Bus vs Bike

It's been a while now that I wanted to try Cape Town's new MyCiti IRT for commuting to work. I was thinking that on really wet days it might be a good alternative for the bike seeing that getting stuck in traffic with a car on a rainy day in Cape Town traffic is something you prefer to avoid at all costs. I had to wait for an actual day with a rain forecast because until now I just could not get myself to leave the bike at home while the sun was shining outside. Well, today rain was predicted and I decided to give it a go. Armed with an umbrella and my MyCiti bus card I hitched a ride with my neighbour to the main bus stop in Tableview. If he was not around I would've had to walk about 10 minutes to the closest bus stop, get a feeder bus to Tableview and that would've taken 20 minutes at least. So I scored on some time and effort here.

I am not really that unfamiliar with riding bus. I frequently have to take the bus from the terminals at the airport to the plane. So how much different could this be? I first had to pay to get sufficient funds on my card. The bus card is also a debit card and you cannot ride without one. No cash any more. Fortunately the card I had, but the PIN number eluded me for a moment and with anxious passengers behind me in line I had to try all the PIN numbers I had stored in my brain somewhere. Fortunately for me the first one worked and the sun came out at the same time. It seemed like it was going to be a good day after all. There was still time to turn around and go get the bike now with the sun out, but I was not backing out now. 

Last 10 min walk to my office

We left the house at 7 and got on the bus at 7:30. We were last in line but because of my PIN issue we missed the first bus and was first in the line for the next one. This meant that we could get seats. I like riding bus while standing, it is like surfing or skateboarding on a bigger scale, but the ride was about to last 35 minutes to town and sitting would just make it easier to at least have a conversation with my buddy. I guess it can get boring with no-one to talk to all the way. The people look better than the ones I saw on the Metro in Prague, but no-one was talking much, except for this girl behind me who was explaining events from the Bible to her friend like she was there when Jesus walked on the water. My buddy and I talked about kite surfing, RC helicopters, various gadgets, travelling and the normal stuff guys talk about. Time passed quickly and soon I had to change buses at the Civic Centre. My next bus would be the Waterfront feeder bus with the second stop being the one where I need to get off. Transferring were easier than at Schipol Airport and soon I was on my second leg. I arrived at my stop at 8:20 and was left with another 10 minute walk to get to the office. I arrived at 8:30.

So, what's the verdict, bike or bus? Time wise, the bike is better, 20 mins compared to 90 mins. Money wise, if you have a bike already it works out more or less the same, approximately R25 a day. Comfort wise, I think walking in the rain for 20 minutes might be just as bad a riding in the rain for 20 mins. Definitely safer to take the bus but with no excitement and adrenalin I would prefer to be on a bike. The worst of it all is that I am in town now with NO transport, and if I want to get back home in a rush, then I have to prepare myself for another 90 minutes before I get home, even more if I have to wait for buses and if I add the last walk to my house. Unless you can sit on the bus and meditate or answer emails, I cannot see how anyone can waste 3 hours a day on just commuting. Life is too short for that. 

The sun is shining at the moment and I am probably the only one with an umbrella today, but at least now I know what it's like and no-one can accuse me of not trying. In future I will however stick to the bike, thank you.

Those were the days....

This was many years ago before we had GoPro Cameras and other fancy video recorders to capture that "first jump". This however wasn't my first jump, it was indeed my first free fall of 5 seconds.  Not much, but having to pull your own rip cord after 8 static line jumps it felt like forever. With me is Henk van Wyk, my jump master from Mossel Bay Skydivers and the same guy on the tandem picture from my previous post. I did a few more jumps after this but eventually stopped skydiving after I moved to Cape Town. I changed  over to paragliding and invested all my money in paragliding gear. Those were the days.....  

Blood stains on the carpet

Guess who's been having more fun than me lately?

