The oval ball bounces straight for us.

It is indeed a sunny day in Tshwane (petoria). The locals woke up as World and Super14 champions, had a winning team over the week-end and were comfortable in the knowledge that they couldn't lose in the week coming up. But weather is all relative and it's getting remarkably Stormier in the near future for our boys in blue over the Jukskei. They have a bye coming up, have already surrendered the S14 trophy (even the Stormers already have more points than they can mathematically get) and Dangerous Dave is joining the ranks of their tax paying/avoiding residents (the fact that my darling sister is leaving the town for good on the exact selfsame day has not gone unnoticed).

Dan's the man

The contrast was hard to ignore (these days are distant memories, WWSD-what would Steve Do?). Loftus was empty, Newlands packed. The Super 14 is getting very exciting as the Crusaders wait on who'll be joining them in the semis. There's four weeks to go and the Sharks and Waratahs are sitting in second and third with a bit of breathing space to the pack of six marauding for fourth. The length and nature of the tournament means that they're all in with a shout and there's a bit of dice throwing required to predict the make-up of the final four.

Which is exactly what we did. Here are the crunch games with some bone tossing for the results(winners in bold).

April
25 Crusaders vs Blues Christchurch 9.35am
26 Waratahs vs The Sharks Sydney 11.40am

MAY

3 Vodacom Bulls vs Waratahs Loftus Versfeld 3pm
3 Vodacom Stormers vs Brumbies Newlands Rugby Stadium 5.05pm
9 Hurricanes vs Western Force Wellington 9.35am
9 Vodacom Bulls vs Brumbies Loftus Versfeld 7.10pm
10 Vodacom Stormers vs Waratahs Newlands Rugby Stadium 7.10pm
16 Blues vs Hurricanes Auckland 9.35am
16 Western Force vs Brumbies Perth 1.05pm
17 Reds vs Waratahs Brisbane 11.40am
17 The Sharks vs Chiefs The Absa Stadium, Durban 7.10pm

The bones are clearly from the Table mountain area as they see the 'Tahs and the Sharks stumbling ever so slightly in the difficult run in with the Stormers and Cane's pulling through with mostly homeground games. Using a lovely excel sheet we can fathom a 'Saders vs 'Tahs/Canes in Christchurch and Sharks/Stormers (venue TBA) final four. That's my cock on a block, but anything can happen, except a Bulls title defence.


Whilst we're on the subject of rugby, and have got the boring talk of results/matches out the way, it's time to look at some pivots. Dan Carter is the best.
Just look at him, and you'll see why Jeannie D didn't come home the night the 'Saders played in Cape Town. The bone structure, the 'gee shucks' countryboy attitude and the fact that he's pretty darn good all makes him a top prize for any girl. But since he's currently injured we do have to look elsewhere and luckily it's not a far travel to find his worthy replacement.
they all want their hands on him



He's reserved and down to earth, pretty good with the boot and (according to our XY chromosoned sources) bloody hot too. Yes sirree, Peter Grant has it all, and if those bones are to be believed an appointment with Mr Carter come May 31st.

Pete always scores

world's biggest foam party

not what you thought. the dudes from Sony Bravia went a bit wild downtown Miami.

now imagine if they left it on at night?!

Who's got a new flag?

Hey they threw this thing up the other day. Now Blue Flag means cool beach in municipality language.

Nice

I think to celebrate we should hold a surfing beach braai where we get mortared. Bring your dogs

the figures are all skyrocketing

So all the numbers are going up. Petrol is like it's linked to some internet dating scheme. I still shudder when the joggie tunes me it's over four hundred bucks to fill up my thriteen hundred. They must be laughing, as I'm sure their tips go up proportionately.

Eskom is pushing at getting their price tariffs upped by hefty margins, bye bye cheapest tricity on the planet, tough takkies if you run a factory on slim margins (but not if you have an aluminium smelter and it's all at cost anyway).

Tito has just reminded us that he's not forgotten about us. Take that 50 basis points and find another whole in that belt of yours.

Then I stumbled on a graph for Zimflation. Wahaaa. you can see it all here, but for the record it was a staggering 585 in 2003% but due to the scale hardly it even registers a blip.

