With my ride diary showing a weekly average under a 100 km for the last three months due to a combination of holidays and ill-health the prospect of three weeks off the bike larding it up on a work trip was frightening enough to get me googling bike rental opportunities across the United States. My first stop was in Austin so the obvious choice was Lance’s own bike shop Mellow Johnny’s. A bit of research on their website brought good and bad news. They did rent out road bikes and they had a group ride going from the shop on Sunday mornings. Perfect so far but the snag was the shop would close on Saturday before I arrived and not re-open on Sunday til well after the bunch had departed.

My first email to the shop got lost in the ether but I got a quick response to a follow-up to someone called Stephanie, but it was a hand-ball to send my query to someone else. Nine days slipped by without a reply to my third email, so I sent a fourth, once again to Stephanie, who had responded so promptly before. This had the desired effect of producing an email from the bike-hire guy, who ignored my main question about whether or not I could pick a bike up on the Sunday morning and sensibly enough asked what size bike I needed. I replied with the details and reiterated my main concern.

Three days later I got an email from Stephanie asking if the bike had been sorted out. I replied with slightly false confidence that it all seemed to be under control. Another three days passed and my confidence cracked like an Aussie riding in the Alps, so I sent another quick email to the hire guy that assumed everything was good and asked what time I should turn up to give them enough time to set me up for the ride.

As luck would have it I was prevented by various mishaps from checking my email after leaving work on Thursday to get ready to fly out Friday, and didn’t get back online properly until Sunday evening in Austin. This turned out to be fortuitous, because had I read the bike hire guy’s response to my last email I would probably not have bothered heading down there this morning. He had finally addressed my key question, and the reply was both frustrating and disappointing, because he had ignored the fact that I had already worked out I couldn’t pick the bike up on Saturday and suggested I come in that evening when the shop was open.

So I arrived in Austin with my colleague on Saturday evening after a layover in Sydney followed by fourteen sleep-deprived hours taking in four movies to L.A., where we waited three hours for our two-and-a-half hour onward flight. Despite nodding off for a bit on the last leg I was pretty frazzled by the time I went to bed that night. I was however still convinced that a good  work-out on the bike would be almost as good as a Bloody Mary as an aid to resetting the body clock, so despite the lack of a definitive reply from Mellow Johnny’s I set my alarm for 7.00 am, with the intention of being at the shop by 8.00 am.

Things seemed to take a long time in the morning as my addled brain dithered from one half-completed task to the next. I managed to be out of the hotel before 7.50 am but the walk to the shop was longer than I had anticipated, so it was a little after 8.00 am by the time I arrived. There were three or four guys sitting on the verandah at Juan Pelota’s cafè, which though attached to the shop opens two hours earlier on a Sunday. I hopefully asked if any of them was from the shop and felt the first crack in my facade of optimism when the common reply came back negative.

The shop itself was dark so I ventured into the cafè where the barrista was no wiser than his al fresco customers. Things were not looking good. I ordered a coffee which in recognition of my plight came on the house, giving me a good opportunity to practise being a happier tipper than I am by nature. I sat at a table and felt my sad face coming on, as I cursed the bike-hire guy to myself. Not only would I miss the ride but I could tell already I was going to be too grumpy about it to come back later for a proper look at the shop and some souvenir hunting.

Outside the number of waiting cyclists was growing. Some of them looked a bit serious and I used this to try to console myself with self-doubt: “What am I thinking? This is the Boss’s shop. No doubt he has a hard-core crew. They call this the mellow ride, but they confess this is in jest and in fact it’s their least mellow ride. There was a cancer fund-raiser on at our hotel last night, so the man is probably in town and will be down here personally to make sure we don’t go under 40 mph…”. Between these thoughts I tried to imagine each arrival was the bike-hire guy. Many of them gave me fleeting hope by sporting shop kit, but none had the looks to match the non-anglo name I’d been emailing, and none responded to my forlorn yet hopeful looks.

