Holiday Plans and Things!

Our tickets are booked! In May, we'll be travelling up to Gauteng to visit the various family members, and to venture with Robin (Francois' brother) to the Drakensberg for a hike up Sentinel Peak.

I can't wait! I've never been to the Drakensberg before, and Francois has told me many things about the beauty of the mountains there, and the intensity of the hike. Yippee! (Yes, I love hiking. Although a less recent discovery than my enjoyment of cycling, this was also a fairly new revelation for me. A younger me would never have believed that I'd like exercising so much.)

Resting in the shade during one of those hikes that I enjoy so much. (Proof!)

Some more specific information for the family and friends who I'd like to see:

• We arrive in Johannesburg on the 14th of May
• We leave again on the 30th of May
• We'll be taking a weekend to do the hike, most likely the 16th and 17th, but maybe the 23rd and 24th. This still needs to be finalised.
• Most of the time, we'll be staying in Pretoria.

By the way. Our arrival in Joburg will not be by bus. We're flying! For the same price! Thanks to the awesomely affordable new airline, FlySafair, we lowly folk can now afford to travel across the country at a great speed, and no longer have to put up with stinky, crowded, slow-moving buses... If we book far enough in advance, of course. This makes me very, very happy.

So yes, we have some exciting times coming up. I feel very ready for a holiday, and for some contact with certain people that live very far away. This does mean that I need to make extra money before we leave, to make up for the two weeks that I won't be working, but that should be easy enough to do, with my mindset right. 

Look at how perfect it is! Buy it!

To help with the extra monetary needs, we're selling Francois' Wacom Inkling. It's a really cool drawing gadget, but shortly after he purchased it, he bought his drawing tablet, so it's gone unused. Feel free to share the hell out of that gumtree ad, by the way. It'd be great to actually sell it sometime soonish. :P

Well, this update is long enough, I think. Bye for now!

A Quick, Slightly Boring Update

Francois and I were planning to do a proper cycling trail in Saasveld yesterday, but we decided against it for now. I'm still not able to stand and cycle at the same time, and that would make the extra-bumpy trail particularly painful to experience.

Cycling along the driveway, just so Francois can take
a picture of me... Proof that I really can ride my bike!

Instead, we went for a ride around Wilderness. It was really relaxed, and gave me the opportunity to learn how to start cycling from a standing position (as opposed to starting with my bum on the seat). I enjoyed navigating the sidewalks, dodging people and dogs, trying not to scratch parked cars and narrowly missing various poles (most of the time).

Me again! Still in the driveway. But cycling!

Well... I enjoyed it after the initial extreme nervousness, anyway.

Unfortunately, after the cycle, I was so kaput that I couldn't bring myself to write anything for my blog. So I skipped a day. :(



What I did do was make really yummy pumpkin and spinach soup. We bought a HUGE crown pumpkin for R30 from Fruit and Veg City, which Francois massacred artfully using his manly muscles. I wouldn't have been able to tackle that pumpkin... It was ridiculously hard. So we had fresh pumpkin (I used less than a quarter of it), and spinach that I bought for R15 from the local veggie-selling hippie in Wilderness (which I used about a third of). Woo! Cheap, ridiculously tasty soup!

It looks weird because spinach makes things
look weird. But I promise it's delicious!

I'm going to roast the seeds that were scooped out of the pumpkin to make a crunchy snack. I might post a picture of them here when I do... But that may not happen, for two reasons:

1: If I fail miserably and burn them or something, I won't post a picture out of sheer embarrassment and depression. (I'm kidding. I probably will, because it'll be funny.)

2: If they're amazingly delicious, we'll probably eat them all before I can grab my camera. (I'm not kidding about this one.)

Okay, I think I'm done with this post. Hopefully I'll think of something more interesting to write about tomorrow... Any brilliant topic ideas are always welcome, by the way. :P

A Balancing Act

Potholes are a pain in the ass. This is not a recent revelation - it's terrible to hit one while you're in your car - but I'm speaking literally here. When you're riding a bicycle, every bump that you hit hurts your behind. During my cycle with Francois yesterday, I really started getting nervous about the big bumps in the road... Because the longer you ride, the more sensitive you are to every stone that you bounce over and every hole that you drop into. I was starting to hurt.

I have a comfy silicone seat cover...
Not comfy enough!

