2010 and all that!

It's hard to look back on this year and pick individual highlights as we have been busy in so many different ways.

Paul did regular flights throughout the year taking many mission teams to Mozambique as well as to Botswana, Zambia, Zimbabwe and within South Africa.
Cathy continued to work at Africa School of Missions (ASM) and delivered loads of babies.
Matthew announced his engagement and the countdown has now begun to 21st May 2011. He still takes an inordinate number of photographs.

Next year looks like being even more frenzied. We will likely have more flying and we we are planning to visit the UK again for a few months towards the end of the year.

We would like to thank those of you who pray for us and help financially - we hope you know what a difference it makes.

Please keep checking up on us on Face Book as well as this blog.

Thanks gain.

Paul, Cathy and Matthew

Tis the season to... go bike racing.

94.7 - and the rest... (98 km - 3h 30)

Cathy and I recently did our first ever road bike race in Johannesburg. It's known as the 94.7 after the frequency of the radio station that organizes it, and is supposed to be the same length in kilometers as the radio stations frequency is in kilohertz - except it never is. This year it was just under 98 km.

It is the second biggest timed bike race in the world (the biggest is in Cape Town) with 25-30000 entrants. As it was our first race we got a late start group and the temperature was in the 30's for most of the ride. Despite this we were still pretty chuffed with 3h30 and 4h54. This put us 4,262 nd and 12,012 th overall!

I don't have a photo of Cathy (that she would let me use), but to give you an idea here's a general picture of the start area with start groups going back as far as the eye can see.


Noon 2 Moon (63 km - 3h 42)

The next weekend we did the fantastically brilliant Noon 2 Moon 10 hour mountain bike race, which starts at noon (strangely enough) and finishes at 10 at night. It is a relay race with teams of three completing as many 7 km laps as possible around a course of jeep and single track twistier than a politicians excuse, including three hours of scary night riding.

All went well until two hours into the race when we got pounced on by a huge thunderstorm, leaving everyone to swim round the course with their bikes.

Paul's team came 10th and Cathy's all girl team came 3rd in their category and won a prize.

Paul having a dirty weekend.

Pilgrim's Rest (51 km - 4h 30)

I would have thought with the relative success of the previous races, that this race wouldn't have been too much of an issue, How wrong can you be?

It hoofed down with rain all the night before but dawned bright and sunny on race day. Only an hour after the start we heard the first thunder but this stayed far enough away to give us some cloud cover but only light drizzle. This was more than welcome as it was stupid hot in the sun. The course was excellent, very diverse but mostly manageable with hidden valleys and sneaky single tracks. The only thing that was missing was some oomph for the legs and I think I came about 7th last.

Sabie Experience (121km (75 miles), 2450 m (8038 ft) ascent, 7h 31.10

What a blast. Four days of dirty fun in mountain bike heaven. Me and my mate Barry combined to form Team Fred Zeppelin and, being a bit whimpish, opted to do the 'lite' version which was half the main race distance that the big boys were doing. Baz has a fancy bike which had been in for a service the week before. Only prob was, they hadn't done anything to it and his forks, were still in Jo'burg supposedly being fixed. His only feasible option was to put his wife's old rusty forks, which were like pogo sticks, on his bike and hope it all held together.

Let the games begin.

Day 1: 21 km, 350m ascent, 1h 13.34, 3rd in category, 6th overall.
Day one was a prologue to get us warmed up and to sort out starting times for the next days race. It didn't rain during the race but the course was as muddy as a muddy thing from the previous weeks storms. Fast and furious fun which took less time to ride than it did to clean everything up afterwards.

Day 2: 35 km, 839m ascent, 2h 30.34, 3rd in category, 6th overall.
Day two involved a long awkward slippery single track decent followed by a killer hot climb to the water point at half way. Then it was 20k's of rocky brake squealing down with some interesting single track to finish. Baz's girly forks didn't collapse like the English batting had done earlier that morning and we retained our ranking. By this time I had realised the cleverness of doing the lite race and I informed Baz that if he had any intentions of doing the big boy's race next year he would likely have to recruit a new team mate.

