In just 6 short months, I will paddle the Old Legs Crocodile Tour -380 kilometres through the crocodile and hippo infested waters between Milibizi and Kariba. I am trying to get to grips with being a kayaker. Apparently, us kayakers are good at getting to grips with stuff, on account of having Popeye arms and the upper body strength that comes from countless hours of paddling, which I actually haven’t got around to yet, on account of never having sat in an actual kayak. But that is all about to change as I have just bought a splendid bright yellow second-hand kayak which I intend naming the ‘HMS Inedible.’

To rectify my currently pathetic typist’s arms, I’ve had to turn to the pretty slip of a girl on You Tube for advice, with great reluctance I might add. I vowed to avoid her the last time, when she tried hard to show me that it is indeed possible to change a tubeless tyre on a mountain bike in under 7 hours, and without getting that white gunky snot stuff all over the curtains and carpets. Which F.Y.I. is impossible, unless you’re a Formula One mechanic working for Lewis Hamilton, but more of him later.

Back to the slip of a girl on You Tube. Driven by the desperation of just 6 months to go, I asked her what exercises a kayaker without a kayak should be doing in the privacy of his own home to prepare for a 14-day paddle marathon. She told me look no further than resistance band core- training, which she proceeded to demonstrate, without any grunting, straining or sweating, and it all looks too easy. For the uninitiated, resistance bands are nothing more than industrial sized multi-coloured elastic bands which you are supposed to stretch whilst contorting your body in a bewildering series of different directions.

So, I bought some resistance bands at Decathlon in Johannesburg. Resistance bands come in various thicknesses and colours, starting with the red 65-kilogram ones, an orange 45-kilogram job, then a whole bunch of lesser pastel colours, right down to a pink 5-kilogram band. Because I’m training to paddle the length of Lake Kariba, not across Lake Mac, I scorned the lesser bands and jumped into the deep end with the red 65-kilogram band, plus the orange one for warm-ups.

I resisted the urge to try out my splendid red and orange resistance bands in store, mostly because of my fellow athletes who were crowding out the aisle, not so much on account of narrow aisles, but because their muscles had muscles. N.B. resistance bands are found in the same aisle as the barbells, medicine balls, kettlebells and other heavy-lifting sporting equipment.

I couldn’t wait to get home and commence training, just like the girl on You Tube. Alas. After 10 minutes on the fat red elastic band, I was left wanting to vomit, I guess in anticipation of life out on the open waves. But unlike the girl on You Tube, I was able to stretch my red elastic band not one single inch, despite strangulating my hernia and making my eyeballs bulge like Greta Thunberg. I am thinking Arnold Schwarzenegger uses his red resistance band only for towing his Ford F250.

To avoid death by straining, I had no option but to downgrade to using my orange elastic band. After three days on that, my contortions threaten to be permanent, with no signs of Popeye arms anywhere on my horizon. If anything, my arms have gone backwards. I no longer have the strength to type Qwerty without stopping to rest. I wish I’d bought the pink 5-kilogram resistance band. I now officially hate the girl on You Tube.

But I am so thankful that I am an almost kayaker, and not a cricketer like Quentin de Kock. Us kayakers aren’t required to kneel in memory of dead drug addicts, an account of kayaks not being the most stable of crafts and prone to toppling over, which especially not a good idea if you are paddling on Kariba.

Poor Quinny. With all the hullabaloo at the Yorkshire Cricket Club, he will be kneeling for years to come. Apparently, a cricketer of Pakistani descent was called Paki,  and sometimes even Kevin,,even though his real name was Rafiq, although they might have been referencing Alex Hale’s black dog, which also answers to Kevin.

The allegations have opened up a real shit storm in English cricket, prompting a whole raft of apologies from cricketers both current and former, including Rafiq himself after someone outed a whole bunch anti-Semitic and anti-black text messages that he’d sent back in the day before he became an anti-racist campaigner. Rafiq says he doesn’t expect the Jewish community to forgive him quickly but hopes the outing of his messages doesn’t derail the cause of anti-racism.

Rafiq is lucky he doesn’t live in South Africa. Apparently, racism there is more in your face than name calling as alleged by a witness giving testimony to the South African Human Rights Commission. Having survived the aftermath of the KZN looting orgy earlier in the year, the poor chap alleged that bar just a few, the entire Indian community in KZN are racist after they shot /slaughtered / massacred 44 blacks for trying to steal their 58-inch plasma televisions, microwave ovens, dishwashers, and anything else they could carry during the looting frenzy.

As yet there has been no response to any of the above from Kevin Peterson, or from the Australian Cricket Union despite the flagrant and continued use of the diminutive term Aussie, although my brother-in-law, also Kevin, is understandably aggrieved. Lewis Hamilton is expected to also continue kneeling, even though his knees are sore like those of an errant nun.

But thankfully kayakers aren’t have bigger fish to worry about than name calling, like crocodiles and hippos, both of which I am more terrified of than before, especially after phoning friends for advice on what to do when we encounter the beasts.