Once I started paying proper attention to the deeper holes in the road, I tried lifting myself off the seat just a little bit to minimize the impact, but I couldn't lift up enough to make too much of a difference. That's when Francois suggested that I figure out how to stand up while riding my bike. He showed me how to position my feet, explained that I should lock my knees into place for better balance, and waited for me to give it a go.

Well, I tried, at least. A few times! I didn't give up too easily. But for some reason, I just couldn't lift myself up and balance nicely on my pedals. At first, I thought that my legs were just too tired, or a little too weak, or that I just needed a lot of practise and would get it eventually. They were all logical assumptions. But the answer was actually in my bicycle.

Because I'm still very uncertain with my bike and have only recently figured out how to ride, I've left my seat fairly low down. This allows me to climb onto the seat, balance with one foot on the ground, and then push off on the pedal with my other foot. I start with my bum firmly on the seat every time. That's all good and well, until you want to stand up on your bike... My leg doesn't straighten completely when I push the pedal all the way to the bottom, so standing automatically becomes a much trickier feat to accomplish. Without that straightened leg helping me to balance and then distribute my weight between my two legs, it became nearly impossible to lift my body weight.  There we go, it suddenly all made sense!

The pesky pedals that I need
to learn how to stand on...

It would be perfect if I could tell you that I adjusted my seat, started riding and 'voila!' managed to stand and cycle. One problem, though... By the time I realised how to fix things, I was super tired and just wanted to make my way back home. No seat adjustments, no victorious standing on pedals, none of that. I made it home, flopped onto the grass defeated, and gave up for the day.

It's still all positive, though. I learnt quite a few things during that ride:
1: That I had a problem. (My sore bum!)
2: What I need to do to fix that problem. (Standing up while going over bumps.)
3: How to adjust things so that it's actually possible to achieve my goal. (Raising my seat. Obviously.)

When we go for another cycle on Monday or Tuesday, I'll change the height of my seat and give the whole standing up thing another shot. Hopefully, with my new information and adjustments to my bike, I'll manage to perform the balancing act that will save my behind from certain doom.


P.S. I was going to point out the way that this relates to other aspects in life, like balancing work and leisure and things like that, but Francois said that he'd tease me about it if I did. So I didn't. But I kind of did, by telling you about that in this Post Script. So yeah... Balance is important and stuff! Okay. I'm done now.

Exercising Forgotten Muscles

Oh my goodness. I'm exhausted. Today Francois and I went for a ride around Hoekwil for my second ever proper cycle. We went a total distance of... (Drumroll please...) 9.3km! That sure feels like a lot, I tell you what.

Francois calls this pattern of burn my 'wings'.

I got a little too much sun and my quads are rather tired, but what I didn't expect is that my shoulders are very sore. Oh yes, that's right, I have ZERO upper body strength. Most of the time, that doesn't affect my day-to-day life at all. I'm strong enough to carry trays full of drinks and heavy plates of food to tables while I'm waitressing at work, and I only have a little trouble carrying the full laundry basket up and down the stairs, even when the laundry is wet and extra-heavy. However, on days like these, I remember that I can't even do one proper push-up. My arms are that stupidly weak.

So, balancing on a bicycle (which requires a certain amount of pulling and pushing with one's arms) for 9.3km makes for a ridiculous work-out, and very sore shoulders.

Today, I exercised muscles that I didn't even think were important. Correction: That I didn't even think about. At all. I'm sure that strengthening these muscles will improve the way that I do other non-cycling-related things as well, and I probably won't even notice the improvement in those areas of my life (carrying drinks, doing laundry, all that fun stuff). It feels like a good reminder that exercising other kinds of 'muscles' is also very important, even if it is so easy to forget about. Writing more often can improve my ability to communicate with those I love, can broaden my mind's ability to think about things from different perspectives, can help me to improve in my poetry and my singing, and who knows what else.

Practice, practice, practice... It's so important, and something that I keep forgetting to do.

We're planning to do another cycle, about 8km long, on Monday or Tuesday. It may be shorter than today's cycle, but it'll be quite a bit trickier thanks to the hills and what-not (It'll be an actual, honest-to-gosh, cycling trail. In the forest and everything! Yay, shade!), and hopefully I'll conquer the trail with pride (or only just manage to make it back to the car, that'll do fine, too). Perhaps, after a few more cycling expeditions, I'll find that I'm able to do an actual whole push-up... Maybe.