Sex, Parks and Recreation 03.06.2013

Run Like a Deer
Be Strong like a Lion.

Having missed the flight because COSATU felt it necessary to turn the country further into a jelly state, and having been forced  into ‘standby mode’...twice, because no flights to Durban were empty and with Friday turning from day to dusk, I had no choice but to drop a testicle on a tacky business class seat on an SAA flight.  Seated, consoling myself, I ordered two cokes to stabilise me and two bottled waters to get my money’s worth. And while I thought things couldn’t get worse, while sat waiting to taxi onto the runway my running partner, my anchor, my Linus blanket and great friend Marty calls to say ‘Danny, I’m not gona make the race, the funeral’s on Sunday’.

There is no Dr Phil book or Oprah episode or Fortune cookie that prepares you for the emotion you’re about to trawl with you on the 45 minute flight to Durbs.
As I bobbed my eyeballs in a pool of salted tears, rubbing my dribble on my sleeve caking it to stiffness, I couldn’t but feel that business class is a waste of money.
The trauma I suffered that day was inexplicable, even receiving a call from the bereaved to consol me.
The SAA staff anything but sensitive to a situation, their arrogance unnerving and my voyager mile status leaving me as wines dregs, I hope never again to fly ‘Africa’s best voted airline’

Not even Spielberg could write this kinda intro to my eve of the 2013 Comrades Marathon. I shivered in expectation, brr brr.

As I woke at 3:30am on Sunday the 3^rd of June with a smile on my face, you slept after a debauched eve of greasy pizza pie and thunderous amounts of alcohol.
While Michael Stipe sang the chorus line to your peaceful sleep, we rubbed our eyeballs to light, applied Vaseline down our nether regions, taped our nipples, sun creamed our necks and pinned our numbers, lassoo-ed our one’s n two’s, ate peanutbutter toasties and hurtled down to Durban Town Hall.
While you dreamed of being the fat kid swimming in a river of syrupy chocolate in Charlie’s Factory, we were vibrating in nervous throngs in our pens, our nostril hairs vaporised by the throbs of Deep Heat, our teary eyes pulsing as a woofer to the echoes of Vangelis’ Chariots of Fire.
While you sipped on water to tenderise those parched lips, and slipped back into peaceful slumber, we strode at the crack of the cannon, over the line for the start of the 2013 Comrades Marathon.

While you breakfasted at Tiffany’s, we shivered for the giants, but we ran. While you flicked on last eve’s episode of Game of Thrones, we ached at the thought of 70kays to go, we were on Cowies and our energy levels didn’t even know it. We ran.
While we felt the dripping sweat make sticky our backs as we chugged up Fields, my memory bank telling me to hold back, you percolated your coffee. And we ran.
While you hit the gym hard, ‘booi’, for an hour clenching your butt at a sweat 1000 class saying ‘gsus that was a tough work out’, Lance, David and I basted the heated tar eclipsing Botha’s. And we continued to run.
When we hit the halfway mark at Drummond and with still 43 km’s to go, you hit the showers and knocked back a fruit shake. We were still running.
While I hugged my brother at the rise of Inchanga, tore at a nougat warming my Gu-filled gut and wondered how the hell I was gona scale this lofty hill with still 5 hours of running to go, you jumped in your car, stuck on the radio and took a drive down the highway. And We still ran.

While you lunched with family and friends over a bbq, toasted a marshy and chugged a beer, we hit Camper Down, and still, we ran.
While morning spun into afternoon, we felt temperatures rise and shine, we saw runners around us capitulated in the searing heat, lying flat throbbing for assistance, you took your doggy to a doggy party at the park. And. We still ran.

As the day saw the sun dissolving, it’s effervescence fading, we mounted Polly’s. You might have gone to a late show. And we still ran.

And as the km boards settled down to single digits, with smile and comfort  we rolled on forward, the banner nearing the fresh grass smelling. While you put on that teevee at 4pm after an exhausting 10 hour day to watch 50/50 we raised our arms beneath the banner that heralded 10:33. And Finally, We stopped running.

We don’t choose our days or our conditions. We can only ask why or what. Sometimes the dice rolls for us, and sometimes it doesn’t. Somehow we get back on that saddle and somehow we ride.

The Flaming Aubergines 28.04.2013

I don’t use words like ‘lol’, or ‘lolo’ or’ fomo’. I  don’t ‘LFMAO’ nor do I ‘Yolo’. I do though Moma and I can play yoyo like no other. I ain’t no trend surfer, or trend getter. I don’t listen to Justin Beaver nor Highveld Stereo. I listen to my ipod or i spin my vinyl in mono. I wear blue velvet, but I don’t eat Red. I share my rolo, and I eat bolo. I never was into Marcels, but I loved to lick Carvel.
I don’t call myself  an ‘entrepeneur’ on Linked In. I don’t surf no social wave, but I would crowd surf.
It was on this day in April that I tramped the trend travellator, hopped into my Toyo’, and headed out for some ‘Fro Yo’.

A ‘fro-yo’ asteroid has rocked Jozi and as we left our red velvets sprawled on the windshield as a splattered flying insect on our journey to our next trending destination, we headed to victory park for food far greater, far smoother.

