Something from nothing.

Waking up to the sound of heavy rain on the roof this morning was lovely, till I realized I was supposed to be heading out for a ride. The effects if staying up till 1.30am to watch last night's stage of the Giro hit home when I put my feet on the floor and headed for the bathroom to get dressed. Surprisingly I wasn't looking for excuses to hop back in to bed, if I could just organize myself a coffee I would be right, even if only to drive to Lancefield for another one with the rest of the crew, and watch the rain for a bit while we deliberated if we were made of the right stuff.

The rain had stopped by the time I got there so I pulled the bike off the ute and got myself sorted. By the time I was ready, eleven of us were all good to go. No sooner had I shut the door to the ute, the rain started coming down again, quite steadily. We all scrambled for the shelter of the veranda of one of the local business' and waited for a bit till it eased off and a couple of the lads hit the road, decision made.

It was great to see Trivess back from his honeymoon, how could we not ride when he and Aiden had come all the way up from Melbourne.

What a great ride, yeh, we got a little wet, but only a little. There was lots of thunder, but I love that and it wasn't cold. The smell of eucalypt was strong and the conversation was as good as ever.

It was great to catch up with all the ride chat, we were all busy doing various rides last weekend and going over the 400 from the perspective of the other guys who were on it was nice, we hadn't much of a chance to talk about it during the week.

It was funny to see, as Leo punctured a tyre, he was almost knocked to the ground in the rush to see who would fix it for him, in the end it was about four of us that took on the various stages, wheel off, tyre off, tube out..... It's much easier to be the one who punctures on a Lairs ride, you get to do the least.

We only did a bit over 35k, at a very easy pace, yep, a really nice ride.

I snapped the photo of John on our way up to Hopetoun last year, I wonder how he's going in Italy. One week of riding done, six to go. Lucky bugger.

Steve.