Cape Argus Cyclist Race

Sunday was such a neat day. It was hot but there is always a breeze. Cape Town has an annual cyclist(bicycles) race and there were 38,000 entries. They close all the main streets around the area and it was difficult to get to church so we thought we would make a morning of it. We got up at 5:45am and got ready and went down to Fish Hoek with our chairs and waters and waited for the leaders to come through. We learned that the race started at 6:15 and the leaders would come through about 7:00 am. This was a 109 kilometer race( 67.7 miles) At a few minutes to 7 they started appearing in the distance. I was fascinated how these folks all came together in a pack, where they could literally reach out and touch the other person. If you have ever been at a NASCAR race and all the cars are going along at 200 miles an hour and don’t wreck, you would appreciate the rush that these guys left us with. After the first group went by it was a few more minutes and then another huge group went by this went on for hours. One of the pastors from King of Kings Church, that we attend, was in it. We wanted to see him go by but with so many bikers we didn’t think we stood a chance. The only thing we knew is that he left at 8:40. We then calculated how long it took the first one’s to come through and then based on that we calculated what his time might be. With all that said and done, we spotted him gave him words of encouragement and he waved to us. (This reminded me of those silly math questions in school that we had to figure out. I’m sure you all remember if A left at 6 and B left at 8 then what time would A arrive if C happened J something like that). There were some guys who set up some really big speakers and they were playing 80’s music to get the bikers pumped up when they went by. We heard someone way down the road playing the music first thing in the morning and I said, “I sure am glad that music is way down there”, and then another bunch came up at our end and cranked it up. Turns out it was a lot of fun. This lasted until 11:00 for us but the race didn’t finish until about 5:00 pm. We found out that the winner finished the race in 2 hours and 27 minutes just about the
time Guy, the pastor from church, was starting the race. We then went home had some lunch and enjoyed going to the beach.
About the beach this is another story in itself. The water here is cold and we debated about going in but we figured once we were numb we wouldn’t feel anything. After we had played in the waves, we laid out our Sulu’s (from Fiji) and our towels and decided to lay back and close our eyes. We know we weren’t there very long before the tide came in on us and soaked everything we had. We
moved faster than you can believe grabbed up our belongings and sat on the bank and held everything up for drying out. The winds blew and it looked like we were flying flags. I know, I know you really feel sorry for us and to top it off we got sunburned.