Here you’ll find comments, news, reviews and lots of inane ramblings about sports, especially cycling and rugby, along with occasional comments about a myriad of other sports and a rant about that blind fecker of a referee the other night.
I live in Dublin, Ireland, and like many Irish people I’m a sports fanatic, and have been as long as I can remember. My current sports are rugby, sailing and cycling at the moment, though I’ve been known to do a triathlon, try my hand at climbing and descending a sheer rock face on Achill Beg, I really enjoy kayaking (how we got out to Achill Beg!) and I’ve run a mini marathon or two.
Spectator-wise I will watch anything that moves, from football (that means gaelic football in this country) to Aussie rules to NFL to cricket to baseball to ice-hockey to that cross-country skiing and shooting event whatever it’s called to … well you get the picture. I’m not a big fan of horse racing boxing or curling for some reason, but I’ll watch ’em too if they’re on tv.
I’m a stadium steward with the IRFU so I can get in to all the really big matches and have the best view in the house for 90% of the game, then head down to pitchside and watch the last couple minutes from ground zero. The downside? Having to show up 3 hours before kick-off and stand around (especially in the cold, out of the sun West Stand).
As of this writing (Oct 06) I’ve become a real cycling fanatic. It started a couple of years back when I needed to buy a new bike to get to work on, to replace my old commuting piece of cr@p. After asking lots of questions of the good folks over at bikeforums.net I eventually bought myself an entry level mountain bike.
It had crossed my mind during the process that it would be really cool to head over to France and do a camping tour on bike, so without much difficulty I signed my cousin up to be my partner. After a fantastic 2 & 1/2 week tour along the Loire, I was hooked.
I’ve also chronicled my own attempt to complete as many of the 14 days of the Cycle Against Suicide as possible.