Paralympic Year!
Hi there readers, a lot has happened since my last blog and the last two months have absolutely flown by with games, travel, holidays and getting back to work here in Italy.
Firstly, we reached the midway point of the season before Christmas picking up a good win and a narrow loss to finish equal second on the ladder, which in turn has qualified us for the preliminary rounds of the all important Coppa Italia (Italian Cup). It’s never good going home at Christmas time with your last game being a losing one, but there were some positives to take away from it and I think with the New Year and a focused resolve we will only improve in 2012.
I would like to wish everyone out there a Buon Natale e Cappo Danno and hope that your festive season was as great as mine. Hugo’s first Christmas was always going to be a special occasion and once he recovered from the jetlag of returning to Australia he soaked up every minute of attention from Grandparents, Great-Grandparents, Aunts, Uncles and the multitude of friends we caught up with while we were back. The two weeks absolutely flew by and while we all wished we could stay at home for just a little bit longer we bundled back out to the airport (it seems like we live there!!!) and headed back to Italia.
Getting back into the habit of training is always a bit difficult, even after a short break, but with the motivation of losing my ‘Christmas cheer’ I got straight back into it and we have since come away with our first win of the year against Torino, far to the country’s north (read a nine hour bus ride that took us straight to the game because we stopped too long for lunch on the way, priorities right!!??).
My next Rollers commitments are in early February for our first training camp of the 2012 Paralympic year, it will be great to see where everyone is at physically in their preparations for London; however I don’t relish the fact we are travelling again so soon! This trip is not all hard work, as we will get to enjoy the extra special occasion of my younger brother getting married in Melbourne, I am proud to say I will be the best man for the event and can’t wait to help him and his fiancée celebrate in style!
I am sure you have all heard of or seen the Segway personal mobility device (for followers of the Aussie cricket team I believe one of the cameramen at the boxing day test fell off one in the field!), well a friend of mine got the opportunity to try one out here in Italy a Segway made for wheelchair users! I kid you not, the machine utilizes the same principals as a standing Segway, just in a seated position, and has enough support that it can be used by anyone that can manually transfer. The kicker is it costs around 10,000 euro and weighs in at a hefty 70 kilos, but the manufacturer suggests it can fit into the back of a Smart car (I will believe that when I see it!) and is designed to run on a sandy beach. I’m not sure when these will reach an Australian market but I can just see a few of these cruising the beaches of Perth very soon!
Stay tuned and enjoy the Perth summer as we shiver through winter here on the other side of the world!
