Time to take a rest. Bike is posted to Cape Town, for the Cape Town cycle tour. Too late to do training now. Will have to do some running this week, to stop myself from getting lazy. Looking forward to see what my time will be as I have put some road tyres on and a pair of tri bars. Need to do better than my 15 km/h on the Trans-Afrika. After all it is just a breakfast run. Next time must write in for two laps. Ha Ha.
Looking forward to the weekend. Will be flying down to Cape Town from Johannesburg on the 4 March, with our vets and a number of people from the pig farming industry. CS vet and pharmaceutical companies are sponsoring the weekend. I will be riding in their kit. They have lined up some activities for us.
This is the second time I will be doing it with them. Actually they dragged me kicking to the first one. I had never done a cycle race before. Annie one of the vets gave me her place in the race and she transferred it to my name, as she had decided not to ride. I did not even have a cycle shirt at that stage. Actually bought my first shirt on a special at the expo before the race. That KAWAY shirt that you have got to know me in. This was in 2014. I had only ridden tours in Africa. I had cycled in Zimbabwe, Mozambique and Malawi by that stage. Been a tourist on a bicycle is very different to riding the biggest timed race in the world. Think that year there was over 33000 riders. Even now I am not used to having so many riders around me. Very easy to have an accident.
So cycling will have brought me to Cape Town three time in the last few years. Amazing how cycling starts to make a big world smaller. Saying that it makes me realize how small the big cities in Southern Africa are. When I was a child they looked so big and could only be crossed by bus or car. Now on the bike it is less than an hour cross Johannesburg. Cape Town city centre in 15 minutes.
Having said all that I would be ungrateful if did not brag on getting 60 mm rain this week. It rained on three different days. The parched earth sucked up the water as fast as it fell not leaving much to run away. I was wondering what we are going to have for winter grazing. There is a marsh/water way that the farm gets its name from called Meisjesvlei. This is the first time in three years I have seen water running down it.
On the top of the farm there is a quarry that collects water in the rainy season and then it seeps down to the underground supply. Last night I found a puddle of water there for the first time in two years.
Puddle of water at Dead mans Island
There are two months left in this rainy season. Sure hope this rain keeps up. South Africa is experiencing its worst drought in a 100 years. We have been lucky it is not as bad on the farm as some places. This rain will be enough to take the sunflowers that survived the scorching heat to harvest. Here are some photos at sunset on the farm in the past week.
Long day safaris 