Mamil

Thule 598 ... initially skeptical about them but am convinced after 18 months that they are 100 percent secure. Also had one mishap with no damage ... if i forget i deserve the pain.

I actually think that overall we do a pretty good job of keeping the trails and roads clean. Been participating in events for 4 years now and I have never seen anyone throw a wrapper down. I'm usually in the middle of the field if not the first 2/3 and while I do see the occasional wrapper it's infrequent enough to believe that it could happen accidentally. Could it be that most of us love the outdoors enough to respect it? Runs counter to my overall negative opinion of the human animal ....

I think its a sensible way to go. You pay the weight penalty for the extra durability but thats a compromise worth making in my view, particularly in the middle of the field. The 7500 is a big number though. Depends on how much sand, grit, dust one gets and leaves on it and thats a function of weather and trail conditions and also how long each ride is. And how willing one is to risk a breakdown to repair a broken link.

Just been offered 60k on a 96k trade value car which has a 66k residual due in 2 weeks. If i could live without the infernal combustion engine I would but unfortunately our world is addicted to fossil fuels and so am I. What an irony, excavating the ancient remains of prehistoric rain forests to destroy the present ones. Maybe I'll swallow my pride and trade in the car for an ebike, slap a trailer on it and pedal my way to the sportif towing my proper bike. In 5 year's time when it's pivots are creaky and it's battery pap as a 5 year old nokia, Chris Willemse will offer me 15 cents on the rand and let me squeek out of my residual. It's a mugs game. And we're the mugs.

Ja I've had one or two experiences like that and I've had more than one or two where the person, male or female reacts with an aggressive comment. Some peaches from the last few weeks "You're riding on the road where the cars belong" "It's 2018 dude - you do me I'll do you" "Don't touch my f$%$king car" I haven't been a perfect ambassador of manners for the sport in some circumstances. Found myself yelling at a taxi driver "I'm a father - you're going to put my child through university when you've left me dead on the road?" which accomplished absolutely nothing. I asked one massively overweight idiot who had a cigarette in one hand and a cell phone in the other steering with his knees from speedbump to speedbump on the back route from Noordhoek to Simonstown if he'd eaten the other cyclists who'd dare to query his driving habits after he said "You cyclists, I've had enough of your billsh1t" when I told him that he should please stop using his phone. Sometimes I worry that some muppet may just get my bontrager shoved into his roadrager and then where will I be? It is as Footballingcyclist says - a person gets sick and tired of idiots who couldn't care less endangering lives through a fine blend of arrogance and stupidity.

Jislaaik we live in a pretty bleak society. I'm finding it harder and harder to find my optimism about our country. There is an almost constant climate of fear and his close friend aggression.

On the way to piketberg the other week for the bo berg ride I missed the sign that signalled the end of the dual carriageway. I was driving on the wrong side of the road oblivious to the mortal peril I was putting myself and two other vehicles in. At the last moment i realised that the headlights ahead of me were in the same lane as I was. The vehicle to my left realised my idiocy before i did and left space for me to come back on to the correct side of the road. I don't know how close it was to an horrific accident that would have killed me and others. I drove on full of adrenaline, relief, horror at what might have happened and that I had been given a very lucky break. I think the guy on my left might have been a cyclist on his way to the race. If so, sorry and thanks. I think my point is that we don't know why or how this accident happened. It's another tragedy on our roads and again, thoughts and condolences to all who are touched by so terrible a thing.

Holding the riders and their families in mind.

There was a chap riding day 2 of funky fynbos on an ebike last weekend. I sneered at his battery and we got chatting. He had polio as a child and it left him with 60 percent muscle loss in one leg and i think he said 90 percent in the other. He dropped me on the first climb.

