Newsletter No 24 30/09/04

Daylight savings starts this weekend!! Yipee, we can get rid of the lights and maybe the leg warmers, arm warmers and layers and layers of clothing soon (if we ever get some decent weather).

Thursday night racing starts next week. Same place (Horsham Downs Hall), slightly earlier time (6pm race start). So, get there by 5:45 at the latest to sign on. Kevin Stuart, I know you aren't sure what day the Thursday night racing is on, so I'll give you a clue. It is just after Wednesday and just before Friday.

TA are starting their Tuesday night racing next week too, so I expect a group will be riding over there to try to raise the IQ level in TA for a few hours (I mean, they've got Graeme Bunn, Richard Mellsop and Bob Puru - their collective IQ just barely breaks the two digit barrier).

Speaking of our Bob, I heard that Cliff Whittaker kicked his butt big time last weekend in the Round the Mountain Race. Our Cliff was on fire and came in second! Way to go Cliffy! Now he has worked out how to pin his ears back out of the way, his new aerodynamic form is blasting the opposition into the weeds. Has Cliff has worked out a way to counteract Bob's special Donkey Growth Hormone, or did Bob take too much DGH and find that he couldn't fit his hooves into his shoes anymore? I understand that Taranaki Trevor Foley also finished behind Cliff. I suppose Trev would be gutted about that, particularly since it was his former stomping ground.

Bev May has a two day race meet over in Morrinsville this weekend. So, I expect Bob will get a chance to get his revenge on Cliff.

Kerry Evans is on a roll. Instead of buying a new lounge suite, he shelled out the equivalent of half the suite on a new training bike. Kerry being a true aficianado of quality bikes bought a Litespeed. It wasn't the real classy titanium frame, but an aluminium and carbon frame. Still, the Litespeed tag lent it an air of cool sophistication and class that you don't get with the common or garden variety Merlins. Kerry also seems to be trying to take over from Blyth Andrews in the fashion stakes. Last Sunday he was wearing a very cool blue outfit that would have sent Blyth into an envious rage.

You may recall that Graham Dudfield complained about not being insulted enough the other week. Last Sunday I saw Graham in the fast sunday bunch and I would encourage all of you to line up to point out to Graham that he has the ugliest aero bars in world on his bike! I mean these things are uglier than Trevor's first cousin, Gregory the Ugly Goat. I think someone should take them out the back and shoot them to put them out of their misery (they could shoot Graham too for having such poor taste). Aero bars are not the prettiest of things at the best of times. That is why triathletes use them. As you know, triathletes are a sad, deranged bunch of misanthropes and masochists, who don't know any better. But we should be kind to them and only laugh politely as we wait for them to struggle up hills.

Finally, I also heard that Kevin Stuart has been working on Shane Bullivant's bike. How do I know this, you ask? Because it has had it's annual clean. Shane rides a red Eddy Merckx. Now most of you wouldn't know that because for the majority of it's life the colour and make have been hidden beneath a solid film of dirt, grease and dried worms. If you come along to the Sunday bunch you may get a rare chance to see Shane's bike as it should look, before it once more sinks beneath layers of filth once more.

Good Cycling

Michael