DJR

Please PM names so I can avoid.........

Suddenly, after the Olympics, I am no longer the only one in my group of friends who know who Gojira is!

My number one favourite mountain pass in the world.

There is nothing as fantastic as a father and son tandem team.........ok..........maybe a mother and son / daughter team is on par...........trying to be fair......... it being womens month and all.

I have had a truly close call while riding my bike in the traffic. It changed my perception of BOTH riding and driving. I have always been a pretty defensive rider who used my "spidey sense" to keep out of potentially dangerous situations on the road. I did an advanced drivers course many years ago and the single most valuable thing it installed was exactly that. Too look, think and anticipate so that you will not get into a dangerous situation in the first place. (But the skid pan was more fun.) What it did NOT teach (it was long ago) was the necessary tools to cope with our overly aggressive and often unqualified fellow road users. The penny on that one dropped when a young man in Cape Town got beaten to death with a hockey stick in a road rage incident for blocking and brake checking the aggressor. No, it is simply not worth it! You will not teach that taxi driver a lesson, he will do the same again tomorrow and the day after. The possibly serious negative consequinces are likely to be yours, not his. Life is tricky enough to negotiate safely as it is, so, do not add to your own stress and problems. If you need to get the stress out of yourself, ride your bike or tackle the punching bag. All that is necessary is a little mindshift! Ps. Said like an old ballie who no longer fights every single windmill!

I never thought there were so many closet traffic cop wannabees on BikeHub 😁

What I can add is this: Tim was an absolute encyclopedia (do the youngsters still know what that was?) of everything related to the Cape Town Cycle Tour and South African Cycling in general. If you wanted to know ANYTHING about the history of the "Argus" you just had to ask Tim.........some whould say he was better at it than Google!

I also thoroughly enjoyed the documentary. I always had huge respect for Greg and found it sad how he left The Syndicate, but hope that his new Norco gig will translate into something that will allow him to mentor youngsters and build a formidable team in the long term. He really is too valuable (i.t.o. knowlege, expertise and experience) to be wasting his time in retirement running a little local bike shop.

About when to go: If all the recent winter rains is anything to go by, then it will be a bumper flower year in the Tankwa this year. It is usually at its best from mid-August to mid-September. (A bit earlier that the traditional time for Namakwaland or the Great Karoo.) The Tankwa lies sandwiched between the winter rainfall area of the Boland and the summer rainfall area of the Karoo proper. Some years they get both, some years one or the other and every once in a while they get neither. It makes for very interesting botany with unusual plants. In a good year the flowers can be absolutely spectacular. In spring you do have the risk of a very cold spell, even cold enough to have snow on some of the high passes, but you will not have the extreme heat of summer. As for headwinds.......this is cycling...... and headwinds you will most definitely have.........(most of the bad winds in spring will be from the West and just before a cold front blows in).

Ha ha, funny thing happend on the way to the comedy show............ I once spoke to a ranger in The Hell about the road that was closed because of flooding..........I switched to Afrikaans............and he said.........."ek is juis op pad soontoe, ek sien jy ry 'n Landy, volg my"🙂

https://www.sanparks.org/parks/tankwa-karoo/what-to-do/activities https://www.sanparks.org/parks/tankwa-karoo/what-to-do/activities/mountain-biking On their website, SANParks gives mountain biking as one of the activities for the Tanqua Karoo National Park, so, yes, cycling is allowed, but then they say also say this: ".......overnight visitors are allowed to make use of marked roads within the immediate vicinity of their booked facility. No walking or bicycling is allowed in the rest of the Park." Which means that only people staying over are allowed to cycle around their cottages. I still don't see how they can advertise "mountain biking" on their website and then say that. I also don't think they can prevent you from cycling in from one side and out the other, just like they cannot stop anyone using a public road using a car or a motorcycle. I suppose a phone call directly to the Tankwa admin offices is what you need to do. No use asking the SANParks headoffice, they won't know if the sun is shining outside their windows. Best to ask those IN Tankwa.

I have also cycled in the park. It now sounds strange, but it was so obviously "allowed" that we did not even ask. It is an open park with a public road crossing right through it, so, my take is that they cannot prevent you from riding at least on the main through-road. About the smaller routes in the park, I suppose I'll now have to ask next time.

A minute of my day well spent.😁

"Ha ha", says Jan Ulrich while turning......"I want a re-match for that title"

He just didn't like the idea of an ear piercing.....

Just to make sure I don't get shot through the ear by an angry Cavendish fan, I am in awe of what he did and I admire him tremendously. Oh, and I know it is impossible to compare him to Merckx. Even just the decades in between them makes it nonsensical.

I am an old Eddy Merckx fan (yes, I know he doped) and I suspect even he may be secretly amazed at what Cavendish did..........but then...........if you consider that Eddys' stage wins came from mountain stages, sprints and time trials (not just sprints) and that he won all the jerseys (green, polka and yellow), ........perhaps The Cannibal is still the greatest? Besides, having a nickname like "Sir" is just lame. 😉 Ps. Tongue in cheek warning

I have often bought offcuts from Rarewoods for very simple projects like a quick no-frills cutting board as a quick unique hand made present for someone. What makes it special is the wood and not necessarily the complexity of how you make the cutting board. A simple piece of wild olive, nicely sanded and oiled, will (to my taste) be as beautiful as the fanciest end grain pattern cutting board that takes incredible skill and much time to make. I think the same principle will apply to a key rack. Find a nice piece of unusual wood and you won't have to do anything fancy to make something very special. You will also see Rarewoods........and that is a bit like the "cathedral of wood" in Cape Town.......almost? a spiritual place to visit, even if just for the smells and to look at "unobtanium" (price wise) wood.

Rarewoods in Epping has an offcuts shop where you will be able to find something unusual and beautiful.

Poor Vincent, what did he ever do to deserve THAT? 😜

😁😁😁

Tokai Mtb works on the mountain every day and their efforts is the reason there was only ONE attack up there in about 3 or 4 years

"Science" is often flawed, no doubt. But at least it is open to examination, re-evaluation and correction, as history has proved many times over. But what else should we "follow" as an alternative when it comes to health matters? Folklore? Superstition? Anecdotal stories? Beliefs? Trump? These are not based on something that allows examination, re-evaluation and correction. All alternatives are even more fallible, methinks.

If I look at the road carnage I think there are many who don't even know they are supposed to drive on the left..........leave alone opening a door without looking first🤪

Agreed, a positive develeopment very long overdue. The City of Cape Town simply MUST clean up the grime and crime unless it wants to allow its inner city to die together with the goose that lays golden eggs for it, tourism. I am sorry for the homeless, and have many years of co-existing with them in my neck of the woods, but as it stands since Covid, it is totally out of control and needs to be addressed.