I last did the funky fynbos in 2016 - I missed last year because of a busted hip courtesy of a fall at the Garden Route Trail Centre and so I knew the 2 day format and longer first day ride would offer surprises and I didn't expect all of them to be pleasant. Day 1 was hard. Don't get me wrong it was beautiful but hard. Like being in love with a beauty queen who grew up tough kind of hard. Ecstatic highs followed by excruciating pain. I hadn't ridden the first singletrack climb before - I was a bit too ambitious in my pacing perhaps not realising or maybe forgetting how punishing the climbs to come would be. I thought of lots of things to call the fynbos besides funky. I had ungracious thoughts about the route maker. I was glad when it was over. Day 2 was a lot easier - many more free kilometers and treated us to some of the previous day's routes in reverse which was actually very nice. Did that first singletrack climb again, this time way slower and what a surprise, I enjoyed it more. With that out of the way I could feel the routemaker's mercy in his design of the route. Chatted to a chap on a 2018 Specialized e-bike - he had polio as a child - what a boon it is for someone with only a small percentage of muscle left in his legs to be enjoying the mountain. He dropped me at the first climb but ran out of battery shortly before I did on the last big climb up out of the valley. Overall a memorable weekend's riding, I'll be back in 2019.

I got off work early today and rode from Mowbray through to Camp's Bay, up to signal hill and back home in a cold wind. I had the feeling one gets when sitting with a woman you've loved a long time and worry that you need to leave.

Only saw the fence on second look. That would get a person to put down.some watts.

RACE REPORT I hardly slept Saturday night - a consequence of eating about 5 pieces of fillet more than I should have at a dinner party and topping it off with port. This is a recipe for middle aged insomnia. I also had the tail end of a cold which had kept me out of the DC team's Saturday ride. These are my excuses for being bleary eyed as I put the old wheel I use on the front of my Trek when transporting it to races to spare the good one from being damaged by the roof carrier. So bleary eyed in fact that the good wheel was waiting patiently for me exactly where I left it next to the front door. The old wheel isn't quite true and has a worn out Bontrager tyre which I just knew was a chink in the otherwise intimidating figure I cut as I lined up with the other Mamils in F-H batch. One nice thing about having group F thrown in with G and H is that things are sure to be lot less fierce than when we have to throw in our lot with D and E and this proved to be the case. The pace as we began was sedate and my circus wheel wobbling only slightly, I found myself able to keep up. Billy Goat was there too and when he told me that he was going to take it easy because he'd been going to gym (what a stupid thing to do) I knew there was no way he would be able to contain himself and sure enough, just after the first left turn he went to the front and things picked up nicely. If you've read any of my other reports you'll know that getting dropped is just another day at the office for me but I am thrilled to report that as we crested Hels Hoogte, with the exception of a small batch of fast looking young people who rode away from us, I was still in the top third of the group. This despite the uncomfortable and somewhat threatening interoceptive cues coming from the fillet and port in my mamilian belly. The ambulance went past me and another guy and he pointed out that the paramedic was staring at us - perhaps she was just super keen and wanted one of us to go into cardiac arrest or maybe we just looked bad. I did wonder how they'd handle the gastric emergency that threatened my smooth progress up the hill but in the end this wasn't necessary. I picked up Billy Goat at the top of the hill and we and a guy from L to M that had ridden away from his group and a nice bunch of our FGH's bombed down the hill - a nice fast group that I was happy to wheel suck with and that actually caught the breakaway bunch on the drag up to Wellington where everything slowed down again. I was so excited. I'd held onto the group which, as if by telepathy was surging when I felt strong and resting when I needed a break. This is it - I thought. I'm going to win this group. I started planning my tactics. I am very adept at using my weight advantage (98kg of pure South African beef) to move up the group on the downhills so that if the hill starts making me feel too bovine to be fast, I have some leeway and can hopefully hang on. I was imagining the thrill of my first ever bunch finish and I fancied my chances. And then that old worn out Bontrager hit something very hard in the road - I don't know what it was. At first I thought I'd got away with it. but about 3 minutes later there was no doubt - a slow puncture. Bleeding fingers from wrestling it off the rim - solo until Windmeul where a group of mixed droppees caught me - I sulked along with them to the end and came in 3:10 when 2:55 was definitely on the cards. Going away next weekend to Gansbaai - two days of the funky fynbos - wooo hoo.

