Looks like I might get some action this year!

Yes it's a Blue Moon on Saturday, and time to get a little nerdy.

We all know that a Blue Moon is something that happens very very seldom (just like me getting action). It is actually to do with the timing of full moon. The ambiguity starts there, and involves the (very olde) Maine Farmer's Almanac and a second incorrect definition (Calender Blue Moon) that is more popular due to being easier to understand.

The first is when a quarter of the year has four and not three full moons - the second is simply when a month has two full moons. So June 2007 is a Calender Blue Moon (1st & 30June) for us, but not in the general Western Hemisphere (they had one in May - 3/31). They occour roughly every three years, whereas a Black Moon(February with no full moon) comes around every 37 or so - the next one is only in 2018, so watch this space.

The world is Two Wheeled

It appears we have hit Bike Madness Month. Got the Oyster Festival next week-end, with a 80km MTB race spiced up with a 110km road race....The lottery closes for the Cape Epic tomorrow.....Joined the Warthogs on a night ride up Tokai last night, was really cool, time to build me some serious daylighters...the UCI B World Champs are in CT, with the road race following the Argus route plus a few laps on Sunday......Le Tour De France starts next saturday, in London of all places, and we have Team Barlowworld on the startline with a wildcard.



It looks like The Cape Epic has become the Argus Yardstick for mountain biking - you don't really count if you haven't done it. But to me the Epic is for rich people with fancy bikes and has roadies on the podium. Don't get me wrong, if I could find someone to bankroll it, I'd be there. I have bought into the whole EPIC vibe by ordering 2 of their tents that they were shelling out, they've now sent me 6! But the EPIC pales into comparison when one looks at the 15 souls on the Freedom Challenge.



I'm not going to say much about it, because I want you to put 10 minutes aside and go explore the site for yourself. Go to {Trail Races/2007 Races/Race Logs http://www.freedomchallenge.org.za/rasa2007/index.php} and read some of the blogs with reports from guys on the road. Talk is cheap, but I think there's a really good chance I could get myself on the startline next year.

glued to the screen/pc

OK, we're not there(as expected), and it's pretty much NZ vs NZ/swiss, but the America's Cup is hotting up. just get to DSTV channel 25, or follow it on www.americascup.com live sailing. Yesterday was pretty special, the swiss paid dearly for allowing so much speration when they were ahead in light light wind....Thank god for PVR

 

It would be fair if ETNZ could win it back, but i do kinda like the AC in Europe

 

Off the road and running

Those of you interested in all things celestial might have noticed that the sun is finally setting a little bit later now every night. Yip, the winter solstice came and went last week, and our daylight hours will be getting longer. But for the early risers, the sun only comes up earlier after the 10th of July – go figure!

There’s been some complaints that the Diaries team have not been doing enough in the Deep South itself. Well boohoo to you, and to prove it we have some evidence from Saturday’s “Old fishermen’s Trail Challenge”. This is one of the hugely popular events on the so-called trail running calendar, and was very over subscribed. The course is:
Hout Bay Harbour
Hout Bay beach
Chappies to East Fort
Up Blackburn Ravine on the ‘Jeeptrack’
Still going UP
Down to the Silvermine Dam
Follow Silvermine River Trail to Ou Kaaps
Take jeeptrack till Ridge peak and the Amphitheatre
Down Echo Valley through Enchanted forest
Boyes Drive to Main road
Clovelly River to Fishhoek beach



All in all it’s a 22km slog, with Start and Finish at a Yacht Club, so everyone is stoked with the cheap beer. They are really super stingy about the safety kit to carry, and were insistent on compulsory attendance at the briefing in the week. They alternate the route and consider this year the ‘down’ run – which is fair enough if you consider a nor’ wester.



To prepare I found myself doing a few long runs after work up in the Muizenberg/Kalk bay mountains. It’s still quite special to be up there alone, with sweeping views over False Bay down Peck’s Valley and then later a burnt orange sunset through to Noordhoek and the Atlantic. Coming back I almost stumbled into a porcupine, who had all quills splayed out and ready to defend. He looked like a huge bush in the half-light and only once I fully recognized and comprehended what was infront of me did I let out a very girlish scream of sheer fright. This ended our brief mexican stand-off as he ran down the hill at full scurry, leaving me with a maxed out BPM and a smile.



The big pre race decision was how to tackle the deep and dirty Disa river in the middle of the beach. Some went for plastic bags over shoes; others hopped into black bags at the spot and waded through but most just got wet. I followed the few who went barefoot and put on shoes at the end of the beach; much better than the squelch-squelch and weight of wet feet, not to mention some pretty scary blisters on shoe at the finish. After that the bulk of the field was dispatched and I pushed it through main road and the beach to come in under 2:13, just 20 minutes behind the superscary skinny winners. The sun has set on Hout Bay Trail entries, but there’s still daylight for The Crazy Store Table Mountain Race, so get keen kids and hit the trails.

