Camera back from the dead

After our last kayak trip my Minolta DiMage G400 digital camera was drenched with water. I removed the battery as soon as I saw the the fact.

Back home I took the camera apart and saw the damp on the inside. I left it disassembled for a day or two, resisted the urge to put the battery back as long as possible. Eventually I put it back but the camera was dead as a duck. ...to he honest I was really upset. This little 4MegPixel camera is kicking my EOS 20D's but with quick fun pictures. It is extremely sharp and it still has a view finder something new point and shoot cameras don't have.

Kath wanted to toss it in the dustbin for me, I resisted.

The little silver bugger I was lying around on my desk for a month, I even took the charger plug out of the multi plug and put it away.
Some how the battery and the camera was separated but today while cleaning up my desk I slipped the battery back in to the camera and for fun switched it on.
It was alive!
Asking for the date on its bright LCD display, I quickly took a photo and the camera seems to be OK! I'm so happy. Going to buy a new waterproof Pelican case for this little one as well as a 1G SD card.

Leg in a cast

Early in January I went for a run, at the 4km mark I could feel that there was some pain in my left foot. A runners’ always believe one has to run through the pain. I tried to run through the pain but at the 8km I stopped and took my shoe off. The next 4km was very hard, it was getting dark and I could not run. I do not run with my cell phone so there was no way that I could contact someone to pick me up, the idea of hitch hiking even went threw my head. When I got home I was crying, had a bath and put my foot in the air.

The next day my foot felt better, the days that followed I realized that I need some medicine to take the inflation away. Helgard stopped at the chemist and I bought an over the counter painkiller. A week after the incident Helgard talked me into going to the doctor. The doctor explained that it was only my muscle and I need to drink some cortisone. I finished the cortisone,and painkillers and changed my exercising program to swimming.

Deléne (the doctor among the friends) helped me to bind my foot, a fracture was the next diagnoses since the pain did not want to go away.

Apparently swimming is the kind of exercise that your foot need when there is a problem. In my exercising program I focused on swimming because the Midmar mile was my goal.

After swimming the Midmar Deléne put my foot in plaster. It was my first time in plaster, it was a difficult 2 ½ weeks. I couldn’t help myself, couldn’t even drive. Helgard was very nice a helped a lot even offered me his automatic car, that made life easier

Doctor Helgard took my plaster off while he was drinking a beer. The photo will explain why I was worried……

I realized that my foot wasn’t healed, so I went back to the doctor I he referred me to the optometrist. The optometrist gave me a few options but I decided to have plaster on the foot again. So in plaster again, have cabin fever, but hopefully my foot will heal within the next month.

More pictures here

Midmar Mile 2008-02-09

Friday dawned bright with anticipation and eventually by lunchtime we (Kevin, Ursula, Helgard and Kath) were driving down to the beautiful emerald green KZN. Unfortunately after a blistering hot week there was a cold front so by the time we got to Van Reenen's Pass, it was cold and miserable and misty.

After arriving in Howick, we sat down to a glass of sherry before everyone set up their "camp" in the workshop. Because it was raining so much, everyone decided to sleep in the occupational workshop at Sunfield because it was nice and dry, although we were prepared to pitch our tents camp on the lawn.

Saturday morning dawned and Kath woke up really early to go and collect everyone's caps and tags. Ursula did the coffee rounds and before long we were ready to pile into Gert's jeep - 9 of us. It was a squash but with everyone's excitement the sardine can didn't feel too bad.

Thousands of people converge on Midmar dam each year to swim the largest open water swimming event of the year. By the time we got there, the traffic was already queuing and we had to find parking. After sorting out our stuff we caught the Halfway Toyota taxis that ferry the swimmers from the finish to the start. And there we waited and waited. Our race was delayed because the mist made the swimming conditions dangerous. Helgard and Ursula stood in the water most of the time as it was warmer in the water than out!! FINALLY, we could give our stuff to the coaches and make our way to the pens where you are separated by your cap color. (First seeds are red, then blue, yellow, green and white.) Waiting anxiously, we huddled for warmth while the first batch (red) went and then 3 minute intervals until our turn. Time for a quick team photo before the whistle and off we went.

