Tour de Nez TT

Yesterday myself and fellow team-mates Matt Chappell and Ramsey Etchinson, raced the Tour de Nez individual TT which was open to the public after the pro TT event was finished. The Tour organizers held this special event as a talent search for rising stars. Well on the day the only stars were the 8 athletes that showed up. Matt, whom we could tell was fired up for the race, took line honors for the 4 mile hill climb time trial in a time of 11:03:84 with myself taking 2nd spot in 11:04:78 and Ramsey squeezed in to take 6th place in a time of 12:06:89. After the event we took a look at top pro athlete who was Ian McKissick from BMC who's time was set at 08:30:59 and the last pro was Chuck Koyle of SUC who's time was set at 13:46:91. So in hindsight I think we all did pretty well.

Being a hill climb TT we all decided to use a standard road set up with a few tweaks. As you might be able to tell by the picture above. I rode the Team's Scott Addict Team issue with a Zipp 606 wheelset (404 front, 808 rear). In hindsight I think perhaps a set of 303's would have been better had I known the course was that steep.

It was a lung buster and we are all very stoked that Matt churned out such a great race.

"Great Job Matt!"

Landing the 747-400

Sitting in the observers seat, First Officer, Stuart Walker shot this video of me landing the 744 at Chep Lak Kok (Hong Kong International) on June 16th. The conditions during arrival were tricky with a lot of weather avoidance manouevres but the final approach phase was calm and smooth. We had a clearance to roll through to the end of the runway so we never used reverse thrust to slow down and shorten the landing roll. For the landing we used FLAP30 and the speed was set to VREF30+5 ,which is standard for those conditions, which gave us an approach speed of 153knots.

Summer

Summer is here. The past week has seen the temps going up and the sun shining a lot warmer than the past few weeks. Early summer has been one of the best I have ever had. Lots of early Spring racing in the Central Valley with teammates from CWC Racing and some epic training with friend Dan Hugo from South Africa. Dan and girlfriend Ruth traveled from Stellenbosch, South Africa so Dan could compete in the Xterra USA series. They arrived bright eyed and bushy tailed and that's the way it stayed. It was such a pleasure having them stay with us that we hope they return soon so Dan can complete the series and Ruth can complete her studies with "Patrick". For more stories and to follow their progress visit www.dghugo.com and subscribe to Dan's blog for some great reading.