Courtenay Brown

On my second-to-last day in South Africa, I raced the Totalsports Challenge Terra Firma. It's so named because it's based off the original Totalsports Challenge that runs concurrently, and has 7 events, and Dan Hugo has won it a hundred times, and those events are a mix of land and sea stages. The Terra Firma race skips the sea stages (two paddles and a swim) for those of us whose legs are faster than our arms. So it went: 50k road bike, 13k road/dirt run, 25k mountain bike, 9k beach run. The race is point-to-point with three separate transitions, so at Christmas after a suitable amount of wine I successfully roped Dan's uncle Michael into sherpa-ing me at the race! Except ...

I arrived home in Boulder last night. Classes started today, there was snow on the ground, and my car needed roadside assist in order to start. Sputtering and grumbling, we're back to real life. I didn't take an abundance of photos during my last week. I did race on the Saturday though so I may have photos to post from that a little bit later. These are some photos of training, of some of the signs and sights I enjoyed, and also of my last day. We went to a Johnny Clegg concert. I love his music, and actually had played some of it on the radio back in my DJ days, but it was a whole new experience to see ...

These photos are from two separate trips. In one I went to Guguletu, one of the Cape Town townships, and spent the afternoon seeing what life is like there. In the other trip I was here in Stellenbosch's township, Kayamandi, meeting the songo.info kids and seeing their facilities. At Guguletu I wore flip flops. There is a lot of glass and dirt and trash, so I walked carefully and wished I'd brought proper shoes. After Guguletu I went into Cape Town and met a friend at the beach, where I walked carefully around iridescent purple mussel shells so beautiful I did not want to break them. For me it was quite an encapsulation of the extreme contrasts here. [nggallery id=63]

...in which the high life was lived. [nggallery id=62] The polo match defies description in many ways but in keeping with my website's tagline, I'll give it a quick go. The place dripped money, and it wasn't even a Pretty Woman-type tournament. I did wear a sun dress just in case. The spectators consisted of about 10 cars parked on a steep rise overlooking the field. It was evidently a very exclusive New Year's Eve invite. We sat on the grass and watched what seemed to be mostly 19-20 year old guys gallop around and around. Some had been flown in from Europe and Argentina to play. I heard one chatting up a girl, she asked if the poor horses were OK. ...