On the weekend three of us; Grant, myself and Del went for a paddle. It was an average weekend weather wise, but I took the opportunioty to try out a sea kayak, cause I don't have enough boats and I need one of these to add to the stable. Del and I planned to take the MTB's out before hand and my hard tail sitting on the roof reminded me that I still haven't got my duallie back from the shop.
Our MTB's were freighted back from Africa to avoid the ridiculous excess baggage fees we would have been slugged if we tried to bring them with us. During the race we were forced to swim with our bikes across a salt water river. So when we finished the race we carefully rinsed them, sprayed them liberally with WD40 before packing them away in their bike boxes. We finally picked them up from Aus customs some three weeks later. Customs and quarantine were as big an epic as any all day ride in the bush with no compass. In summary:
Join a queue
Fill out a form and rejoin the queue
Hand in the form and join join a queue to take a number
Take a number
Join a queue
Be told you can't get your bikes inspected; come back in two days
Argue
Join queue
Get another form
Fill it in and rejoin queue
Hand it in
Get another number
Join the second queue
It's too late to get your bikes inspected
Argue
Wait
Go pick up your bikes
Computer systems down come back tomorrow
Argue
Wait
Get bikes
Join queue
Get bikes inpsected;
You get the picture, if you ever find yourself in the same situation, persevere, don't stop smiling, flirt where possible and don't take 'come back tomorrow' as an answer.
Anyway looking at bike # 2 was a sad reminder that salt water, three weeks in a box and another week before getting to the bike shop is not good for your bike. The guys at the shop tell me that there is salt crystals in my bottom braket, my frame is full of oxidised aluminium and every bit that could rust, has, The pivots are OK though. Looks like I'll be paying for this race for a while yet.
Regardless of that sob story, the weekend paddle was awesome. We went through the shore break, straight into a pod of dolphins, paddled along in close proximity to them for 20 minutes or so, then paddled back and played in a nice 2-4 foot break for another hour, trying desperately not to murder young children learning to surf with 25kg of out of control, rampaging sea kayak. Great fun!!
Stew
Monday, September 29, 2008
Tuesday, September 2, 2008
Post Race Shenanigans
The 12 hours after any race can be summed up easily ‘Sleeeeep’. Although the sleep is regularly punctuated by; ‘Eeeeting’. Such it was after the Bull. Del and Luke, after cleaning up and having an initial sleep went off in search of food, while Grant and I continued to sleep. In fact Grant didn’t raise his bones until around 6:30 that evening, and only then because I woke him so we could do some more eating.
The next day is cleaning and sorting gear. Gear boxes and bike boxes inevitably contain the smelliest, dirtiest, hard to identify stuff you can imagine. It never ceases to amaze me, but while your racing, in your desperation for carbs, you can squeeze every last drop of gel from a packet. But put that dessicated wrapper in a gear box and it will continue to ooze gel over every piece of kit in the box. So after two days of sitting in the hot sun, when you finally come to clean out your box, every sock, every glove, the handlebars of your bike, your one clean t-shirt will be covered in a mixture of horrible sticky red, orange and yellow gel. The only solution is; if it can bend put it in the wash, if it’s solid then hose it down. If you can’t decide, hose it first then either, chuck it out or wash it, simple. Then once everything is sorted out, be prepared to continue to return and have returned various pieces of kit (especially socks) for the next couple of months from your other team mates.
The after race party was the usual affair of drinks, plates overflowing with food, people sleeping at the table and dancing afterwards. The KEEN Torq’ers put on a brave show, but the honors for the final leg had to go to the Russian girls from Areena, who can really move it, and the guys from the video crew, who can still move it regardless of how much they can drink. Special mention has to go to the South African girls from Dew Point, who made an emotional entrance on their MTB’s during the ceremony, some 10 hours after the official finish of the race.
We kissed Lukie goodbye, as he was flying out on Monday, while Del, Grant and myself started our overland tour to Johannesburg before flying out on Thursday. The idea was to cram as much sightseeing into the next four days as possible. To start the itinerary we drove out to the Southern Drakensburg Ranges, to ascend the Sani Pass the following day. This 4WD track climbs 1300m to an altitude of 3000m over 8 km. A steep but relatively straight forward climb, the fastest descent over the 8km is held by a MTB in just under 13 minutes. Some 4 minutes faster than the fastest motorbike and significantly quicker than any car. The Sani Pass sits in the country of 
Lesotho 
(Lah-soo-too), and is populated by the Basutu who speak Masutu (something like that) They are the descendants of the tribes who fled from the persecution of the Zulus under King Shaka. They live a hard life on a barren plateau, (when we were there it was well under 0 deg with a biting wind), tending sheep and goats with some supplementary income from the tourist trade. A quick beer was had at what was once the highest pub in Africa then it was onwards and downwards to the midlands and the town of Howick.
Howick provided an excellent hotel. The Pre requisites for this are comfy beds for sleeping and good food for eating. SA is a great place to eat. We managed three courses of gourmet quality food, two bottles of wine and five desserts for under $30 a head…..how good is that. The next day was spent flying through the trees on zip lines at Karkloof. This was the best. The longest line was 180m and you fly over or through the trees and tremendous speed, at times up to 30m off the forest floor.. Then it was up to Spion Kop for some horse riding and some more eating and sleeping.
