Shebeen Posted January 3, 2011 Share finishing this saturday, 12pm at mouille point lighthouse http://counterbalance.co.za/ Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Shebeen Posted January 4, 2011 Share tracking them today from near ceres,,,gonna be a hot one!follow live tracking from the link at the panel on their site I'm riding with them on thursday, will try get some trail reporting in Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Tumbleweed Posted January 4, 2011 Share I'm riding with them on thursday, will try get some trail reporting in Cool, where will you post? Here? Or is there somwhere else we can follow you? Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Slowbee Posted January 5, 2011 Share any updates ? Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Slowbee Posted January 5, 2011 Share they are in tulbagh Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Shebeen Posted January 10, 2011 Share sorry guys, i had intentions of live reporting....BUTa)i spent the week in bainskloof with no tricity so cellphone battery was preciousb)it was like 40'C..so under maslow's hierarchy of needs all efforts shifted to survival anyway, it was a rad day to see how things turn with these fellas. we met up pretty darn early (no probs there with the heatwave) and left the tulbagh shell at 5am. i went armed with my kona single speed to garner a bit of respect from the mUnicyclists. i didnt realise that they actually have two geared fixed hubs, quite an engineering marvel. they basically flick between the two by using a well directed heel during the top of the pedal stroke. so we had - me:32x16(ie 2:1) 26erjonny, alan and donna: 1:1 and 1.55:1 29erthose who know sliderules will see that i didnt really leave them behind in the dust and it worked pretty well. my main advantage was a)uphill till we all started walking b)downhill where they had to work their butts off and i just freewheeled. they also have a brake to slow down and a hand rail for stability. http://www.krisholm.com - the kh29 we cruised to the first climb of the day..the oukloof pass above montpellier in tulbagh. this is an olde wagon route before the nuwekloof, bainskloof, du toitskloof, sirlowry's kloof etc were built and must have been murder with an ossewa and 16 oxen. it actually wasnt too bad, and we walked up iot once it got steep. i don't think the epic okes will sukkel too much. oh wait they're going both directions. cresting the top we could see the flat plains ahead and the few bumpy mountains in the bergriver valley. the bonus for these guys, is that now into day 42 of their trip, table mountain was a rad sight in the distance. crusing down i got some love with the gopro camera, taking some behind, overtaking and static sequences for the guys. i told them that this was probably the last big downhill of the trip(not sure of perdeberg ropute, but i could lie about it for a day) and alan was very happy to let his knees know the good news. there were a few jump offs from the boys...as it seems quite hard to make it down in one go, but they gracefully dismount and hit the ground running. we got down to the little berg canal system and waited for donna to join us from the people wagon. ythe canals were empty and i pretended like i was tony hawk on a bmx. except the walls were quite steep and i was a total wuss. eventually we found it easier to just meet them on the main tar road and cruised through some cowfields. SAND is not their friend, and they battled to float over some of the soft stuff. hooking up with donna(rider 3), kirby (backup/blogger/life of the party) and raoul the purple people wagon(the quantum bus) at the road side we got going with the rest of the day as it was starting to swelt (hmm, about 35'C now). fairly straightforward all the way to riebeck wes here, with only the main berg river to cross. we managed to break this up with..1x tyre repair, replacing innertube that was just not sealing somewhere. ja they dont always use tubeless for some plausible reason that i have now forgotten, maybe tyre pressures?! 2/3/4 x breaks in the shade, any shade! about every 45mins we'd pull over for a quick 5-10minute siesta. so even though cruising speed was about 13/14km...moving was about 10km/h i had sold my soul and begged my backup team to come pick me up, so jumped into a car at riebeeck/got some coke from the spar, but the girls really really wanted to see the boysa in action, so we cruised the dirst road following them around reibeck kasteelberg until we got to their overnight stop - goedgedacht. this could not come any sooner, and a welcome dip in the swimming dam and a picnic on the side was handy. major major respect to these guys. they're riding with loaded packs too, probably 6-8kgs on your back depedning on the amount of water at any time. i did my best to level things by riding no handed for as much as possible, and gave the municycle a go, not so easy at all! i remember scornfully sneering at fixies but now own one...not sure if i have skills for this one though. if i do go this very dark dark route, you can blame this day. they did of course make it to mouille point (and johnny is already back at med school!), but still have loads to go in their charity drive. they'r raising cash for bobsforgood, an organisation under bob skinstad that gets schoolshoes on rural kids' feet. these shoes even have reflective stitching so that the cars can see them at night! donations start at R100 per pair. you can find out about this and more all at their site:www.counterbalance.co.za Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Shebeen Posted January 10, 2011 Share excuse the uberkak blackberry photokwalitee watch those hands in unison even thick downhill tubes pus slime dont always win! coming on for a break Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Slowbee Posted January 11, 2011 Share Steve, you have that GPS route ? Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Shebeen Posted January 11, 2011 Share Steve, you have that GPS route ?err nope. but i could find the directions or get hold of it. some of it is on private land btw. there are much better trips around, whatcha wanna do with it. it's very much like amarider 100miler territory(2009 route, didnt do last year) Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
WOFT Posted January 12, 2011 Share Steve, you are a legend! It was awesome riding with you. You and your singlespeed whipped our butts in every part of the ride, except pushing uphill. And handless riding. If you give me a few days and many reminders, I'll pull the file off of the other unicyclist's (Alan)'s gps and post it here. In the meantime, you can check out the route that the Altech Tracker picked up: follow the link on right of the CounterBalance website homepage to the "Live Tracking / Guardian" page. Login with username "freedom" and password of "password". Click on "trip replay" in the left column, and view the tracking from "6 January 2011". I'm not sure how helpful it will be as the Guardian maps are not topographical. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
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