A while after I’d long since decided it was too late anyway even if he turned up, the barrista quietly told me they were sorting something out. It seems someone else from the shop had arrived for the ride and he’d apprised him of my dilemma. Time seemed of the essence, as it must have already been close to the 8.30 kick-off, so I hastily dashed to the back of the shop to change into my C.C.Coglioni finery. Back in the shop a Trek bike was being readied by a guy called Robbie.

Things were looking good again as I hopped on to check the seat height, but pedals soon became a problem. No my old Look cleats won’t fit Shimano SPD-R pedals. Keos? I don’t think so but let’s give it a bash. Nope. Starting to feel bad again. Robbie had used his gravitas to delay the start of the ride, but it was fast looking like they would have to go without me as it became apparent that bog-standard Look pedals had already became archaic, in Austin at least. I suggested swapping the cleats but Robbie dismissed that as too time-consuming before disappearing into the basement. He was gone for a while and I began to think he’d abandoned me to the wrath of the put off peloton when he emerged with another bike in hand, and lo it was cranked by a pair of classic Looks.

At last I was out on the road offering a feeble apology for holding everyone up to anyone who would listen. I wanted to explain how many emails I’d sent trying to organise things, but felt it best to keep a low profile and hope not to hold things up any further in any way. Accordingly there was no thought or stopping when I realised my saddle was way too low, and my steerer was angled a good five degrees east of true.

We started off skirting the CBD and headed through leafy urban suburban east Austin before crossing Ladybird (formerly Town) Lake and going south through Pleasant Valley and out past the airport. It was flat at first but became a little more undulating as we got further from the city. The pace was fairly easy and there were enough people that didn’t look Lance-core that I no longer feared being spat out the back on the first pinch. On the other hand I immediately felt the benefit of riding with a local bunch, as the maze of highways we negotiated would have been far too much to deal with on a solo ride.

Having delayed the start I felt inclined to retreat into my taciturn self and focus on staying out of trouble, but before long someone rode up beside me and started to chat. It took only a few questions to establish that as luck would have it not only was Mike Australian, but was also from Perth. Further interrogation revealed that he was a Santos employee on assignment in Houston. We chatted a bit and ended up on the front together when we stopped at a set of lights. The pace had lifted a bit by now and so we took off briskly when the lights changed, inadvertantly causing a split at the back. I had my just desserts though as a few minutes on the front into the breeze at a good pace had the heat and the jet-lag nagging at me to drop off.

Nestled back in the bunch I tried to keep cool and hydrated while I wondered where in Texas we were headed. I knew there were some hills around Austin but despite the undulations we didn’t seem to be heading towards anything seriously lumpy. Then we suddenly hit a pinch that those in-the-know were prepared for as waves of riders flew past from the back to get some momentum and dish out some pain to the unwary. I was boxed in and by the time I was able to swing out there was a significant gap to those who’d escaped up the road. Once over the top I regrouped with some others who’d been caught out and we started to drag ourselves back through the shattered peloton.

Fortunately these shenanigans presaged a pit-stop at Elroy Country Corner, as the extra effort had my head burning, and tiredness was limiting my ability to dig deep. The local riders recommended the Mexican Coke as having even more sugar than the American product. I guess I should have given it a try but in my delirium decided to stick with the devil I knew. Nevertheless I went back for a Snickers bar to ward off the bonk. Back on the road the pace was lifted by the tailwind and the need to chase down a trio of escapees.

I did my bit but once again struggled to keep it going after a hard effort and started yo-yoing off the back of the leading bunch. Between a set of traffic lights and the odd passing rider I found enough help to stay in touch til the Austin skyline came into view and I found my second wind before the pace eased as we rolled back in the way we’d come out. We’d done 56 km in well under two hours on the bike, and though the overall average wasn’t that high (about 31 km/hr with the pit-stop factored out, but other stoppages included) there were long sections up around 40 km/hr.

