Behind the scenes - Saphora

Not too much has been happening of late... but a UQCC friend of mine launched a cool business aiming to bring some styling chicks cycling gear of her own to market.  I have left all the serious brochure shots out, you'll find them soon enough through Saphora if you are interested - but I do have a great collection of out-takes and generally inappropriate shots which tell the story pretty well.

As part of getting her brand off the ground she organised a photo shoot and rounded a bunch of us up to play bike-related dress ups and to roll for some pictures.  Fun!  What we didn't know was that the sites she had chosen were somewhat challenging.  And by challenging I mean stupidly epic hills.  The first was a nice 15% gradient.  What a good warm up. As we pulled up I realised  three hours on coot-tha was probably not the best preparation but what the hell, I figured pain only hurts.  Even better the plan was not to ride the whole hill but to start off part way down.  Standing starts anyone? We laughed.  A lot.  No idea if any of the shots were good as we were fully consumed with making it!

Glasses on or off?  Whitemans overbite? Mostly it was trying not to stall or tear a leg off.

Since the 15% was presenting some challenges with getting everyone er, relaxed (!) we headed to the next location.  Anne sent the girls ahead on their bikes carefully giving them wrong directions, down another big climb - ooops!  I took the car with Anne's bike and mine, while she ferried the patient photographer, Ben, up to the next vantage point. I was sent on retrieval and I found the girls hauling ass back up the wrong turn and they wisely retrieved their cars and drove up to the next point.  Anne and I stayed parked on the corner and tackled the next hill.   The one she assured me was 'not as bad'.  Not as bad in a car maybe, but definitely WORSE on a bike.  We were both testing our core strength as we laughed and tried to make it up the beauty below.  It was definitely approaching slalom material.

The Approach -Tiny Dot Rach says " that looks steeper to me"  Tiny Dot Anne says "no, it is not as bad"..

The crest - Rach says "for the record, that hit 22% in one bit"... Anne says " hahahhhahahaaa".....

We then attempted a few off the bike shots, though we had limited time before the 'locals' turned up on their dirt bikes and started chucking monos for the ladies in the hot bike kit.  Shocker.

The natives are getting restless.... do we look impressed?

Ok, we now had too many hoons on dirt bikes getting sideways so we moved on to the next location.  This was about as flat as it got - which is to say not really flat at all.   Then we were on the attack through the cutting. Light was fading so off to the last site.

 We attempted some cool pace line shots while record amounts of Sunday afternoon back road traffic appeared!  What are the chances?  Something else to laugh about.

Losing it as Anne tried to pop and spray the mini Moet...... Good times.

Anne then called a wrap and opted to pop the champagne.  She shook it for what seemed to be forever, and after a few false starts because cars drove in between - she tried to spray it.  Did the cork pop? Yep.  Dramatic spray?  Not so much!  Too funny.

That was a fun afternoon.  (and if you are wondering, yep the kit is pretty slick, chamois is great and the extra class touches like a complimentary wash bag are top notch... check it out.)....