Congratulations

Congratulations to Clint and Kylie who finally got engaged yesterday.

Helmets and cycling on the Gold Coast

Today I headed down the coast to see Clint and Kylie. They're staying at Burleigh for a few days so I went down with Gabriel to see them. We decided to walk to the takeaway for lunch and it was then that I noticed that the proportion of cyclists wearing helmets was very small indeed. In Brisbane, I would estimate that over 98% of all the cyclists I see wear helmets. It's so common that someone not wearing a helmet really sticks out. The people I saw didn't just seem like random tourists that weren't wearing them; as far as I could tell, these were regular coasties. We would have seen around 40-50 cyclist and I would estimate less than 10 were wearing helmets.

So that was a interesting diversion, but when we got to the shops things got even more interesting. Whilst I was looking after GT on a bench on the street, I heard a loud bang and looked up. A car had just pulled out of a parallel park and smashed into a roadie heading in the same direction, right in front of us. She was moving on the ground, but didn't look in great shape. Straight away a number of people ran over to her and the calls to 000 started. (As much as being a concerned citizen matters, if you are at an accident scene and you see others on their phones, it's a good bet that they're calling 000. Go over and find out. For this accident 3 people called so they had to call back 2 ambulances who may have been better served on other emergencies).

Clint ran over to her to see if she needed help. All she wanted to do was ring her boyfriend to tell him what had happened. Clint oblidged with his phone and then kept talking to the bf to keep him informed about what was happening.

The guy who was driving the car was pretty shaken up and his mother was in the car and she needed to be helped away, as the shock of her son smashing into a cyclist was a bit much for her. To the guy's credit he stuck around (not that he could have gotten far, it was a very busy area and a number of people took his license plate down) especially considering the size of her boyfriend when he turned up.

We stuck around till she got put into the Ambulance and the bf thanked Clint for all his help. From what Clint could ascertain, the car had pulled over and was in the start of a U turn when he smashed into her. She hit the side mirror (not sure about the rest of the car) and came down heavily. A number of fingers were pointing in the wrong direction her elbow was damaged and her leg was broken.

I'm sure the fact she was wearing a helmet helped her avoid any head damage, a point sadly lost to the people at the start of my post.

24 Solo

A DVD I finally got hold of for Christmas is 24 Solo. It's the story of last year's 24hr solo world championships in which Chris Eatough was attempting to make it 7 straight titles. In his way was Craig Gordon, an Aussie with very little sponsorship who actually has a 9-5 job he has to hold down while he trains for these races, unlike Eatough, who is fully sponsored. A couple of news articles will give you the flavour of what occurred.

From Velonews

Chris Eatough's attempt to secure his seventh straight victory at the 24 Hours of Adrenalin Solo World Championships ran into an impassable roadblock Sunday morning - Australian Craig Gordon. Gordon, a 34-year-old former World Cup cross-country rider, hails from Sydney, Australia.

After riding wheel-to-wheel at a blistering pace, Eatough and Gordon lapped the field after only eight hours. But as night fell, Gordon (Cannondale) gradually rode away into the dark, adding two minutes, three minutes, five minutes, and once even ten minutes per lap over the 31-year old Eatough (Trek-Volkswagen).

With the Eatough eventually slowed by an upset stomach and blurred vision in one eye, Gordon upped his pace, maintaining 44- to 47-minute laps on the relentlessly bumpy eight-mile loop, site of the inaugural Olympic cross-country race in 1996.

Gordon also managed to outmatch Eatough in the team pit areas - the Aussie would often times run his bike through the pit areas as his mechanics lubed his chain and handed him water bottles. When dawn broke on Sunday, September 8, Eatough was a full lap-and-a half down on Gordon.

Also from Velonews

Rhabdomyolysis

A common disorder which may result from a large variety of diseases, trauma, or toxic insults to skeletal muscle. It may be defined as a clinical and biochemical syndrome resulting from an injury which damages the integrity of the sarcolemma of skeletal muscle, leading to the release of potentially toxic muscle cell components into the circulation.(1,2,3) This may result in potential life-threatening complications including myoglobinuric acute renal failure, hyperkalaemia and cardiac arrest, disseminated intravascular coagulation, and more locally, compartment syndrome.

Craig Gordon pedaled his bike so hard this past weekend that he nearly rode himself to death.

More than a slight cramp: Gordon did some damage

The Aussie pushed his body to the extreme limits of physical exhaustion to capture the 2006 24 Hours of Adrenaline solo world championships, held in Conyers, Georgia. In doing so, Gordon sent his body into the depths of rhabdomyolysis.

