“Ability is what you’re capable of doing. Motivation determines what you do. Attitude determines how well you do it.” Lou Holtz

"I hear and I forget. I see and I remember. I do and I understand." Confucius

Tuesday 27 June 2017

Week 3 in Treviso

Tomorrow there is a changing of the guard.. my sister leaves to go back to London and Alex arrives from Aus.  This week I have changed from morning language lessons in a group to private lessons in the afternoon....the weather was just too hot to train in the pm.  As expected, the moment I changed, so did the weather!

Today's ride ended up in 3 parts..1st trying and failing to work hard, 2nd giving up and taking pix and finally when I turned for home and saw the black sky and flashes of lightning... a really hard race pace "gotta get home soonest" speed.

yup I AM in Italy!


Church/war memorial
side view...external stair case anyone?

NEVER trust this sort of sign to take you all the way!

hmmm!
and finally...seen in Slovenia..... a group of Aussies on small wheeled bikes  with these dinky cargo carriers behind...cool!


Saturday 24 June 2017

Treviso city and suburbs

Here's where I'm living currently...6km north of Treviso..a 15 min commute by bike ..most of which time is spent navigating around the city itself in order to get to the language school.  Our apartment is on the ground floor, the family live on the first floor.  That's my set of wheels on the left.



And that's 2 weeks of morning language school  and  of training in the afternoon heatwave completed. Ooooff.....currently I'm just existing as the humidity is pretty high.   Starting next week I move to afternoon classes and morning training, which just has to be an improvement.  My sister leaves and Alex arrives on Wednesday.

Apparently there is some concern about water supplies as there has been little rain for the past 4 or 5 months and little snow up high  resulting in less new snow melt but more melting of the glaciers.


Pizzeria Treviso style
Bocce is clearly popular here!
There's an ippodromo, a boccidromo but sadly no velodromo


the ancient St Thomas gate I cycle through every day
and on the far side of the gate is the Pinarello shop, although I've not yet been to it.  The Basso shop just a few km away too....

Saturday 17 June 2017

Treviso

 Treviso is a city surrounded by water and walls.  For cyclists it is a safe and easy city to navigate..cyclists being able to ride against the one way traffic system; however for the stranger driving inside the walls ie in the centre of town it is a nightmare.  Last weekend we decided to locate exactly where our language school was....never found it and 30 minutes later after circling round and getting totally confused we just gave up!


The area is almost completely flat and therefore is somewhat wind affected  so sometimes I can blast along the flat, straight, smooth surfaced roads with extremely low wattage and sometimes it's not quite so easy. So sometimes I feel the need for a small reward!


Our apartment at Lancenigo, where I've stayed previously, is  about 6km north of Treviso making for a 15 minute bike commute, most of which is spent navigating the city streets.  The road into town is a main one but there are bike and pedestrian paths and also a generous  clean bitumen edge to the road outside of the white line. 

This weekend I was originally going to do the Sportful Dolomiti Gran Fondo at Feltre which last year took me 6 hours to complete, but since my travel and race fatigue has only just lifted, I'm giving it the flick.

Instead I'll go along to rego, tell them I'm not riding, collect the bag of goodies, check out the expo,  go for a nice longish ride and then visit a town just north of us here which is coming to the end of a week long festival concluding  with  a Palio.  Last weekend I  checked out the place and bought these things! 



Wednesday 14 June 2017

Austria, Slovenia and Italy





Just the name of a town in France that I hurtled past on a freeway.  This pix liberated from the interweb 'cos I couldn't stop to take my own



From staying in Karlsruhe for the night and discovering that breakfast was put on an hour later than advertised due to it being a public holiday, I drove to my home from home Sankt Johann in Tirol.  Originally I'd planned to stay for just 2 nights but on receiving an unrefuseable offer I ended up staying  Monday to Friday.  I rode the road race course x 1 and the TT course x 2.  This wood pile changes every year and every year I take a pix!



Friday morning early I shot off to Slovenia for the TT race there.  My start time was about 5:20 pm so there was plenty of time to find my apartment, find the  registration place, have a rest and return in time to warm up and finally race. I linked up with an old friend, Vida Ursic, which was nice but also handy for translations.  Finally at about 10pm , the presentations concluded and I got back home to bed.

On to Italy and in particular to Lancenigo a small town just north of Treviso (home of Pinarello), to our home for 4 weeks and where we've stayed for the past 2 years.  The apartment is nothing flash but is very economical and close enough to the railway station to allow us easy access to Treviso, Venice and points north as needed for my sister who doesn't drive.  For me there are flat straight roads, nearby hills and if I ever find it a velodrome that's not too far away.

grape vines and castles and the 1 nearby hill!


there's always a cow!

Sunday 11 June 2017

Finally stopping somewhere for more than a day or 2!

Since leaving Aus on 30th May I've driven ~3000 km, have raced 2 TTs, visited France, UK, France, Germany, Austria, Slovenia and am now finally in Italy! Enough with the travelling for a while!

Eventful moments..
**picking up the car at Paris airport..I couldn't find the meeting place and with typical lack of care the instructions given over the phone in heavily accented English were designed for a person who already knew where to go!!
When in doubt take a pix of the number plate 😃although since it's red which is 100% unusual it's not hard to lose.

**finding a petrol station.  The car comes with 10 litres of fuel so getting it filled up is a priority..the first garage had a queue that was so long I didn't realise it was the queue til I'd passed it!...oh shit..is there a strike or something?  I had to fill up or get stranded on the freeway..so I stopped at the next one and finally filled up nearly an hour later.

**crossing into England...notoriously early to absolutely everything I scored an even earlier crossing than planned and with the time difference finally reached Peterborough in time for breakfast! Check out the colour of the sky! Yessss!

**my sister and I got to visit our childhood home and see the interior modernisation and to tell the current owners about it's history and what had changed  (eg the removal of the servant's stairs!)


**TT  raced (slower than last year but still beat the younger age group) and this time with a support crew of 3..sister and 2 nieces it was time to return to Europe.

with Anne Staley, winner of the younger age group


**The London terrorist attack happened over night so as a precaution I set of much earlier than planned in case there were further issues/lockdowns.  I drove ~ 1000km that day to get to Karlsruhe where I propped for the night.  Interesting subterranean car parking:

On to Austria but now I have to ride my bike so more anon!