Tuesday, October 15, 2013

Where the $%#* are we?

Early ride last Sunday with Rebbecca, Juan, Nadine and Gary, we met at the BP at 5:30 and headed out towards the mielie fields. Weather was great besides a bit of a headwind. I decided to detour from going down next to the train tracks like last week and instead went venturing over Bapsfontein road and past the Polo Fields. This where I came a bit stuck as we did not cut across a farm on the route Greg and I did before (the farmer had a few stern words with us), instead we headed straight and ended up getting slightly lost, after jumping a few fences we managed to eventually find our way back in the general direction of the brick yard. Fortunately the group did not hassle me with my bumbling tour director duties and welcomed the extra kilometers that we did :-).

3 other highlights of the ride were:
  1. Accelerating past some (unfriendly) road bikers and leaving them in our dust when coming back on the 'Roller Coaster' road towards Dunblane.
  2. Gary buying a farm when going through a ditch (ok I stopped and this put him off)
  3. Platkop Mucha coffee at the Hava Java cafe at the Brentwood Pick & Pay center afterwards.
Gary, Nadine, Becky and Juan taking a breather and refueling
Gary after he bought a bit of a farm (Nadine had a good chuckle)
Well deserved coffee afterwards...

Awesome to be out riding with great company, I finished on 80km, click here are the stats of my ride.  

Sunday, October 6, 2013

Back in the mielies

So after a fantastic holiday it is back to the Benoni flatland's, chasing dust in the mielie fields. I have had some great rides last Saturday (77km) and again today (75km). Weather has turned and at last there are clear skies and great summer days. Today I had the privilege of leading a group of 10 riders out for a mielie field, train track dash. The group split at 40km after Dee had a tumble, hitting the ground really hard and she and her hubby, Adriaan decided to head home (and 3 others joined them). This left Roy, Mandy, Nadine and Gary and myself to go hill hunting. The rest of the ride was awesome, fantastic ride with good company. Everyone had a good laugh when I was crossing a dry stream bed and my front wheel hit the rise on the other side with comical effect. My bike stopped dead and the back wheel rose up at 90 degrees and I stayed there for a while before crashing to the ground.
Vlakfontein single track...