Nice little 9km morning hike on the mountain yesterday. I don’t usually get up early on a Sunday, but this was definitely worth the effort. What a pleasure.
Lovely sunrise, and great views across the misty Cape Flats before coffee and breakfast on a rocky outcrop near Rooikat Ravine.
Then back for a few jobs at home (including editing the photos: nothing too strenuous) before an evening braai.
What’s not to like?
You occasional/annual (when I remember) reminder that:
“There is snow on the mountains because it is cold.”
NOT
“It is cold because there is snow on the mountains.”
It seems to be a Cape Town old wives tale that the snow on the local mountains is somehow responsible for the chilly temperatures in the city.
Here’s the view from our bedroom (long lens, yes) yesterday.
But this isn’t a tricky “chicken or egg” situation. It get cold and then it snows.
Not the other way around.
Social Media Manager for Eskom being at number 1.
But Social Media Manager for the City of Cape Town must be in at number 2.
Because there’s not enough electricity to go around nationally, the City is obligated to cut its power to certain areas at certain times to reduce the strain on the overall system. There are timetables for that process, and we’ve been through this a lot before on here. And while the national “supplier”, Eskom, has different stages of loadshedding which apply to the rest of the country, Cape Town can use its pumped-storage facility at Steenbras to sometimes lessen the effect of the loadshedding for City customers.
Less so on the weekends, because you can’t just keep creating free energy. That’s not how physics works.
The City tries to provide up to two stages of load-shedding protection where feasible. At the high stages of load-shedding, it becomes more challenging. Over weekends, when the demand is lower, the City often sheds close to the same stage as Eskom to build reserves for the week ahead. It does the maintenance of the Steenbras plant too.
The City then announces or updates its plan via social media and then the people get angry at the City.
Usually, people get angry because they are inconvenienced by the loadshedding that the City has announced, somehow failing to realise that this loadshedding is often less, but perhaps more importantly NEVER WORSE, than for the rest of the country.
What I am saying is that it’s not the City’s fault, but they still get the blame.
And when these people aren’t inconvenienced, because of the City’s intervention?
The City getting a lot more blame this weekend because there’s a big rugby game (URC Final, Stormers v Munster) in Cape Town on Saturday evening, and there is (nationwide) loadshedding. For some reason, people who are going to be loadshod during the game seem to think it’s a personal vendetta by the City, and they’re not happy.
Wouter Swart doesn’t have a single friend whose house he might be able to watch the game at.
And that’s sad.
Ilse Engelbrecht says that she’s in the same boat, but then she gets called out by Lionel. He says that she’s lying, and reminds her that she’s invited round to their place. Looks like Ilse was going to be watching the final with Lionel and she was just after some internet attention.
Yes, Vanessa. Every single TV in Cape Town will be off. There won’t be anywhere with electricity in the whole of the Western Cape. No-one will have a clue what’s going on. As usual.
Come now, Babs. It’s not about tonight’s rugby match. It’s a longer term problem. I’m surprised that you haven’t been aware of it before. And… wait… in what way are the away fans being treated badly?
Surely anyone who has come over to SA for the match will… er… be at the match? Or do you really think that a) Loadshedding is an issue in the south of Ireland, and b) the City of Cape Town somehow has some control over that?
Are you quite mad, Babs Ryan?!?
I did a teeny, tiny bit of research and it seems that it’s actually Eskom that has instituted Stage 5 at 17:00. . And yet it’s CoCT that’s being spiteful?
Honestly, Ronel Cripps. Get real, man.
And then, this:
Always, as Elise Mayer Bouwer tell us, “on an weakrnd”.
Look, I used an AI-powered translation machine thing and it thinks (after quite some deliberation) that Elise is aghast that there is loadshedding on a weekend. Is that unusual? Well, let’s have look at how loadshedding has actually been spread across the days of the week this year, shall we?
Aaand… yes. It does seem that it is always on an weakrnd:
via theoutlier.co.za
…and every single other day as well. Except – actually rather annoyingly – Tuesday 21st March.
So yes, technically, Elise is correct. But I don’t think that her assertion is particularly valuable. Narima is the one who has spotted the bigger pattern here:
And it was a strong start in her comment. That top line is 100% accurate.
But then back onto shooting the messenger in the second half. Muppet.
Look, I get that loadshedding is annoying. It annoys us all. But I can’t help but think that you’re barking up the wrong tree by taking potshots at the City in all of this mess. While they might not be perfect, you’d do well to understand that they’re not responsible for loadshedding. And maybe you need to take a look outside our comfortable little bubble and see what sort of a state the rest of the country is in, before you go wishing for some sort of change in local governance. Because I can assure you, it’s really not very pretty.
Another cold day, meaning that the beagle was dressed in her bandana and hid in her basket for most of the day.
I feel that if one of our kids was dressed like this, we’d be saving this image for their 21st birthday party.
But with dog years being what they are, Colin is already well past that potential ordeal.
Lucky for her.
An utterly filthy day, as predicted. 42mm of rain in the back garden so far.
I took Mrs 6000 into town to get her passport back, and with it came added visa-ry goodness, so we’re all clear for takeoff to Europe in a few weeks time on #6kTrip23.
On the way back, we were astounded by the amount of water coming off the back of Table Mountain, so I grabbed my camera and popped down to Newlands in the pouring rain to ‘tog it quickly. You can probably imagine that the light wasn’t all that it could be for this enterprise (it was horrendous), and so I was most delighted to make use of the new AI-powered (because what isn’t these days?) denoise tool on Lightroom.
I mean, this is far from great, but it was a lot further from great before I pressed the button on the computer screen.
And while it isn’t going to win any awards, this does at least document the waterfalls, which we’ve seen before, but were much bigger than usual. And the scale is important, but not hugely visible in this pic.
The total height from where I was standing to the top of the rock is 950m. I think this little lot were probably dropping around 500m.
I’m back to my car park this evening, and I’ll probably take the camera along because wet days are the best days there.