The Guy in Pink

I use 180mm on my road and 177.5mm on my Mountain bike, and my mountain bike frame has nice high BB clearance. It's an age thing, (next BD is no 70) with less strength available the longer torque arm is useful. I'm still able to spin them quick as I was schooled correctly long ago (in the '60's) with our early season club races being restricted to gears of 72" max (48/18 or 53/20).

Sad news indeed. Good bye Holy, Tumbles , Barry. I will miss your prolific posts.

From a few pages back: Husky rescue SA Standard Bank Cape gate 02 39 10 271474092 "Tumbleweed" would be an appropriate reference for donations I made a donation to the above , but I would like to see the fund for Tumbles himself set up as soon as possible as I am sure I have enough spare $'s to help ease his recuperation period a bit.

I'm in

Spinne The Kremetart has always cost 2 times more to run than the entry fees received, Sponsors have made up the balance and the race has always been fantastic value for money, so losing the major sponsor is huge problem . I guess the only alternative is to charge what it costs to run.

I suggest a call to Stanley Thompson @ Thompson Motors Louis Trichardt. I am sure that he will be able to cast some positive light on the event.

Tumbles - all of Hubland will be thinking of you. May you have a speedy and complete recovery.

The POSH cabins on the Sea trip to India from England were those on the Landward side. Thus it was Port cabins Out (to India) and Starboard cabins Home

At the beginning of November of our security fellas banned me from riding my bike out of camp - as I have done for almost 6 years 4 times a week. (They had intelligence of a security threat, something that materialised bigly this week) So, I ordered a Spinning Bike from SA which arrived two weeks ago when I got back from R&R At a visit to my GP during my R&R, I mentioned that my plan was to use it for a lot of interval type training, so my GP prescribed Joe Friel's book " Fast after 50" for me. Joe Friel swears by using power and not heart rate only for setting training zones, so I closed my eyes, opened my wallet and ordered some Garmin Vector 2 Power pedals.

my sort of engineer.

A Fantastic picture Story!

The Amerindian Kids live in the water, and travel but Dugout to Church on Sunday

The birdlife in that Jungle is fantastic

I worked for two years in a Tidal Mangrove swamp trying to build a prawn farm in part of the Amazon Basin. Almost all our safety incidents were insect related . .

This is pretty much like the terrain where I work in the mountains of the eastern DRC

The mountains of Eastern DRC, @ Twangiza. The route of my normal early morning Ride (start 4:30am ) which I try to do 4 times a week. The first picture is from my start point at 2430m ( 8000ft) above sea level . I then drop down about 100m and then turn up and ride to about 2550m altitude (8360ft) before turning back gives me about 300m of climbing on my 11.5km ride. The mountain to the right goes up to 3200m (10 500ft) as the google earth view shows.

One of these fellas was shot in the hand Sunday two weeks ago while we were having Sunday Brunch. He tried to claim that he was surprised by two baddies in his tent and when he threw his hands up in the air in surrender they shot him. But 5 minutes investigation revealed that he was pissed out of his mind and shot himself. I helped the pilots load him in the Chopper to get him to Hospital

Nope, something much softer

Keeping us Safe and sound. Two Photos snapped from my Office chair. The Pygmy in the first shot is dwarfed by his two firearms and not so happy to pose.

Some Awesome Skill. Cutting planks with a chain saw out of jungle tree we felled to make a road .

One of the kids posted this photo on our family Whatsup group last week, so I thought what the heck I send a bunch of Roses to the wife on Valentines day with the Message " Relax! there is no new bike! " The online price for roses for delivery on Valentines day is about 3X the normal rate but what the Heck? I'm earning Dollars and Zuma has done a good job. So I hit SEND and blow the better part of 1G. But I did not recon on our Small Town mentality that they NEVER work on Sunday, not even on their busiest trading day of the year. They delivered that Blooming roses on Friday morning, two flippin days early

If you can pay there is world class treatment available in the private sector, but even then you have to drive it , for about 20 years the only time I saw my GP was in the forest on our bikes, at races or when I fell off my bike and needed patching up. It was only when I hit sixty I decided I should be having an annual medical check-up. If I had not decided that I would by now have the cancer spread all over and probably still not be aware that I have it.

The links if any are small and may be accounted for by the fact that cyclists as a group may be more health conscious, and are more likely to be diagnosed early.

If you are male you have a 16.5% chance of getting prostate cancer. If your brother or Father had it that goes up to about 27.5% My Brother and Father had it so it was no surprise that I got it, but only I am a cyclist. 5 of my friends over 60 have had it, and not one is a cyclist. Regular testing is essential. From the age of 60 I went for annual tests, in 2010 my PSA test was normal 2.1 , In 2011 it was still a normal 4.0, but in increase signalled a change so I was tested every 2-3 months thereafter and in 2012 had a biopsy and then underwent surgery. I have NEVER had any symptoms at all for the disease, no pain, poor flow, enlargement, or anything else. Only the regular annual blood test and eventually a Biopsy picked it up.

My chain stay of my Kinesis Max-light frame snapped on a ride up to the top of the Soutpansberg at an hour before Midnight on New Year's eve. I managed to carry on up to the top of the 930m ascent as the pressure on the chain held it together but decent was impossible. After a few days looking at alternatives I ordered a Inbred on Sunday 3rd Jan and it arrived yesterday (Friday) morning. I transferred everything over from the Kinesis and only need the Seat post clamp, the headset and some new gear cables. These views show it set up for night adventure with the Exposure six pack, , GoPro and my Garmin 500 . With the 120 decibel Zound air horn and SWAT spray it makes for a busy but compact cockpit.