deutschlandsberg..southern austria

It's so far south that if you take a wrong turn on the road race, you end up in Slovenia.

Yesterday was another epic drive from Aachen to here: from rain to sunshine , from industrial to rural, justunder 9  hours with 99% on autobahns and about 35km in tunnels.

I was getting very bored and had resorted to talking to Doris, the on board  GPS thingey, when this van shot past me.... and straight away my incipient fatigue disappeared.  Luckily we got held up by road works  so I was able to take a pix of an epic punctuation fail

Somewhat later I came across this sign and knew I wasn't too far from D'berg.

It's (or should that be i'ts) been quite a few years since I've been here, but nothing has changed much, which is sorts nice.  There's quite a few faces I recognise and many more I don't, and the shops all seem to be the same.

Today's race was the 300m giggle sprint and although still cobwebbed from 2 days of non stop driving I managed 4th in the quals.... the finals are this evening  and  somehow I don't think I'll improve on that placing but I'm really happy with that for a  first up effort.