On the 11th April 2010I had the honour of meeting Ray Chaplin.  For those who do not know who he is you are missing out on a great inspiration.  Ray is THE advocate for cycling safety if there ever was one and has done such admirable things to promote safety for us often missed (all too often NOT missed) and most neglected users of the road by those mobile metal death dealers, mostly disguised as trucks!   

The first challenge was decrypting the valve on the camelback - oh the challenge which was a bit too much..... turning left and right and back again was not working, neither was it correct!  In my frustration, dehydrated, dizzy and hearing Jérémie's voice in my head "giving up is not acceptable" I pulled at the end of the tube and [plik!!** out it popped and blessed water freely flowed!  Perhaps if I had got frustrated sooner, I may not have got so thirsty!!!!  Well thankfully I did not get in the car and made it to the end! 

This morning a colleague at work asked me how my weekend was and told me how he spotted this poor lagging person behind a group of cyclists and thought "how could they leave this poor person behind" only to glance back and see that it was actually me.... :) hehe

Here is the route mapped out that we took, it was really a lot of fun.  Meeting Ray was really an honour.  The guy has so much charisma and finds funny in the simplest things (then again so do 3 year olds haha but hey we are all kids at heart!)  Seriously, such a down to earth person yet so wise you find yourself just wanting to stand there and listen to him.....

Inspired by the simplest things about the whole concept of the ride, like the photos by the safety sign. 

The dinosaur he was riding had some kind of magic on it though because it seemed to disappear into the distance very quickly.... then again I guess coupled with the speed at which I dropped behind; this must have appeared quite extraordinary - now you see me now you don’t...... huh?  I made it though, I made it....

I think the hardest part for me was riding into Milnerton, you get so excited and its a deceptive stretch, then the Wobbly Highway.... with the 'Bombers' flying along it sent my nerves into over-fire.......!!! No, I have concluded, road-biking is not for me, I may not like uphill gravel but road cyclists...... you guys can take care of the tar, I think I will stick to the minimum!  Respect!

One thing that I did learn out of this however was that I know far too little about hand signals and the fact that this may one day save my life, so I am busy with some research and will post a blog soon about signals.

The next ride in Cape Town will be on the 22nd of May and the link is: