The Aussie Aussie awards

Last night, being vrijdag, marked the annual galah Aussie cyclist of the Year awards, which were held this year at Darling Harbour Convention Centre, just a tad more interesting than the centre of the Dunc Gray Velodrome. It was truly a galah occasion, and it was like a who's who of Australian cycling, as we regularly remarked to each other.

The presenters were nearly all cyclists, and this was perhaps not the most inspired choice. After hearing Michael Ford and Ryan Bayley present a few awards, it became clear that good athletes don't necessarily make good public speakers. At our table, Mark Renshaw summed it up nicely, "We can't read, we can't write, but we can win bike races."

Nevertheless, there are quite a few articulate riders out there, such as Brad McGee, Stuey, Matt "You Can't Handle The Truth" White, Sara Carrigan, Oenone pronounced Eh-noh-nee Wood and Lindy Hou. And the suitably gormless Ryan Bayley's comment after he won the Aussie Cyclist of the Year was quite pithy: "Screw everyone who doubted us." Onya Ryan - tell it like it is!


Anthony Tan, Les Clarke, me, Kate Marley, John Stevenson and Gerard Knapp
©Lesleigh Russell

We managed to scrape up six of the eight Sydney-based Cyclingnews crew to occupy most of a table. Not bad going I reckon. Ash Hutchinson, the aforementioned Renshaw, John Stevenson's wife Lesleigh and Kate Marley's beau Nathan Rennie (top Aussie downhiller) rounded out the ten, and a good time was had by all. There was much grog consumed. I vowed early on in the evening to stick with beer, but the beer seemed to dry up and someone had advertently left an opened bottle of red wine in front of me. I looked on the label but couldn't see a year on it, so at least I could be assured that it wasn't past its use-by date. It's amazing how much wine you can drink with a shot glass.

Food-wise, it was a bit thin on the ground if you know what I mean. Three courses, all very small and round. We had smoked salmon with tiny round sliced potatoes, then round beef on a round potato cake, then a round sponge/chocolatey dessert type situation. Applying a bit of basic geometry to the meal, I believe that someone miscalculated the serving sizes. Especially for a bunch of cyclists. If they'd doubled the radius, the volume would have quadrupled and that might just have been enough. Oh well, at least there was round beer and round wine in round glasses.

I conclude that filling up the round holes in one's stomach with alcohol leads to a certain sensation whereby the room goes round and round. Especially when you close your eyes. And in the morning, it's more like, "Don't make any sudden movements or you're for it..." Round and round.

Parramatta Teams Race

The above wasn't the reason that I didn't race today at Heffron. Actually once I did get out to Centennial Park for a couple of hours, I felt really good for the first time this week. Nice day for it too.

But tomorrow is the famous Teams Race out at Parramatta Park, a major appointment for the Gallant Randwick Botany Lads who effectively have two teams of six in the 80 rider field. Not bad! My team consists of Jerzy Sowa, Pat Naughton, Shaun Higgerson, Chris Jenkins and Mark Robertson (and me). The goal is: DESTROY!! Or at least win some money. Hence, I want to be a bit fresher for it.

All going well, I should be dropping in to see the Josh/Anita/Daniel/? clan for afternoon tea and bikkies, 'cos they also live at Parramatta.

The Petersham boutique brewery

Being extremely environmentally conscious, Ma and Pa have installed a rainwater tank in our backyard just in front of the 400 square metre garage/showroom/warehouse/home of Bobbity (Dad's bike with the special Lancewood seatpost). Sydney is in its third year of drought, although you could have fooled me with the rain that we've had of late. It's a bit like Melbourne weather at the moment actually: Thursday it was 36+, Friday was 30+, Friday night it rained and Saturday/Sunday were 20-ish. Sorry, I had to get that in. My favourite site is www.bom.gov.au/weather.

The rainwater tank enables us to collect rain that would otherwise be wasted on the garden or the tree that fell down or something like that. So instead of using tapwater to clean my bike, I can now use rainwater. How environmentally sound is that??

