Dirtopia Pic

 

Dirtopia and Team Cape Storm

This past long weekend (thanks Thabo!) was Dirtopia and the launch of Team Cape Storm.  The festival for 2008 returned to its roots and was once again held in Greyton.   This year things were a little different to previous years with a more relaxed program in terms of races, but don’t worry all the classics were still there, the ENDURO, the widowmaker hillclimb, the trophy race and of course night polo.

 

Day 1

Myra, Andre, Tamara and myself arrived on Thursday morning and quickly got our campsite in some sort of order.  Next on the agenda was to track down Pierre from Cape Storm and our new kit!!  It felt like Christmas had come early and there was a massive box of stuff for Andre and myself.  Most importantly Pierre had remembered to bring along my CS Firefly sleeping bag so no cold nights for me.  Once we were fully kitted up Andre and myself were on our bikes and headed off for lunch in Greyton.  Myra who unfortunately had picked up a bad case of flu caught a lift with Tamara.

After a slight altercation between Andre and a Greyton motorist (I thought only people from the city got road rage!) we found a spot to eat.  There must have only been about 10-15 of us in total but this coffee shop was totally unprepared for this group of mtb’ers.  After we had eaten all their food they actually had to close!

 

Once we had eaten all their food we saddled up for the 17km trek home.  I use the word trek because the burgers in our stomach made the ride home feel a lot longer than it actually was!

 

Next on the program was the night race (2 laps of 7km).  After a bit of humming and harring and checking to see if our lights had enough batteries we decided to join in the fun in the dark and ride the night race.  As with any mtb race it started at a pace.  My legs were actually feeling really good and started off really well until I decided to test out my helmet and go over my bars!  The fall was actually quite harmless but when I got up and tried to remount I fell into fynbos!  I got quite stuck and battled a bit to get out.  I managed to regain my position (4^th) and seeing as though Andre (3^rd) was now a fair distant ahead and 5^th place was quite far behind I decided not to take too many more chances.  In the end Andre managed to get Team Cape Storm’s first podium!

After a shower it was braai and beer time!

 

Oh I must tell you about the carbon Giant with Crossmax that I was riding!!  I had taking my bike (Raleigh) into Flandria to send for the fork to be serviced and it didn’t come back in time.  Leonardo however kindly let me his bike, hence the upgrade which made Andre very jealous!