Last time we spoke I was siting by the each watching the waves roll in. This time I'm sitting in my 5* Hotel room supplied by SBK down in Qatar with the worst flu I've ever had. The worst thing about it all is with the new dopy doping reg's yo can't take anything to help fight it.

So after arriving back from Australia with an average of 30°C we landed in Zurich which proved to be quite a culture shock. I think the temperature was about -10°C which is pretty bloody cold if you ask me.

I was only going to be in town for a couple of days until I headed off down to Spain for testing. So we decided to head up to the mountains for a bit of cross country skiing and snowboarding. Funny enough it was even bloody colder. Topping out at about -20°! On one of the nights we decided to go sled riding which sounds pretty lame, but it's really quite cool. At about 6.30 pm you catch a mini bus deep up into the valley about 8 or 9 kilometres until you reach a restaurant at the top. You then proceed to consume copious amounts of cheese Fondue with bread and black tea to help digest it. So when you can barley walk it's then about time to stumble outside find a sled and try and navigate your way back to the village. Now on this particular evening there wasn't a moon so it was pitch bloody dark. I gotta say it's definatly one of the scariest things I've done in a while. You're reaching speeds of more than 60 km/h 2 up on this little wooden sled and you honestly can't see your hand in front of your face (and it's a public road as well). It's definitely something I'll do again but next time I'll be taking a torch.

A couple of days later I was off to Spain to begin our long awaited test programme. We were to have 3 days testing in Almeria and then off to Valencia for another 2 days. Almeria gave us a chance to blow the dust off our shoulders and get a whole lot of promo pictures and filming done. We couldn't get too productive with testing mainly because the temperature only broke into double figures for about 3 hours each day which wasn't warm enough for our tyres to operate properly.

We then shot off to Valencia for some better weather, which was exactly the opposite. It basically rained flat out the whole time. I didn't even turn a wheel! In fact the team had already packed up after the first day.

I then shot up to Andorra for a couple of days and then over to Milan for the team launch at the Rolling Stone Night Club. This was the most amazing production I've ever seen! Firstly the new partnership between Winston and Honda was introduced to all the press, then the new colour schemes and finally the riders. That all kicked off at about midday and then later that night they threw a huge party to celebrate which kicked off at about 10.30 pm. Bit of a crazy party with well over 2000 people and a free bar to go with it, which didn't help our early morning flight to Qatar the next day.

Not long after we got here Chris managed to catch a really bad flu, needless to say he wasn't very shy in sharing his pain and his germs with anyone nearby. Two days later which is day one of our test here in Qatar yours truly also contracted the toxic germs. The two day test was slightly fruitless for me with neither the energy nor concentration to complete too many laps. Which is really embarrassing; the entire Superbike team was standing around idle, while their riders were coughing and splattering with barely a same comment between them. I haven't really got much more intelligent stuff to say particularly because I've been in bed for the last two days.

Today we got introduced to a couple of real local's and even got to have a short ride on the two humped beasts. We also got to taste some of the local delicacies and I even inherited myself a new outfit which suspiciously looks like a bed sheet.

Hopefully by tomorrow I will be feeling a bit more flash so I can get on the bike and cut some hot laps.

Over and out.