The real reason it was installed was so that Pa could re-start the Petersham boutique brewery, which he has now done thanks to a brewing kit, beer barrel and hose. It may not be brewed to the original Petersham Trappist Monks' specifications, but at least we can be sure that it is fermented from the purest water and the finest quality ingredients that you can buy at the local Woolies supermarché. I'm not sure how long it'll take but they keep telling us the War will be over by Christmas so that's a date to fix in your calendars.

Stark reminder: Only 34 more shopping days until Christmas! That is, if you shop on Sundays like I do. I have been secretly building up a stockpile of Chrissy presents over the last few weeks because it always pays to Be Prepared like Baden Baden Powell, Der berühmt Pfadfindermeister.

Weevils are here again

The ever present mystery of where on earth all the weevil moths in our kitchen come from is still plaguing us. The theory that they all emanate from one particular cupboard which contains open, half empty packets of flour, is plausible but weak in our learned opinion(s). Instead, inspired by Michael Palin's travel doco on the Himalayas that we saw the other night, we have come up with a new hypothesis.

In Nepal (or Tibet if you prefer), the Buddhist monks throw roast barley flour into the air as part of some nefarious ceremony. It's obvious that weevil moths inhabit this flour, and being Buddhist weevil moths they are capable of Astral travel, whereby their minds and spiritual bodies roam free while their physical self remains stationary. It's clear that most of these Astral travelling moths find their way to our kitchen, where they inhabit the bodies of the dead moths that we kill each day. They then rise up again in a sort of pseudo reincarnation, only to be squashed by one of the Jones family in a fit of rage. Thus, the cycle begins all over again.

I don't know what you'd have to have done in a former life to be reincarnated into a weevil moth, but it's probably something pretty bad. Like voting for Dubya. It may be bad karma to kill the moths, but they're annoying buggers.

The "Rappo"

I've managed to race three times this week (Tuesday/Saturday/Sunday), finishing off with today's Anthony Rappo Memorial out at Eastern Creek. Tuesday and Saturday at Heffron were nothing spectacular, but at least A grade finally caught B+C grade on Tuesday so we were in with a shout for the Big Money. Lock it in, Eddie. But we only caught C grade on the laatste ronde so things were a tad dicey as we tried to get around 30-odd C graders. I think I got about 10th.

Saturday we only had 7 starters, although it was a decent quality 7. Pete "The Machine" McDonald spent the first half of the race attacking and the rest of us spent the first half of the race chasing. Then things slowed down; I had a couple of gos but Tony Iannacito (Caravello) attacked on the laatste ronde and stole the race. I thought it was pretty cool because he was probably the weakest guy in the group but because none of us chased, he won! Strange that the Randwick boys all chased me but not him, but that's club racing for you.

Today was somewhat better because we can actually ride as a team in Open events. We had about 35 starters in A grade and three of us from Randwick (me, Matt Lucas and Pat Naughton). Pat got in most of the early breaks that were brought back, but then after about 25 mins a bigger group went away with three Lidcombe riders in it, so I took the option of going across with Matt on my wheel. I think we had about 10 of us all up and we worked reasonably well, averaging around 43 clicks to put a 20 second gap into the bunch.

After about 45 minutes I was starting to feel it a bit and just before the hour mark, Jorge Libonatti attacked and split the group up into two lots of five. Matt made the front group so that was good and the rest of us were caught by a Klayten Smith-driven chase group. I didn't have to do any more work 'cos Matt was up the road but I wasn't sure if his group would stay away. On the last lap I could see it was coming together , although Jorge had ridden away for a solo win by that time.

Klayten had a dig on the hill with about 2 km to go, as I knew he would, but I still didn't want to go because of Matt. But Klayten caught and dropped that group and held the rest of us off to get second. I was involved in the sprint for third which meant I ended up 10th. I am sprinting like a hubbard at the moment, and I don't mean Rosealee...

Cruised back via Parramatta and not on the silly freeway today, thank goodness. We stopped at a coffee shop with Klayten, Nash Kent and a Parramatta guy. Nash shouted us coffee which was damned decent.

After Friday night at the Trinity and Wednesday night's soiree at home with Coas the Builder (who done up our house tres nice), this week has once again been a social whirl. Only two weeks until holidays too. Yay.