Back in the store I did a little browsing and souvenir shopping, then got myself some lunch at the cafè. In the end a mighty fine morning in Austin.

Post-script: The bike-hire guy was in the store when I returned and though I avoided him then I did email him a summary of my morning later, if only to reiterate my thanks to the guys who saved my day. The local motto here is “keep Austin weird”. A bar had a band playing that night called Landis Armstrong, but sadly fatigue won the day and I did not get to find out just how weird they are.

The following fine report is from Gaz, and keeping it all in the family the excellent pictures are courtesy of Mrs Gaz. I can only add that it was a privilege to ride with you guys, particularly as we collectively laughed at the wind on the run in, keeping the pace high and the team together. We beat our best accepted official time on the course (2009’s 2:28:31) by more than nine minutes and our informal 2008 time of 2:27:15 by more than eight. Better still, we even beat our misbegotten official time of 2:19:35 from 2008.

A stunning day greeted us all for the Pinjarra stage of this year’s Sportif calendar. As with every morning since the start of Le Tour, the alarm went off way too early, but after a big bowl of muesli and yoghurt it was time to hit the road. First a quick stop to get Paddles and then the time flew by as we motored down the Kwinana freeway, with Ton (Mrs Gaz) and Paddles reminiscing about their respective times in Kalgoorlie. Talk about five degrees of separation!

The first important stop in Pinjarra was the bakery. We turned into its car park full of utes with ‘roo bars, spotlights and gun-toting locals with nary a front tooth in sight. Not really a place to be for those with lycra on their mind so we hot-footed it inside. Yum! Lots of luscious looking cream delights, pastries and pies, but Ton gently reminded me that an apple turnover probably wouldn’t last the distance up the first hill, so I took her advice and only just threatened to give it a hiding.

At the racecourse car park the usual round of pre-race Coglioni phone calls began, like “have you seen so-and-so, I need a jersey” and “where the hell are you guys parked? Where? I can’t see you! Oh, there – that’s you guys 10 metres in front of me?” True to form Stuey rolled in with minutes to spare and promptly decamped to the bog leaving both teams nervous as Bif had stowed his bag in his car not knowing if he still needed access to its contents. Finally all the troops were rounded up and both teams were ready to roll.

The start/finish line posed a small safety issue of a slight rise in the bitumen but seriously, who was that going to bother? No one, or so most of us thought. The talk in Uno was to go out gradually and not cook ourselves before the climbs up to Dwellingup, but a decent tailwind enabled us to set an average of 38.6km/h after 12km. We then hit the climbs and by the 25km mark we had slowed to an average of 28km/h. Sadly, we had also lost Babel who wasn’t feeling too well. He soldiered up to the near the crest but unfortunately had to pull the pin in the interests of health. Bif had been whining about an impending illness before the start so no doubt he had resorted to some black magic from O’Dirty’s bag of tricks to transfer the ailment to his hapless teammate.

Everybody took turns on the front up the hills into Dwellingup and a solid team effort was well underway. The two grasshoppers, The Doctor and Boab, were climbing like Contador and Schleck while Bif didn’t bother either breaking a sweat or getting off the big chain ring. As the heftier team member I did my bit by blocking out the wind while Spunker did his best Mathew Flinders impersonation, circumnavigating the group to regularly monitor our progress. The blue Due boys came into sight every now and then before disappearing round a corner or over a crest, so it was great to have something to chase. But the catch would have to wait.

As we approached Dwellingup we saw some road-side random taking photos of us. (For the purposes of this report, I will refer to her as the Hot Chick.) At this point only I knew who it was (my wife, Ton) but it didn’t stop the rest of the guys smiling and waving! When she yelled out “go, Coglioni!” I think half the blokes thought wow, we have a cheer squad! Someone muttered, “Who was that random??”

