More nooze from Rob Ogren, CRC correspondent in Australia: I'll start with the party. Country western band with a skinny chick who could do tricks on her bass cello. The wet tee shirt contest was one of the strangest things I've seen; a bunch of really drunk Aussie guys strutting around pulling their pants down, while the one woman (who was kind of flat BTW) jiggy danced around them. The $100 prize was finally just tossed into the air by the On-One importer and the contestants all just hased after it. All the time the band strummed their guitars with a dirge like back ground. The race was fantastic. Half the riders were in drag or other costume. Dano announced the start with a simple \"Go\", no beer swilling/can crushing this year. The course was fairly rough with lots of rocks. I saw at least half dozen flats on my first lap. I did the beer stop short cut the first lap and took a bunch of pictures. Next two laps I did the technical section but just stopped to take pictures again. The bad section was a steep down with ledges and dirt sort of like Downieville stuff, but certainly rideable with some practice. My last lap I did the beer stop again and it was a whole bunch of the same guys from the first lap still there. As you had said Dano set up a pretty knarly course. Both Gary and I keep talking about how we\\\\\\\'d like to go back and try riding the hard stuff again, just to see if we can do it. All rideable with a little caution to the wind. Winner was a guy from NZ named Clinton. Ladies champ was Linda from California. Cadel Evans and some other pros were there but didn\'t figure in the results. Evans lapped me but didn\'t seem all too happy to be running about tenth, being put on the trailer by a bunch of knuckle head single speeders. We\'re in Sydney touristing, sucks compared to what we were doing. Rob