I just stumbled upon a picture of a friend of mine on facebook where she did a tandem jump a few months ago. I spoke to her last night to hear how she was doing. Over the past few weeks she has been paragliding in Barberton, 4 x 4-ing (if you get such a word) in the Richtersveld, been to Mauritius for a break and then returned via Mozambique where she was deep-sea angling from a jet ski."I'm going to climb out of my skin" she said, "I am as bored as hell."

Two weeks ago after shark cage diving and returning from a trip to Prague I told my wife I am totally annoyed as everybody is doing fun things and I am about to cut my wrists, bored as hell. Depression was not only written on my forehead, it was tattooed across my whole face. My one biking buddy did a trip to Sutherland with his wife, the other went to Lesotho and saw the thickest snow this country has ever seen and I was at home dealing with boredom and bad weather. Yes, I have just been to Prague and stuck my head under the water to see some sharks, but that does not mean I can sit back and relax now and that I have done my outings for the year. No, it means that I kept myself sane for a few weeks longer during this cold and raining winter season which does not seem to have an end in sight. 

Where was I when my buddy took this photo? (Photo: Francois Joubert)

While talking to the "I'm-bored-as-hell" buddy of mine last night I realized that we both suffer from something most people won't understand. It has been bugging me since I was a child as my mother always wanted to know why I could not sit still. At a point I thought I was being selfish because I always wanted to be involved in some sort of adrenalin adventure. I even thought there was something missing in my life and that I was looking for it by doing dangerous stuff. I am not an irresponsible person otherwise I would not be sitting with a steady job and a beautiful family, but today there is DEFINITELY something missing in my life....I need to do something exciting or I am going to kill myself AND the people around me. I am sitting waiting for summer to return and I have a list of things I want (need) to do. So please Mother Nature, I beg of you, bring "Summer" back, I miss her tremendously...! 

We've made a date for the weekend to discuss plans on how we are going to make sure we going to keep ourselves "alive". My only salvation is the fact that I have slightly more activities I can get busy with when the weather does not play along, but we still seem to be fighting our own boredom wars alone while we could be sharing ideas and trips. I wanted to finally do my scuba course this year, but I think I would rather invest more time and money in my paragliding. I need a new kite for kitesurfing and she said she is going to give it a try too. Then for rainy days there is indoor rock climbing maybe. I also play squash a lot although I would not classify that under "dangerous stuff", but it surely helps for seasonal affective disorder. Sadly I am a sufferer of that too. Anyway, what I need is balance in my life because at the moment it is toppling over towards boring and suicidal and it has to be corrected. No-one likes cleaning blood stains from the carpet.....

XT 600 through Africa?

For the past three mornings while having breakfast at Russel's in Pemba, I been checking these bikes out hoping to get a chance to speak to the guys who it belong to. I have not seen them, because it seems they party late and sleep late. I assume they are guys and not a girl and a guy because they don't share a tent. This morning one of the tents was open, but no-one around looking like a biker that is crossing Africa on an XT 600.

From the number plates I assume that they are Swizz. Whether they are going down or up in Africa I cannot tell, but I can only make an assumption there as well. What I do know is that they are in no hurry because they have been there for 3 days already. If someone knows them, please tell them I wanted to ask them about their trip so far....

Restaurant 556

The more visits I do to Pemba, the more surprised I am with the amount of South Africans living here. On this trip I met Cor who owns the Restaurant 556. He's been living here for many years and he makes sure that the South Africans that do come here do not get homesick. His restaurant specializes in South African cuisine, and if you don't know what that is just think anything MEAT.

I loved the menu, definitely more than what I loved the furniture and decorations. Fortunately I pay for the service and food and not for the looks. In Africa that is a bonus if it's good. A friend suggested I go for the "Beef 556" with peppercorn sauce. I did just that and added beer for starters along with some really good chilli bites (the biltong kind). All the meat on his menu comes from South Africa, so I was not worried about bush meat and/or possible road kill landing up on my plate.

