Cape Argus

So here are my official stats for the Cape Argus yesterday:

Time: 3:31:02
Ave Speed: 30.99
Overall Position:6925/28669
Group Position: 7/422
Age Position: 1096/3366

Recent News & Events

This weekend and last have been extremely busy but full of fun! Last weekend the boys had a Thomas birthday party on the Saturday morning, complete with little sit-on train for them all! Eli was very scared of the noise and Joel wouldn't go near it - that worked well!!! The party was amazing as the mum had really gone to town with Thomas accessories!! Eli was in 7th heaven - the biggest decision being what shall I eat next?

Cape Argus

I rode the Cape Argus on my road bike this morning and cracked a respectable time of 3:30. In truth I'm a little disappointed as I know I could have gone better but circumstance and my legs conspired against me. At least I know what I need to do next year to crack a sub 3hour.

Unnecessary Quotation Marks

Bethany at The “Blog” of “Unnecessary” Quotation Marks has posted one of my pictures: How Personal?

Do pay her a visit and enjoy more silliness of a similar ilk.

Health Care

Paula had a real eye-opener experience of the South African health service last Friday. One of her friends in CNP, who also happens to be a home based care patient, has been really struggling to get information, test results etc. etc. Finally fed up with all the fobbing off that seemed to have been occurring, Paula bundled her friend, 1 of the carers and another friend into the car and drove to the local clinic for some action. After 3 hours (a miracle in itself!), we had finally found the right healthcare professional who could help; established that the patient has got TB; received the first TB counselling session and 2 days's worth of drugs and made an appointment for the AntiRetroViral clinic the following week - it turns out that our friend had been taking vitamin pills thinking that they were ARV's!!

Boschendal - Cape Argus MTB Challenge

On Sunday morning I rode the Boschendal 55k MTB race and finished in 3:18 which wasn't too bad for the first MTB race of the season. The course was very fast and easy with only one hill of note two thirds of the way into it. The course was also very sandy which made for some challenging riding at times. All in all this is the easiest of the MTB classics but a nice prelude the real race season which starts shortly.

Next Sunday morning I'll be riding in the Cape Argus
which is the 109k road race. Last year's post is here.

Absurdity Of Bureaucracy

How crazy is this?...

Tiny Bubbles Créche was set up in CNP about 2 years ago in the containers, so they have electricity but no water or sanitation facilities. The municipality agreed to provide these services for the créche but to date has failed to do so.

So late last week the municipality sent a health inspector to Tiny Bubbles to assess the situation. The conclusion being that the créche may have to close if they don't get water and sanitation sorted out.

Answer To Prayer

For the last three years I've tried many times to help Peter get an ID document but without success. Peter was born many moons ago on a farm back in the days when such births were not registered. For most of his life, Peter's got away without needing an ID, but now that he's sick he needs one to enable him to access the social grant. Peter and I have been to Home Affairs, the police, the magistrates court, the local social services office and a few other places in our attempts to get him an ID. Recently we sent him off to Caledon to stay with family so they could help him, but he returned after two very frustrating weeks with no joy.

Helderberg In Cloud

The weather has dramatically turned here today, having gone from 35°C yesterday to about 28°C raining and thundery today. Needless to say this creates some spectacular views locally.

Look what We Can Buy...

This is bizzare! Paula was in a local shop (bearing in mind we're over 6000miles from Blighty) and came across a variety of tins from Tesco of all places. Just to prove she did buy them here, look closely at the label on the top and you'll see it's priced at R3, which is about 20p in UK money.

Quite why anyone in South Africa would want to import oranges from the UK is a bit lost on me. It's a bit like shipping coals to Newcastle or ice to Iceland!

Just to top it off, the oranges were produced in Swaziland which is a tiny land-locked nation within the borders of South Africa.

The world is truly a strange place.

Weekend

We've had a lot of fun this weekend mostly chillin' out at home. Dean went riding on Saturday morning so Paula took the boys to the gym for an hour and then onto the Nature Reserve so they could watch the emergency helicopter loading up with water before heading onto the fire on the Helderberg again. The helicopter filled up every 7 or 8 minutes so the boys were in paradise watching it coming in so closely. Sadly Dean had the camera with him so no photos of that.