Some AR action - QUAC 2

Talk is cheap, and some no bullsh1t action was required to get some adventure racing back on the menu. Luckily Uge from Quantum Adventures put out an event up the west coast and the game was on. I pulled Jamie online as he’s had enough of moaning about mystery ITB and getting bored on the couch. Looked easy for ‘Team Lost Yachties’: 12km paddle, 25-30km MTB and 5km run/dune running; the bonus being held in the West Coast National Park means that local knowledge is a plus.



Despite having the purple turtle K2 in the backgarden, we chose to use surfski’s on the lagoon. Fair enough, you don’t want to tip a K2 when you are 3km from shore. The masterplan of staying at Yzers the night before backfired when we realized we were a helmet short, luckily we have connections and a spare was shipped to the race early next morning.



Ok now, Langebaan, is actually not 20-25 mins from Yzerfontein; somehow more like 45. Like rockstars we arrived 15 mins before the scheduled start, and somehow got ready in time. There were 45 teams running around getting everydamn everything in order. The cool things were that; being a peach of a day not all the required thermal gear was mandatory, and some teams were given GPS tracking units from Sportstrack. Fancy pancy as spectators could follow race on a laptop/big screen!

A monkey see monkey do approach to the paddle saw us following Landrover man Martin Dreyer to PC16, a wreck severely lost from some terrible navigation (not dissimilar to the stuff witnessed on the day in the mist!). With single ski’s we had no chance of keeping up with the leaders, but lead the chasing pack to come in about 5th. The logical second PC15 was not where it should have been, and after the mess with it being disallowed we were now pretty much last after ditching skis to run to the PC on foot. Anyway, now sitting so far behind meant we got to overtake teams for the remainder of the race in a game of catch-up, always a mental boost.



We came into the transition after a seriously painful portage, carrying canoes of any form is soooo overrated. Even worse, the precious map was somehow lost by yours truly! I managed to talk my way into getting a spare from the admin lady, so lucky we were at the transition. Onto the MTB leg we picked up quite a few places, but the PC’s were all pretty obvious. We all missed the sneaky route of saving half the bike PC’s for the return leg after the run. This would have given a lot more fast tar riding, but came down to not planning the course and just blindly following the numbers like sheep.



The run leg ended up being quite a meneer. We opted for the sand dune first, it was a wild goose chase on soft dunes, and not easy to find the PC. We had to put in some walking on this leg as we were now into the fifth hour of the race, but were at least on the way home. We came in with the seasoned Team Tension Structures, and headed out first with our support crew waving pom poms for us from the Geelbek restaurant deck.

On the slog home we let them pass us, but they remained in sight. Then disaster struck, as they pulled up with a broken seatpost bolt and we flew past. With maybe just a km to go, we followed the wrong turnoff, fooled by some MTB tracks and ended up on the beach. Looking at the return route we saw two teams had followed us, and had just leapfrogged as we all turned around. Hard lesson to learn that you can never let your guard down and lose concentration.


We pulled into the finish at 6th overall, but 4th in the male pairs - Not bad considering all the mistakes made, and out of a large field of 45. This put us just out of the prizes, but at least in the points. Jamie had come within 3 minutes of winning the hydration pack he’d bought the day before. We made up in the lucky draw as we won a pair of fancy sunnies and a headlamp between us. The patriotism in us got to the Tropicana bar next to Mykonos for the last quarter of the rugby and extremely well earned sundowners. All in all a good day out, see you at Palmiet Gravity Festival for #3 in August.

Hail the Comrade

Well the Comrades Marathon has come and gone for another year. One wonders how long it will be before the prizegiving ceremony becomes bi-lingual, as none of the prizewinners had a clue what was happening this year. After the biggest onslaught since Glasnost; soon it will all be in Russian (with maybe some English subtitiles). Reports are in that the title of the race could be given a less socialist slant, but Butana Khompela (parliamentary portfolio for sport/rugbyforthebruthas ringleader) is quite happy with ‘Comrades’, but would prefer it if there could be some black Russians in the top ten. Personally, I have never been scared of a White Russian.

Bruce Fordyce was almost solely responsible for the peak in Comrades interest in the 80’s, and his unbeatable down run record has been shattered by Leonid, the good soviet, after 21 years. To put a 5:20 Comrades time into perspective, you have to rapidly say 3:35min/km. It’s just a shade more than four 75min half marathons back to back; if that doesn’t keep you awake at night, nothing will.