Day 3: 27 km, 517m ascent, 1h 34.36, 3rd in category, 6th overall.
By now were becoming aware of where and who our main rivals were. We were in 3rd, 2 minutes behind 2nd but only 1min 28 secs in front of 4th, who were less than a minute in front of 5th. Game plans started to get hatched and keeping an eye on the others was a must. We (I) was slow on the uphills which meant we got passed by the guys behind us and we had to push on the downs to make up for it. Day three saw another slow uphill drag with us catching the 4th place overall guys just before the top. We pushed hard all the way down and through the single track to the finish and beat them by 6 seconds. We now had 1min 34 secs to play with for the last day.

Not too muddy at the end of day three.

Day 4: 38 km, 723m ascent, 2h 12.20, 4th in category, 7th overall.
All we needed to do today was stick with the guys behind us to ensure they didn't beat us and keep an eye out for the guys behind them. We started at the front of the chute and all was going well until the 3km mark when a marshal sent us the wrong way. It was only a few hundred metres, but by the time we were back on track the whole pack had caught, and passed us. Now we had to motor, and pass most of the field in the mud. Today's profile looked like a camel's hump with ever increasing gradients to a tricky bit of muddy single track at the highest point. Baz is a machine and had got to the top in front of our main rivals, but then had to wait for me.

When I arrived the news was that they were about 2 mins ahead. Again it was big ring, pedal to the metal and brakes used only when essential. We must have done the last 15 k's in under half an hour and only caught our 4th place friends up when one of them fell at a stream crossing 2 km from the end. We couldn't believe our luck but still pushed to the finish line. After the melee of the 3 km route confusion we weren't aware that the 5th place guys had snook in front and beaten us by 2 min 20 sec - but that was alright as we had 2 min 26 sec in the bag on them. We had done it - or so we thought.

Later that evening we checked the final results on the web to find that the 6th place guys who had started the day 5 mins and more behind, had had an exceptionally strong last day and steamed in front of us all to claim joint second place. We were relegated to 4th in category and 7th overall (out of 79). Still not bad for back markers who usually come about 3/4 of the way down the field. We're still quite chuffed. Roll on next year!

Total 121km (75 miles), 2450 m (8038 ft) ascent, 7h 31.10

The difference between girl forks and man forks, or if you're American with a British heritage, the difference between Gal forks and Guy Fawkes.

Team Fred Zeppelin

Lastly...

I wonder how many other sad people there are out there, like me, who record practically every pedal stroke and mindlessly spew it all onto a spread sheet. I have one page for each ride then another page to compare similar rides.

Anyway, now we’re at the end of the year I am the proud owner of endless information on how far and fast and high I went in 2010.

Each of the last two years were around the 4500 km mark but this year went well with more training and more races. I had 5000 km in mind but it soon became evident that 6000 km might be attainable. I devised another spreadsheet page to tell me what percentage of 6000 I was on and what total I would reach if I continued at the current average rate. The 94.7 in Jhb, Noon2Moon, Pilgrims, and Sabie Experience races helped boost the figures in December and this last Tuesday saw the 6000 milestone. Cathy and I actually stopped and took a picture with a cell phone!


How bad are they?

Then, whilst entering the data that evening I noticed that 6205 would be a nice round figure to achieve as that would equate to an average of 17 km per day. So, today I was hard at it in 30+ temps making sure that even with the most major of mechanicals I could even push my bike the last few km to reach the target. A surprising stat is that during all this my ascent was in excess of 91000 metres (57 miles).

The boring facts are as follows.
Total 6250 km (3885 miles). Roughly half Mountain and half Road bike.
Height gain 92161 m (57.3 miles or over 10 times up Everest).
327 hours in the saddle - ouch.
242000 calories burned - how many cream buns can I eat now then?

Paul

Fixing a hole where the rain get's in...

Actually technically not true. We made a hole not so much to stop the rain, as to prevent stopping the light.

We've had some Swiss boys at Mercy Air recently (see previous posts). They worked for six months at an orphanage in Zim and then came to us to help extend and put doors on a hangar.

In their last week with us they offered to do a few odd jobs for others and we were second fastest to put our hands up.

Anyone who's visited us knows that our house is like a cave with a porch all around the front and big trees above. We have to have the lights on on the sunniest of days. The answer to this was to let the Swiss loose with a saw and angle grinder and hope they could repair the damage before it rained again.