The swim was great and didn't seem as long as you think it is. Ursula gave Helgard a good skop (kick) before leaving him and finishing the race in 42 minutes - preparing him for marriage :-) We all met at the stairs and had some OBS (Old Brown Sherry) before heading to a bar for a dop or two and then homeward for a shower and warm clothes.

That evening Gert made a delicious potjie, Kath's family as well as other friends visited and everyone was celebrating. Unfortunately it was still pouring with rain but the atmosphere was still great. Stuard was a bit reluctant to join in on the sheeps head, sticking to the potjie. The swimmers were a little tired so the party ended early, but it was well worth it.

The next day, Stuart swam his race and then it was home again for some sparkling wine and orange juice before heading up through the rain, over the pass and reaching sunny Gauteng.

More photos here, thanks Kath!

Faerie Glen Nature Reserve Sunday 3 February 2008

A Sunday is always a nice and relaxing day. Sunday after church Francois phoned Helgard and said that he wants to be outside. We agreed on a hike in the Fearie Glen Nature Reserve. Since I have a fractured bone in my foot, Francios and Helgard went hiking for 2hours while I enjoyed a Coke at the coffee shop. Later two extremely tired hikers joined me, according to them they summited the highest peak.

Proof!

After both of them had two Cokes at the coffee shop we got into the car and had a picnic at Fort Klapperkop. Like real entrepreneurs the World Cup 2010 and the business opportunities was discussed.
Francois felt like ice cream and we drove around to find a Steers. We had a big ice cream while laughing and talking about silly things.

The evening when Helgard and I were laying in front of the TV, I felt tired but happy, because it was a day outside.

More photos here

Kayking Vaal-Below Parys 26 January 2008

After 2 rainy weeks the kayaking group (Delène, Gert, Helgard and I) thought it was a good idea to paddle threw a few fast moving rapids on the Vaal. Gert is the "scout" among the kayakers, so he insisted on the rapids below Parys. The water in the river was above 100cumec

The trip started of with a few long but slow rapids. Just after the hanging bridge the real action started with the Big Daddy rapid. With a name like "Big Daddy and the sound of the water I decided to get out and carry my kayak. The force of the water was to strong, screaming and shouting I went down the rapid, I even went with my back down the river, it was a scary experience.

When the river spited, Helgard took the stream to right and Gert, Delène and I kept to left. We were unlucky because water hyacinths stop us from paddling, and we had to make our way through the 30m of of the alien invader plant. Water hyacinths sounds like a little "problem", but it was hard work, because one has to push one threw the hyacinths floating on top of the water, fit the current pushing below. The hyacinths are capable of choking the river that it looks like a grassland, see the Wikipedia page anyway…
The 1st 3 rapids after the hyacinths are called "Gapping Jaws" they are relatively easy to paddle threw. After the Gaping Jaws there is a pool and a drop, because of the high water there are huge waves.

After all the excitement we caught up with Helgard who was lying in the sun and drinking beer. (The stream that he took was definitely shorter and easier.)
After we met up with Helgard Delène and myself organized the cars while Gert and Helgard paddle further down the river.

In the process Helgard saw his camera and cell phone floating in water inside his watertight bag....we are minus one camera at this stage.

Gert and Helgard encountered two more rapids of note. At the last rapid called "Gatsien" (roughly translated it means see you arse). Helgard and Gert got stuck on the rocks just before the rapid. While being stuck Helgard retrieved a paddle form from the river, the next moment the stream caught the back of his boat and from there on he was only a passenger. He went backwards through the greatest rapid ever (ok apart from Visgat rapid that nearly killed all of us). With a lot of struggling Gert worked himself loose from the rocks but did not manage to fasten his splash skirt. Fortunately Gert made it through the rapid but his kayak was flooded. The kayak was filled with water to the top, very funny.

More photos here

New Year 2008 !

There is not a lot to be said about the new years celebrations of 2008. It was a quite evening with friends at my mum’s house. We had a barbecue and champagne at 12h00.

