I’ve had a pleasant few weeks at home since Salt Lake City only leaving the country on brief trips to both Portugal and Austria. The weather was great so I could enjoy beautiful bike rides at my leisure and it was quite simply just nice to be home. The trip to Portugal didn’t run as smoothly as I would have liked as you can see from the photographic evidence! After meeting with the team boss Paulo Pinheiro he let us loose in some cars on the Portimao circuit. I chose the Ferrari 360, as any 23 year old would, but didn’t even make a lap before spinning out. Paulo had warned me to take it steady as the rear tyres were worn out, perhaps I should have taken a little more heed to what he said. Of all the places I could have spun out it was on one of the three hairpins where they’ve put high kerbs in place to stop the cars shortcutting. Rear wheel drive cars just don’t agree with me, the only other time I drove a rear wheel drive car was at Bruntingthorpe in 2005 and I lost it at 120mph! At least this time I didn’t have to stare death in the face.

Last week I travelled to Salzburg for the day to visit Red Bull’s Hangar-7. The photographer took some really good pictures for the upcoming Red Bulletin magazine feature so make sure and grab a copy. He took so many pictures of me drinking Red Bull that i was onto my third can by the end of the shoot! At the weekend I headed up to Coleraine to watch my friend Stewarty wakeboarding and I was pretty impressed by what I saw. He’s been number one in Ireland for six years which is basically since he first got on a board! Not a bad record eh?

I flew to Misano on Tuesday and things have been pretty chilled out so far. I ran two laps of the circuit on Wednesday and as I was about to start my third I thought the better of it as the sky began to look real nasty. No sooner had I stepped inside the garage the heavens opened and the rain hammered down for the next half hour. I sat back, had a brew and thanked the heavens that they chose not to soak me wet through!

I’m off to the circuit to see the boys in red, catch ya next week.

Eugene