Good bye Tom

Tom is going back to Australia. Some South African mountain biking friends of his organised a weekend in Afan (south Wales), so i fixed my bike and joined them.

On saturday, I really struggled to keep up for the whole 40km we did. But we had good, dry weather instead of the fog/drenching we were promised, and i really enjoyed the day. Here is an image of our ride, recorded by the GPS. Click here to open the file in google Earth, or to download it.



I only had my mobile to take pictures with, the quality is not too good.

At the start:


First breakdown - and only - breakdown:


First long climg, and last time i had the chance to take pictures of the others from the front (!)


First break:


Another break, I'll loose my smile soon:


Near the end we caught up with other friends who did a different ride. Here's Julie:


On sunday, I emptied all the spare layers from my bag to take the bigger camera:





After these 3 pictures i realised i'd left the gps in the car park, so i raced back down and then tried to catch up with the rest of the group, which i did after a couple of hours non stop except for this picture:




A big thanks to Claire and Spike who organised this. I hope to join you for more adventures on wheel next year!

And good luck to Tom on his return to Aus.

To the police station...

I've had a rotten week so far, and my friend Tom was here to remind me that there's always someone else in a worst situation.
He got pulled up by the police because his tax disk was on the dashboard, not on the windscreen. Then they found that his insurance had expired - mix up with the insurance company apparently. Worst of all, apparently he's not allowed to drive here with his Aussie license. His car was impounded not far from where i live.
So today i went to the police with him to sort it all out, or as Tom says, to hand in an extortionate amount of money . His car is now on my drive, waiting for Tom to get an English license. Here's the two of us at the station:



By the way, the police woman thinks i can't really drive in England with my French license... More good news then! But i shouldn't worry, she also said my English is good enough to make the necessary phone calls...

Ca commence bien!

Je rentre de vacance, devant bosser dur au sports shop pendant le premier de l'an et les soldes et ma voiture me lache!

Si vous voulez des details, allez voir sur le forum citroen ce qui m'arrive...

Vendredi Tom (avec qui j'ai fait le mountain marathon) m'a pris en covoiturage, samedi j'ai emprunte la voiture de Harley et ai fait un detour de 2 heures pour aller a une casse acheter une piece, dimanche Harley m'a depose a 12km du boulot et j'ai couru, ce qui m'a fait beaucoup de bien pour evacuer ma frustration ! Et Sue m'a depose a la maison. Demain, ca va etre un melange de train et de velo...

Et dire que j'etais content d'avoir vendu la skoda avant noel!

Bon, on va dire que comme le probleme est apparu jeudi, c'est le dernier coup du sort de 2006. Et comme aujourd'hui j'ai fait une course d'orientation avec Mike, que je n'avais pas vu depuis 6 mois, sur la coline deriere la maison, l'annee commence bien!

Bonne annee 2007 a tous!

En photo: Harley me depose a la junction 25 de la M1 dimanche matin


Et une heure avant que ma voiture decide de ne plus demarer, Caroline m'apprend une recette de muffin:

Thank you Tom !

2 weeks ago Tom was at home in Australia:

Last weekend we did the Original Mountain Marathon. This is what it looked like on day 1:

In spite of being very tired, and having injured his feet Tom kept going and we finished the race. Here he is just 4 minutes before crossing the finish line:

So a huge thank you for Tom without whom i would have missed this cherished event two years in a row...

Mountain marathon

We're off! long drive to Galloway (south of Glasgow)

You can follow our the event on the internet here. I'm competing with Tom from Australia, we are team 466 doing the class B race.