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