Last minute bash in the Alice

Ah christmas.. riding, eating, sifting. The day of the year really.

7:30 was a nice casual start time for a ride with Po, Suze, Clarke and Julia. What started out as a completely overcast sky, soon cleared to a clear blue one but the cool breeze held firm to give us some great riding conditions. Out on the fence track, up along the helmet track, and return via roo track and 5-ways.. a nice way to spend 2.5hours.

Po, Suze and Julia on the Helmet Track.

Suze, Po, Julia and Clarke.

It was then off to Suze's house for breaky. If only every breakfast could be like this! Eggs, bacon, haloumi, salmon, garlic mushies, salad, fresh turtle bread, avo, juice, coffee , champers... 1pm with bellies bursting it was time to head home and take up the sifting component of the day. And sifting better come through and shrink the size of my belly because we've got a mountain of food to get through before we board our flight tomorrow arvo!

Aw'right - happy christmases everybody! Enjoy yourselves, and see you in Melbourne or up at Buffalo:)

3 days to Buffalo

Aw geeze i'm excited. Just a few short (incredibly loooong) days to go till we fly south to Mt Buffalo. Best part number 1: hanging out with our posse of friends again. Best part number 2: we're packing some bikes. Hai Hai! Best part number 3: wedding! Yippee!

Logistically a bit of a nightmare, having to rely on lifts to get from Melbourne to Buffalo to the Yarra to Melbourne, but man it'll be rad. We've been dreaming of the trails we'll ride (dreaming of BERMS!! AW FEED ME SOME BERMS!) Up there on the list is Beechworth. Haven't ridden there since the 6hour a few years back. Then theres the trails at Mt Beauty. Never ridden there. And then theres the hills. Ah, I can't wait for some real (Australian) hills. I'm sick of a little nipple with barely 50m vertical gain being called a hill. Damn flat Alice. (We have a bunch ride here called the 'Hills Bunch'. Still trying to figure out where the hills are...) It's certainly been going from one extreme to the other - moving from Bourg St Maurice to Alice Springs.

Hai!

Denti done

Yay! Built and ready to roll:)

Retour au vin!

It's been a tough November.

It wasn't the heat. It wasn't moving house. It wasn't sleeping on thermarests for 2 weeks. It's been the lack of alcohol flowing through our veins. We've been smashing our way through bottle after bottle of Soda water instead. Clearly not an adequate replacement for a bottle of Devil's Corner Pinot Noir, with which I am currently whetting my palette.

"Not the end of November" I hear you say?! Ha! I actually don't, probably because you're reading this in the month of December. Probably because I can't hear you over the expanse of sand between us. Speak up dammit. Anyways we go by the laws of eves here... an eve is as good as the day.

To change the topic, here is a chair. Complete with magazine rack and convenient carry handle.

Class.

Milo Denti

It's been quite a task finding a worthy replacement for the Teschner. Several failed attempts at buying roadies online (ebay, rotorburn, corc, ccc, bikeexchange etc etc) and I finally decided to bite the bullet and head down the build-my-own path.

Now I've always had a bit of a taste for a fine bicycle. It doesn't help that some of my friends have acquired quite the rides of late (pat's pooey-the-baum comes to mind). It also doesn't help that I get rather attached to things rather easily. This 'thing' I attached myself to happened to be a used frame from Hungary. What the hey. I trust PayPal. Let's build!

The Denti arrived in a 'box' made up of about 4 banana boxes taped together with packing tape, and thankfully, un-dented. A beautiful thing, this frame. Chromed fork and rhs chain stay. Lugged steel construction. Cast-inset ladybugs on the fork crown. Stamped 'D' on the head/down tube lug. Campag drop outs and fork ends. Yummo.

The build was easy. Wheels (Ksyriums) I had already. Seat (Selle Italia) and gruppo (Record) the same as what I had on the Teschner, although the groupset is now complete Record, with the addition of ultra-torque cranks. The front end is all nice and shiny with a NOS 3TTT Record84 quill stem, 3TTT Super Competizione bar and a Dura-Ace headset. All things of beauty mind you.

With nearly everything having arrived (just the wheels to make it here from Canberra - thanks M&D!) , it's nearly all built and ready for the road. I think that after a thorough thrashing over the xmas period down in the Vic highcountry, and some long summery km's here in Alice (in preparation for WildSide), it'll be getting stripped and sanded, ready for fresh new clothes in the new year. If anyone's got any recommendations for painters - please let me know!

Back, and at rest

Only a month late in reporting that Paula and I are back in Australia. The rest of our France time was great. We finished the Haute Route, met Gabs in Corsica for a few days walking and eating Broccio, packed up our drippy cave in Bourg and jumped in a car for the final week to really ram home the France-ness.