Why the interest in Comrades, you say? Well it is definitely on the to-do-list, but probably perched on page two for now. It does happen to be the first leg of the most insanely crazy ridiculous must-do event ever thought up in this country – ‘The Freedom Challenge Extreme Triathlon’.
Leg 1 – Comrades Marathon – 89km Durban <=> Maritsburg
Leg 2 – Freedom Trail MTB – 2200km Maritzburg <=> Paarl
Leg 3 – Berg River Canoe Marathon – Paarl <=> Velddrif



It is so mad that no one is even attempting it this year, I think you’d want to do each leg individually first at least once, before trying them in one shot.

The ride itself is a totally self supported adventure. The help you get is 25 accommodation/food stops roughly 100km apart. Before the start the riders draw up insane spreadsheets and ship 25 icecream containers to the respective stops. This is the entrance exam to a Ph.D course in forward planning. It requires Fairchild Semiconductor logic, Noakesian dietetics, Da Vincian mechanical gurubility and some suspiciously lucky sangoma bones to get right. Even Lance would struggle with this one it is ‘about the bike’. You have to know how to fix, manipulate and nurse everything that will eventually break.

The first week they are joined by a larger group who do the “Ride to Rhodes”, which involves a lot of offroad uphill. Thereafter it is the 15 on their own, some even with blogs and all with sportstrack gps units for the public to follow (a cruel paradox, as competitors aren’t allowed GPS navigation). We’ll be watching it closely to whet the appetite for Barlowworld hitting the TDF in July.

The record time is 16 days, which requires a fair amount of early starts and night riding, and would give a week’s recovery for the Berg. I’ve got to admit it is a very tempting undertaking and if ‘DIKTRIL WP’ is your desired motor numberplate, then this is a way to earn it. Makes the Cape Epic look like a Sunday stroll and reduces the much hyped Argus to a mere walk to the bar fridge.

Trump in a wetsuit?

You gotta love Bob. I first met him ages ago when he went around as Noddy and had the foulest mouth in the fleet. Being born and bred in Zeekoevlei, means he’s anything but normal. So after doing Business Science at UCT and hacking it out at a desk job for a whole THREE months; he decided there was more to life than 9-5 and a stable salary with medical and dental plan. What better idea than starting an adventure company (Revel Adventures) and get a slice of the insane tourist money pie coming out of Cape Town’s summer oven?

First up was sandboarding trips, mainly to Betty’s Bay. Build a few boards and put some posters up in backpackers. Load every one up in a kombi, show them how its done, pray to Jah that no-one gets hurt and whip out some sarmies and cokes under your gazebo when its lunchtime. Brilliant, but it’s a little pity that some dude thought of it first and still holds a large chunk of the market (note: no link to his website- Bob probably has a voodoo doll of him somewhere and it’s porcupined with rusty nails).


Looking for something to see him through the lean winter months, he added surfing to the repertoire. Snailman built him a clutch of longboards in his garage, Reef put a bunch of suits together and Revel now offered beginners surfing trips to Muizenberg. Good thing they were aimed at beginners, as Bob didn’t really know how to surf himself. He cottoned onto the idea of adding a tour of the Constantia winelands after surfing sessions and a great combo day was born (he knew didly squat about wine too!).


His latest is extended trips, over three days. Here we can see him in person with some customers, he’s claimed to have had some serious hotties over the years, but do we ever get any numbers (which he obviously has access to!)?


In between all of this the evergreen entrepreneur has had a few schemes; going to Thailand with an empty bag and returning with cheap clothes sold at +800% markups, making and selling Orgasmotrons(oh yeah!), the odd trip to the Med washing dishes on Oil Cartel Charter Boats and of course the infamous Clicks coconut candle endeavour.
Plan F has always been to go commercial with his much loved Home-Brew and try filling the gap in the market between Windhoek and brandy. But now, in true Trump style, Bob hatches Plan G:


He’s opening a video store in Vredehoek!
The business model seems fairly sound – large population of young urban professionals (yuppies, if you didn’t know where the term came from) in the area, with only Gardens Centre serving their need for the latest Scorcese box office hit. The naming rights went out to tender (for a sixpack of Home-Brew), and one of the working titles is exclusively technologically placed above for us. Who knows what goes into starting up one of these establishments (I’m skeptical Bob really does – what does one get for a kidney these days?), but there’s always the chance he follows the quick buck and starts offering some good quality artistic adult erotica, as we can see below.


Well we do admire the dude for taking the road less traveled, for having the balls to do what you really want to without worrying about the dire consequences and this project will definitely attract a little bit of interest. We’re also glad that there are enough wannabe surfers that keep Bob’s purple mini full of petrol and some spare change for the random round of mashie golf.