The place is a bit pricey, but it definitely caters for the upmarket people with no fuss over fancy serviettes and fine china. The typical South African meat loving type of guys. Apparently the view from the restaurant is also good, but I didn't even see that; I think we were seated at the wrong side of the restaurant, at the bar area. 

The Beef 556 is a piece of rump steak filled with cheese and mushrooms, done as per your request. My buddy ordered lamp chops. Cor added an extra chop just because he felt the ones he had was a bit small. Both meals were well prepared. Will definitely go there again.....

Instant headache

Three weeks ago I spend a a few days in Prague where I drank more beer in 5 days than what I normally do in a year. The beer was cheap, cold, and tasted sweet like a fairy peeing on your tongue. On my way to Mozambique I bough a South African travel magazine where one particular writer suggested that 2M (pronounced "doshem"), the Mazambican beer is far better than another local beer called Laurentina Premium...just in case you had to choose. Listening to his advice I wished an hour later that I didn't. This is instant headache stuff.  My opinion...rather go for the Premium...or go to Prague.

I love my picture

I took this picture in Pemba and edited it with some basic software I have on my phone. This happened at 3 am as I was awake and couldn't sleep. I love the final product though....

What you see and what you get...

Choosing the best angle for your pictures

I posted a couple of photos on Facebook which I took in Pemba. The response from the few who commented was all in the line of "wow" and "you lucky fish". When we see beautiful pictures we all want to be there, plan our next holiday there, or wish we could permanently live there. We see pictures of tropical islands and wonder what we must do to sell everything and move to "PARADISE".  But where or what is Paradise?

Yes, the beaches in Pemba are extraordinary. It is beautiful and the pictures I took really give it the impression of a tropical paradise. But it is because of the angle I took the pictures from. Had I turned my camera a few degrees down I probably would've captured a few broken bottles or plastic bags on the sand;  a few degrees south and I would've included dilapidated houses and poor people who have no reason to believe that they find themselves in paradise right now.

I live in Cape Town which is considered by many to be a very beautiful place. Some might even call it paradise. Not everyone living in Cape Town necessarily see it as a beautiful place. Once you live in one of these post card picture places one thing you cannot escape from is reality. The reality of having to work to earn a living, or the reality of noisy neighbours, or what South Africans have to deal with at the moment, a government which is busy throwing the beauty of the country to the dogs. All of a sudden the pretty pictures of Cape Town don't seem to be so pretty anymore just because we see it from a "different angle".

So from which angle do you take your pictures? Where and what is your paradise? Is is it a dream on a post card, or is it a place in your heart? You can live in the most beautiful place, but is it really paradise? What makes a place "paradise"? Definitely not a beautiful beach alone. It is the way you see life, the people you care about, your contentment with who you are, where you happen to find yourself in life and the appreciation you have for your possessions, or the lack thereof. Once you have that then you can play around with your camera and only focus on the beauty around you. Then it become as simple as the angle you choose before you press the button....

Smile. Say jaws!

If you take into consideration that the sea was rough and bopping us around, that the camera was an underwater disposable point-and-shoot with a manual reload mechanism and film, that the visibility could've been slightly better on the day, that one cannot use the view finder while you are wearing a diving mask and that sharks don't stand still to have pictures of them taken, then I guess these ones came out pretty well. 

While I was in the cage, I tried to capture at least one decent picture, but it was really hard. Apart from all the things mentioned above, the little arm band on my camera was also lost when a friend of mine opened the packet. This meant I had to, among all the issues above, cling onto my camera so it wouldn't drop into the deep blue ocean. While taking shots with my arms extended to at least get a pictures of the sharks and not the cage only I also didn't want to stick my arm out too far where the camera with the hand could be lost due to the interest of a curious shark. I didn't have much hope for the end result, but what I got was much more than what I bargained for. Besides, this was a shark cage diving trip, not a photography trip....