The Filo store is wedged on the bend of a strip mall with a Spur spaghetti-twisted playground it’s back drop and the glowing Woolies and their futuristic food in the foreground.
There I stood on the wooded floors, grabbed a Filo bucket and with a firm grip of the knob protruding from the stainless steel dispenser called “Spaceman” I pulled hard on the throttle engaging the flow of dense starry eyed frozen yoghurt. And being whipped into hyper space I didn’t want to let go of the swirling excitement.
Feeling like a fighter pilot engaging the full propulsion of the thrusters the experience engaged.
I rocked the base with the mint green of pistachio and topped it off with the chocolate hazelnut cos I don’t do fruits. I’m no tree hugger but it so happened the colours were leafy and complimentary. My cup brimming, I by-passed the smarties avoiding a coronary and sat my bucket upon the weight watcher scale, leaving it looking sheepishly left. right. and left again.
The tarty choc sweetened by the dribbly lick of the ‘stachio. This was no movember but I made a yoghurt moustache. Look ma, i’m a hipster.
Having arrived feeling as though i’d swallowed a turbo boosted chain saw, swallowing lactate would be against all doctors orders but it was the sticky sweetness of  the yoghurt dessert that soothed my firey tonsils.
Sundays in the roaring ol’ eighties were often dedicated to a road excursion to a Carvel ice cream and this little journey ripped that memory from my brains bank and heaved it to the forefront.

For one small moment I felt like the fighter pilot I’d always wanted to be. For one small moment  I felt like I’d been given a nickname like ‘Maverick’ or ’the Sherminator’. For one small moment  I felt like I’d experienced the gravity of 300 G’s.
But for that one small moment I tstill didn’t feel like I’d just made sweet love to Kelly Mcgillis.

Leatherman Super Tool Patent Pending 02.12.2012

The year 2012 brought me to the architecture of Frank Lloyd Wright, it brought me the chance to see the last rock band i’d ever wanted to see still performing, it brought me a rapid Tough One and an unsettled mind. It brought thoughts of where i’m going and where i’ve been but it brought me too to a hike i’ve only experienced through the epic imagery and words of the Klotz and langeman Patley. Now it was my turn. the pinnacle of hikes, the much feared, but necessary, Great Otter trail.  My life is complete.

With the blood draining from my head, desiccating my brain on scouring and finding my wallet ID-less at the Kulula check-in counter at the airport, I thought it was over. Rapidly I, with my fingers shaking trying to dial as in a horror movie, managed to get my mom on the dog n bone and had her wade through my condom filled bed side table to photograph my old school ID document and with such relief, our plane engaged, banked, and thrust its jet engines. We had made passage to George.

The Otter Trail hugs the serrated coast line of the Eastern Cape, just nearly knicking the West. The launching pad, the Tsitsikama Forest. The end, Nature’s Valley. The trail’s elevation dips and rises as a healthy heart beat. The boil and wart plagued forest floor, knobbed in protruding tree roots and stumps best negotiated by a hobbit, a brown wizard, carpets our path. The forest canopy thick dense like grandmas hair-net, protecting us from the orange-juice sun beam. The heavy branches casting snake-like shadows on tangible surfaces, our guide ropes. The pebble beaches twisting ankles, looking a greyed charcoal bbq, pixellate our views.
The trail throws us into Tolkein’s dense mystical forest, looping us out on to the continents edge.
A landscape for an adventure, for a big budget flik.

The terrain inflicts drama. Our thighs trying to bust out of our skin, our muscles inflating at every step. Blood zipping to body parts most needy of nutrient. With the strength required to kick start a Boeing we negotiated the course whilst sucking on the teet’s of our Camelbaks.  The salted sweat dissolving the pigment of our shirts. The crusted salt caking our faces. As we stand staring down the line of the trail, the smooth palette of greens and wooded browns don’t reveal the grainy grinding structure we’re to endure.

The trail demands its hikers are self sufficient. Loaded with hammers and gu’s, chunky fruit packs kilos of meat, chunked tuna and Nandos convenient packs concealed we are sustained...just. Backpacks grafted to our skeletons, as a horticulturalist only knows. Our socks, shirts and backpacks an extension of our form, an exoskeleton of necessity. The weight is gravitous.
 

Each day the softness of the forest is torn to reveal the rugged cragginess of the coastal rock. The sea coursing it’s way through the rocky, craggy crust, panelling it into shape.
The Otter’s trail is cut by veinous streams of cola tonic infused tint. The rivers colliding at the seas mouth each tearing at one another as lovers grappling to merge. Light-pulsing blue and cool cola, a pantoned cocktail. The power of the two forces tearing and tugging us, treading, flailing. Fighting nature’s current we emerge, dripping excited by adventure. The crossing of the Bloukrans, a daunting challenge.
Plunging waterfalls. Deep ponds. The water lilies, the pads, nature’s geometry.

Our legs shredded by the fynbos, revealing a sweet scent, as tickley as a banky of Mary Jane, it’s blessed with pigment only an HDtv could reveal. Purples and yellows, reds and blues, the colours of our yogic breathing splashed upon the landscape.

After gruelling, unrelenting days our wooded cabins gave respite. Cold showers pricked our energies, refreshed our spirits. Rest couldn’t come sooner. We giggled and we exposed ourselves. We were lads being lads. The memory stick of city bullshit had been downloaded and disposed of seawards . The gluttony of suburbia dissipated in the smoke of the heated fire warming our blistered souls.  We hike ‘cos it returns us to our senses, to what’s important, to the basics and to an appreciation of a sculpted world.

The trail caught me off guard, it was more aching than anticipated. It didn’t give us slack. It crushed my cartilage, exposed my weakness. It left my spirit wounded, it challenged me. I felt I achieved.

...and Dan, Stermer, Big Al and Darwin walk off the stage to huge applause having picked up a coveted Oscar for best performance in a lead role in a Drama....

My Life is Complete