Now, back in Australia, it's bike-hunting time. The cyclocross is taking a bit of a hammering on the trails down at the south coast, plus the longish commutes of 160km between Burra and Broulee, so we're both on the prowl for new bikes.

Winding Down

We've only a month left in France-land before our triumphant return to Australia, but we're planning on cramming alot in into the time that we have left. This coming monday we're off to Chamonix to do the Chamonix-Zermatt Verbier Variation, most commonly known as the Haute Route. The following monday we will return to Bourg for a few days before flying down to Corsica. We'll have 6 days there, kicking it with Gabby and exploring the island, before once more returning to Bourg to pack up our stuff and move out of our little drippy cave. For our last week in the Hexagon, we're hiring a Kangoo and driving north to visit Madeleine in Mirecourt, then dropping back down to end up in Paris.

But it's been a while since I logged on and put up any updates, so what have we been up to? Well, we've cut back on our skiing and ramped up on our riding. The days here are just perfect for it - high-teens, sunny and with vertical gains of well over 1000m on quiet, steep mountain roads, it doesn't get much better. Having the Surly and Bullwinkle running cyclocross tyres means we can also explore the hundreds of dirt paths. These are incredible - centuries-old paths, usually linking up hamlets or individual farm houses and cutting across steep hillsides, boarded by intricate stone retaining walls.

Picnics. If you're going to have a picnic, you might as well go to picnic heaven, lac d'Annecy.

We've also been touching a bit of rock with visits to a cliff just near town, an artificial boulder in the park, and the indoor wall. I can't wait to get back on it and visit the local crags when I get back to Aus, it's been a while!

Getting ready for the Haute Route has taken a lot of planning and effort. We've had a few skills sessions up on the hill to make sure we're all up to date with the techniques in crevasse rescue, glacier travel, avalanche rescue and ski mountaineering. The first couple of days on the HR should be fun as we'll be able to get some quality self-arrest and crevasse recue practice in on some good terrain. Always fun! [po snow bollard] The HR is apparantly in very good knick, which is some good luck. We should be able to ski all the way down to Champex on the second day, and hopefully all the way down the piste in to Zermatt on the final day, which will be a great way to end it.

spring

Spring's here, temps are up in the mid-teens, so the bikes are out of the shed. Went for a 2.5hr cruise up the Beaufortain valley as far as the road was cleared. Stunning stuff.

po's grande pente

mont blanc is watching...

Valdez Couloir

A few days ago now, managed to squeeze this in on Saturday morning before work. A pretty gnarly descent with Jamie and Ely, from the top of Aguille Rouge down the Valdez Couloir and on down to Villaroger.

wednesday 11th feb

Over to La Plagne today for some powder turns with Paula, Tracey, Jonothan, Jamie and Ely. On my new skis today - Line Prophet 100's with Marker Baron's. Oooooh yeah:)

Friday 30th January

It was just Jamie and myself today. We decided to go ahead with the plan of the Grand Col route without Chris (who was out with a bung knee) and his mates. The route was quite tracked and therefore easy to follow, but still easy enough to find fresh tracks by stepping to the side a bit. We met up with Po for a couple of pints at l’Altiport afterwards and thus I find myself sitting at home typing these few words with a slightly fuzzy head.

Thursday 29th January

Today we managed to hook up with a contact of Jamie’s for a ski off-piste. Chris is an off-piste ski guide, a bit of a character but a pretty handy person to know. Two of his mates joined us for the day – Paul and Keith. The plan was a couple of runs down la Bellecote’s petite face nord. After a delay of about an hour to get across to La Plagne on the Vanoise ‘Express’ due to strikes or crowds or dodgy French queuing tactics, we opted for a bit of a play in La Plagne first and only the one run down la Bellecote.

First run was off Roche de Mio, down the widest of Les Rossets couloirs to the bottom of the Telesiege de Chalet de Bellecote. We had a little play around under this lift before accessing la petite face nord. The snow cover down the north face was good and the run wasn’t too tracked out. A good run for our first 2000m vertical descent. Certainly the views we had of the south face of Mont Pourri and beyond to Mont Blanc were worth it.

Our route down from Roche de Mio

Keith nearing the bottom of the petite face nord.

Looking over to Les Arcs. Our routes down in to Nancroix.

Sunday 25th

Jamie coming off the top of Crete des Lanchettes

pic of the yesterday

not actually a pic from today - its puking down outside at the moment - so its a day for washing, waxing coffee, and then i'll head up the mountain for a couple of hours this arvo. anyway, this pic was taken by Jamie yesterday, me skiing down to Nancroix again.

pic of the day

ok, so now that we're finally remembering to not only take the camera out on the slopes but actually take pictures with it, i think i'll just put up a photo per day... pic of the day yo.

heres todays effort: from the top of the TransArcs we dropped to the valley at Nancroix. Paula and Sarah joined us the second time down. Very, very good.

tuesday 20th