With most of the competitions over, the athletes village was relaxed by the time I got their. The only ones still left to go were the roadies, poor buggers. I went with them for some laps on their course... a tough loom lap in the centre of Melbourne. With some luck though I found someone with 2 tickets to the final night of the athletics. As an athlete I could get in for free, so Dad, Allan and I got to see a great nights action. Nick Willis won the 1500m for NZ (in the photo.. check out the 80,000 crowd!). he’s da man! The 4x 400m relays were awesome too.

Sunday I met up with Dave, Allan and Dad to watch the road race. It was around 30dC heat, so a tough job standing out on those climbs and yelling. Between the races Dave showed us some cool alleyways of the city. He seems to know the 'in' spots.. like the tiny crape cafe where we bumped into Bob, Karen and Mike (obviously very 'in' people as well ;), plus the ex Aussie DH/Trials champion, now singlespeeder/bike builder. Cruisy Singlespeeders certainly rule these parts, leaving roadies and lycra to show their stuff down StKilda and in the burbs. Just to show off, Dave took us down graffiti lane, a dirty little alley way right besides federation square that has been declared a 'tolerance zone', allowing graffiti artists to do their thing and the results were actually pretty cool.. check out some pics in the photo album.

The NZ team put on a great little get together on the last day in the backyard.. a chance to relax and honour our medallists. It was the worst performance for a long time, with only half the medals compared to Manchester. The Aussies had dominated even more then ever.. But, the important thing was that we competed and did our best.. yea right! Packing bikes and bags again, oh the joy. Am really looking forward to getting back to France and on with 'normal' life again!

But, of course home will have to wait one more week. I'm now in Curacao, in the Caribbean’s for World Cup #1. The typical flight delays resulted in a crummy hotel for the night in Miami, but that was the least of problems. Allan was stopped at the US boarder. He had had problems earlier when we worked for Trek, but thought it was all cleared up. Apparently they didn't even let him discuss his case and despite the fact he was only in US for transit, they wouldn't let him in.. so he's now back in Denmark.. poor bugger.  ¶ 12:16 AM