lustworthy. I'm jealous. I want ALL the red bits on my bikes so that just by looking at it, everyone will think I'm super speedy. I DO have red handlbars (patched up with red electrical tape where i've come into contact with the road a few times and it doens't have the glamour factor). RED means roooly FAST.

THIS morning was my first MTB since my Menai crash•. I had to dust old Chucky the Cannondale off as i just put him in the cupboard after the last bloody (I'm not swearing I WAS bloodied) OTH ride and hadn't even washed him. We went down Duck Hole and up & down the Chiltern trail -while waiting for our big group to REgroup we were just standing by MaCarrs Creek Rd. I fell for no reason. Standing still. Foot stuck in pedal and unable to get it out in time in front of everyone, then to add further injury to my battered ego, the people cycling past on roadies all turned out to be my roadie friends who witnessed the whole thing.....unreal, the bigger the audience the better! Imagine if I had broken something? "How'd you do THAT?" Oh, just standing with my bike.
 
I HAVE had a really clumsy week: knocking things over, falling, hitting my head on whatever i could, banging into doorways. I turned my bath time into a Blood Sport: shaving my legs this week. I took a bit of skin off and it just wouldn't stop bleeding. I left an horrific wet bloody trail through the house whilst limping to get bandaids with a massive wad of toilet-paper-compression-bandage trying to stem the flow. It'd be funny - if it wasn't me.

This Thursday we leave for Munich for the Ispo tradefare and it's been freezing over there. My non-cycling husband delights in telling me it's warmed up and is now @ 12º. When he was talking about how we'll get around I said what a shame we weren't taking bikes.
 If looks could kill I would have been murdered many times over by now. This will be our first stand at an International Sporting Goods Trade Fare. I'll be layering on the Apres Velo tees and sweats. I've never been anywhere so cold.

• My crashes are all named and rated upon my body. Scars denote when & where I crashed due to pigmentation etc.
The aim is to have an anthology of great rides from around the world with the matching/corresponding scar souvenirs. 
Scar tissue however is threatening to take up more coverage than virgin unscarred skin and some scars have been doubling up ie: Manly Dam x 3 and Red Hill x 4 on my knees. 
Below are photos of the freshly inflicted, infamous full length body-slide down Duck Hole trail of Feb 2009.