A light breeze in Rotterdam..

I have just come to the end of my last proper week in Holland....and a joyous one it was.....rain, wind, grey sky...and did I mention rain! All this grey sky gets me down but at least I know I have a summer to come home to. I feel a little sorry for all the locals...this is probably as good as it is going to get for a good 9 months or so...yucky! I am craving some good Aussie sunshine and some golden sand to lay myself on :) Only 9 days of racing to go.....

Yesterday we had the penultimate World Cup of the season in Rotterdam. After a week of rain and wind I thought I would be prepared for anything the weather had to throw at us...but alas no...we awoke to gale force winds and driving rain. Luckily by the time the race started at 1pm the rain had slowed to a drizzle but the wind was going to be a major factor. After 20km or so we turned into the cross wind, I was desparate enough to be 3rd wheel at this point and the bunch split to pieces. Initially there were 16 of us....the Bates family was well represented with little and big Bates there and I had 2 other team mates. Being a bit of a lightweight I tend to suffer big time in the cross winds and on one occasion I just couldn't hold the wheel in front, but luckily I dragged my assie back on. Lucky because at this point we were approximately half-way through the 130km lap...it would have been a very sad day all on my lonesome. Anyway....9 other girls joined us and our group of 25 grovelled through the wind to the finish. Unfortunately I just couldn't hold on when the pace picked up with 10km to go...but my team-mate Kirsten was 3rd and I was happy to be up the front all day and get a bloody good training day in.

Now I am at "home" for my last day for a month...I need to pack for 2 tours, a world cup race, the world championships and a holiday in Croatia with my mum....see if I can get all of that into one bag! The last thing to do is to download some podcasts onto the I-pod...Merrick and Rosso have been getting a lot of airtime and keeping me in touch with some good Aussie humour. You get to this time of the season and having being surrounded by non-native English speakers I find that my vocabulary as become quite atrocious...Katie pointed out to me the other day that within a 10 min period I had said to her "you know the thingy, with the bit that goes like this...(insert hand gesture here)"....at least 5 times. I need my SMH crossword....