Tour Down Under: Stage One - Steampunk

Stage one of the Tour Down Under. A very hot day.

The teams ride out of North Adelaide, determined.

They follow South Road and the Port River Expressway, then turn up towards the Adelaide Hills and Snake Gully.

Richie Porte pedals mechanically and works on his poem.

To your home on the top of the mountain
I have climbed without stopping......

Yeah that's cool, thinks Richie. No potatoes.

Peter Sagan is some way behind Richie, trying to figure out if it's worth catching up.

Max Walscheid is visualising gaps and squeezing through them.

Team Condor sticks together.

Sweezus: Anyone heard of steampunk?

Pablo: Is it a train?

Sweezus: Nah. Vello thinks I know what it is.

Arthur: So find out. Anyway, what for?

Sweezus: This play I'm supposed to be helping them finish.

Pablo: What is it?

Arthur: Candide's Garden. It's a follow up.

Pablo: Let us take our mind off the bad heat in Snake Gully by thinking up dialogue.

Sweezus: Cool.

They begin to do that.

In Inglewood, Terence is waiting, wearing Hatter with Eyebrows.

A few people have stared.

What's he, mummy? asks a baby.

A boy dressed up, says mummy. I don't know what his mummy is thinking. To let him wear a hat like that with orange hair and eyebrows on a hot day like this. He'll be steaming!

She looks around for Terence's mummy, in order to frown at her negligence.

But there is no mummy. Only a parrot.

The parrot is having an altercation with a man with a tooter.

So obtrusive! squawks Celia.

It's tradition, shrugs the man. Wee-waw! Wee- waw! He toots at a rider.

Who is it?

Jacub Mareczko.

Jacub ignores the tooter. He is thinking of gaps.

Fast forward to the hot finish in Port Adelaide.

Elia Viviani spies a small gap. He shoots through it to beat Max Walscheid and Jacub Mareczko.

Proving something essential, about gaps.