When the remote mountains call...: Chemo 21

Chemo 22
Chemo 20
19 Nov 2011, Saturday - Last week Wednesday was still much the same story with the recipe books, except that I spent the day in a very hot showroom at Océ, running the first print of the Dis Mos Kos book on one of their machines. Our printer apparently could not handle the type of paper that we wanted to print the books on, but it turned out to be an entirely different problem after all. If Océ pays me enough I will tell them what the problem is... I also popped into one of my favorite bike shops on my way back and came across a frame that was now seriously going out of fashion, brand new but a 2010 model and 2012 bikes are starting to dot the shop floors. So I made a deal that I could not refuse, and bought the frame.

By Thursday mid morning our own machine was running splendidly and I was waiting to hear from Robert and Machai from America who were busy cycling from Johannesburg to our place. I am glad I did not offer to cycle with them. Not only did they choose to cycle the second busiest road in the whole of SA, but they also chose the warmest day of a very warm heatwave that hit SA. I had some errands to run and my route coincided with theirs, so it was a very relieved Machai that loaded her bike and luggage into the Pajero and enjoyed the little bit of relieve that the air conditioner was able to bring. We had a splendid time with them and took them for a trip to the most Afrikaans of Afrikaner symbols in SA, the Voortrekkermonument, as well as entertained them with another very Afrikaans tradition, the Braaivleis (Barbeque).

Their plan was to leave here early on Monday morning and by 13h30 they got going on their way to Cullinan. I booked into Oncology long before then for my sixth chemo session. This was a predictable affair except that the nurse battled with her aim and had to try 4 times to get the drip needle into my vein and not into the tissue next to it. By Tuesday evening 22:00 I was back at home and starting to feel very groggy, like a hang over without the prelude of pleasure... This was much the case for Wednesday and Thursday, but yesterday morning I felt better and wanted to spend some time in the office, but we had a hint of a thunderstorm on Thursday evening and was without electricity for most of the morning. So I used the time to work on the new frame and by yesterday afternoon I had a 95% complete bike. 2 small problems reared their ugly little heads. The front derailleur dos not fit on the new frame. This I will fix this morning by buying the correct one. The second snag is that the distance between the back wheel and the bottom bracket is slightly longer so the chain is very marginal on the big-big combination. Since that is one combination that one hardly ever uses and should never use, that is something I will live with for this chain cassette combination. When I replace the chain I will be able to cut the new chain to the correct length.