For the past 8 years Adriaan (my bother) fell asleep while every one was celebrating the New Year. This year he was awake, enjoying champagne and entertaining every one with some firecrackers. It was the first time Jarot saw fireworks.

Happy new year everybody!

Chrismas 2007

December is always filled with Christmas get-togethers, the highlight is of cause Christmas Eve and Christmas day.

Christmas Eve was spend with Helgard’s family. Munda (Helgards’ sister in law) went threw a lot of trouble to make the evening rememberable. The Christmas table was set with a Christmas theme and the food was delicious.

The family members had an agreement that there wouldn’t be presents, but Helgard’s dad was Santa, didn’t listen to anybody and bought the whole family presents, thank you Santa Jerry. The Ross family is a caring family and it was nice to be between people that value their family and Christmas.

On Christmas day the cat was our alarm. He wanted some food so he maaued till Helgard got up; lucky for me I got coffee in bed. While we were drinking coffee Helgard gave me my presents. Helgard knows that I enjoy “bath time”, so I got a nice soft, white bath robe and some rose bath salt. Helgard is a Wii-fan, so he got another remote for his toy. We couldn’t spend too much time in bed, because the church service was at 8 o’clock. The church service was something special and when we sang Silent Night I could feel the love and peace of the day in my heart.

At the Reyenke’s house (my family) the food especially the meat is very important on Christmas day. Adriaan put some lamb and pork in the Weber and my mother did the rest of the cooking in the kitchen. It is always nice to have a little one in the family when it is Christmas because they really enjoy Christmas. Jarrot enjoyed the presents, sweats and swimming pool.

The evening Helgard and myself were tired. It was nice to feel the peace and love of the day when I fell asleep in his arms.
More photos here

Kayak on Klip River

After the excitement we had last time on the Kip river See (Too much of a good thing) It was decided that more time will be spent on scouting out the route to prevent us from spending too much time in the water. Gert and I used Google Earth to measure the distance we wanted to go and this time it came to 15.43 km which is much more respectable for a leisurely Saturday cruse.

We arrived at 9h30 at the launch spot and asked at the neighboring houses if we could leave the cars in their yards. In the mean time Gert phoned and told us they bring along two more guys too and they are on their way to leave one of their cars at the end our river journey. The previous time we saw a caravan park and picked it to be our end point. To Gert's surprise the caravan park was deserted, gates locked and nobody to be seen. A small problem because this is now the planned end point, fortunately he found a friendly guy in the street busy mowing his lawn. Gert struck up a conversation and the guy and he borrowed Gert his gate key. The caravan park is between the river and the back of his property, looks like everyone in the street has a key for accessing the back of their yards.

Eventually we launched and Sybie and Morné joint us on their wave boards. There are a couple of differences to our kayaks. We sit inside, they sit on top. We have a lot of space to pack tents and food and beer, they can bring along an apple and a bottle of water. Their boards are wider than the kayak, so sometimes we crossed obstacles a bit faster. Their boards are on top of the water so they turn much faster than we could. At the end of the day it does not matter for what we did the day.

This was the first time all of us went kayaking after the notorious killer rapid. Too be honest I wasn't in a hurry to go down the first rapid we came across. It looked like nobody wanted to go down the rapid. Eventually all of us made it through.

The next bigger rapid we crossed a tree trunk was placed nearly in the middle of the rapid and Sybie was unfortunate to make contact with it. Ursula was also swimming and bumped her knee again. After fishing everyone out on the riverbank we took a break for a byte. Sybie took quite some time out to recover from his injury while Dalené tried to help.

There was definitely more water in the river, and more tree trunks was in our way, looks like there was a lot of water down the river since the last time we saw it. The water was very muddy and it is better not to think too much of what may be lurking beneath.

Dalené was still trying to come to grips with her engagement ring.

Eventually we came to our deserted caravan park and the last rapid of the day. It was so nice Gert and I just had to do it a couple of times, for the experience….ok both of us wanted a white water picture.

When we tried to get out of the caravan park Gert realized that he left the borrowed key in his car, where he began our trip. Now they had to find a second person willing to borrow his key!

Eventually everything was sorted out with the cars and the equipment and we even had time to braai a nice big fillet steak.