So as we might have realised not everything is going up (definitely not renumerations), and this one is a moniker of note. 5 years ago, a bottle of the tried and tested Chateau Libertas was about twenty bucks. I picked up some at a Tops the other night on special for...twenty bucks. Hmmm, somethings fishy, because you can be rest assured the price of Tassies has doubled in that same time frame

cruising parking lots to pick up chicks

You have to ask WTF is going on here?
Look at the hands
It's mulletboy XC racer boerie stander and road princess Cherisé Taylor. Now Cherisé is the Angelina Jolie of south african cycling, she pulled a silver medal at the world juniors whilst still in matric last year. She was one of the four Konica Minolta ladies, undoubtedly the hottest team to hit local tarmac EVER and got rewarded as SA female cyclist of the year for her troubles. Unfortunately MTN picked her up this year and gooied her on a Raleigh, but not even that could stop her from winning the Argus.
Go princess, go!
Well Boerie is our top rated XC lap racer from Port Shepstone. He's also a yungsta, but came 5th in the under23 section of the worlds in Scotland last year. He's off to Beijing for sure, and turned some heads already at the Epic this year racing with world champ suzie before his knee exploded on day three.

Dirty boy
Pity is, he's tappit to the core. The mullet, the gold chain and the terrible hat selections make him a little bit parow-noord for my paranoia. So we had to do some sneaking (ie. Go to his open to the public facebook profile) and it appears our worst fears are confirmed. He's bonking (off the bike) our princess. Never before has such a hottie been so quickly Federlined, I'm only consoled by his profile

Activities:cycling.cruising parking lots to pick up chicks, hangin wid peeps in the ghetto
Interests:penguins
Vrooom
His car isn't much better, definitely from the wrong side of the tracks

bikep0rn

okay, now that's out the way, lets get back to my ruminations and the original subject title.

So I'm really battling to crack it into the local adult entertainment industry. Before you go on about performance, hardware, lack of german accent etc. let me just say it is purely down to my cycling tan. No amount of self-tan lotion or coconut oil will ever neutralise that solid line on my thighs where one side is slave to the african sun and the other porcelain princess locked up in her castle. It's just as bad on the upper arms, and the hard to hide sockline. They have all sorts of experts on set, with all sorts of lighting rigmarole trying all sorts of things, yet it's all come to naught......

then at a low-point (just before i considered giving up riding to pursue this career more seriously), it hit me.

BIKE PORN

Yes, I know what you thinking, get your fixie off those fixies i showed you earlier. If those top-quality movies can all have female stars wearing their high heels, why can't we have some bib-shorts and helmet scenes? A bit of off-trail roughriding? All we really need are some good titles, the rest will come. What they normally do is take a really good blockbuster and wangle the name around:
For Your Thighs Only
Forrest Hump
Full Metal Bikini
Ghostlusters
Gonad the Barbarian
Good Will Humping

and that's just F and G, what we need are some saucy bike related titles. here's a start:
head tube
seatpost in seattle
top tube gun
the tale of nippleless wheelbuilding (does that sound like nicklaus nickleby??)
the texas chainstay redesign
cleat and present danger
XTR

Finally, another race report

Ring ring and i pick up the phone, it's ching chong jim wei on the line:
CCJW: hey dude where are you?
Sailorboysteve:F@#$ Sh11 CR@p, I'm still in bed.

Luckily our oriental friend needs me to find Lourensford, as he's unable to point his car east on the N2 and follow the cars with mountain bikes on the back. Of course I've set my alarm for the unholy hour of 5am, but the phone is so damn clever the artificial intelligence kicks in and realises i don't want to be up that early on a saturday (but I did this morning, huh?!).

The dude doing the start seeding has not read Darwin's “origins of the species” and I'm in B group 10minutes behind a whole bunch of funriders. It's not like the alphabet either, essentially B comes last here. Sweet. At least I find Tatum and some very fit looking multisporter in team jeep kit called Cass next to me as we sneak in under the candy tape. We have the usual startline chit chat...not doing much training/had the flu/just chilling out today etc etc. The gun goes and after about 500m of dirt riding that stupid race competitive instinct kicks in and it's time to start weaving through the field. Cass is quickly gone, but a good thing I'm still ahead of Tatum.

I'm expecting the long pull up to the saddle 'a la Lourendsford classic, but instead we head off towards the dams pretty soon. Then it's the usual overtake/passing right spiel. We hit this just rideable slog up some vineyard track which takes a while. At the top I realise that i'm not overtaking B group hackers anymore because chingboy is there too. Poof! there goes his 10 minute headstart like the dust cloud that emerges on every descent through the very dry terrain.

that's a loverly bike...the silverback

It's still very crowded when we hit the first wooded single track at about 10kms. There's a holdup as some senior guy has had a very bad wipe on a steep section. There's groaning and ahhing. He's got some guys helping him, but no-one knows who to call, there's no emergency contact on the number board either – nice one Epic. Of course it's been brilliantly marked the whole way with a lot of signs and candy tape, but there's not much in the way of personnel on the course. Moving on it's now soldiers rank down the clustered singletrack as the rubber necking has held the route up and patience is the order of the day. Not so for some wise guy who decides it's a good idea to overtake 10 people at a time. I have to laugh as he flies down the side, brakes, does a sideways somersault with his toeclips/cages and comes to rest.

