Its still a summer tour right?

This is an excellent question… Not surprisingly, there are two key elements required when you decide to conduct a Dirty Northern Hemisphere Summer Tour:

1. The Northern Hemisphere
2. Summer

As such, post Canada, my current location may come across as mildly incongruent with the above, yes, I’m in the Marlborough sounds, New Zealand:

Still can’t see the chairlift

Yes, if you want to disorientate yourself to fuck and experience what its like to be part of the witness protection programme, I can highly recommend the following itinerary, done across 2 or 3 days, depending on how you account for massive time zone variation:

Vancouver>Hong Kong>Singapore>Christchurch>Wellington>Picton>Sounds

4 flights and 2 ferry rides later and I have no idea what time it is… And feel jet lagged beyond reason. Clearly I am not much of a fisherman, so the original plan was to ride the Queen Charlotte trail, I read on a toilet wall it was a hot ride, so thought I would scope it out. Alas, logistics, weather and feeling like a turd duvet (or a doona for the Aussie readership) has torpedoed that plan, so first ride down here will have to stay on ice (literally) until Monday.

In the mean time, something significantly more exciting and notable – This week has seen the drop of two new versions of arguably the biggest DH bikes on the market. Yes, a new Specialized Demo carbon and a new Santa Cruz V10 carbon. Whilst both are devil wheel shod, this is like having christmas and a lap dance from Mrs Claus all in one week for the DH world. Its a marketing melt down on all fronts:

A new salvo of ‘I WANT’ being loaded into the rocket launcher

What’s even better, we get to see who the new BOSS is this weekend when both bikes are debuted at the latest round of the World Cup, in a tantalising head to head knife fight, both under form riders on a seriously bad ass course in Monte Sainte Anne. Scramble to Red Bull TV to see them in action, then begin the thought process about how you can organise getting yet another hot new piece of kit you probably don’t really need…

Now, I have been doing my best to not encourage XC nerdery here, its a disease that you need to make sure doesn’t spread too much, so talking about it helps no one – Especially those infected with it. BUT, its not every day a kiwi walks away with a gold medal, so massive kudos to Anton, putting his new Cannondale Flash to reasonable use in Scotland. I’m not sure if Mr Bolt was referring to the mens MTB field when he made his recent comments on the Commonwealth games, but doing in the world #3 not an effort to be sneezed at:

Covering all bases we thought it best to send Big Ted and Little Ted to the games

I’m going to get back to the all important task of flushing the last remaining vestiges of form and fitness down the drain aided by epic NZ food, perfect timing ahead of some upcoming races… Stay tuned for some weird winter riding action.