What a day! More photos here

Eventful evening

Usually we invite friends over on Tuesday nights, yesterday was no different. Just as I arrived home Ursula tell me that her brother has broken down in Johannesburg and wants us to come and help him, possibly tow his car home.

At that moment Gert and Dalené also arrives and Gert volunteers to drive with me to Adriaan. Before we leave Gert calls everyone together and tells us that he and Dalené is as of yesterday engaged! Hugs and kisses are exchanged.

Adriaan actually did us a favor not to have to listen to the smallest details of the engagement. The girls are exited and are laughing at least they have something to talk about and Gert and I head off on our rescue mission.

We found Adriaan next to the highway in Jo-berg feeling very sorry for himself. The bolts on the cars left CV joint is miraculously all loose, leaving the drive shaft disconnected from the gearbox.

This brings me to one of my philosophies in life, a mechanic's car is never in working order and as is a engineers PC. I have made a conscious decision not to fiddle with my PC any more. I buy assembled PCs and don’t touch the insides, I used to buy spares and build up my own system but you end up constantly upgrading and tuning the PC.

Well let me put it this way, I saw Adrian's car on jacks not to long ago with CV's being overhauled.
In any case, Adriaan was able to attach the CV to the gearbox again, so we could at least tow the car. We hooked up the kinetic strap and wanted to extend it with another steel cable. After some arguing it was decided not to use the steel cable. I had to move my car forward but couldn’t find the key.

You get that sinking feeling if you see your car is locked and you don’t have the keys in your pocket. In the boot of the Freelander there is a compartment that is opens with the car's keys. A couple of things must go wrong now. The back door can only be opened if the car is unlocked, but if you by accident press the lock button on the remote while you open the compartment, all the doors of the car lock and if you would close the rear door the keys are locked inside the car. Well it happened. The only thing that saved us is that the rear door did not latch completely. We had 15mm play on the top of the glass to look at the keys in the middle of the car's boot floor. Fortunately we found a piece of wire next to the road and used it to hook the keys, …the keys could not be pulled out ans had to be turned it first, turned it, and pulled it out like an expert car thief. We were saved.

Towing Adriaan was quite uneventful we could even pass some of the slower traffic on the highway. We unhooked him as soon as possible to get to the party at our house.

The rescue mission took around two hours and we were back home and celebrating. Kath was cooking and she invited her new love interest to join us. Unfortunately for him we were already a couple of glasses of champagne strong so it was a bit difficult to speak proper English.

Gert an Dalené, congrats with the engagement, good luck, excellent health and a lot of wealth together!

Christmas party 8 November 2007

Looks like having a Christmas party and inviting friends over for a cookout dinner is becoming a tradition. December is a month filled with social events, so to find a date that suite everybody is difficult; fortunately we were early with our invitations.

We asked the guests to bring salad, starters or pudding and chair to sit outside in the garden since we don’t have a real house yet. Rain started Saturday morning and we hoped that it would clear up by the afternoon, but it rained harder. Looks like we got the 79% of the rain that was for casted.
By the time the guest arrived it was pouring and the party had to move inside, I arranged all the chairs in the house, but I couldn’t see 15 guests sitting in the room. Panic set in!
We moved the TV to the bedroom gave everyone something to drink and all the people started getting to know each other, soon 15 people were talking and laughing together.

For a me as hostess a Christmas party is always nice, because all food is outsourced –and Helgard prepares the meat.
Starter was seafood munchies and cream cheese with biscuits. For the main course Helgard had 4 chickens in the Weber braai with potatoes and salads. Dessert was ice cream cake and Malva pudding.

Before the party, on Saturday afternoon Helgard got cabin fever and had to go shopping for a Wii game console. After dinner the guys got caught up with the excitement of virtual sport. None of them could believe how tired you get from boxing. Eddie lied on the bed and Nico had a coffee in his hand while playing golf.

By the time everybody was leaving Kath started doing the dishes, she didn’t want to bring a salad but was willing to do the dishes, so everything even doing the dishes was outsourced.

It is nice having to have wonderful friends, thank you all for making the evening memorable and thanks for bring the food.

More photos here