The carnage begins. Urs 'The Bear' Rooney wields the axe...
The hole is made...
..and almost immediately repaired with a less photon restrictive substance.
Now we need sunglasses to watch the telly.
Reward was given by way of home cooked sustinance, which you could actually see on the table.
Now our minds can wander to where they will go.
Next we'll turn our attention to the the cracks that run through the door...

Paul and Cathy

School visit

This is something that happened a few months back, but I've only just re-discovered the photos.

Each year for the last few years we have had a sort of open day - well open morning really, for a local school. This year about 60 kids descended on us and we took it in turns to explain a little about our ministry and let them get a close look at the planes.

The heli was quite a hit.
Me trying to explain something.
'Don't press the red button.'

Thanks

Paul and Cathy

Woken up by Whales (but not whilst driving up the M5 past Hereford)

Not too long after the previous two trips we once again set sail for Mozambique, but this time for a place we had never been to before - Nacala, which is actually half way back to the Equator from where we are in White River.
We had planned a 10 day trip to visit two different missions, but the one in Marromeu had problems with getting the doors made that they wanted us to fit. We did however, visit them on the way up to look at the progress on their centre and get a better idea of their need for when we hopefully visit in early December.

From there we continued up past some impressive scenery...
..to Nacala where a German couple, Martin and Simone, live. We unloaded the contents of the plane into his pick-up truck...
and collected a few other things, including the proverbial kitchen sink...
..before driving a further two hours north to Memba. To help Martin and Simone better serve the community and share the Gospel, they are building a small house and training centre in Memba and will move in as soon as the roof and electrics are completed. To assist these missionaries and support this project Mercy Air offered its services and took a load of electrical equipment up including 140 metres of very heavy (125Kg) armoured cable as well as Derek, an electrician, who had volunteered his services. Our main job was to lay the cable, install the lights and plugs and wire them all up.

Memba itself is a pretty isolated and run down coastal town which was heavily attacked during the war (which finished 17 years ago) but never seemed to fully recover.
On their land they are building a small house first in which they will live before completing the centre early next year.
Despite being right on the beach it was hot - very hot. This was most evident when it came to digging the 1/2 metre deep trench to the nearest power pole.
We had to dig it up a street of old Government houses, many of which were still occupied.
Eventually it was complete and we laid the cable.
Derek then showed the local electric company how to terminate it on the breaker box.
Holger made some clamps and fixed the cable to the pole.
Unfortunately a moment of 'operator error' saw him lose his footing and fall 5m down the pole, breaking his foot in the process. After a spot of medical attention, he completed the rest of the trip on one leg and a permanent grimace.
Derek was a real trooper though and offered his services whenever needed.
Despite the heat we finished in good time and even returned to Nacala a day early. We spent two nights there and slept in the 'beach house', above. The one night I was woken up by a strange noise that I later recognised as a whale 'blowing' a few hundred meters off shore. Earlier in the week we had seen them doing that jumpy thing they do and even managed to get a photo.

I kept humming Nantucket Sleighride by Mountain whilst taking these pictures. I'll be impressed if there are many people who know the link.

On the way back we stayed a night in Chimoio where we picked up Ron and Bernie, the guys I had taken up two weeks earlier and who had been working on the Mercy Air house there. A few phone calls though had determined that there was no Avgas to fuel the plane at any of the airports on the planned route home, and only two airports in the whole of the country had any fuel left. Fortunately the recent upgrades to the aircraft meant that it had a healthy endurance and we were able to divert to Maputo to fuel up and clear customs.

Our grateful thanks go out to all those who support us and Mercy Air with faithful prayers and financial giving to make such flights of support and encouragement possible.

Paul and Cathy

Having a whale of a time

I'm not long back after three practically back-to-back trips as detailed in 'Upcoming Busy' below. I'll relate the first one here and then the others above.

We have had some Swiss guys give up a lot of time to come and help us at Mercy Air by extending one of the hangers and making and installing some hangar doors. By way of a thank-you, we let them charter us at cost for a long weekend break in Durban. Fortunately there was a seat free so Cathy was able to come along as well.