Sussing out Markov Chains

But first, the Club Champs report

4:45am was way too early. Had to have the 2 hour pre/post-midday nap to compensate. But I did get to experience the delights of Eastern Creek International Raceway Be There at approx. 7:00am for our Club Champs. It was only 51 km (13 laps) so it wasn't really long enough to extend beyond a crit. I remember the days when it used to be 100 km around Bargo. Now that was a good course.

Of eight A grade starters I managed a fairly modest fourth, mainly because I'd done several do or die attacks in the last half in an attempt to get away. Not today - the Others were plenty strong enough to chase me down, although the last attack with 2 km to go caused a few problems. Josh Marden was chiefly responsible for closing the gap and then he won the sprint so I can't complain about that! It's the Anthony Rappo Memorial out there next week and that'll be a bit more fun with teammates to work with and stuff.

We absolutely flew coming back, averaging 40+ along the freeway with a bit of a tailwind until we stopped in Leichhardt for een koffie of twee. No beer though - it was only 9:30am when we got back!

Sleep followed, then looking at houses that I can't afford in the Western Slurbs Courier, food shopping, i.e. very little of interest apart from an ice cream...mmmm...and then (ik denk) Sag Gosht.

The Axis of Weevil problem revisited

I knew I had forgotten something in the general coarse of the week (it has been very coarse). Dad and I discussed remodelling of the Axis of Weevil problem in our kitchen, which may involve remodelling our kitchen. I note that it could get complicated by the Axis of White Ants that has eaten a goodly portion of our back door frame.

The competing Axes may bring each other down in a cloud of wood dust and quick oats but the only way to determine this is by an accurate mathematical model. Such a model would have to know how to differentiate an inverse exponential function on the back of a bus ticket and also look suitably alluring in the kitchen. That's what models are for.

Before we get onto the combined model, it's first necessary to sort out the Axis of Weevil problem in a multi-step process. Step 1 involves throwing away the partial differential equations that were alluded to in an earlier blog. They are wrong, wrong, wrong, Jana. Wrong. PDE's have very little to do with Markov Chains, which can be used to model birth-death-catastrophe processes. In this case the birth refers to the birth of the weevils; death refers to when we kill them or they die of natural causes like being eaten by Lucy's deceased guinea pig Smiley (R.I.P.); and a catastrophe is when they take over the kitchen and eat everything, including the awful muesli that mum likes.

A Markov Chain requires using matrices and integration and stuff. It doesn't necessarily have to converge to a steady state of constant weevil population, although it could, if asked nicely. The input values have to be made up out of thin air. Something like 5 and 7, for the number of moths we kill and that are born from an egg on a mountaintop each day. We can plug this into our equation, which is left as an exercise for the reader to suss out, and that will give us the weevil population on day 2.

Of course this becomes rather tedious after a few days, as you have to put in different death and birth values. Instead, what we can do is make up some arbitrary matrix to describe how many weevils we will kill on average and how many are born, again on average. They key word is on average, except that it's more than one word. The solution to the equation can be found with the Viterbi algorithm, which again is left as an exercise for the reader. I won't bore you with such trivial details.

In layman's terms, the weevil moth population will vary a bit from day to day, depending on some different stuff.

The tricky part is when we combine this problem with the Axis of White Ants. We can rename this combined system the Axis of the Willing because the weevils are willing to take over the kitchen and the white ants are willing to devour our house from the top down. The combined problem becomes - in technical mathematical terms - a great big bloody mess that you wouldn't even want to think about solving unless you have access to NASA's superduperparallelwithonelattheendcomputer that they used to send Voyager to Uranus. I've never been to Uranus, even though our physics teacher always used to refer to perturbations in its orbit.

In other words, a little knowledge is a dangerous thing.

Particularly nasty weather

So they say. Heffron was called off today because of the wind! Unbelievable. I did about 25 laps with Shaun Ballesty and Dale Rockell occasionally on my wheel, and it wasn't actually that bad. I've certainly raced at Heffron in conditions as windy as that before. The real reason was that Helen didn't want to stand out in the wind. Dang.

Club championships tomorrow out at Eastern Creek International Raceway Be There. 7am start. Christ that's early. <Does some calculations involving simple physics and whereis.com.au> Need to get up well before 5am. Christ that's early.