Life's a beach

Close your eyes, and whisper 'Surfing' - you are taken to a vast expanse of sand, with the azure waters quite easy to spot from the comfort of your hammock between all the palm trees. A rack of perfect lines are sweeping into the bay from afar and peeling over from left to right as you look. You can see Delgado cleaning tonight's fish on the beach with his knife, and are relieved to hear the thwack of ice cubes cascading into a glass behind you. Flavio, your Brazilian girlfriend (who moonlights as a part-time model), is preparing your first Rum and Coke for the afternoon. 'Hunnee' she chortles, 'triple or four?’ You lazily spin around, noticing that she's wearing the blue bikini made from dental floss, and blow her four kisses.


It is a little bit of a conundrum that a sport like surfing is actually more of a winter pastime in Cape Town. As much as I'd like to tell you otherwise, the corner at Muizenberg is not exactly this scene just described. Swap the Brazilian for a Nigerian crack wench, Faizel is not cleaning fish blood off his knife and Bostik quickset is preferred over Captain Morgan. But we do get waves, lots of them. The beloved South Easter even takes a well deserved break (along with the boardsailing gear that is now hibernating in the loft after a good rogering with soap, sponge and freshwater).
The weapon of choice in the ‘corner is of course a longboard, you don’t really want to be caught with anything under 8 feet around here. It does make life a whole lot easier, and when people ask, ‘do you surf?’ one can comfortably answer in the affirmative, even if you are totally clueless, as any idiot can stand up on a longboard.



Despite a lack of hard evidence to substantiate the claim, I am indeed a world record surfer. Last September saw a record breaking wave with 73 surfers all standing up together for five seconds……the picture is grainy, but if you look carefully, but I’m in there on a yellow board somewhere. Was a very cool day, you’ll hear all about it if they try it again.



Top right corner, yellow board with blue stripe.

Now onto something a little more important. The Red Bull Big Wave Africa has just started again. This competition is well known for never happening, as it requires the heavens to play ball off Hout Bay and for Dungeons to come alive below the sentinel. The window for action is now 3 months, where they give the invited dudes 48 hours notice to jump on a plane and get down here. Obviously there is a reserve list, and no I am not on it. The site is up and is pretty interactive.




Three days after the event last year produced some of the biggest surf ever seen, including this insane 70 footer that won biggest wave of the year. The way to do it is to drive to Hout Bay, hike round the mountain and park off with a chair and binocs when it’s going off. Watch the site for updates, early indications are that we are in for a monster winter.

From the files of Doctor Michael Hunt

Despite a heavy schedule, I am pestered with looking after a few lost souls out there. This request came in this morning in the guise of a 'freudian slip'. She's a good one, luckily not terminal

 

Lulu Pie, do we really have to go over this again?

I really think Doctor Klebestrom should double the dosage on your prescription; it may be enough to kill a rhino, but it clearly has little effect on the ant farm that passes as your medulla oblongata.

We are (thankfully) not living together and never have (once again, thankfully), try remember how everything you saw, touched, heard and even smelt had some token reminder of me. The time when I was both Joe Black and Walker, Texas Ranger on SABC3 and E-TV at the same time should spring to mind. After the (dismal) failure of both EST and chemo we had to get a male figure into your life as a last vain effort to cure you. That (not surprisingly) proved almost impossible with most subjects quitting within the hour.

Luckily technology has come along way, and T1 is no longer on the sci-fi shelves. We procured a male cyborg, and programmed him to tolerate you (only some of the time, there is a limit to what's possible in quantum physics). As a laugh we gave him a dead-on-balls accurate Scottish accent, and even add a few afrikaans phrases every now and then when his Lithium fuel cells are getting recharged at the HQ up the R27. We called him 'Simon', but he is anything but simple.

This brings me to a very pertinent point(thankfully), your callous disregard for taking care of Simon. Six months ago you were the model owner of a cyborg - cooked, washed, tidied and even rubbed and oiled him in all the right places. If the line of interrogation that you reign down on him every evening continues, his patience circuitry might be damaged irrepairably. Just let the man enjoy his sport after a long day recharging, your feelings are of little (if any) concern to him. For your own good, bake him a cake, pick up his clothes, clean his bike and don't ask any piercing questions anymore. Ever.

oh yes, taking him out for a romantic dinner wouldn't hurt. I can recommend House of Rasputin on Main Road; feed him and feast his eyes, and then when you get home show him that while you yourself are no robot(no sh1t, sherlock) you can give Tatiana, Olga and the rets of those Latvians a run for their money.

good luck,

the Doc

ps. I am happy to see that your winter sickness blog is at least getting an irregular dust off;. Long live the Life o' Flu;, even if most of us have had the necessary sniffs, coughs and innoculations by now.

----- Original Message -----

From:

Louise Corbett

To:

Steven Burnett

Sent:

Monday, June 04, 2007 12:36 PM

Subject:

dinner

I was thinking we haven't been out for a 'romantic' dinner in a while and it has just gone 6 months we've been living together....maybe we should go out to dinner soon and celebrate 6 months of not being at each others throats??

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http://lifeoflu.blogspot.com/