I of course cycled with Craig “Pharmboy” Sterling for our friends at Izivunguvungu in Simonstown. The rub is that Craig had a mahassive flag and I had a total sh1tter bike from House and Home...throw on a banging sound system and it came to a behemothly 22kgs! Oh yes we had lifejackets and full sailing gear on too!
As usual I was preparing a bike the night before the Argus, only this time it involved getting my 6x9's and amp out of the bakkie and onto the new rack at the back of my Shiny Raleigh E100. How long will a 7Ah motorbike battery last, when you crank your ipod through the amp?!!
Well the start was fun, at the back with a 86year old, normally after “everybody say hopla” they play some sh1tty tune..this time I chose to ride out on Roxette's Joyride! By the time we got to hospital bend, I knew it would be a looooooooong day. The bike was just too small, and you had to stand to get a decent pedal stroke in.
Anyway, we coasted up Edinburgh drive to much fanfare, pulled into my dad's refreshment station at Blue Route...and just missed the bacon and egg breakfast! Back on the road we switched bikes, and now Craig got to feel the pain of riding the beast! It was a relief to go on a decent bike again, even if it did have a huge flag, and my sailing booties didn't really work with SPD pedals!
Well the ride to Simonstown is always a pleasure, nice and flat, beautiful vista and Kalk bay rocks as usual. I stopped for a free bum massage in St.James, very niiiice!
We pulled into Jubilee Square well behind schedule, but who's watching. Quick refill and we were about to leave, until we saw some very cute physios with open beds. Ahh, switched on second years, double teaming my calves for ten minutes!
The cruise up past Smits was cool, with the tunes getting a good reception from all and sundry around. At the top we stopped in at the mechanics to see if we could tighten a pedal which was squeaking madly. The dudes from the cycle factory/Stevens didn't have the right spanner, so gave us a new one instead!
We also ran into some of our boys from Izivunguvungu there, they'd walked from Red Hill squatter camp, a good 10kms away. We were starting to feel the pinch a bit as finally the halfway mark was passed. Another stop in Oceanview with a whole crowd of the boys was also a welcome break. By now I'd have been finished, but we still had Chappies and Suikerbossie to go. Up Chappies we even had the joy of seeing the flag spin around and face forward..indicating a following wind. Unfortunately halfway up the sh1tter tuned us nooit, bru. Puncture on rear wheel. Now there's no qr lever on this baby and I stupidly brought the wrong multitool. So options were to walk to the top and see if there was bike support, or just fix the tube on the wheel. We did both, Craig walking all the way down with a spanner, that I never used in the end! A few extra blasts from the standup pump and we were on our way.
Now, Chappies is quite a winding road, heavy bike with minimal brakes is fun. Throw in an idiot mechanic(me) who only reduced it to a slow puncture and we have a hairy ride down, stopping every now and then to repump. Where's the #15 spanner now? Bowman's didn't have one either, and the call was made to fix it properly, on the side of Suikerbossie. The mood really dropped when Gnatterly Burls came flying past us, with a 'what's taking you sooo long grin'. With the job done properly it was a cakewalk to the finish, with about an hour spent on the side of the road giving us plenty of rest.
All in all, it was a good fun day out, our time of 6:44 was very long and we actually only just escaped the 7hr cut-off! The beertent had never been so inviting. Well done to all who finished, it was a great race day and very luckily only 26'C.
Have a look see through the results here if it's still not crashing!
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