CAIRNS WORLD CUP SUM UP

Tzadaam! Race is over and we have three happy winners. Matt Walker won the Juniors, Rachel Atherton women and Loic Bruni took his first ever World Cup win! Congratulations to everyone :)

Day was really beautiful and there was no sign of clouds or rain. Perfect conditions for racers, spectators and media to enjoy the race. Only one bad news was that the junior cup leader Finnley Iles couldn't compete as he broke his arm. Shiiaaat! He was totally flying on the course when doing practise runs.

Volunteers selling mosquito repellent and sunscreen

Fox stand presenting their forks

Sadly this rig was just hanging in the tent on race day  

My favorite athlete the Italian National Champion Veronika Widmann

I though I would take tons of photos during the race but then I realised that fuck, I want to see and enjoy the race so I just took few photos and rest of the time I was yelling like crazy and making noise with my bell and horn. That's the right world cup spirit right?!

Instagoodness

The race went well without any major crashes. Steve Smith got unlucky and his run was ruined by flat front tire. Still he crossed the finish line with a long wheelie. Stylish as always. The number one in qualifications Troy Brosnan seemed to take the win leading in every splits but the last 300 metres took it's toll and Troy ended up on second place just +0.493 seconds back from Bruni. The disappointment was tangible.

Vige Gaetan (10th Junior Men) making his way thru The Generator

Ruffin Thibaut (60th Men Elite) pedalling like crazy towards finish line

The sad man. But after the first expression he put a little smile on his face

And the happy man who took his first World Cup WIN!

If Bruni enjoyed his first win, this champ was celebrating her 28th win with a margin of 7 seconds before Tracey Hannah. She's unstoppable at the moment.

After the awards were over it was time to prepare for the Cairns nightlife. It was quite cool to have drinks with the buds like Brendan Fairclough. To sum this up the whole World Cup event was a really great experience and I will definitely remember it always! I still got some deconstruction tomorrow and a thank you BBQ offered by Mountainbike Australia.

 

And for everyone's information: THE WORLD CHAMPIONSHIPS ARE NEXT YEAR HERE IN CAIRNS SO BE HERE OR BE NOWHERE! IT'S GONNA BE BIG!

SEE YA IN 2017! 

CAIRNS DOWNHILL WORLD CUP PREPARATIONS

As I told you in previous post I was heading to Cairns for the UCI Downhill World Cup. You have probably seen my posts already in social media about the event and thats GOOD! I'm going to recap here shortly what I've been up to here.

I started working on Monday in construction team offering my absolute expertise in this field. We built few platforms for the TV crew on the XCO course. After we finished the platforms I saw one guy struggling to decide how to line the course so I gave a hand and did some lining as well. All the riders can now thank me of that gnarly lining before hell's gate! xD Next thing was to sit and relax. Working at the WC event ain't too stressful at least for the casual workforce.  Before the first day was done I put few signs on place at the finish gate, installed a grippy flooring at the DH start gate and set up the pallets to the ground at the bike wash corner. People were totally excited about the colours we put there. Few shades of green gives Aussies a little mental cutting edge against other nationalities. Time to call day done and open a beer. Cheers!

On Tuesday I was in broadcast crew. This was quite good exercise as our job was to pull loads of TV cable from the bottom of the hill to the TV cameras. Friday was also broadcasting. All the cables were on the hill so now we were taking the cameras on right spots.

Camera spot 6 to truck. We are on and rolling. Sweet!

Thursday was exciting day as I was one of the 41 course marshals. I started climbing towards my spot at 7:00am and because of the slight delay in practise I got my ass back to the event village at about 6:00pm. Quite long day but who cares. I was able to see all the pros practising their lines and for my surprise my marshal point showed to be quite interesting as who else than Duncan Philpott, Sven Martin and Tim Bardsley-Smith was keeping me company for several hours. It was so cool to chat with these sport photograph GURUS!! And as cherry on top of everything I also met the mountainbike legend Rod Warner! 

Morning on qualification day. Never get bored of these views here in Queensland.

Martin and Tim as snipers behind the net. Nice camouflage bros!

Claudio Caluori and Troy Brosnan doing their course preview

Massive huck before the Paw Paw's

Tomorrow is the Big Day as the racers are going to fly through the tropical jungle of Cairns here in Queensland Australia and settle who will be the winner of round 2. Lets hope we have a nice sunny weather and everything goes well.

PS. I have tomorrow off so I can concentrate on the race and shoot some photos and just fully enjoy the World Cup atmosphere! Stay tuned and remember to watch the Redbull live stream from redbulltv.com ! See ya laterz!

HAPPY 88th FARMDAY TO ME!!