There's some more very technical uphill slogs to follow, did Leon 'Dr Evil' Evans set this course too? I'm fine with that, you have to suffer to appreciate the 966 reasons the Epic finishers are legends, but it quickly becomes apparent there's a big gap between the 22 and the 55 routes as some people are beginning to suffer. In my prerace rush I haven't checked my qr skewer properly and the rear wheel pops out on the next downhill (i'm actually not sure how that happened, it's a new bike and i thought it was tight enough). All is fine as i stop before any damage, but the one pad (v brakes) has twisted and is rubbing. I'm about to swear when i realise my multitool is still in the car, but then Tatum swings past like an angel. A quick stop and she's got her's out for me. I promise to try catch her. It takes a while as she really does fly (see her work here ), but when I pull up to her she's running short on air in her rear wheel and doesn't have a pump on her. Rarely is karma repaid within 3kms and we're back on the go after a few good pomps (ja ja, that joke never tires). We concur that it is actually a moer of a race and we can't wait for some downhill respite. I mention that if we still are going up to the saddle then it'll be a loooong day indeed. Then we arrive at the saddle, from above?! How did that happen?!

A long section of downhill follows, and the rest is a race against the incessant throb of helicopter engine. I have to beat those damn Vredestein dudes to the finish line. There's a few sections of singletrack thrown in, where they've taken a broom and cleared a path in the pine needles. There's little 'flow' to it, and I'd hate to be rider 1199 down that section. It does get a little bit hot, but we're mostly in the forest now. For jeep track riding, it really is good terrain. There's repeatable sections of switchback road leading to hiphigh river grass every gulley and for once the contour is flat. I probably only see 2 other riders for the last 5km's (but I do pass a big truck setting up a water point about 5 mins from the end – huh?!).

the only Bulls worth shouting for

Well I time it perfectly and beat the Bulls by about 15 minutes so I'm on the grandstand for their sprint finish. Later i hear some swiss hack called Cristoph won it after his partner's knee exploded on stage three of the epic. That's funny because the online registration closed before the Epic started, and I doubt he entered both. Either way the yodeller is lucky, because if I was in A group I would have sucked his wheel dry and dropped him on the downhills (or taken the chicken run shortcut from the saddle – employed by a few I hear!).

I'm glad I did the race, it's obvious they use it as an afterthought, but you can't ride lourensford just once a year. Much respect to all the full finishers, and the dude who invented Spur rib burgers.

saddle sores, that's what 966km does to you

Epic bru

twisty switchback


So you might have heard of this little ride called the Cape Epic. Take your mountain bike to Knysna, and book 9 days off work. 966km later you’ll emerge at Lourensford in Somerset West a little bit tired but satisfied.

Not that simple, fellows. If you ride bikes, people ask you if you’ve done the Argus. That’s a joke of a race, something we call a fun ride. But if you ride a mountain bike, people will enquire about how many Epics you’ve done. Totally different scenario. The Epic is a large undertaking, the middle of the bell curve do about 5000km of training and spend about R20k in the 4 months leading up to the event. Stories of sleeping on the couch with the bike, avoiding friends, quitting jobs, partners (romantic) getting suspicious due to time spent with partners (racing) all abound. Some people even get tattoos.

Gav on the run

Of course the pros whizz around and it can be exciting following the drama. For once the saffers are actually able to keep up with all the top overseas hotshots (5 of the top 10 rated dudes are here, lots of funny sounding surnames). With only two straightforward stages to go, we should see the MTN team in third.
Kev and George charging in for the prologue win
Yesterday the race leaders (Fugelsang/Paulissen – I warned about the funny names) had to ride the last 18km without a back wheel. Too many punctures and no way to fix them. They only lost 8 minutes of their 18 minute cushion on second place. Legendary stuff for a team that were pipped into second last year.
Who needs rubber?

But the bigger human story comes further down the field, where total amateurs have put their lives on hold for the race. Many race against the cut-offs just to stay in the race. There’s heartbreak whenever the medical team have to remove injured riders from the field. 90% seems to be ITB or saddle sores, there’s no way to really train the body for 8+ hours continual punishment for a week straight when you still have a nine to five. Ride of the week has to go to the 115kg Robbie Kempson, who you might remember as a Springbok prop, crazy what people will do in the name of charity.

thanks honey

We’ll be there at the finish (after a little 55km burn round the vineyards to warm up) to see them in on Saturday. Watch this space