Sunday, July 5, 2009

The universe has a sense of humour

A good way to end the Freedom Challenge, I thought, would be to ride down the pass after giving Bruce and Erik coffee at Teeberg.



Simple enough, get a lift up with Steven, have coffee and then breeze back to town. What could be simpler?
As I waved goodbye to Steven and the Karoo Surfers, I took a while to appreciate the view across to the Nuweveldberge, stunning. Then helmet, gloves, buff, windbreaker for the chilly descent.

Hop on and..............................flat front tyre. No problem, when I finally got the valve open with my semi-frozen fingers, I pumped the wheel up extra hard just in case.

Fifty metres down the road it went soft again. Anyway, after lots of patient fiddling and pumping I realised that" Stans" and "sidewall cut" do not belong in the same sentence. Not for the first time that I was reminded of this fact, mind you. Today was to be my walking day and no amount of squirming was going to change that!

And how many bikes have I fixed over the last ten days? More specifically, how many tubeless wheels have been through my hands? I don't remember. So why does mine have to be the one?.

Simply because the universe has a sense of humour

It was a new experience, walking a bike all the way down the pass, or rather being dragged down the pass by a bike. Needless to say, the Pajero boys didn't even wind down their windows to ask why I was pushing my bike downhill. But then, if you can drive a car with the name "Pajero" you aren't easily going to stop and risk abuse from some idiotic cyclist! http://www.pistonheads.com/GASSING/topic.asp?h=0&f=23&t=392436&mid=0&i=40&nmt=Crap%20car%20names....&mid=0

Did I forget to mention that your SUV makes you look fat?


Right down near the bottom of the pass, two young Dutch women stopped to offer help, so I asked them to phone Lindsay when they got to town. Thank you Inge and Anneline.

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