Today we went from Bucklands over to the entrance of the Baviaanskloof and halfway through the kloof towards Willowmore. Tim James said the ride from Bucklands to entrance of Baviaans is a day's ride. Thought we could do better, since we had a whole day off doing nothing but sleep and eat and serviced the bikes. This was in fact the only real service the bike had in the two weeks, put on the spare chain, fixed gears, brakes, cable tied the bottlecage (only thing that broke during the Freedom Challenge).
Started early the morning, made some tracks all over the place to confuse some other people;-). Had another stunning sunrise. The portage over Paardeberg was fine, luckily didnt get shot at :-), very rideable road on top with fun fast downhill on the other side.
Had my first problem with bike, rock hit the front derailer and shifted it, but could fix it easily so no worries. Marnitz said it's because i ride like a hooligan, i just think the rock was bored of lying there all this time. Got heavy wind on top of the mountain,guessing something like 40km/h with gusts over 60. Blew me off the track a few times.
Had some really really insanely cool downhills. Hands feel like they have thorns in,most mornings i have puffy hands when i wake up from all the shaking. Don't really want to list everything that's wrong, trying to focus on positive things. Truth be told there is a lot more of those if you just take the time to look around a bit and realise how privileged we are.
Went down old ossewa trail,extremely rough and crossed the river at the bottom 11 times,good for oumens voete. Got to Glencoe cottages, just before the Baviaans, round about 4 ate, got everything ready and left for Damsedrift. Should have made it by 12. Instead we got a heavy headwind as entertaining company. Expanded my vocabulary some more. The last 24km of flat/rolling riding took us close to 2.5hours. On the last uphill before the end of Baviaans everything caved in again,was shaking, sweating, couldn't even walk. Hoping it was something i ate earlier. Rode last two hours with bad stomach cramps, not fun. Marnitz helped me over again, absolutely no idea how i can ever thank him, feel really bad though, if it wasn't for me he could have been a day ahead in position to win race and maybe even go for the record.
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