Thursday – Jan. 21
In order to get the trip going right, Cody and I woke up a 4:45 in the morning so we could leave by 5:00.  Happy times, I am such a morning person.  So we arrived at a gas station to meet up with some of Cody’s friends to drive out to Shepparton.  After a bit of waiting, we got on the road and drove for a few hours and stopped at a truck stop called “Dog on the tucker box”, story goes “some f*(#!ng old timer died and his dog sat on his tucker box (lunch box) and never ate the food and waited for ages”.  End of story according to Codes, and loving all the details!!!  Had breakfast there and carried on.  Eventually we stopped at a Kennworth dealer to pick up some stickers for Harley (Cody’s brother).  After about 7 hours of driving we made it to Shepparton Victoria, and after debate and searching on Google, found out where the DH and 4x courses were.  Two separate locations on opposite sides of the county!  The DH was 30km (haven’t gotten used to the imperial system yet) out of town in a small township called, and I kid you not, Dookie.  The course resembled a few races I have done in years past.  It was like Fontana with the rocks and awkward moves, Cougar Mountain Classic in Sonoma with camber dead grass and weird corners and finally, Northstar for the looseness.  So, after getting hot, dusty and dirty walking the DH we drove back into town, then out the other side over to the 4x track.  From what all I was told, over $100,000 had been put into the area where the 4x track was to make it an official park!!!  The layout of the track was very creative and well done.  Plenty long and on par with a WC track.  After the boys and I got done with hanging out there we went back to the apartment for dinner.

Friday – Jan. 22
I figured that today might be a tough one because I had to register, practice and get used to the Australian setup.  Well, registration went smoothly except for paying extra for Friday practice, and a late fee which led to it being a 250 entry fee!!!  Bummer man.  So for Friday I really had to figure out the best plan because of all the variables.  First, I needed to learn the course, I needed to do enough runs to make the extra 50 worth something, I needed to not do too many runs so I didn’t learn the course on last year’s rig, didn’t want to crash because people were getting carted off and biggest thing was that the course was going to change so much that it would be almost a completely different course the next day.  After practice, the crew went to watch Cody at the 4X and pickup my new frame – delivery thanks to Sioux Eicchorn!  When I got the new frame out of the box I was the center of attention for about half an hour for 15 people, all just looking, holding and examining the frame for when they might get to have their own.

Saturday – Jan. 23
After a late night sweating the build of the new Banshee Legend MK II, I managed to get it together and ride-able for the second day of practice.  No shock tuning occurred because the shock was still brand new and had not broken in yet, so I just ran it fully open, no compression and some rebound adjustment.  After two runs to get used to a completely new bike, I felt ready to start getting some!  Played with my lines a little and was getting the hang of how the course rode.  In the afternoon, the course was closed because there were a few bodies that needed removing, so there was some waiting at the top. After one of those long waits, riders at the top were getting worried because the time was approaching for qualifying and they were planning on getting more practice in before the course was closed.  Eventually, qualifying started and we all packed into the shuttle and went up.  I was a little nervous because I hadn’t raced DH since I can’t even remember (not really long ago, maybe Sept. 09) but I got over it and had a decent qualifying run.  Nothing spectacular during my run, but did manage to qualify 13th out of about 50 riders.  After, the boys and I got packed up we went back to the condo for unfortunately-soupy lasagna.

Sunday – Jan. 24 RACE DAY!

Got my game face on and was ready to do some racing that morning.  Did some practice, made one update to my lines due to course erosion and got ready for finals.  After having seeded 13th, I got a late start time so I got on the shuttle a bit later than the mob, which was nice, but once I got to the top there were all of the pros who hadn’t gone yet because the juniors and females were finishing up.  Worked out good because I got time to do some last minute visualizations and get a warm up in.  Eventually I got lined up, waited and watched the riders drop in and the line slowly get shorter and I got closer to the start.  Did some track standing to zone out and was ready to go by the time I got in the gate.  The start was 1 minute delay and 5 sec rider preference start, which means that when you have 5 seconds to go you can start whenever you like because you are tripping a line.  Anyhow, I left on the 4 and had a decent run.  Did one foot dab and probably could have pedaled in two more places but otherwise had a clean run.  I got through the line and finished 13th!  How I managed to place the same as in seeding I have no idea but in the end I didn’t get any UCI points because it was a Cat 2 level race.  Bummed, but still stoked on doing that well with only 2 days of riding on a new bike with a completely different personality from the last bike.  Had a nice trip home and was ready to get some training on for the next race on my list, Thredbo National series race #3.

That’s all for now bros, bra’s and everyone in between!
Graeme Pitts
Team Geronimo/Banshee Bikes