Blood, sweat and gears.

It must be said that we do go cycling quite a lot. Social rides, races, keeping fit before or after work rides. So much so that we don't really blog about it too much. People might think it's all we ever do!

But last weekend we went out for a little jaunt which didn't quite end as expected.

We did some nice flowing single track bush tunnels on one side of the valley - see: https://www.facebook.com/photo.php?v=10151756562466895
and then Cathy drove Willem and I up the hill on the other side.

So there's this Avalanche... where you get taken up a mountain to the start and then clap it back down to the valley. Mostly downhill, minimal pedalling, just point and shoot really.

The weather was brill and we were going great guns - at first, until Willem's world started to take on a different slant.

 

Cause - operator error, he wasn't even going that fast.

After verbally checking he was OK I gave him a thumbs up which could be considered the mountain bike version of the Strictly Come Dancing score cards, and to let him know that I was also OK.

 

His groans did encourage me to take a closer look and get some video evidence in case it was needed by a coroner later.

 

Turns out that wasn't necessary and all was good so we re-mounted and pointed ourselves downhill again. Beautiful scenery, perfect weather, single track as twisty as a politician's excuse, down down deeper and down. [I want all the world to see...]

So there's this tunnel on this avalanche... A big corrugated iron one that allows a whole valley's worth of water to drain under a road.

This was taken on a previous visit when it wasn't quite so wet. We entered the tunnel

 

You can tell by both these pics that it is also fairly long. Long enough that after a few metres you can't see the wall, or the floor, or the ceiling. In fact all you can see is a little dot at the end.

It's also, therefore, fairly hard to know whether you're in the middle, and as it happens you only need to be a few inches to one side before the angle between slippery wet tyres and slippery wet corrugated iron exceeds the value required to stay upright.

There was a thump and some loud groans and a fair amount of pain before I managed to get back on my feet. I've fallen off my bike before but I knew this wasn't a good one. I dragged myself out of the tunnel and we both looked at the damp squidgy redness and decided not to investigate further until we had cycled the last 5 km to the car. Turns out I'd landed on one of the bolts that hold the corrugated sections together - but we didn't know that then.

Once there, a peeling back of the shorts revealed a large hole out of which parts of me had already exited. That was the also the cue for Cathy to go into hospital mode. Nee na nee na.

But that was a 50 km drive and a short limp away.

 

It was actually a day clinic and once they saw the furrow in my thigh...

 

and prodded it a bit... they said it was far too serious for them so...

..they dressed it and packed me straight off to a big hospital.

The surgeon wasn't available till the next day so there was a bed, a sleep and the first night.

Early the next morning a man in a white coat visited me and asked a few questions and said he'd see me again at 09:00. But that wasn't before another man in a gown asked similar questions and said he'd be able to put me to sleep in under 10 seconds. He was right, and an hour later I woke up with a 12 rung via ferrata up my thigh.

The stability of the whole thing was still somewhat in question so there was a bed, a sleep and a second night.

Turns out the nurses in this hospital aren't half bad, especially if you can bring your own.

Another doctor type person visited on the third day and was murmuring words suggesting a fourth day, but a bit of fast talking by the personal medic convinced him to let us vacate the premises and continue the convalescence back home.

So, I managed to get home on C'mas Eve and also managed to avoid a certain amount of C'mas shopping.

Good stuff.

Paul and Cathy

Incommunicado

The Long Walk to Communication

On the night of 6th October our telephone cables were stolen.

There was a 700 metre length strung between the poles from the road, across the fields and down to our offices. Now the only purpose served by the poles seems to be as somewhere for our resident Crested Eagle to perch.

Two months later Telkom came, on a Sunday, with a big JCB and a load of men and dug a trench alongside the airstrip into which they threw a cable. Problem was that the cable wasn't quite long enough and stopped a good 100m short of where it was supposed to end up. How hard can it be to measure 700m accuratley?

This is how short the first attempt was.

If we misjudged distance like that it would be called landing short of the runway and would cost us a few million dollars and possible a life or two.

So another week goes by before the missing metres are replaced. Then after another week we get a message that Telkom aren't going to sort the problem out cos they can't afford to replace cables that are stolen so often. 'But this is the first time our cables have been stolen and you've already dug a hole and laid a new cable anyway.' Oh, OK, err we'll be down to join it all together then - thanks!

And so it happened - after a few more days, and we now have land lines and internet access.
Notice the white cable in the picture above. That was the power to the electric gate at the entrance to the farm. It was cut seven times and is still not fixed. We now have to charge the gate motor battery up each day and install it each evening to provide access security for the farm.

The interim solution was a dodgy dongle, laptop and a cell phone.

Paul and Cathy