Spion Kop was very olde worlde British Empire type stuff. Reading in the lounge, overlooking the property, with a scotch in one hand and the Jack Russell terriers at you feet, was all very comfortable. The three course meal followed by cognac, cheese platter and dessert wine was equally as pleasing. The next day we rose just in time for a cooked breakfast before rushing off to go horse riding through the local game reserve. Seeing Red Hartebeest, blue wildebeest, zebra, impala, jackals and kudu up close and personal from horseback was very special. Unfortunately we didn’t get to see the endangered White Rhinos, but we did see evidence of their passing.
From Spion Kop we headed back to J’Burg to meet up with Ben. Ben loves crotches, bums, has a fetish for drink bottles and socks, and when he’s not busy with all of that he looks after Ian, who raced with team Kreatures at The Bull. Ian’s hospitality was typically South African, even if he was an ex pat Pom. We ate his food, drank his beer, slept in his house, used his washing machine and he even took us to the local J’Burg tourist market, which was way above and beyond the call of duty. Messages from home confirmed that both Grant and I both had kids bursting with excitement at seeing their dads again. There is certainly nothing like being swamped as you re-enter your home. So it was with mixed emotions that we boarded the plane on Thursday morning. It would have been great to have had more time to travel through Africa, but the reality was anything less than 3 months was never going to be enough.
As for what’s next for the KEEN Torq’ers…….watch this space.
The next day is cleaning and sorting gear. Gear boxes and bike boxes inevitably contain the smelliest, dirtiest, hard to identify stuff you can imagine. It never ceases to amaze me, but while your racing, in your desperation for carbs, you can squeeze every last drop of gel from a packet. But put that dessicated wrapper in a gear box and it will continue to ooze gel over every piece of kit in the box. So after two days of sitting in the hot sun, when you finally come to clean out your box, every sock, every glove, the handlebars of your bike, your one clean t-shirt will be covered in a mixture of horrible sticky red, orange and yellow gel. The only solution is; if it can bend put it in the wash, if it’s solid then hose it down. If you can’t decide, hose it first then either, chuck it out or wash it, simple. Then once everything is sorted out, be prepared to continue to return and have returned various pieces of kit (especially socks) for the next couple of months from your other team mates.
The after race party was the usual affair of drinks, plates overflowing with food, people sleeping at the table and dancing afterwards. The KEEN Torq’ers put on a brave show, but the honors for the final leg had to go to the Russian girls from Areena, who can really move it, and the guys from the video crew, who can still move it regardless of how much they can drink. Special mention has to go to the South African girls from Dew Point, who made an emotional entrance on their MTB’s during the ceremony, some 10 hours after the official finish of the race.
We kissed Lukie goodbye, as he was flying out on Monday, while Del, Grant and myself started our overland tour to Johannesburg before flying out on Thursday. The idea was to cram as much sightseeing into the next four days as possible. To start the itinerary we drove out to the Southern Drakensburg Ranges, to ascend the Sani Pass the following day. This 4WD track climbs 1300m to an altitude of 3000m over 8 km. A steep but relatively straight forward climb, the fastest descent over the 8km is held by a MTB in just under 13 minutes. Some 4 minutes faster than the fastest motorbike and significantly quicker than any car. The Sani Pass sits in the country of 
Lesotho 
(Lah-soo-too), and is populated by the Basutu who speak Masutu (something like that) They are the descendants of the tribes who fled from the persecution of the Zulus under King Shaka. They live a hard life on a barren plateau, (when we were there it was well under 0 deg with a biting wind), tending sheep and goats with some supplementary income from the tourist trade. A quick beer was had at what was once the highest pub in Africa then it was onwards and downwards to the midlands and the town of Howick.
Howick provided an excellent hotel. The Pre requisites for this are comfy beds for sleeping and good food for eating. SA is a great place to eat. We managed three courses of gourmet quality food, two bottles of wine and five desserts for under $30 a head…..how good is that. The next day was spent flying through the trees on zip lines at Karkloof. This was the best. The longest line was 180m and you fly over or through the trees and tremendous speed, at times up to 30m off the forest floor.. Then it was up to Spion Kop for some horse riding and some more eating and sleeping.
Spion Kop was very olde worlde British Empire type stuff. Reading in the lounge, overlooking the property, with a scotch in one hand and the Jack Russell terriers at you feet, was all very comfortable. The three course meal followed by cognac, cheese platter and dessert wine was equally as pleasing. The next day we rose just in time for a cooked breakfast before rushing off to go horse riding through the local game reserve. Seeing Red Hartebeest, blue wildebeest, zebra, impala, jackals and kudu up close and personal from horseback was very special. Unfortunately we didn’t get to see the endangered White Rhinos, but we did see evidence of their passing.
From Spion Kop we headed back to J’Burg to meet up with Ben. Ben loves crotches, bums, has a fetish for drink bottles and socks, and when he’s not busy with all of that he looks after Ian, who raced with team Kreatures at The Bull. Ian’s hospitality was typically South African, even if he was an ex pat Pom. We ate his food, drank his beer, slept in his house, used his washing machine and he even took us to the local J’Burg tourist market, which was way above and beyond the call of duty. Messages from home confirmed that both Grant and I both had kids bursting with excitement at seeing their dads again. There is certainly nothing like being swamped as you re-enter your home. So it was with mixed emotions that we boarded the plane on Thursday morning. It would have been great to have had more time to travel through Africa, but the reality was anything less than 3 months was never going to be enough.As for what’s next for the KEEN Torq’ers…….watch this space.
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