The good thing is that I get back early so I can have a pre-midday kip. They're always handy. In fact, I've implemented a harsh new sleep regime. It involves going to bed at a certain hour and getting up approximately 8 hrs later. The getting up time generally depends on the going to bed time and beer. So far it's worked, and I can still get up between 5:30-7:00am without resorting to the alarm. It also means I don't feel sleepy in the arvo pärt.

Racing: only done two since the last update. Last Saturday was the Snow Wilson Memorial, and it was OK. I felt good but spent most of the race blocking for our Gallant Randwick Lads who had made the five (then four) man break. Unfortunately our surviving Gallant Randwick Lad only got fourth in a four man sprint, missing out on the fabulous $500 prize, which is close to (puts finger to lips)...1 million dollars in the new post-election monetary speak. I got 6th, thus just missing out on the $50 for fifth.

The other race was last Tuesday, which was significantly faster than the previous Tuesday owing to the fact that we were Organised. Somewhat annoyingly and despite going 2 minutes quicker(!) we didn't even get close to B grade this time. The buggers held us off by a good minute I reckon so we were left to fight it out for the scraps of first A grader. I had a go with just over 1.5 km to go, but this time my attempt ended in failure as Computer took it upon himself to chase me down and led the Others back up. So I got caught at the top of the straight. Of course, Computer blew himself up in the process and Steve Fitzpatrick (not his teammate) won the sprint. Somehow I still got sixth despite not actually sprinting. There weren't too many of us left at that stage, but.

Social Round

This week has been a real Social Whirlwind as I make the most of my limited time in the Antipodes. To quote Eeyore: "I have my friends. Somebody only spoke to me yesterday. And was it last week or the week before that Rabbit bumped into me and said 'Bother!' The Social Round. Always something going on."

Last Sunday we had our first official Cyclingnews.com ride to the 'Gong, which was actually only a ride to Stanwell Tops because the coast road has collapsed. Oops. Expected reopening in 2006. So four of us (me, Gerard, Kristy, Kate M. and Kate's friend Leslie who was really only with us in spirit) dressed in our official Cyclingnews jerseys, saddled our velocipedes and sallied bravely forth or bravely sallied forth bound for Stanwell Tops. All of us made it there and back again without blowing up, which impressed me no end as the Other Three had only been riding 1 x per week. We even made it back to St. Peters for a total of 110 km.

On Wednesday I caught up with Josh at the Belgian beer cafe/bar/former school assembly hall at the back of Grosvenor Place in town. It was actually quite good, despite being a tad expensive. Belgian beer costs about 10 bucks a pop here, or about 6 euros. It's about half that if you buy it from a bottle shop - but even that is roughly three to four times the price it is in Belgium!

Fortunately, after four beers and a largish bowl of frieten met mayonnaise I was pretty much annihilated so it didn't turn into a really expensive night. First time I've had a De Koninck and a Gulden Draak too. Not sure if they really go together but it didn't really make a lotta difference. No comment on getting home.

Thursday wasn't a social event but it did rain. Lots. It started about 6:30pm when I was just gettin' ready to tool off home so I decided to wait. But instead of easing up like it would in België, it got harder and harder, and by 7:30 I had to call dad to come and get me in the van because Clevland Street was under about a foot of water! Dried up by Friday.

Friday evening was somewhat lower key as I was a bit beered out from Wednesday. So the Four Horsepeople of the Knapp Apocalypse (me, Gerard, Kate M. and another of her friends) trundled up to The Trinity for beer and food. Tried a Kilkenny this time, which is sort of a lower key version of Guinness and not a patch on any Belgian beer. Sorry, I'm turning into a beer snob now but what do you expect when you live in a country that practically invented the stuff?

It was Saturday today and it was windy. See above.

The End.

Blogging to win

I think I'm over my jetlag. Two nights in a row where I could get eight hours sleep, uninterrupted except for a ridiculously loud thunderstorm at 4:00am last night. The body clock is righting itself again, but I've just buggered it by racing the first of the Tuesday nighters at Heffron this evening. Normally at this time I'm very droopy eyed, but I only got home at 8:30pm, so it takes a couple of hours to settle down.

