Written by Don Hamstre of Schiavi di Don
  
  The OCM world has been left in confusion over the past few weeks. Why hasn’t there been an Awards Article yet? Is it true that The Don was seen leaving the Awards Live Results being incredibly drunk and holding a trophy in his hand? Is it true that The Don had all the time of the world to write an Awards Article but decided to watch baseball instead? All this, will be answered in this article. The answers to the second and third question are quite simple by the way, but in order to keep some suspense, I’ll wait with the answer until the end.
  
  It was a rainy friday evening in Bergen, Norway, as I boarded a plane to Murmansk, Russia. Of course it had been a strange place to organise the OCM Live Results, but I had been told it was very cool there. The event itself wasn’t all that spectacular, except for me being so drunk that I forgot Aubrey Vaden had been riding for Yuri Super Team during the season, not just johny2. In fact, the results were quite exciting as well, but the events which followed in the after party made me forget them all together. So I fear you’ll have to look on the forum for those. This article will be about the after party.
  
  Murmansk turned out not just to be very cool, but in fact utterly freezing. After I had left the accommodation in which the Live Results Show had taken place, I had lost all feeling in my lower arms within 10 minutes. This had of course nothing to do with the excessive whisky-consumption earlier that evening. Some locals gave me strange looks, which might have been caused by me wearing short trousers and a Hawaii-blouse, while shouting ‘Best Tour Rider, Motherrussians!’. I have no recollection of doing such a thing and wearing such clothes, but to be honest, this

whole story has not been collected from my personal memory of the day, which has been entirely removed.
  Suddenly, one of the locals started walking towards me. This scared the heck out of me, as I tried running away. Running away works a lot better when you don’t hit the nearest lantern post though, and soon I found myself being helped back on my feet by the same guy I tried to flee from. He introduced himself as being a staff member of the NightmareChaos cycling team. Subsequently, he invited me to an after party. I wasn’t really in a physical or mental position to resist, so ten minutes later, I entered a Soviet-style swimming pool. This, however, would not be a normal party. It was going to be a birthday party. Russian style.
  
  The swimming pool had been drained for the occasion. Half of it was turned into a dancefloor, while the other half was filled up with something disturbingly resembling to nuclear waste. Speaking of which, the first drink I was presented tasted about the same as well. Needless to say I quickly got even more drunk. The music was very darkly themed, which created a very odd atmosphere combining with a very happily drunk Pole dancing wildly. He was soon kicked out though, and not very long afterwards, the guy celebrating his birthday entered the building. It was no other than Finz. This revelation shocked me completely, as I had vowed never to enter one of Finz his parties, but the damage had already been done. I now had the problem of not having any gift ready for him. I tried getting away with giving him my freshly won trophy, but he would have none of it. I were to be thrown of the highest diving board, into the part of the swimming pool filled with what I then assumed to be very closely related to nuclear waste.
  Escape was once again not very successful, as I

ran straight into a Russian bodyguard the size of medium sized apartment block. This, or he, for that matters, knocked me out on the spot.
  
  When I regained consciousness, I immediately regretted it. I found myself lying in a basement, tied to Raul (what he was doing there is still very unclear to me), and with a terrible headache. For three days, the only thing that would disturb us from our daily routine of utter boredom, was a Russian guard pissing all over us, and some unicorns visiting us to talk their plans of conquering the world through. One of this might not have happened, but as said before, I have a very vague recollection of it all, so you’ll just have to make up your mind about it yourself. On the fourth day, I decided to escape. I spent my day figuring out an escape plan involving a lot of grease and some knockwurst, but this turned out to be irrelevant when a man from New Zealand turned up and told me he would escort me out in return for the Award for Best Australian. I accepted this offer, and together we walked straight out of the building, which turned out not to have been guarded at all. Two days later, I returned home, still possessing the awful headache, but feeling a lot less confused.
  
  This, my fellow managers, is the story of why this isn’t an Awards Article. You might have some questions about it, like ‘Is it true?’ (Probably not), ‘How old did Finz become?’ (way too old), ‘Is this a bad story to distract us from you bribing yourself to winning Best Tour Rider?’ (Most likely the case), and ‘Weren’t you going to answer two other questions at the end of this article?’. The answer to these initial questions is of course yes, and yes.
  I hope to be seeing you all at the Awards next season, and may you never be invited to a Russian party!