Day 4, we making progress.
Each night we stay at local Bed and breakfasts in the town where we complete our ride. I share a room with my cousin, Don Voysey, the guy that got me into this thing. Although we were big mates when we were young we kind of drifted apart as the years went past and only met up again 2 years ago at My mother's 80th birthday. On that day 11 of the extended family agreed to ride the Argus Cycle Tour in Cape Town in 2010. So my brothers and my son, Donald's brothers and his Dad and another cousin all completed the race that year. After the race Don told us about this ride from Empangeni to Cape Town each year organised by the local Rotary Club and in a moment of madness we made a pact to do it. Robert, Don's elder brother, will join us in Port Elizabeth and ride the last 600km with us. I have not shared a hotel room with anyone but my wife Shona for many years and it is really amusing to see how Don and I co-exist. To be very honest Don is worse off because I cannot live out of bags and am not able to keep my things tidy. Also I tend to lose stuff so Don spends much of his time helping me locate the missing items.

Anyway back to the ride today. Our routine is now established, up at 4.30am, start cycling at 5.30, ride for 5 to 6 hours, make some donations, arrive at our over night stop, wash our clothes, fill our bottles for the next day, rest for an hour or 2, go to dinner, in bed by 8.30pm and finally doing my blog. Today we rode 135km, 5 and a half hours. not as tough as yesterday as the hills were less steep. The countryside was as magnificient as before and the sun was soon doing it's bit to sap our energy. Last night I was convinced I would be in no physical state to ride but with a good nights sleep the body had recovered enough to get me going. So our stats so far are.
Distance - 430km
Time on the road - 18 hours 45 minutes
Calories burnt - 21,850
Tomorrow we ride 115km and make 1 donation.

Day 3 on my big ride.
Wow today was tough, it's 8.15in the evening and I can barely keep my eyes open. We are staying in a guest house just outside the town of Clarens, for those who know, it is a beautiful part of the world near the Drakensburg mountains. Today we basically rode over the Northern Drakensburg up a pass I forget the name of and through the Golden Gate National Park. I have some great photos by still do not have access to the Internet except for an iPad, which cannot upload photos on to the blog. Anyway if you have never been to Golden Gate in the Drakensburg, google it, it is really a special part of the country. As i said it'a National park and on occasions we were riding and enjoying watching herds of buck, zebra and wilderbeest. At one stage it seemed like they were attracted by us and 100's of animal ran in the same direction as us for a while, the general view of the riders is that they were attracted to the warning flags or our bright yellow jersey's.
Back to the tough day, we started in the early mist and soon were gunning along enjoying the magnificent scenery and the crisp morning air. We stopped for breakfast on the side of the road then set off to climb what is called the "Mother in law" climb, you can work out for yourself why it called that. The climb over this pass was the most difficult I have ever done, much worse than day one, and harder than anything I could have imagined. For those of you know about hill grades the maximum we rode was 20%, which is 8% higher than the hardest hill I trained on up in Sentul in Jakarta. At one stage it was impossible to peddle and I had to walk 300 or 400m, some of the others did as well thank goodness. At the top we were 2100m above sea level and on top of the world..
So summary so far is we have completed 300km, climbed at total of 3500m and donated close to 30,000 USD. My legs are sore, we have 145km to ride tomorrow and I must thank a friend of mine who recommended I buy a Brooks saddle, they are amazing.

Day 2, Vryheid to Ladysmith.
What a great ride we had, a chilly early morning start, some mist to contend with and some challenging hills. We rode 65km before our first stop in the Town of Dundee. We handed over R40,000 to the local crisis center and enjoyed a great breakfast of yoghurt and muffins prepared by the Dundee Rotary Club. Another 55km saw us arrive in Ladysmith and a donation of R6,000 to a youth center. After that we checked into the local Royal Hotel together with a big African wedding, a rather noisy afternoon to say the least. Now we having a quiet beer and watching the sharks playing rugby against the Auckland Blues.
So just to explain how the whole fundraising works, the donations are a combination of what the cyclists have collected and Engen South Africa (Mobil to you international guys). At every town we ride through the Local Engen Service station pledges an amount of money and Engen South Africa matches the amount, the Service Station gets to nominates the recipient of their choice. I cannot say enough times how thankful these recipients are, there is so much needed and so little support. Thanks again for everyone' generosity.
Tomorrow is a massive day, we ride up a mountain pass and through Golden Gate in the Drakensburg mountains, it will be spectacular and hard at the same time.

Day 3, day 1 of big ride

This is now the 3rd attempt at my daily update. The rather dodgy hotel we staying does not have any form of Internet and my 3G card is barely making a connection. So this will be a quick update, tomorrow we arrive at our overnight stop mid morning so I can give my update a full go, pictures and all.
The 4am alarm jolted me out a very pleasant sleep and the gear all laid out reminded we that this was the first day of an epic adventure that I have been waiting and training for. After the usual last minute preparation and a boring energy bar for breakfast we headed for the start. Good lucks and safe riding wishes complete we rode 1,5hours into the spectacular morning country side arriving at the dreaded Melmoth pass that everyone talks about. The mother of a hill lived up to it's legendary reputation; 10km of the sleepiest climbing I have ever done, but heads down and determined peddling saw us reach the top and to our first official stop, a donation to a struggling pre-primary school. The thankful staff and prepared sandwiches for us which we gladly accepted before riding on to the local Engen Service station to hand over a donation to a shelter for abused children. Back on the bikes we arrived in Vryheid and made two more donations, one to an old age home, all the old dears were out to thank us and then to our final donation, a home for abandoned and abused children, most HIV positive. The kids csme along to the presentation making it quite an emotional affair. I realized there and then how privileged I was to be involved, thank you all soo much for your generous contributions, your money is making a real difference to these poor people and children.
So 85km and 4 donations later day 1 had ended, what a wonderful experience and a tired bunch of riders head for an early bed in anticipation of the 120km ride tomorrow.

Day 2 - my car trip to the start

1 day to go until we on the road.
I woke up this morning with big expectations, a nice quiet drive from Johannesburg to Empangeni in time for the opening speech and a ceremonial ride around the town. I didn't factor in 250km oF road works and lengthly delays where only single lane traffic was allowed. I would think it would be logical to fix 20km of road at a time instead of ploughing up 250km but I clearly do not understand the finer process of road repair. Anyway all this resulted in me arriving 20 minutes late and missing all the formalities. This was no big issue as I was still able to meet some of the other cyclists and introduce myself. Tonight we celebrated my cousin Donald's 50th, a quiet affair as both of us are rather nervous about the big day tomorrow.
Final bike adjustments are done, juice bottles filled and gear all laid out. My cycle shirt is a little small but should fit in 14 days time. We have to be at the start at 50am so the alarm is set for 4.
I am really looking forward to posting my first big day tomorrow, hopefully complete with some good action pictures.

Day 1 in Johannesburg

Bike Sent to Cycle Lab,http://www.cyclelab.co.za/, for Full Service and new Tyres....

Unwrapped new camera, ATC 9K Action Camera, for Bike, so that I can take pictures and film while riding...










Leave early tomorrow morning for Empangeni for the official start tomorrow afternoon...

BIG Ride starts at 5am on Friday morning.