Bonus

Never seen pictures like that before. Not even after 9/11.

Keep 'em coming! We need the humour right now . . .

I could do it, but in reverse . . . .

Farnborough Airshow in the UK

These sorts of face plants make my blood run cold!

Cool. Loved the first 2 series.

Still tons of planes flying over Europe / Middle East / the US . . . .

Shame man. I remember the damage after several in a row hit Edenvale and the East Rand. As a kid I used to live in Kriel and go to school in Witbank. Don't remember ever seeing a crazy hail storm back in those days. But it also rarely rained at all during winter then and yet that has now changed. Everything is changing man :-(

My thread takes a turn for the worse!

I'll post some pics and details later.....

Pardon? :-) Yeah it's loud.

Lockdown with my Stack and my Ibanez Jem 7 . . . . :-)

Returing SA's and picking up UK's?

wow! Thank goodness now is not the season for one of those "hailstones the size of oranges" storms that the East Rand has so many of.

Let's hope it doesn't turn into an Airplane Graveyard! Snap a few pics if you can . . . . ?

cheers man!

I do :-) We're hanging in there. Cheers man.

The lockdown in Spain continues. New rules/laws and been added/modified daily as quarantine procedures are fine tuned. In fact, most of the "updates" are just a case of the authorities tightening up in areas of the law where people are taking advantage. For instance "Yes, you are allowed to walk to the shops to buy food - please go alone and go straight there and back again" has had to be written down because "technically, I can walk to the shops and back three times a day via the scenic route and just buy some chappies when I get there". People hey? Here are a couple of photo's of the main road in Boltaña which runs past the flat we're renting. Normally on a Saturday afternoon this close to Easter the place would be pumping - pavement cafe's open, cyclists riding, families walking etc etc. I didn't break any laws taking these photo's btw!

It is true. "Where my bike is taking me" tomorrow is the spare room on a turbo trainer!

One of my fav novels is about Rome (The Far Arena). I've just re-read it for the unpteenth time and then thought we could watch the series. I've enjoyed it more since learning a bit more about the actual history of the Roman empire here: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=46ZXl-V4qwY

We've just re-watched "Rome" - one of my favorite period dramas from 2005/7. I guess we'll be watching a few old series while Spain is in lock down!

Swearing in Afrikaans is always special :-)

In amongst all the truly awful Corona Virus stuff going on in the world right now, we've actually had some positive news regarding our Build Project. We met up with our friends Ben & Corina on Saturday afternoon (before the restrictions of movement were announced I should add!) and we had a good chat about the various jobs that need doing in order to convert our property from what it is currently into something we can use to live in and make a living from. There are a couple of jobs that we will really need a builder for - stuff that requires the use of a crane and/or involves big concrete support beams or large quantaties of stone (the barn is built from stone) but there are also tons of jobs that I would be able to do on my own if Ben were able to help me. In a nutshell, pretty much every "difficult" job I mentioned, Ben was confident we could manage between us, either with him helping me, or with him showing me what to do and then leaving me to get on with it once I knew what I was doing. Now I have to go through our Builders quote and weed out everything we can do ourselves to see what amount we're left with that we still need to raise for materials and builders costs. I have plenty of energy, a fair bit of free time and I'm a quick learner. Let's see what we can do here.... :-)

Wow! Tough times in Spain at the moment. Along with some other European countries, Spain has opted to go into "Lockdown Mode". The key points are these: 1) People are being asked to remain in their homes unless they have to go out for food, medicine or in some cases, work. No socialising, no visiting relatives - nothing. 2) All hotels and other holiday accomodations are closed, as are all restaurants and entertainment venues. 3) Schools and Libraries are closed. School Easter holidays have started early. 4) All sports events are cancelled until further notice. 5) Going out to run/ride as a form of exercise is prohibited and has been deemed a fineable offence. 6) Tonight the Spanish frontier was closed. Only Spanish citizens or people with Spanish residence visas will be allowed to enter the country. As far as I know foreigners are allowed to leave if they are "on their way home". This is all terrible news for an area where so many people, including us, rely on tourism for their livelyhoods - but I know we are not alone. Literally millions of people are as badly off - or even worse off - than us. Let's hope as many people as possible can pull through this and come out the otherside with minimum damage. Good luck everyone! B.

Sadly, just as the season should be picking up speed and people should be flocking to our area to ride the Enduro & XC MTB Trails of Zona Zero or road riding the Cols & Valleys of the Pyrenees, the Corona Virus has, overnight, stopped everything dead in its tracks. I had friends visiting - they arrived from a wet and windy Scotland on Thursday night in their two camper vans for three weeks of riding in the sunshine - and by Sunday lunchtime they were on their way home. Both of them and I are gutted. Spain enetered a State of Emergency on Friday and on Sunday evening a sever restriction of movement of people was announced, to start 8am on Monday morning. The trails are closed, even to locals. There's a 2000€ fine if you get caught Running / Jogging or Cycling at all during the next 15 days. The reason behind this isn't so much a case of keeping people away from each other but rather reducing the number of people who could potentially hurt themselves / be involved in some sort of accident and require hospital treatment. I know some people will argue that you could just as easily have a kitchen related accident over the next 15 days as fall of your bike - but they've had to make decisions and this is one of the calls they've made. If this 15 day quarantine period is enough to slow the spread of the virus, and therefore the demand on hospital treatment, enough then maybe we can salvage the Easter holidays - but I think that's maybe a big ask given the scale of things. At least this is to some degree (or at least we all hope so) a finite problem. Within a period of time this little asshole of a virus will have done it's worst and we can start putting our lives back together. I fear though that the cost we're all going to pay, financially and otherwise, is going to be high. I know there's talk of this virus being too tough to beat, but I can't think along those lines right now. If that turns out to be the case them our little blue dot really is going to be in trouble. Keep well everyone. B.