Heading back to the bubble in an hour or so, only 3 weeks this time. Looking forward to catching up with everyone, their kids and my nephews and nieces, not looking forward to leaving Zett by herself while all hell is breaking loose with her work.
Got my bike packed so I can cram in some “secret k’s” while I’m home.
What started with a few beers at a party with Hein, has turned into a cycling club almost 20 strong.
We’re not actually an official club yet, but we do have a facebook page and some t-shirts getting printed.
I can’t take much credit though, Hein (aka Mother Goose) is the main recruiter and motivator, it’s a good thing he directs his energies into noble causes like this, he’s so good at getting people together he could start his own cult!
Basically we’re on a mission to promote proper technical trail riding around here, we seem to be in the epicentre of spandex wearing, coffee drinking roady scum posing as mountain bikers, they love nothing better than stomping out 80k on the flat, then sipping on a soy decaf crapachino with their tackle on display… dropping off a gutter is their definition of technical riding! (I don’t blame them for getting off the road, road riding here is suicide!).
The Massive lined up before last Saturdays ride
So we’ve got a good crew of guys and girls together that like to have a decent go and have a drink and debrief (ergo talk shit) afterwards.
Post ride debrief and braai (BBQ)
We’re still sniffing out the good trails around, Cal and I are going on a bit of a recon mission tomorrow arvo, he’s got lead on some new single track.
Got some sweet tanage happening at the moment, plenty of time out on the bike in the balmy Pretoria weather has turned the skin on my arms and knees nice and brown.
It looks great with my riding kit on…
With no gloves and shorty shorts on it becomes immediately apparent that I spend the rest of my time indoors, ridiculous!
Sam and Lamby sent us a box full of stubby holders for Christmas.
They don’t have proper stubby holders over here, only those massive mongo foam ones only hill giants can get their hands around, no wonder no-one uses them.
I always make a point of handing them around, at braais (BBQs), they’re a bit of a novelty, one thing you don’t have worry about here is people stealing them, but on the flip side you don’t get the random transfer of holders either.
Of the dozen or so sent at least 4 of them we recognised from our old stocks, which is not bad considering the number of times we’ve been for drinks at each others houses over the years.
The person to look out for with your stubby holders is the Chimp, he’s got hundreds of them stashed away in that shed of his!
We can rest easy in the knowledge that we’re doing our bit to maintain the international flow stubby holders.
As most of you would know by now Zett and I are with child, this week we went for our 12 week ultrasound, I’m sure every expectant parent in the past 10 years has the same blurry alien images.
I’ve seen them before but there’s something magical about them when you see the thing hooked up to your own partner and watch it happen in real time.
Everything is on track, it passed the down syndrome tests no worries, has 5 fingers and nose!
These shots are of our brief 4 day holiday down near East London for Christmas, we were all staying in WP and Celeste’s awesome beach side apartment.
I won’t bang on too much, I’ve added text to all the pictures so just hover over the images for a couple of seconds to read what each one is about. We had a great time down there, not much else to do but chill, wallow in the waves pretending to boogie board, eat like kings and have a laugh over a few drinks.
We’ve definitely have to spend some more time down there.
After we returned to Pretoria and sent Zett back to work, Sam, Lamby and myself finished off the trip with a couple of locally accessible game attractions.
Seeing we’d already done the hard yards spotting for hours on end in the more natural game parks (more rewarding in my view), we cherry picked a few of the quick and easy animal experiences. The following pics are a combination of Pilansberg game reserve and Farm Inn.
Pilansberg is a small but well funded reserve right next to sun city (Where Trav was for the wakeboarding comp) we’ve never been disappointed game spotting here, in one day you’ll see more than several days anywhere else. Any on the pics below that are in open fields with no fences are from this reserve.
Farm Inn on the other hand is mostly a Cheetah breeding facility with a few other rare species on show, it’s literally 5 minutes drive from where we live in Pretoria. As you can see the Cheetah are very tame, apparently they’ve been used in a few movies and advertisements. They lick you and purr just like giant house cats with giant teeth and claws!
Anyone notice the Tigers put in there to throw you out, NO there aren’t any wild tigers in Africa, but the guide did say that at the rate they are disappearing from India that they will probably only exist in African conservation sites in the very near future.
This rounded out an awesome three week trip with great friends, many a beer and wine was drunk and many a tall tale told, it’s amazing to think we crammed all that in… and fell pregnant!
As an added bonus we proved that a visit to South Africa is not that dangerous, we managed to see a hell of a lot of the country and not get hoodwinked, bushwhacked, or contract cerebral malaria… mostly due to Lamby’s vigilance.
Thanks to Sam and Lamby for coming over, Zett and I had an awesome time showing you around, we’ve got a slight leave deficit at the moment but if anyone else wants to come over for a visit let us know and we’ll make a plan!
Last but not least a special mention has to go to Zett for doing such an awesome job of organising the trip, somewhere in the 5 minutes she has to herself each day she managed put it all together.
Have you ever wondered what it’s like to slick your fingers in the hot, steamy, snotty nostrils of an elephants trunk?
You can experience it all at the Knysna Elephant sanctuary!
Knysna is an awesome spot along the Garden Route, from there you can do day trips to heaps of interesting sites and experiences. I won’t bang on about too many details the pictures tell the story.
The following were all part of the “Elephant walk” hike we did through part of the Knysna forest.
This was called the “Big Tree” for obvious reasons.
Me on the intrepid search of the rare Knysna Elephant… apparently there are only one or two left…. we didn’t find one.
Lamby looking for leopards… we didn’t find any… a good thing too!
Sun downers at Knysna heads.
Sun downers and the Knysna heads.
The view of the Knysna lake from the front of our accommodation.
The view from the Knysna lake of the front of our accommodation.
More sun downers.
This an awesome MTB ride we did the last time we were up there near Tsitsikamma national park.
You zigzag through nice thick forest…
until you hit the coast… That thin line running through the top of the next cliff is the track… awesome!
This is us re-fuelling while taking in the ocean view.
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