Cycle Race

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It was the big bicyling event in Cape Town again this weekend, with many bicyclers raising money for charities and many more raising blood pressure for any of the city’s 4 million odd residents trying to actually do anything with their Sunday.

This is one of the biggest bicyling events in the world, and certainly the biggest in Africa. Friendly foreign person Oleksiy Mishchenko came down to the Cape to do some bicycling and found a uniquely African way to train for this uniquely African event.

Contrary to popular belief, we don’t (generally) have wild lions roaming around Cape Town CBD. There are some zebras on the mountain *points* just there, though. However, ostriches are fairly common in this little corner of Africa – especially down towards Cape Point where these guys were bicyling.

Training using ostriches is frowned upon by the SA Bicyling Union, given that we’d still have dodos if it wasn’t for those pesky penny-farthing races on Mauritius in the mid 1800s. Still, these foreign people probably weren’t to know that, so we’ll just wish them well and say thanks for the laughs.

“meanwhile, back at work…”

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It’s been an exhausting weekend featuring several (or more) tasks, including (but not limited to) shed building, bowl painting, pool mending and failing to buy paint.

Long story.

It’s the 6th though, and that means that a-ha are playing in Russia this evening, and if you thought that my flat-pack plastic shed was an ordeal (it wasn’t actually that bad, although the correct instruction booklet would have helped a lot), then you should be a roadie on the Cast In Steel tour.

magne

This is from Magne’s Instagram, titled: “meanwhile, back at work #hellorussia“.

Can you imagine the scenario?

“Can you pass me the 15″ spanner please, Bob?”
“Sure – where is it?”
“It’s in the black box.”
“Er… which one?”
“The one with wheels and a lid – you can’t miss it.”

And once all of that is out and set up, and the Ekaterinburg show is done tonight, it’s got to be all taken back down again, transported 944km to Kazan and all set up again for Tuesday evening’s performance there.

I hope they’ve found the spanner by then.

Tickled

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I get sent a lot of jokes via email.
Generally, they’re not very good, but this one tickled me, so I’m going to share it.

A Tall Klipdrift Fishing Tale

I went bass fishing this morning at Groendal Dam, but after a while I ran out of bait. Then I saw a puff adder with a dead lizard in its mouth. Lizards are good bait for bass.

Knowing the snake couldn’t bite me with the lizard in its mouth, I grabbed it behind the head, took the lizard, and put it in my bait bucket.

Now the dilemma was how to release the snake without getting bitten. So, I grabbed my bottle of Klipdrift and poured a little brandy into its mouth. His eyes rolled back, and he went limp. I then released him without incident and carried on fishing, using the lizard as bait.

A little while later, I felt a nudge against my foot. I looked down and there was that same snake with two more lizards in its mouth.
Life is good in Africa.

Numerous disclaimers here: I’m not sure that lizards are good bait for bass (or anything else), I’m not sure that a puff adder is unable to bite you if it already has something in its mouth, and I’m not sure how a puff adder (or the SPCA) will react to Klippies being poured down its throat.

Maybe it’s the fact that it involves brandy. But I think it’s more likely that I just liked the idea of a snake more obedient than our beagle. I’m actually making a list of things that are more obedient than our beagle, and so far it turns out that everything is more obedient than our beagle.

There’s a lesson here…

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I’ve enthused about Getwine on the blog before, most notably here and here.

For those of you who missed those posts or have simply forgotten what I wrote about, here’s what Getwine says Getwine is:

GETWINE is a South African Wine Portal which allows you to easily buy superb South African wine online and have it delivered to your door.

What they don’t say in that tagline is that those wines are often heavily (or more) discounted. This puts really good wine into the occasionally desperate clutches of us normal people.

But not just us normal people. Abnormal people as well:

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Yes, that’s a Getwine delivery going to a motor yacht on the Waterfront. The motor yacht in question is the Vava II. I’m not saying that it’s fancy or anything, but it’s owned by Swiss-Italian biotech entrepreneur Ernesto Bertarelli and cost £100,000,000. OK, it is fancy. There, I said it.

I’m no expert, but I’d wager that Ernesto wouldn’t exactly struggle to buy basically any South African wine (or vineyard) he wanted. He could even check the grapes out in person by using the helicopter that sits atop his big boat.

But no, Ernesto (or his people) chose to buy discounted wine from Getwine.

Firstly, let’s not for a moment suggest that this isn’t a big vote of confidence in Getwine’s offerings and service. And big congratulations to them. Local boyz dun good.
I’m guessing that Ernesto picked up some hints and tips from a local blog and simply went from there.

But secondly, is this an example of how people with lots of money (and Ernesto does have an awful lot of money), get and keep lots of money? By not splurging on the simple things in life, when there’s an equally good – and more reasonably priced – alternative. (Obviously, I don’t count his 97 metre long yacht in this “no splurge” category.)

Is there a lesson for us financially mere mortals here? I think that there probably is.
And will we listen? No. Of course not.

Allegedly, Vava II is on her way to somewhere that’s not Cape Town at some point today. You can live the Playboy lifestyle vicariously through Ernesto via Marinetraffic by following Vava II’s progress here.

UPDATE: See the comment below by Getwine with all the details.