I won A grade too, which was a) rather surprising and b) rather nice, given the years of Tuesday night suffering I've experienced at Heffron Park. You have no idea of what it's like to be dropped in every race bar one in a single summer, and still come back for more. But racing in Belgium over the years has certainly helped the condition. That takes suffering to a new level, and it means that you have to have your base training right or you will crash and burn.

I think I managed a second in A grade down at Heffron last year, but this is definitely the first time I've won it. OK, it wasn't the overall win as C grade managed to burgle its way into getting a huge handicap and was probably still a minute ahead of us at the end, but we did catch B grade at halfway so part of the job was done.

For those who don't understand handicap racing, it's an inherently unfair system whereby the riders who have done the least amount of training and/or are slower, get the biggest head start on the riders who dedicate their lives to the Bicycle, living monastic existences, weighing all their food and bike parts, drinking no alcohol and eating negative grams of fat. It's designed to give everyone a "fair go" in the great Aussie battler spirit that seems to favour mediocrity above excellence.

But those are the rules and everyone who races on Tuesdays accepts them. The race is 15 laps, with B grade actually starting first, then C grade behind them, followed by A grade another half a lap later. C grade only has to do 14 laps, which means that A grade has to catch them and then lap them in order to have a shot at the overall. A grade generally starts with about 3/4 lap (1.5 km) disadvantage to B grade and 1.5 laps (3 km) disadvantage to C grade...in a 30 km race. Usually if A grade works properly it will catch B and C grade in good time so there are no arguments. It does tend to keep the pace high in A grade though!

As it was the first night of racing and not all of the big hitters were there (Jose Rodriguez and the NSWIS team par example), A grade was a bit ragged. The very strong north easterly wind was against us on the back straight and with us on the main straight, and this normally gives A grade a bit of an advantage over the other, less well organised bunches. But it was not to be. We were lapping at around 2'50 (2 km per lap), which is good under those conditions, and I think we got C grade the first time after 5 laps and B grade after about 8 laps. Liam Kelly and Stewart (Computer) Campbell were particularly strong, and kept attacking in the tailwind, to which the rest of us had no answer. They caught B grade first, but then we tacked on the back and it was a big bunch again.

With about 5 to go, I saw C grade was still less than half a lap behind us, so I knew we weren't racing for the Grand Prize this evening. There were a few more attacks, a little more subdued as everyone was a bit stuffed by this stage. On the last lap Spurge, Computer, John Sunde and a couple of others opened up a bit of a lead into the headwind on the back straight. I thought it would be prudent to bridge up to them, so I did (followed by the rest of the bunch). But as I got on the back, they all sat up and I knew that it was time...

Thankfully no-one got on my wheel straight away so I hit the finishing straight with about 30m or so on the bunch. I was a tad out of breath at this stage but committed, and I had a bloody big tailwind so I knew that would help. Somehow I managed to sprint and held the rest of them off by a comfy margin. My HR was 197 across the line, which was 4 beats higher than what I thought my max was. Always handy to know these things. So much for the 220 minus your age formula! Or maybe that means I'm 23...

Anyway, I earned the princely sum of $25 for my efforts, which will cover the last two race entry fees and leave me $5 spare to buy a beer. Hmmmm. I think racing in Belgium makes more economic sense.

I am starting to like the Ridley Damocles now.

Axis of weevil

In other news, I've been helping dad with partial differential equations for his uni work, and I've realised - contrary to my belief when I did 3rd year maths at uni - that PDE's do have real life applications. To whit, Dad has been trying to model the weevil moth problem in our kitchen using Markov chains. You see, no matter how many moths we kill with our bare hands each night, there are always moths left over that flutter around and are generally annoying. So there's some kind of steady state system involved, and the dead moths are quickly replaced by new live ones. The easy way would be to apply liberal amounts of weevil poison in all of our cupboards, but then we couldn't model the problem any more.

I thought of something else too, unrelated to the axis of weevil in our kitchen but fairly related to blood doping. You see, Santiago Perez, the rider who finished second in the Vuelta and repeatedly blew away climbing genius Roberto Heras in the last week, tested positive for a homologous blood transfusion. Same thing that his teammate Tyler Hamilton got pinged for. So when are the "I believe Santi" badges coming out? And why are people donating money to Hamilton to help his legal defence? He's a millionaire ferchrissakes!

So many questions...