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

These argies are crazy

Oh my word! So I stumbled on Rule69 again the other day. It's back up and running quite nicely.

Followed a link to some Oppie regatta pics in Argentina. Can you imagine they send their kids out in those conditions. They must have big balls over there (the kids and the mommies in the parking lot).

I'm on starboard
So am i , but can't see sh1t!
Try not to ramp over the mark now

Don't forget to put that board down

Vernon Koekemoer

ok things are just exploding in our dark corner of africa. If you don't know who Vernon Koekemoer is, where have you been hiding??

So some built dude rocks up to the H2O rave in boksburg (where else) looking like he just played eeny meeny miney moe at Freaky Feast and within a week. the joy of the internet and people with too much time on their hands photoshops him somewhere between Steve Hofmeyer and Chuck Norris.

With mini vernon

just follow the links.

watkykjy

rambo guy


it's scary