Burnaby velodrome challenge.

Last weekend, we travelled for eight hours to Vancouver BC, to compete at the indoor velodrome in Burnaby as our first official outing riding for Bike central. The racing was fast and furious. We had not been on the track since september, and it showed initially. The problem was compounded by the track being even steeper than Alpenrose, with an almost nonexistant apron. Luckily we got to practice riding it a little bit the night before the first day of racing. We both did well, I raced B and tied for second in the points race and in the snowball (placing third and fifth due to tiebreaking), got third in the elimination to scratch, got fifth in the sprints and missed the keirin final by the narrowest margin possible (it had to be decided by a photo finish). Amelia rode with the C men, and kept up with the field with very few exceptions.

The A field was ripping, with several Canadian riders putting on the finishing form touches for the world cup in L.A. this week.

The pose here is really something of a pun on a blog entry by another vegan rider, Dave Shishkoff, that had visited Burnaby, and that we got to know when he came back for this meet. For a picture of me, Amelia, and Steven setting up for our amazing team sprint, see Dave's blog entry about this meet. The bearded fellow featuring in some of the pictures is our wizard team mechanic and team organizer extraordinaire Dean.

That would be me in black and white at the head of the pack, in the points race. 

And I got a nice souvenir to bring home too! This is what happens when you slide from the top of the track down to the bottom, after a standing start where one does not dive down to gain speed. 

Christmas---yes!

Christmas finally rolled around! We got a week off, and presents. Such a sweet deal. As usual, vegan lucia cats were made, and hot chocolate drunk. 

Since we had some time to spare for the first time in months, we invited a bunch of people over for dinner. Little Amelia did henna tattoos on assorted people, and people played hoops in the street. 

Some bike projects got done too of course. Here the colnago gets respaced so that it can accept a nine speed drive train. This was a necessity for installing a powertap system. More about that some other time.