We've Arrived

Well the last 24 hours was spent sitting on a couple of planes in order to get to Denmark.  We flew Singapore Airlines and the first challenge was getting my trike on board without having to pay extra.  You see it weighs a bit more than you are allowed!  We had sponsorship from Singapore Airlines for an extra 15kgs but my trike alone weighs 22kg and then with the bag I guessing I was definitely over 30kgs!

I had however put disabled signs on the sides of the bag and when I got to the counter was asked if it was a wheelchair.  I didn’t say yes and I didn’t say no, but when the girl saw we had sponsorship she asked her supervisor and he told her to put it through as 14kgs!  Bonus!!!

The flight to Singapore’s Changi Airport felt pretty fast and was uneventful.  We then had 4 hours to wait at the airport and that is where I met up with everyone else on the team.  The second bonus came when I got on the flight to Copenhagen and found that I was down at the back of the plane right where the plane curves, which meant more leg room than any of the other seats!!  Bonus!!!  But this flight was to be much longer, 12 hours in fact.

About half way through the flight I must have finally fallen asleep but woke up with a start.  I have no idea why but when I looked at the flight path on the TV in front of me we were right over top of Afghanistan and the city of Kabul.  It felt really weird…talk about worlds apart.  Here I was heading to the beautiful country of Denmark and right below me, just over 12,000 meters below me, people are fighting for their lives!  It really made me think about how lucky we are to have been born where we were.  I was actually fascinated at that point with looking at that map and all the Middle East countries where there is no peace.  So needless to say sleep did not come easy over the next 6 hours!

We finally made it to Denmark with all our bikes/hand cycles/trike and gear, loaded it all on two trucks, piled into 3 other vehicles and headed to Ringsted where we are staying at the Scandic  Ringsted Hotel which is about 50 km from Copenhagen and about 20 kms from where we will be racing in Roskilde.  The weather has been beautiful today and hopefully it will keep up for the next couple of weeks.  We all then had to put all the bikes/hand cycles and my trike together.

Tomorrow we are heading to Roskilde to have a ride around the course which I am really looking forward to.

I have even become very patriotic in that I had my nails done with a map of Australia on each nail! For someone who doesn’t wear nail polish very often it is a bit “out there” for me, but hey, I’m here to win for Australia!