We obviously went to the beach and watched a lot of people balance on surf boards.
Cathy fancied the idea..
..but seemed to forget the key bit of kit when it came to actually giving it a go.
We went to the aquarium and some a big fish...
..and some very impressive jumping Dolphins.
No trip to the sea side would be complete without a comprehensive harbour tour...
..before a rather cramped taxi ride getting us and our hired surf boards back from whence we came.
We returned to White River late afternoon on the Monday, and 07:00 the following day I was back out again taking a small team and some supplies up to Mercy Air's base in Chimoio in Mozambique. It was quite a big day flying wise (7.5 hrs), but nothing out of the ordinary worth relating in a blog, and nothing really worth taking pictures of.

Paul and Cathy

Upcomming busy

Going to be dead busy in the next dew weeks.

Tomorrow (Friday) we're off to Durban with a Swiss group for the week end - coming back on Monday. 5 hrs flying.

Tuesday morning I'm off up to Moz to drop a couple of guys off at a mission station in Chimoio. I will be traveling back on my own the same day. 7 hrs flying.

Next Friday I will be part of a building team visiting two mission locations in Moz. One is at Marromeu on the Zambezi and the other in Nacala, on the coast and well up in the north of the country. We will stay for a total of 10 days and do 14 hrs of flying. On the way back we will pick up the two guys we take up to Chimoio next Tuesday.

The day I get back from that we have friends visiting from Doncaster for a week.

As always - better busy than bored.

Regards

Paul

Safe - to a tee

Paul has just returned, along with three other Mercy Air staff members, from a Safety Conference in Gaborone, Botswana. It was arranged by Botswana Flying Mission for the Christian Aviation Alliance and was also attended by a number of other mission flying organisations as well as the Botswana Ministry of Transport, Police Air Wing and Civil Aviation Authority - in all about 50 people.

There are only so many inspiring pictures you can take to capture the excitement of any conference - so this is my best shot:
Riveting eh! Seriously though, it was very worthwhile and we had many good discussions as well as catching up with some old friends.

Paul

What a long way that was

Last week Paul flew a team from a church in Cape Town to visit some of their missionaries in Mongu, Zambia and Quelimane, Mozambique. The trip involved five countries and almost 3000 miles (4500 km) of travel. Enough to get you from London to the North Pole.
He had flown a team to Mongu five years ago and was looking forward to returning to see how the work was getting on. Mongu is set on the banks of the Zambezi River flood plain only 75 miles from the Angolan border and is known for having one of Africa's only inland harbors.
They find that people are willing to walk about an hour each way to church and so their vision is to plant a church within walking distance of each person in Zambia's Western Province which is about the same size as the UK. The area is vast and the calculation is that they will need 65000 churches for the one million people living there. Currently they have 65 churches planted.

We visited some of their churches in Mongu...
and then drove out to one of the bush churches...
The road to and from this church was arduous and dusty, and required a 4x4.
Some of the churches they have planted are many days drive away and when the Zambezi floods - in places up to 50 km wide, it is easier to get there by boat.

There are many aspects to their work including the above mentioned church planting, but they also run a Bible School for the church leaders, as well as orphan care, community development including primary health care, community schools and agricultural development.
You can find more information at their well laid out website at: www.zam.co.za

Strangely enough, one thing I remember about Mongu is the plethora of barber shops as well as the many interesting and almost biblical names given to these businesses.
We spent two nights in Mongu and then headed east via Livingstone, for customs and immigration, through Harare, Zimbabwe for fuel (yes fuel!) and on to Quelimane in Mozambique.

On the way we did a quick lap of Victoria Falls...
The guys in Quelimane have set up projects very similar to those in Zambia. These include:
Schools work...
Agricultural projects...
Brickmaking - for commercial and for building some churches...
A Bible School held in a church.
In the evening the students put mattresses on the floor and throw mozzy nets over the pews to sleep. The kitchen is a wooden structure round the back of the church building.
They have also set up a prison ministry which we unfortunately didn't have time to visit.

One project we did visit involved a long drive down a road lined by coconut trees...
Once there a young bloke shimmied up a tree and chucked a load of coconuts down. Then another bloke attacked them with a machette...
so that we could have a cool drink of coconut milk.
I could go through the details of all the work here but it is better told at the World Wide Missions site: www.wwm.org.za
Thanks

Paul and Cathy