Relaxing with Charles De Gaulle

I just saw an article on the Internet on the 20 airports in the world by Skytrax. What caught me first was that none of them are from Africa, but I guess that does not come as a surprise. I recall a conversation I had with my farther-in-law a few years ago where we both basically agreed that Charles De Gaulle airport was one of the worst airports to be stuck in for more than an hour. The restaurants were poor, there were hardly any seats and the few that they had was so hard it felt like they didn't want you to stay longer than an hour in any case.

Charles de Gaulle is not on the list and I am not exactly sure how these airports are being judged. For me as a traveller what I want is to have a few things to my disposal when I have to kill time at the airport, and when I arrived at Charles de Gaulle two weeks ago I was quite surprised by a few things that were different. For one there was really friendly people to assist, and they actually spoke good English. What was a nicer surprise was the new style of seating options they have. I didn't take pictures as I did't want to impose, but the airport have a few places where you can literally lie down on comfy benches and sleep. There is even spaces that have beach chairs and relaxing areas with soft music. For kids they even have PSP games. 

I must say I spend about 11 hours on the airport today and even though in the past I would've opted for a hotel room instead, I decided to stay at the airport and sit on one of the comfy chairs and work from there. They have created areas where one can connect laptops and recharge cell phone batteries, something that was few and far between in many airports a few years ago. The only thing they can still work on is a larger selection of restaurants. Today I was really in the mood for a large steak but most of the French type restaurants or coffee shops could not really give me what I wanted. I ate at a place called PAUL's but was totally disappointed with the food and the prices. Also if possible it would be really nice if the WiFi was free too, but I am sure that will never happen. But apart from this one can really see a huge improvement at this airport.

Flying the "Phoenix" again

I am sitting at Charles De Gaulle airport in France and if I have my gate number correct, then tonight I will be flying home on this baby. It will actually be the second time that I fly on this monstrosity of an aeroplane. On my way from South Africa I was also on the Airbus Industrie A340-600. I remembered watching that Air Crash Investigation series on TV where on of these aircraft belonging to Quantas had to do an emergency landing and I couldn't help but wonder if the problem has been solved after that episode. I think it had something to do with the Rolls Royce engines, but I don't want to get into that discussion now as I have to get onto this one in a couple of hours and I don't want to jinx anything.

When I selected my seat the first time, I wanted to sit upstairs. Little did I know that the upstairs is mainly for the better classes in Air France, the ones I obviously cannot afford, with only a few Economy Class seats at the back where the boot of the plane is supposed to be. We got in at the front and as I was walking towards the back I was rather impressed with the seats and layout. I thought we were heading into a better more comfortable way of travel all together. I got a rather disappointing surprise when I realised that I was walking through all the Air France classes from "Affaires" (Business class), through "Premium Voyageur" and eventually to good old "Economy Class" where I found my seat right at the back with exactly the same size seats that you would find on any other Air France flight. I was rather an embarrassing moment after I was so pleased with the bigger seats only to end up where the poorest of the poor usually sits...Cattle Class.

See the minute blue blocks at the end of the aircraft for Economy "Squeeze-in" Class

I have no idea if I am sitting downstairs or upstairs tonight. Frankly I couldn't care, as long as I can get home safely I will sit on the floor if I have to.

Metro Blues

For some people riding Metro trains it is like going to the bathroom, second nature. If you are one of the very unfortunate people who has to earn a living by having "Take the Metro" as part of your route plan to work, then you will probably know what I mean. For tourists the Metro can sometimes be quite an experience, very fast and very organized, especially if you are a South African who at home tries to avoid anything with the word "train" in it... suburban train, gravy train, whatever train. For some tourists it could be quite a challenge to figure out how the system works, and even though it is usually very simple, the colours and names and directions and zones really make it challenge to decipher the first time. Now add a language that you don't understand and see how your heart rate rises just by the thought of getting onto the Metro. 

