Another Happy Apollo Customer...... My Old Man

After 4 years of persistant nagging my old man to get a new bike last week he funally caved in to the pressure and bought himself a "Top of The Line" Apollo Arctec.
It has been at leat 7 years since he last bought himself a bike, his Gios a90, which had become a bit of a frankenstein with many DIY repars throughout its life, was in desperate need for replacement.

With his next bike probably needing a similar lifespan, he wanted something a bit special, with some "wow factor", and equiped with Sram red, and top shelf Easton components, as well as having an integrated seatpost neat cable routing and an impressive carbon weave on the tubing/forks the Arctec was just the bike.

Like a kid at his first christmas, Dad went straight to the shed to start the build when we got home from picking it up and proceeded to assemble it at an incredibly slow rate. Not due to difficulty but due to the time spent starring/admiring the craftmanship and attention to detail, and maybe a little due to our limited experience in assembling bikes from scratch.

"Arctec Frame Ready to be Built Up"


It was decided that the local sunday morning ride would be its maiden voyage, and to make the shock of him actually buying himself a new bike greater, 50mm carbon tubs would be used.

"The Finished Product"




With the special attention the new toy was getting, our dog Tess was feeling left out and insited that she would be in all the remaining photo's

"Tess Checking out the carbon seat rails"


"Tess checkinh out the Internal Brake Cable"


"Tess Checking out the Carbon Forks"


"Tess Tired From all the excitement"

Tour of Wellington Summary

2:30am... alarm, it was time to get up and get ready for the drive to the airport for our early flight to welliington via Sydney, picking up Chris, Grover, and Trent on the way. Sam and pete had made their own way to the airport and met up with us at check in where luckily none of us were stung with excess baggage fees. Un beknown to me that is where my luck would end.

As this was my first international trip, and subsequently first time thorugh airport customs, I found out that 80ml of chamois creame in a 150ml container is unable to be taken in carry on luggage, which could have been a real pain in the arse. However customs officers allowed me to buy a smaller container and then continue to scoop the creame out with my fingers into the new container.

Once in wellington my luck didnt improve. stage 1 which started with an uneventfull 15km neutral followed by an 8km Cat 1 KOM started with with a bang, Breaking a spoke 500m after the race was underway, couple this with a botched wheelchange courtesy of neutral spares as well as realising 200m down the road that neutral spares had driven off with my broken wheel still at the road side, and 124km of chasing followed.

Stage 2 was also a hilly stage with several categorized climbs and wasnt the sort of course where one could have an easy recovery day. As a result during stage 3 I ran out of gas with 30km to go and withdrew from the race.

The morning before stage 4 I went for a short ride just to spin the legs over and took some photo's of the scenery surrounding Masterton.

"River Floodplain outside Masterton"



I then spent stage 4 in the team car and at the feed zone handing the rest of the Apollo boys drinks as they did laps of the 30km circuit, with Chris in the break and the rest of the boys sitting comfortably in the main field. Afterwards Muz and Jo Decided that a drive around to some of the local wineries for some taste testing was in order, so trent and I taged along. On our way home from the wineries we took a detour out to a near by gourge where we took in the scenery before calling it a day.






Stage 5 saw the only real taste of NZ weather and resulted in the GC being neutralized leaving a the brave (or stupid)few ride the final crit on painted busslanes soaked with oil and water.

And then it was time for the trip home, and after 4 hour of flying we saw a familiar site out the window of the plane.

"Western Port Bay/French Island"


Then only minutes later, it was time to land in Melbourne Airport

"Planes Shadow on Approach to Airport"


"Getting Closer"


And that was The Tour of Wellington