Now, I'm no doctor, but after reading the above definition, I have to assume that rhabdomywhateveritis can't be good. In simple terms, Gordon's bloodstream was so full of junk given off from his shattered muscles that he was close to poisoning his kidneys.

That is some serious riding. When you push yourself to almost dying, it's gotta say something about your commitment. Now having watched the movie, here's my review.

The movie is basically about Chris, how he prepares and his relationship with his team manager John Posner. John is someone who wears his heart on his sleeve, so he makes for great viewing, especially near the end where they are losing the race.

The cinematography is great and they get a lot of great footage. For the race itself they had fixed cameras, boom cameras, cameras on a flying fox, a guy riding around with a helmet cam during the race and even a night vision camera. With all these angles and options, this is about as exciting as a 24hr race will ever get. It's not really a sport for spectators, but the producers have managed to put together a great sequence, especially on the back of a great original score.

Chris's dominance of the sport can be likened to Lance Armstrong, and during the interviews of his competitors, they say as much. Pretty much they turn up and all fight for second. Except for one Aussie....

Due to the fact that no-one knew who Craig Gordon was before this race, the producers didn't bother interviewing him before the race. All of the footage of him you see was in his hospital bed after the race. They also don't really get a lot of information out of Craig, so it's a bit lacking in what he was going through during the race, and how he prepared etc.

Ignoring those small quibbles, the movie is fantastic. And that's not just an enthusiast talking: The few other non cyclists I have shown it to really thought it was very well done. If you get the chance, watch it. You won't be disappointed.

Streaming direct from America

I noticed an odd thing the other day on Channel 10 regarding the premiere of new and upcoming shows.

First some background: As most Australians realise, we get overseas shows much later than when they actually premiere in the US or wherever they originate. However, with the interweb, people in Australia find out what has happened on their favourite show, but can't actually watch it. That was until BitTorrent came along. BitTorrent is a technology that allows large files to be downloaded quickly, in a distributed way. Thus, people in the US would tape the shows on their TV's and put them online for others to view. This practise is rife in Australia, and it's not hard to see why. People know the show has come out, and feel they shouldn't have to wait 6 months or a year to view it. This has also allowed people in Oz to view shows that would probably never make it here.

I don't have any figures, but I imagine that a large proportion of the digital natives watch TV this way. This must be impacting on the total number of viewers for a series here, which would hurt the networks ad revenue. I always assumed that they would never keep up and continue on their old style media ways, but it would seem that they have learnt.

The current Channel 10 ads for House and a new show "Life" both have an ad saying that they are being "streamed direct from the US" "Watch them just after people in the US do". Also the graphics for the ad have a download progress bar as if it is being retrieved a'la BitTorrent. Now they don't explicitly say that this is because of the BT phenomena, but it seems obvious to me.

I'm actually quite pleased with the situation, as people that may have been uneasy to download the shows, can now watch them at virtually the same time. Well done to the mainstream networks for finally catching up to the rest of the world.

Hello

Cryptic explanation here.

Unfortunate

A seemingly inappropriate ad on yahoo news this morning, given the subject matter.

It's the dirt they don't like

I have often wondered why it is that the Australian government won't apologise for the Stolen Generation. I have always thought it must have to do with not admitting responsibility for the actions of previous government and thus leaving themselves open to litigation. Or why they don't want to apologise for the stuff-up of AWB or the Iraq War, or admit to any meddling in the Haneef case.

Perhaps it's the Howard government taking the lead of the Republicans in America where they don't admit to anything, no matter how blatant it is.

Finally the cat it out of the bag, and it's really not that conspiratorial. They just don't like the taste of dirt.

Dr Haneef's lawyer, Peter Russo, said the government owed Haneef an apology and signalled there might be legal action over damage to his reputation.

But Mr Downer said the Commonwealth Director of Public Prosecutions and the Australian Federal Police had said all they wanted to say about the matter.

"What do you expect them to do - fall on the ground and grovel, eat dirt? I mean, get real," he told reporters at Sydney airport.

See, obviously when you apologise, you don't vocalise the word "Sorry", that would be for the common, normal people. None of this nancy-boy "I'm sorry for meddling in the affairs of the AFP for political gain". No, proper apologies involve grovelling and eating dirt, cause let's face it, the last time someone apologised to me, they grabbed a handful of A-grade topsoil and munched away till it made them sick. It was obviously the only form of apology I will accept as Mr Downer rightly notes.

You wouldn't apologise either if that's what you had to do. It's all very reasonable and not at all over the top to deflect the question, if you think about it...