1. Zebras. Yup, we’ve been riding around in a little park down the road that happens to have a few black and white striped horses hanging out. They’re pretty cool, Mohawks and all. Seem friendly too, or maybe have just given up their inherent wildness on account of living in a park on the edge of town. Africa is cool.

2. Concrete Paved Singletrack. The aforementioned park also has a 2.5k loop trail that’s 100% covered in concrete pavers. Good grip when it’s not raining and fun obstacles engineered for walking. Unfortunately the warm-up with the Kona Boys involved a bit of moisture and no Zebra sightings, maybe that’s why we all got so smoked off the line…

3. It’s summer here! Ah, nothing like a fifteen hour flight across an ocean and the equator to change your weather… It’s between 20 and 35 degrees Celsius everyday here, raining a bit at night to keep things green and fresh during the day. I’ve been loving the long winter in the Great White North but it’s kind of nice to just put on a jersey and shorts to ride all day in the sun. Maybe a little SPF till the tan comes around but other than that it takes about four minutes to get ready to ride, leaving much more time for sleeping…

4. Monkeys. They’re all over the place. In the backyard here at our Duvet and Crumpets apartments, behind the Team Giant pit area at the race, along the roads and trails we’ve been exploring. Evidently the locals are kind of over the monkeys stealing stuff and making noise but I’m still thoroughly amused.

5. Robots. No, not human-like machines cleaning your windshield. Traffic Lights. I’ve gotten a bunch of directions since I’ve been here, all of which involve driving on the left side of the road and passing at least two “Robots”. “You head down to the Robots and turn right on Victoria, then up two Robots and left on Boon” or whatever. It’s settled, I’m going to make up some random names for stuff here and see if anyone notices. Maybe wireless internet can be “Magic” since it seems to be impossible to find…

6. Cheap meat. A nice ten-minute walk up around the corner from D n C brings us to the local dining strip consisting of a pub and two restaurants. The first one is called Pesto and is your standard good Italian. More important is the other though, The Butchery. Yup, they make meat. We went the last three nights in a row. We each had a nine-dollar Filet (pronounced Fill-it) Mignon the first two nights and agreed it was the best steak ever. Last night we figured branching out was in order so we got a full rack of ribs for a starter instead of the usual carpaccio. This left us free to have fish for a main and seriously consider carpaccio for dessert. Mmmm.

7. Fresh World Cup racing. Right, we’re here to race bikes. It’s always kind of the UCI to throw us somewhere exotic in the southern hemisphere for the kickoff. Everyone is pumped to be somewhere new and warm on account of competiton. Unfortunately, I guess a bunch of guys came down here early to get in shape and used to riding in a sauna. Which means that even before my bike rattled itself to a pretty strange, yet serious, mechanical mishap on lap two I was already getting kind of smoked. That just took me from the 30’s to the 100’s… Ah well, nothing like playing catch up to snap you out of your heat induced haze of slowness and allow some actual decent bike riding. I passed tons of dudes on the way to 49th. Kind of a waste of a perfectly good #6 start position, that, but hey, maybe I’ll constructively play catch up in Offenburg and Houffalize too. So much pressure starting on the front row after a long winter… Now I’m just another guy. Oli did good work keepin’ er steady though, starting 27th and moving up to 22nd by day’s end. He got a sunburn too. The thousands of FIRED UP spectators could have told him that though, they see pale British guys down here on vacation all the time… Next year we’re gonna try to come down early and do the Cape Epic in preparation, mostly so Oli can get a tan.

8. Culture. It’s real interesting down here in South Africa. Watching the news has been a good education to the kind of stuff that goes on in the rest of the world. Mucking about outside has reinforced the fact that we’re in a different world here, in a good way. People seem super nice for the most part but there is definitely evidence of the way things used to be…

9. Relaxing. All this culture and introspection hasn’t gotten in the way of some much needed recreation quarantine though. It’s nice to be back in the swing of bike season, travel somewhere cool, relax and ride some bikes. I’m looking forward to the next week down here of exploring some new terrain, sleeping a ton and catching up with the fitness required to be competitive in the World Cup. The long winter has me ready to go, once I actually am ready…

10. Good proper mountain bike riding. A strange number rang into my mobile phone yesterday evening, I answered, hoping it was important on account of the cost it would inevitably come with… Turns out it was Martin Franger of the Giant Swiss Team who was staying in Durban to train for a few days. We agreed to meet at the Gabo Gorge trail center and ride for as long as we could. Turns out we rode for a goodly while on rad singletrack in the sunshine. A few stops to hunt for monkeys were in order, as was a pause to high-five the guys who were grooming the trails we were riding. Weedwacking back the ever-advancing foliage and raking the berms and switchbacks. Thanks, guys, well worth the twenty Rand (about two bucks) it costs to ride for a day. It’s pretty amazing to see such a well developed riding culture down here, you read about it every few days in the newspaper too… Guess I’ll try out a little local racing this weekend in Kawazulu-Natal and get a bit deeper into the scene. Someone will say “GO!” at least…