Kasouga weekend

So I somehow managed to crack the nod for a weekend away with Brendan, Craig and Guy. I’d been part of the initial facebook invite, but then it was all quiet. So naturally, I made other plans. Brendan impressed on me that I should come, and change my plans when all was confirmed. I am glad he did!

After 5pm or so, I was picked up from my place and sat in the back with Brendan. That led to the next hour and a bit with me showing him just how great his BlackBerry is. He wasn’t enjoying it as much as he should have, and I hope that in some small way I have helped to better his experience.

The house in Kasouga was awesome, and could pretty much sleep 10 people. So each of the 4 of us got our own bedrooms with own bathrooms. Sweet ass house. I had taken 4 bottles of wine for the weekend: 2 x Alto Rouge, 1 x Backsberg Merlot and 1 x Glen Carlou Tortoise Hill. We had a braai on the first night, and I probably polished around 3 of these bottles (excluding other people’s) on my own. It’s wine I really like, and I like wine, and holidays are for drinking :)

Saturday afternoon Guy and Craig wanted to go canoeing. I had pretty much decided that I wasn’t going to do that; I have some problems with expanses of water. Brendan didn’t seem all that excited about the idea either. Trying to be a smartass, I said I would only go if Brendan went. He immediately agreed to go and I was now committed (not to mention a bit scared). I decided I would MAN UP for as long as I could.

We got down to the river, and Brendan and I discovered that Guy and Craig were planning for us to “borrow” a few canoes. That certainly added some excitement to the whole experience, and not good excitement. They decided on a small boat, and off all of us went. The boat had a leak, so we started taking on water. I tried to hide how terrified I actually was. We finally took the boat back and we “borrowed” two two-man canoes. I was on the back, with the bottle of wine, and Brendan in front.

When I was satisfied that we didn’t have a leak, and I got the hang of it, I really started to enjoy it. I opened the bottle of wine and had a little and passed the other guys some. At this point, I was LOVING the experience. Me, in a canoe, drinking WHITE wine, on expanses of water and having the time of my life. I would never have thought it possible!

The point of the exercise was that Craig really wanted to go fishing. He made a fishing rod with a bottle of coke and he and Guy were hard at fishing. Brendan and I were just having a great time and drinking wine. Eventually we were starting to get cold, and Guy and Craig weren’t catching any fish. So we decided we’d head back. As we went along, we’d stop to look at the view and as the fish jumped on the surface of the river. Incredible to watch. Then one jumped clean into the canoe, between my legs in fact. I practically shat myself, but was amused that we’d caught something without even going fishing. I asked Brendan that we keep it to show the other guys, but he put it back in. We went back to the guys to gloat.

We would pay for this on our walk home, cold. We didn’t really know the path well, so got lost. We ended up taking a MUCH more scenic route back and freezing.

This morning Guy wanted to go climb the highest sand dune, so we did that. It was bloody hard, but quite a lot of fun. While out there, Craig came to fish in the sea this time. We walked back to the house for brunch. Guy makes a crazy breakfast on a skottel. Insane. I actually want one now.

Now am sitting at the back again as Craig drives us back to town. An AMAZING weekend away, loads of fun. I certainly hope I crack the nod for an invite to the next one. Still amused that the only fish that was caught was the one that scared the shit out of me by jumping into my canoe.

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No more running

I have officially given up on running. My knees just cannot handle it. I have finally resigned myself, in great pain, to that fact. A great pity, since I have come to rather enjoy my short runs.

It all started in a drunken conversation. I then committed myself to training for a half marathon; the Knysna Forest half marathon, in fact. That race is just over a month away, and after skipping runs due to a cold, I decided to try do a slow 1h30 run this morning. I managed about 25minutes of that. The next 20 minutes was spent hobbling back home to throw in the towel.

I am glad that I haven’t paid for accommodation yet in Knysna. I will cancel the booking today.

Bleak.

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Brief update

It has been ages since I put anything up here. Back then, I was still unemployed and trying to figure out what the next couple of years of my life would entail. Some of these I am still keen to follow up on, but the timeline may be pushed back a little more.

This has probably been the first year I haven’t had much in terms of new year’s resolutions. The fall out after a lengthy term at one’s last employ will do that to you :)

Anyway, from 1st Feb, I have been happily employed again. It is what I refer to as soul-fulfilling work; and it’s been a long long time since that’s happened.

My only concern to date is whether I sufficiently learned from my last similar engagement. In other words, will I fall into the same cycle of working for money rather than love in a year or two when the company has grown 3fold? Will I get bored and want to leave? I guess the most important part lies in being vigilant for the signs.

The other important bit is that I have significantly downscaled my life. More downscaling is required to reach the level of simplicity I resolved I would get to while on my drinkfest during #Eurotrip2009 with @denhamcoote. These things tend to take time, more time than I have the patience for usually, but they have been in progress since I got back.

So, should in year or two, I find that I no longer love what I do – I will be able to simply walk away without worrying about how I will pay for my dogs’ food. That in itself is a liberating thought, as I do not want to see myself going through working because I HAVE to and not because I WANT to.

Not everything in my life is as I want it, but absolutely loving doing what you get up and do every morning till late at night everyday makes the other stuff seem silly.

I am happy(tm).

Posted with WordPress for BlackBerry.

(mini) Holiday

Heading out to Zimbali for a couple of days. Since I have neither BlackBerry nor laptop, chances are that I will only be putting anything up on here on Sunday when I get back. Byeeeee!

Rest day

After 4 continuous days of riding, I thought it prudent to stay off the bike today. While it took some effort to not go riding, a bit of a cold that I am picking up and the itchy pain in my legs assisted with the decision. At the moment, I am grateful I didn’t ride. Especially after yesterday’s ordeal.

The 100km that wasn’t

I wake up at 3h30 to get ready for the 4h30 ride. No sms from Sean, so I sms him. He gives me some girly excuse about a cold or some other rubbish. Luckily, Dereck was still keen and let me know when they were climbing my local hill. He was joined by two chicks, and already I started thinking this was going to be a nice and easy ride. I was so wrong.

Health Check

I just did one of them Discovery Vitality health checks. Since I’ve been lazy and fat this year, it’s been a bit of a struggle to get to the required 45000 points to keep Gold Vitality status. One of the things I hadn’t done this year is one of these health check things. A bit worrying since I’ve mostly been drinking and not exercising much this year.

MTN is crap!

My trackball on my BlackBerry wouldn’t move left, so last Friday (04/12/2009) I took my phone in to the MTN service centre at the new mall. I was told it needed to be sent to Jhb, and would take between 3 and 15 days to fix. I complained that this is an excessive amount of time, to which the guy said sometimes it does take the 3 days so I should just call to confirm.

30km easy spin

Either am getting fit again, or was tired enough to not push on the ride and just enjoy it. Nice and slow, to flush some lactic acid out of my system. Swung by the bike shop and got them to “fix” my gears. Noone in this town seems able to get it right.

So I finally watched him as he did it, so that I would know what to tweak. Also asked a whole bunch of questions. It seemed to work reasonably well on the bike stand, however not as well on the ride back home. I will be quizzing him again when I go back there in a bit. At least now I won’t have to put up with paying useless bike shops, and can tweak my settings to what I want.

Tomorrow we’re supposed to ride 100km, but Sean is getting sick and my left knee is starting to hurt. So we’ll see.

I want a new bicycle

This one in fact. A Silverback Monterey. Full 105 (like my current bike) but is has a 10 speed casette instead of my 9, is lighter and sexy.

I have always wanted a training bike (my current) and a lighter, better, racing bike.

Now to get my head in the right place to spend R12k on this.

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