Monday, May 3, 2010

Picture time

Photos from Korea
 Hotel view: Beautiful Jeju Island. You can see the pre race presentation stage in the distance

 Stage 1, Roll out.

Leaving the neutral section, stage 1, uphill and into the wind and rain.

 Many hours post stage 1, plane transfer. Very over it by now, tired and grumpy for sure.

Brief moment on the front, stage 2

 Stage 3, pacing back on after a flat. Downhill, tunnel, fast, fun.

Stage 3, Out of tunnel, nice view!

 Jimmy, our mechanic, also a big fan of fresh Korean seafood.

 A typical Korean sex motel (aka love motel)

 Trying to have a team meeting in the overheated, sweaty and stuffy sex motel room!

  Haidar in action: Drink time

 Loh on the rest day, top of the 1st KOM for the next stage!

 On the way up...

Heading back to the motel, rugged up of course.

That's it! And I have to say a massive thanks to Marco Polo Cycling Team and the organisors of the Tour De Korea for another great adventure..flight to Hong Kong departs in 1 hour. Sad sad reality awaits!

Ciao

S.H.I.T

That's it. The race  is doooone. It has been a tremendously long two weeks of travel and racing. The mental stress had built up and built up and was finally let down last night with a few beers and about 5 animals worth of meat.

The last stage was amazing and ridiculous at the same time. I didn't know whether to laugh or cry.

What's Brilliant: Racing through the heart of Seoul. We started with a lap around the olympic park then looped out a highway and the river, u turned, came back, jumped off the highway and raced up and down around this crazy hill near where the president (or prime minister? I am frankly 100% ignorant on South Korean government structure..) resides then through some more big streets to end up finishing near the town hall smack bang in the middle of Seoul. Very cool. Very Brilliant.

What's Silly, Hopeless, Idiotic and downright Terrifying (S.H.I.T): The lack of traffic control and entering numerous massive intersections, with traffic, and, no marshals to tell us where to go! Mayhem. So as we were chasing after a group that split off on the dangerous cobbled speed hump descent (that's another story!) out of the presidential house/park/thingamajig we took two wrong turns and ended  up stuck in the middle of a 5 lane road with cars banked up infront of us and behind us. We were screwed! Then even worse, the commisaire makes light of the situation by docking our group a hypothetical 3mins 20sec after saying he'd give us bunch time. What a Sha-mozzle. A brothel. A veritable logistical train wreck. Only beer and grilled carcass's can remedy such a shame.

So now I am about to fly out back to Melbourne and will be MIA on the blog front for a few weeks. The plan at the moment is to head off to Europe by the end of May whereby a massive 3 months of racing awaits. So unless I get any hilarious stories to tell it's bye for now!

Jono