We humans are funny annals - no doubt. Always doing peculiar things like complaining about the beers not being cold enough while sitting in a metal cylinder 10 000 meters above the earth travelling at 850km per hour or racing bicycles past elephants or composing Beethoven's Ninth while stone deaf or standing in a queue for 3 hours at home affairs to get a vital piece of paper stamped ... What a piece of work is man. Hope the rider is not badly hurt - the elephant probably feels quite bad about it. They're quite emotional animals I think. He's probably telling his mates that he was watching the funny little hominids riding their bikes and got a helluva fright and accidentally smashed one.

Thanks BillyG - was good to see you too - except every time we do a ride my Domane gets jealous of all the cool toys you've put on yours and I relapse into gear acquisition syndrome! It wasn't our mooch at up the N7 that nearly got me dropped - it was when you went off to the front at the bottom of the off-ramp and started stringing the washing out that made me nearly fall off the line! Sportif #5 -- c'mon - you know you wanna ...

Yes, have to say - the marshals on the motorbikes are outstanding. Their presence alone is worth the price of admission to these events. I am also of the opinion that a core cadre of the marshals who look after the starts at the PPA events could be outsourced to take care of "service delivery protests" - noone can make me feel like a first grader who's not lining up straight quite like a PPA marshal.

Race Report In a fit of enthusiasm and masochism I braved the cycle path and rode to the start from the southern suburbs. I grossly overestimated the amount of time this would take me and stood around in the arctic pre dawn shivering uncontrollably and wishing I'd paid the weight penalty for my lovely windproof. Started in F for F@#$ing freezing and predictably got dropped on the hill up to Mamre - another droppee and I time trialed nicely to catch up with the chap towing his son. No satisfaction in that, actually felt a bit embarrassed overtaking them and even more so as they held our wheel into Atlantis where mercifully a large batch of all sorts caught us. Hung on to this crowd to the finish - all shame banished as I drafted behind the guy pulling his son to stay in touch with the group on the little rollers before Melkbos. In my world an average speed of 34.6 is creditable even if I got dropped on the only hill on the route. Cycled back slowly because an Aussie told me it's good for building lactate threshold ...... I did wonder at what threshold I'd start lactating but reached home feeling smug about my 146k round trip. Cyclo sportif 5 next weekend ... woohooo!!

In the end I opted for the 37 which I finished in just under 3 hours - decided to call it a day while I was still having fun! Lots of riding still this weekend to do. The stories about these trails are not hyperbole - they are absolutely incredible, technical without being too frightening, very rewarding in places, very hard in others. The views are unparalleled. It is definitely worth the drive and next year I will finish the longer route. To the chop who was blaring his music from his bike so loud that it was all that could be heard. Thanks for turning it off when I complained about it - it saves you from utter wally status. Back marker in the Argus - by all means, munch your free choccies and contribute to the vibe - in the amphitheater of natural beauty and physical challenge that is this ride, any noise you make apart from whoops of appreciation and thrill is only detracting from the experience. Excellent day out. Thanks to the organizers.

And if someone is singing like cat stevens it's even worse!

I wasn't the guy who rode off in a huff, this is my first one but if i am in pain i prefer it to suffer in silence. Nothing worse than someone chatting cheerily while you're digging into the dark place to find the grit to carry on.

The route is ok and in terms of road cycling probably the best one. I ride the m28 early fairly often as one of my.morning loops and it can be pretty hairy sometimes in terms of cars. They tend to back up in rush hour which can make it a little easier. The section just before the common feels dodgy to me because the traffic clears a little there and the cars accelerate through the dip and up to the robot. The mtb route would definitely be the more relaxing one imo.

Entered for my third official -- excluding take 1 on the 40th ---- Will there ever be another perfect day like the 2018 one? Cos if there isn't it means I've already posted my fastest time for this race....

Balancing the fine line between excited and scared.

60% --- oh my goodness. Sometimes I like to really suffer and battle it out ... sometimes I just feel that I'd like a nice easy ride, a relaxing one... hope I'm in the mood for it on the day.

I wonder if this 67k is a tougher ride than the wellington trailseeker?