Phuthu Stay Phut, Don't go!

Nope, my man didn’t make his plane trip to the Alps yesterday. The poor guy is coughing up yellow, reddy, greeny, amoebic, morph-like looking things. Yup, I did a phlegm inspection this morning. Actually let’s re-phrase that, I was summoned to the bathroom to have a look at a little family of morphs, perched on my pristine white basin. I looked at them in awe and commented on how jellified they looked. Sorry, I really hope that you’re not about to have breakfast right now?

I’m devastated for him but he seems to be taking it well. And how I know this is that he’s already asked if I will do the race with him next year.  Can you believe it? The Adventures of Camel Toe and Hungry Bum in the Alps….

But today is a happy day! Today is my man’s birthday, Happy Birthday hun!

And with that, comes cupcakes! Tasty chocolatey cupcakes.

Crisis. Superjerm is sick – coughing up yellow globs sick, horrible sick, bad-timing sick, like real bad-timing sick. He’s due to leave for the TransAlp mountain bike race tomorrow afternoon but at  the moment it’s touch and go whether he’ll be able to go. Darn bugs. And despite the fact that my man has been training since April for this event, he is incredibly philosophical. I admire philosophers and deep thinkers but at the moment it’s just a bit too philosophical for me to fully comprehend. He is like: “well if I don’t go, I don’t go, it’s just meant to be.”

And I’m like: “911, I have an emergency, my husband needs to catch a plane tomorrow, send the paramedics and start administering IV antibiotics, STAT.”

So this morning I gave my man some sterling advice:

1. Only make a decision tomorrow morning
2. Only make a decision tomorrow morning
3. Only make a decision tomorrow morning

Get better Superjerm!

I have decided that I am not letting Superjerm ride on his own anymore. I miss out on way too much action. I want to experience first-hand heart palpitations, the kind that sends adrenaline to the capillaries of your pinkies. So, first it was the Black Mamba, then it was the valley fires and this weekend he almost broke someone’s nasal cartilage. Not that I’d like to watch that first-hand or anything. Knuckle-on-nose contact is not my kinda thing.  So you want to know what happened right? Well, I’ll tell you in the next paragraph.

My man, the man I signed up to procreate with, was almost run over by a dude who thought it was fun and funny to drive within a quarter of a meter of Superjerm, slam the hooter full blast and attempt to entertain his kids in the back seat.  Yes the kids found it extremely funny, but they, along with their punk dad, don’t really know how many cyclists are killed due to that type of monumental stupidity.

Needless to say I experienced heart palpitations at the thought of the events that could’ve unfolded.

Now, my man is a very gentle man, he’s the type of guy that saves the cockroaches and slugs that would otherwise be Doomed to death by many a housewife. So, I was all wide-eyed when he told me that he had chased the car down to a BP petrol stop, located the punk and grabbed him by his, uhum, throat and uhum…almost broke his uhum…nose. But he didn’t, there was no blood shed, for which I am thankful. He was showered with profanities instead. But why would my man want to reconstruct someone’s nose, I thought?  Maybe it was a friendly gesture on behalf of all the other cyclists that have had close calls? Maybe it was a testosterone self-check? Maybe he wanted to make sure the punk never did that again? Yes, maybe that was it.

So what do you do when your man has had a close-up encounter with the peeling paintwork of a citi golf?

You bake him the best chocolate cupcakes ever…

And then you take photos of them..

..just to remind him how good they were.

Braving the cold and the dark all by myself in order to get a little exercise is not something I’m particularly fond of. And that’s why I didn’t brave the cold and dark all by myself. Smart girl me. I braved it with a handful of other crazy, exercise-needy people.  I know they were crazy because I had to take off their straight-jackets for them at the start. The Hillcrest running club holds a time trial every Thursday and the main reason I take part is so that I can eat a California pizza at Primi afterwards. It’s because they’re worth it.

It was a small group of about 8 people so I tried to keep up with the two gentlemen in front of the pack, for safekeeping.  Superjerm always says I’m a keeper so hence the need for safekeeping.  Before I knew it we were down to 6 runners and then 5 and then 4 and then 3. The 3 would be me, and my two bodyguards. Things got really exciting though when a black runner joined us and started running next to me. Man, I felt fast. Like real fast. I’ve always wanted to run next to a black man because just like black people have rhythm and good voices, they’re also fast runners.  I am a slow runner and therefore I could deduce from the events that unfolded that if I was keeping up with a black runner, even if it was only for a minute, that I was running fast for one minute. It’s all terribly mathematical but the point is that I felt like a professional.  And braving the cold with crazy people was worth it for those 60 seconds of fast. You should try it sometime.

P.S Off topic, but I’m so glad to hear that the Doctors are back to work! makes me happy.

Superjerm did a time of 7.30 hours for last weeks lonesome Big Daddy ride. And no, he didn’t have any close encounters with Black Mamba’s, nor did he experience bitterly cold weather, come across unruly locals or take any bone-breaking tumbles, instead he was hounded by, wait for it, wait for it – valley fires. Big, rip-roaring valley fires. I’m so glad he only told me about this when he arrived back home because apparently the flames were tiny – about one storey high. Yuh, teeny tiny I tell you.. And with the same nonchalant tone he used to tell me about the Black Mamba attack, he proceeded to tell me about the fires. At one point he had to wait for the teeny tiny flames to cross the road before he could carry on with his ride. Kids, please don’t try this at home. It takes a very unique combination of bravery, intelligence and psychosis and if you get the ratios wrong then you might just land up a burnt marshmallow…and nobody likes burnt marshmallows…

So literally a day after posting Black Mamba Vs Superjerm, my man is at it again – he left for a long ride in the valley early this morning. Only this time, he’s not doing a little 4 hour sight-seeing ride, he’s doing the Big Daddy ride. Now, it hasn’t been given the name Big Daddy for nothing – with the course mapped out by Superjerm himself (and with a little help from Google Earth),the track consists of some 115km and 3000m of climbing.  We were going to call it Big Mother because of all the big mother-you-know-what hills but we thought it may be a little disrespectful so we called it Big Daddy instead.  It’s one of those rides you only want to do once in your lifetime. However, my husband, will do it a second time. We did this ride as part of our biggest training week for Epic and the whole ordeal took us nothing less than 10 hours. I reckon it will take him 6 hours. We’ll have to wait and see won’t we…but please can no Black Mamba’s attack him today, or any other reptiles or any scary looking arachnids.