counting down the hours..

I can confirm that Canberra is a BUZZ (or ABUZZ) with anticipation for the triple crown.

I walked past a bunch of ladies, 3 in all, who looked as though they were in their late 50s today. They were all wearing different plastic crowns on their heads and when I asked the one with the most rubies what they were doing, she said they were spilling over and simply couldn't wait til the weekend to wear their supporter kit. Amazing! What a great bunch of 3 ladies in their late 50s.

Anyway, there are some updates re: the weekend's event. Firstly, there are prizes! My favourite bike store, Mal Adjusted, has offered a crate of useful-bike-bits (UBBs) to give away as prizes. Giving it a very brief moment of thought, I can imagine giving prizes to bikes with cardboard accouterments, very heavy bicycles, helmets pointing in the correct direction, saddles pointing in the wrong direction... and so on. I'd give prizes for anything that makes me stop and look, basically (and I like to keep things basic).

The second excellent piece of news is that we are adding a bit of a social element to the riding, in the form of recon laps of each course. It wont count for much on the Saturday pm circuit, but on the others there will time to really meet some people, and they'll be good since they like bikes enough to show up. It'll also help with navi for the main rides. I'm thinking of putting up corner markers on the longer courses, but wont be producing maps since there are too many turns to show properly. Anyway, I think it will work well.

Thirdly and not leastly, I'm chatting with some guys from COGS about getting some BBQ action on Saturday night. It'll be a nice precursor to what could be a pretty fantastic night out. The last time I went out drinking at a bike event I ended up talking to a dude from a Wisconsin bicycle manufacturer... it was a big whisky (ha! blogger tells me that is misspelled...) night and his beard was large.

I have no idea of numbers, though there are some people confirmed on teh fazeboox and some people here are also a bit excited... I could name names and say how fast some of those people are, but I wont. I WILL however confirm that the people that I have spoken to about builds for the event have reacted to the handicaps by aiming for big time bonuses by way of reducing tire width and gear numbers/freedom. I'm excited.