The section from Dwellingup to the turnaround point saw us zooming down some decent descents and cranking it up the climbs. Overall, the pace remained quick and everyone was feeling comfy, although the road surface in one particular section did its best to throw us out of our saddles. Some of us may have thought we were in the Paris-Roubaix. In hindsight, I’m surprised that Boab’s dentures didn’t take flight! We caught the Due lads at the top of a climb and nearly took on a refugee when Jack from the blue shirts asked if he could hook on. Being a first timer and unaware of the rules, we had to politely decline his request and send him back to the pack.

The turnaround point gave us all an opportunity to take on some water and gel shots. The Doctor had been crowing at the start about a tip he’d picked up from O’Dirty whereby gel shots are stashed under the leg grippers of one’s shorts. It did look like he meant business, but one too many flexes of those famous thighs had weakened the packaging so much that when he went to retrieve a shot the contents exploded down his leg. This left a sticky white residue that was the subject of many amusing comments too ribald to repeat on a family-oriented website such as this. Bif obviously thought this was a good look and proceeded to pour half his gel down his leg, but did not manage to achieve the same “I really get off on cycling” effect. Meanwhile Spunker had learned from past experience and was careful not to allow his chocolate flavoured gel to run down the back of his knicks, avoiding the impression that he had, how do you say, shit himself. Not good to draft behind.

Up and down we merrily went, and then it was time to attack the longish climb back into Dwellingup. We each did our bit on the front and our reward was a zippy descent into town. But, aaagghh! We were brought to an abrupt halt at the T-intersection by a long line of cars that were given right of way by the lollipop man. Once we re-started we went past the Hot Chick again who took more photos of us. I tried to suck my guts in but that effort almost made me black out, so I let it all hang out as we zoomed past the Nikon lens. After the long drag out of town, we finally got our ultimate reward with the juicy downhill to the flat. On the descent, Spunker and I decided it would be best if the biggest windbreakers sat on the front to protect the grasshoppers such as Bif, Boab and The Doctor. I managed not to break wind in the smelly sense, but kept the drag down for the guys behind me.

As we hit the flat Spunker did a quick welfare check and we were all feeling okay. The Doctor was not enjoying the flat bits so much as the hilly bits so he sat off the back for a while Spunker called for the rest of us to spend “a little longer” on the front. Boab took this to heart and did his best Chris Anker Sørensen impersonation and promptly shelled himself out the back for a couple of turns to stay strong for the final assault on the finish line (which Boab took literally). Despite all this we managed to stay on around 38km/h into the bugger of a cross/head wind. Hot Chick made another appearance and seemed to be taking photos from behind, and I reckon The Doctor was thinking how glad he was that he shaved that morning.

We hammered into town and the finish line was quickly upon us. Boab was wearing the timer ankle bracelet and he made a very strong lunge at the inflatable archway, however his efforts resulted in the same outcome as Lance Armstrong and Cadel Evans in Le Tour – a squeal of brakes then straight onto the tarmac. The rest of us were very concerned and voiced our worries thus: “get up buddy!” and “get over the line, mate!!” I even thought I heard someone do a version of Nelson Muntz from The Simpsons: “Ha ha!”

Apart from a little bit of stripped bark, Boab was fine and he did a sterling job to run over the finish line with his bike in tow. Only later did we find out that the official clock stopped about 30 metres before the inflatable archway. Hot Chick was there again and she captured Boab’s moment of glory. When we flicked the photos later on, we saw that his crash-bang efforts were not in vain – the officials responded by putting the perfunctory witches hats over the slight rise in the bitumen that helped cause his spill. Who would have thought?

All in all, a great team effort. The Crownies in the car park, courtesy of Blinder, went down a treat – they didn’t even touch the sides. The food was great and the set-up was awesome. Well done to Spunker for a great effort as team captain and hats off to Bif for making it look like a stroll in the park, even though he’s been off the bike for two weeks. Boab was strong as an ox and the The Doctor had a superb ride. Even I felt strong at the end, although my strongest motivation was to get back to the bakery and teach that apple turnover a lesson!

Allez, Uno!!