1 Day to D Day (B Day)!

Cape Town airport a circus. Still, managed to get an earlier flight to George and had Mark pick me up at the airport. Straight down to registration which really has been streamlined. Bought another Epic shirt which brings my collection to......a lot. It won't be long now and the Acid Heads will be able to do each stage of the epic in a(different) "official" shirt.

After hooking up with all the other Upington boys briefly we went up to our home away from home here in Knysna, The Wayside Inn.

The evening saw us attend the Amabubesi dinner. Nice to see some of the familiar faces again. Sat with Tony and Marcel from George and, Achiem and Coenie rom Kby.

We've come quite a long way with Coenie and Achim. They also rode the first epic together in 2004. And being the only other team from the Northern Cape we had a friendly rivalry going. Tony(Conlon)I met at my first To Hell and Back. He had a wicked crash that year, but he's in superb shape now and a serious contender for the Masters section. Mark remembers Marcel with some amusement as the bloke who chucked his bike into the bush at the Attekwas in a fit of rage after one mechanical failure too many.

Ended up buying the "Coffee Table Book", "Guts and Glory" which is a pictoral history of the epic interspersed with some "quotes" from the riders. And since 3 of my quotes made it into the book I felt almost compelled to buy it. That and the fact that while I was paging through the book considering the purchase, Christoph Sauser came up to me and just "sommer" autographed it! This attracted the attention of a photographer who had us "pose" for a whole bunch of photo's.