Super stoked right now! Im so excited to inform that my hard time in Merbein is done and I have completed my 88 days at farms to be eligible to get my 2nd year visa to Australia! Woohoo! 8) The morning got a real kick start as my boss gave me a shot of moonshine to celebrate the day and said "Welcome to manhood" :D What a man!
Ok, my hard time isn't actually over coz I have a good job and I have to save some currency. Im planning to stay few more weeks until I head back north to Cairns for the downhill world cup event! Sweeeet!! So looking forward to it!

But lets take a quick look what's been going on.

After my holiday with my parents I came back to Merbein to earn some money and celebrate my 30th birthday! Ya man! People won’t believe that I turned 30. And I never believed that I would celebrate that day while travelling. I think I have never said this before so now its the time. Its never too late to travel and im glad I made my decision. This has been the most amazing thing I’ve done in my life. 

I think most of you really don't know how this stuff works here. Lets take a closer look what's happening. What is it like to do your hard time and earn your 88 days of rural work for the 2nd year visa? Not the simplest of questions but this is my point of view from where I have worked.

Between 3:30-7:30 depending of your job the alarm goes off and it's time to face another day in paradise. Now don't laugh when I say this but winter is coming and the temperature can be at +10C in the morning and that is FREEZING. I have never slept with clothes on but here I started wearing shorts and t-shirt so I wont wake up in the middle of the night shaking. Just one month back the situation was totally different. Temperature didn't go below +30C even during nights.

After quick brekkie and making my lunch (2 sandwiches with 1)tuna or 2)eggs) I jump to a van and driver drops us to work.

Then depending of your job, put your headphones on if doing pruning or picking some fruits or like me, jump to ATV/tractor and start messing around. Unlike in Finland there is no legal break after 2h of work and so on. Fuck those laws and rules. No one cares about those things here. Only thing you have to worry about is your work. My basic day is from 10-12h and usually I have one 10 to 20min break. Sometimes I eat my lunch while driving. Longest day I've done was 17h and after 3h of sleep another 12h shift. And forget about having weekends off. When the season is on, we work! During past 4 weeks I've had 3 days off and normal weekly hours are around from 75 to 80. Obviously at first that was like hell. It's +40C outside and the sun is trying to melt me. Normal water consumption has been around 5-7l per day. Pretty crazy aye?

Taking empty crates to grape pickers

My Malaysian fans. They are always super stoked when I speak some malay with them! I even got invitation to Borneo to climb the highest mountain Kota Kinabalu.

Anyway it is so weird how human can adapt to situations like this. Well not everyone, I have seen that. Some people cross their limits and just cracks and not always is that nice to see. I've been thinking how hard it was sometimes to survive the days back in Finland with coffee breaks and proper lunch break but here the times just flies and boom I notice that I have worked 5h without break. Also the 2 day weekend felt always waaaayyy too short to gain your energy back and feel ready for the next week at work. At the moment we have a situation and not all the grapes are ready to be picked so im having my second day off in a row now. Exceptional! And guess what? Feels like I haven't worked in ages. I've been able to do stuff or just do nothing. Actually yesterday I asked if I could help somewhere else because I didn't want to have second day off. Totally weird state of existence. This is also probably why im writing this new post at the moment hehe :D

Downsides of this lifestyle is some sort of lack in personal life. I don't have the energy to socialise every evening drinking beer and playing goon pong but lately it has been better as we start working few hours later. And I have set my mind to work hard and earn money so that hasn't bothered me too much. Some people have even declined to take certain job offers because of the long days and not being able to party after that. Also I haven't been eating the most healthy food coz sometimes I just haven't had the energy to cook. Easier to drop by Maccas or KFC after work and go to bed. But I think those times are gone now as season is going to end soon.

Playing beer pong with my Swedish bro Simon. We were on fire and won like at least 13,8 games!

Ok, now we have survived a day at farm and we can cross yet another day off from the calendar. But what happens after work? People gather around to garden, front porch or living room to watching tv/movies and enjoying the free time. Life in Merbein is really simple. There is one market with bottle shop, one pub, ATM and 2 takeaway "restaurants". We have a river which is the border between Victoria (where Merbein is) and New South Wales. I think everyone knows this river thing already :D Within 15min drive we got the rural city of Mildura. Funny thing, although it's so close to us we rarely go there. Well, at least I don't spend too much money to nonsense here :D

Sometime in the evening usually between 7 and 9 the job board for next day comes up and there you can see what time your pick up leaves and where you work. For me it's only the wake up time that interests me coz im one of the lucky guys (meaning working hard and not fucking things up) that work only for one farmer. Trusted dude I am!

That's pretty much it. Doing your required farm days is doing like hard time in jail but more fun! :D Anyway im so excited and looking forward to go somewhere else and start travelling again. After all as I said this place is quite dead. I'll tell you guys more when it's time to move. Cheers all!