Hey Guys, back again only this time I'm sitting at home in Zurich scratching some words down and listening to some tunes, only one hour away from my visit to the dentist. I'm not completely motivated to go, particularly since I was about 10 since I last went! Could get messy!

Anyway back to were we last left off, which was about a week and a half before Assen. I was just on my way up to the teams work shop for what they call pit stop days or what we call it "the two crazy days". Two days of discounts, competitions, prizes and food. There's always a huge turn out so there's always something to do.

The Dutch are known for competing and racing just about anything, well we also had lawn - mower races. But these were no ordinary mowers; they were packing some bloody supped up 600 cc engines under the hood. They weren't particularly safe, the only way to turn was giving it a handful and nine times out of ten high side or shut the gas so the front wheels cam back to ground. Grazy Dutchies !

On Sunday, Gerit and his wife Femmie took Kats and his family Isabelle and me to a little place not far from the workshop where you can rent these little boats and cruise around the canals passed all these houses and coffee shops. (The ones that only sell coffee and cakes!) It's really popular and the majority of houses are only accessible by boat. There were so many boats in these really narrow canals it was a bit like dodgem cars. Gerit was our captain for the day and it took me a little while to work out why we would speed up and slow down, speed up and again slow down! You can also see this place on foot; there are pedestrians' paths along one side, then up and over little bridges to the other side and back again. And for some reason we always ended up passing under one of these bridges, right when a woman with a short skirt was directly above us. I didn't know Gerit was such a sea dog!

On Tuesday we drove the bus out to Assen and got organized for the weekend. It was a huge turn out for the team with about 800 guests making life pretty hectic for them.

As for me, the week-end was shaping up pretty well, but once again it all turned pear shaped on race day! Race one 6 laps in, my hand that I broke at Brands basically just fused and it was not possible to hold on, pull the brakes or open the gas! Really frustrating! The second leg we changed the bike to help compensate for my hand in case the same happens again. Fortunately, my hand was ok but the changes we made to the bike were not .! We are defiantly learning our lesson's the hard way!

Monday we just hang out at the track, went for a mountain bike ride and a run. After a solid nights rest, we hit the road to Lausitzring. We arrived about 5 pm Tuesday arvo set up camp and washed the bus etc etc.

Lausitz was also shaping up pretty good, but in race one I got carved up off the start which pushed me back down to about 9^th, so I was on a bit off a mission to regain lost ground. But on only lap two I had to avoid another rider and came off second best. Race two was going pretty good with about lap 9 I had a rather large problem with my bike and I began to loose ground. Mmmm. I'm sure Imola and Magny-Cours are going to be a whole lot more positive and successful. After Lausitzring we then rolled down home to Zurich for a couple of weeks before we head off to the final two events.

My Buddy Richo called in for couple of days before he was off to Croatia for a two week sailing trip. He mentioned something about finding a sexy deck hand he could take with him. Once again he was completely unsuccessful and was leaving empty handed! Pour bugger..!

On Saturday night Isabelle and I were invited across to our neighbours' house for a meat Fondue. For those who don't know anything about it, I'll give you a brief run down. Basically it's one plate of raw meats, a plate of raw vegies , one of fruit and all different kinds of sauces, oh and some spuds. In the centre of the table there is a pot full of hot oil and a grill around it, which electric. It's not really for the weight conscious but it defiantly for the meat lovers. It's pretty cool though sitting around talking and cooking and eating and talking and eating until your about to pop! Only to wander home and have a pretty heavy sleep, fighting to wake up the next day.

Hunting season just started in Switzerland so it's a great time to sample some more of the local delicacies, dears, hogs and this other ting that looks like a moose. So the next day some other friends Gaby & Thomas invited us up to the mountains were he grew up in the Canton of Schwyz. We met at his father's house, which is like a dead animal museum with bear skins and animal heads hanging everywhere. From there we hiked for about an hour to his parents little restaurant up in the ski fields. Beautiful place! His father was obviously a hunter so we had a chance to try some local "Hirsch" (dear), which he caught the day before. It was so bloody nice and so bloody much it was really lucky we had to walk back and at least help burning off a quarter of it. So, yet another day of total food abuse!

This week it's all about lattice leaves and even more exercise before we had off to Imola in about 10 days! Thanks again, talk soon!