It’s been a few weeks since I last updated you all, so here’s what I’ve been up to recently.

With all the testing and medical dramas over for 2005 I was really looking forward to spending some time with our families over Christmas. Just before that I’d also become an uncle for the first time, and then a second time all within twenty-four hours as Sandra’s sister and sister-in-law gave birth to a boy and girl in the same ward the day after each other.

We spent Christmas in Adelaide with my mum and sister and spent a few days relaxing, although I did help cook Christmas lunch – on the bar-b-que! My responsibility was for turning the turkey, pork and spuds to make sure they didn’t burn!

After that Sandra and I took off for a few days. We flew up to Sydney first thing in the morning and were swimming at Bondi beach by about 9.30am. Despite living in Australia all my life I’ve never been there, so we thought we’d better check it out. For a city beach it’s not too bad and we were able to catch some waves for body surfing, although my eyes caught a bit more than that as the force of the waves kept pulling down Sandi’s top!

We caught up with some friends for lunch and dinner that day before heading up the coast to Port Macquarry. We hadn’t booked any accommodation in advance and being the peak tourist season everywhere was pretty full. But we managed to find a room at some little back yard hotel as it was either that or paying the earth for a deluxe suite at a top hotel where we were only going to be for eight hours!

From there we went up to Byron Bay for a few days to stay with some friends that we’ve haven’t seen for a while. Every day we went for a run along the beach and then stripped off and go for a swim for half an hour before going to get some breakfast somewhere. It was really relaxing and just to have a few days where we were able to totally switch off and forget about everything. Our only concern really was how wrinkled we’d get from the amount of time we spent in the water!

We stayed there for New Year’s Eve and had a lovely low-key evening at this great pizza place called The Earth and Sea, and would highly recommend the Banana and Prawn Beethoven pizza!

From there we went up to the Gold Coast, somewhere else I’ve never been in Oz. Sandi has been, and tried to talk me out of it, but I was adamant I wanted to go to check it out. However, I should have listened to her as it was just so crowded you couldn’t even swim as it was more a sea of people than a sea of water, and also so built up with concrete skyscrapers.

I was then itching to get back to Melbourne after lounging around for a week, as I needed to get my bike ready for a three day trials camp I was going on with some mates, at Glenmaggie. I packed up my swag and my bike and headed off, but as it turned out, there were was a bit of plague of snakes up there – and there are mainly venomous kinds in Australia! – so I ended up having to sleep in my sway in the back of my mate’s trailer! At the camp we had an ‘awards’ ceremony and I picked up two! One was Mr Clutch Control, for getting up some hard embankments, but the other was the Frilly Knickers award, for not attempting some of the really technical parts as, as we know, I couldn’t afford to hurt myself a week before a test!

I got back from there and was really looking forward to getting to Phillip Island for our four day test. It has felt great to be back on the bike now that I’m back at 95% fitness and can really ‘ride’, rather than just circulate, which is what I sort of had to do at the last test in Qatar. We had a really good test, working through a lot more development stuff and I also achieved a lap time of over two seconds faster than my best race lap time at Phillip Island last year.

Ciao Steve