I've just had my second ride on the Metro in Prague this morning. The most daunting thing about Prague's Metro is the names of the stations. They are quite hard to pronounce, but once you get the hang of it it gets better. When I arrived at Prague Airport I managed with the help of some other tourists to get to the station where I had to get off. Fortunately for me I did not have to change lanes, because in rush hour that could get you lost forever, like a stray dog falling in the middle of peak traffic in Johannesburg. You just don't know which way to run; you get knocked off your feet very quickly. This morning I took the Metro to the airport. My route to the airport also involved a bus ride from the last station. I hate figuring out bus routes even more than Metro routes. Bus drivers in foreign cities usually don't come over as the most helpful people and the fact that you have personal contact with the driver, compared to no contact in the case of the Metro, it even makes you more uncomfortable to ask a stupid question like "Is this bus going to the airport?". Fortunately my first trip to the hotel prepared me for some of the "obstacles" I might have to overcome on my way back to the airport and I arrived at the airport with absolutely no interferences or worries.

What amazes me most on Metros are the facial expressions of the people making use of this mode of transport. I guess we all look similar when we are on our way to work but I am sure most people look better when they are on their way home. On the Metro it is all the same, no matter which time of day it is. I absolutely avoid making eye contact, but somehow I still get the feeling that when I do the other person is saying to me "Please help me get out of here". I just get the impression that none of them really want to be there, but I might be totally wrong because for me riding on the Metro is like taking a roller coaster ride at an amusement park, never knowing what waits around the next corner.

 

This morning something weird happened. I was taking the Metro from the city centre to the outskirts of town. Because I was going in opposite direction than most of the people going to work, the train was getting emptier as I we were getting closer to the end of the line. Finally we were just about 7 people in the coach. A guy in his early twenties were sitting on a seat and was nodding off. I saw him nodding off, but didn't pay much attention to him. Then at some point he must've completely fallen asleep and fell from his chair hitting the floor smack bang with his face. I got the fright off my life when I heard the bang behind me and seeing this guy on the floor thinking at first that it might be a heart attack got me completely rattled. I wanted to jump up and help him, but then I noticed NO-ONE in that coach made ANY attempt to move. I was not sure what to do. The guy obviously did not have a heart attack or anything and slowly came up totally bewildered from his nightmare. I don't think he ever thought that getting knocked back to reality from a dream could be so unexpected and painful. What scared me most was that the other passengers' faces didn't move at all. No emotion, no nothing. 

I am starting to wonder if we are alone on this earth, or if we are sharing Metros with zombies from other planets. Is this what riding the Metro does to a person? If that is the case then I will stick to my F800 GS...

Strike a pose

After a few days in Prague I was getting tired of taking pictures of old buildings. Drinking beer also reached a limit so I decided to take pictures of people taking pictures. It actually started while I was sitting at a square looking at all the tourist and occasionally developing a smile on my face due to the strange behaviours of tourists when it comes to pinning down that memory they are probably going to bore their friends with or never going to look at again. 

What is funny though is that from all the tourists I think the Chinese has the weirdest way of capturing their holidays. They seem to pose in front of each tourist attraction. I just wonder how their conversation goes when they get home. "Here I am standing in front of the George Bridge. Here I am standing in front of Karlstejn Castle. Here I am standing in front of....". Somehow they seem to make sure they are on each picture that is taken.

Then of course there are the poses. Usually they just stand still, like a toy soldier, but sometimes they might sit down, bend down, or what they like to do is show the peace sign, or victory sign. Why they do that no-one knows. I know pictures mean a lot to tourists, but I am sure there are better ways of remembering your holiday than a picture with you standing in each one.

Karlštejn Castle by bicycle

I think it is a settled fact that I would rather spend time somewhere out in nature than in cities, no matter where or what city it is. I think doing something enjoyable is in any case better than just looking at something. When I got bored of the old buildings and many tourist in Prague I decided to take a bicycle ride to Karlštejn Castle about 32 kilometers outside of Prague. Here are some of the things I saw on my way there. Definitely the highlight of my time in Prague. I'll put the Czech beer in a different category....