Archive for November, 2010
Team CounterBalance is ON THE WAY!
Woah!
We are in Durban! Team CounterBalance is unicylcing! I'm blogging!
We set three crazy unicyclists adrift – sorry, on their way, at the cheeky hour of 4:00 AM. We all got up at 2:30 AM to pack the PeopleWagon and get to Blue Lagoon from Geoff Brink's house, our awesome handle-bar-moustached host for the past two days. Jamie Falconer of redsockfriday even came to see us off!
Today, they will cycle some 70 km and stop in Umgeni Valley, and we'll spend the night at Indigo Skate Camp, courtesy of Dallas Oberholzer. Forecasts include unicycles on half-pipes, and tears.
Day 3: How’s YOUR Monday been?
Words: Kirby Kruger
Pictures: Geoff Brink
Good morning.
What day is today?
I mean, YOUR day. OUR day, at the time of writing, is Monday morning. Early. It's 12:10 -early.
Get comfy. This is a long post.
On Saturday morning I put up a quick and neat little go-get-'em blog post where I told you guys how we all woke up at 2:30 on Saturday morning to get Alan, Johnny and Donna to Blue Lagoon so that they could begin unicycling back home to Cape Town. All the way.
Remember how stoked and overwhelmed we all were?
We're cute that way.
This time of writing, (the beginning, I mean), is Sunday evening, close to 11 PM, is Day 2 of the Freedom Revolution Unicycle Tour.
Let me tell you about our past 48 hours.
So the three unicyclists left at 4:00AM, and I was left with the Purple PeopleWagon. For anyone not familiar with the nature of Durban's Blue Lagoon beach parking lot, (i.e us), Saturday mornings are the vomity receptacles of Friday night's leftover car parties, a game which seems to involve everyone bringing their cars and braais to one spot, and playing all of their songs on their car stereos, at the same time. And then attempting jovial, conversational banter over it.
So I, Geoff Brink, Jamie Falconer, and some fifty appreciative and slurring people who had no business being behind any vehicle with a steering wheel saw off these three plucky unicyclists, in their mulit-coloured neon gear. Well, Alan prefers orange, Donna is red, and Johnny likes green or yellow. So, I say mulit-coloured, but I mean within that range of colours. I took off in the PeopleWagon (which is, along with my Macbook, banana guard and sunglasses pouch, is purple), and decided to embrace a busy day ahead.
See, I had to, first of all, get a blog post up. And send off some emails. And make some calls. By nine o'clock, I was supposed to meet the unicyclists at the Indanda Dam, at a point we'd calculated using a combination of Google Earth, some geological maps, and a pretty vague national roads map. So we knew where we'd find each other.
Kind of.
Oh, see, I have a thick, detailed folder of all the maps and the rural routes the team will be moving through – footpaths, Jeep-tracks, grass fields – the challenge is to find a way to find them on their off-road route, whilst driving on roads. With a car. After I did my blogging, I decided to find the Inanda Dam first, and wait there for the riders.
Now, jee, I don't know anything about Durban. I mean, nothing. My maps? Are all national road maps. There are some major roads that show up, but that's it, y'know? And the Inanda Dam shows up as a little blob amidst some nameless roads. So, eh, I drive towards an area that looks close-by. Umhlanga seemed like a good idea. It wasn't. Nor was driving towards Stanger. I eventually stopped and asked for directions at an Engen Garage. As I start asking how to get to Inanda Dam, pointing carefully to the blue squiggle on my roadmap, I look up and see a big friendly green tourist board with the route and the exact place I wanted to be, mapped out like somebody had tried to make a map even Winnie the Pooh could understand. Sheepish, I got back to the PeopleWagon, and the two of us drove down to Inanda Dam, exactly like the big green friendly tourist board showed.