Because he has been responsible for more than a few crocodile handbags in his lifetime, I turned to CJ Bradshaw for advice. He told me and I quote “beware of launching and beaching. Avoid shallow waters. And stay in the boat. And should you topple over, get back in the boat quickly. Do not drag your bits in the water. And if a croc grabs you, stick your fingers in either his eyes, nostrils or his arse, all of which should prompt a quick release.” More of the same from Larry Norton who further suggested I paddle with a large handgun, bear bangers and an axe velcroed to the deck of my boat, to bake crocodiles with should they try and bake me. In the context of this blog, to bake is not a culinary term. Jan Hart further recommended wearing a Bear Grylls sheath knife on my lifejacket. I have decided to go with all of the above and will be the most heavily armed kayaker in the world. I will make Navy Seals look like pacifists by comparison.

Unfortunately, Jan Hart is in agreement with the slip of a girl on You Tube about the importance of core training, so more resistance band training ahead. And Jan will also train us on technique, starting this weekend in his swimming pool.

Admiral of the Fleet Andy Louw-Evans will take epic to ridiculous lengths by paddling the Crocodile Tour on a homemade kayak currently under construction in his garage. Already it looks like a splendid vessel. Andy has christened his kayak the ‘HMS I Have More Meat On Me Than Eric.’

John Stanton has decided to start his training by swatting up on the theory of how to kill crocodiles with your bare hands.

The Old Legs mantra is Have Fun, Do Good, Do Epic. We are paddling Kariba to raise money and awareness for Zimbabwe’s beleaguered pensioners. The very best part of that job description is the ‘Do Good’ bit. Following the success of our just ended Mt Everest Challenge, I am so looking forward this week to being able to help pay for one knee replacement and three hip replacements. Thank you, thank you, thank you to those who participated in the Challenge, and to all those who donated. You have changed lives.

Huge thanks especially to the M’dala Trust for their continued support. The M’dala Trust make such a difference to the lives of so many Zimbabwean pensioners in need in South Africa, and in Zimbabwe. Please support them if you can. I’d also like to thank and acknowledge the Farm Family Trust who continue to do so much to support ex-farmers who lost their livelihoods along with their farms.

Such is the state of the economy in Zimbabwe, the Old Legs Tour are going to be busy, busy, busy next year with not one Tour, but two. The Crocodile Tour in May as mentioned above will be followed by the Skeleton Coast Tour in July. Very cunningly, I have chosen the world’s oldest desert where crocodiles haven’t been seen in millions of years as our destination, although we will have to cross the Zambezi River twice to get there.  

As is our want, we will ride on roads less travelled, 3000 plus kilometres of them, mostly on dirt. We’ll ride through a town called Gokwe, onto Milibizi via the wilds of Chizarira, alongside the mighty Zambezi full of crocodiles to Vic Falls for our first rest day. We’ll do epic by pedalling across the Vic Falls Bridge into the back of beyond that is western Zambia at which point we’ll head across to the Angolan border, so we can cross back over the Zambezi at Katimo Mulilo before heading south into the crocodile free zone that is the Namibian hinterland. We’ll ride via Grootfontein and the Etosha National Park and will take the scenic route via Desolation Valley, Spitzkoppe, the White Lady Bushman and the Brandberg Massif. We’ll hope to bump into the iconic Skeleton Coast at the aptly names St Nowhere and then head south along the Coast past the Cape Cross seal colony and the Dead Sea Swim hole towards our finish line at Swakopmund, where we will rehydrate by quaffing copious quantities of German beer. I am exhausted just having typed all of that, but as so excited.

Al Watermeyer will be the senior man, aged 73 years young, ably assisted by Graeme Fleming, Adam Selby, Mike Reimer, Rob Cloete from Zimbabwe, Alan Crundall, Pete Brodie and Old Legs Kilimanjaro veterans Mark Johnson from Australia, and Nik Bellwald from Switzerland. The Old Legs is an especially apt description for this year’s peloton. To be able to cling to any claims of being middle-aged, most of us will have to push on to the other side of 120 years old.

Please follow our preparations for both Tours on our very splendid new website www.oldlegstour.com. Please also follow the donate prompts.

In closing, some humour from the short people out there. As part of our raising awareness campaign, I give talks to schools in which I make the children roll their eyes a lot by going on and on and on about the importance of spending less time on their tablets, and more time on bicycles, or climbing hills, having adventures, etcetera, etcetera. N.B. Please note, that very responsibly, I go to ridiculous lengths telling them not to paddle on Kariba.

It is a killer presentation if I say so myself, peppered with quotes plagiarised from www.bucketlist.com, like “a ship is always safest in harbour but that is not what it was built for” and “no one likes to move outside their comfort zone, but that’s where the magic happens, where we grow, where we learn, and where we develop in a way that expands our horizons beyond what we thought was possible.”

At the end of the presentation, i.e., once I’ve run out of quotes, I invite questions from the kids. This last week I spoke at Live and Learn in Groombridge. A little chap in the front row called Anesu was the first with his hand up in the air.

“Yes, Anesu. What would you like to ask me?” I asked.

“Can you do a backflip?”

“Um…no, I can’t.” I answered truthfully and rather embarrassingly.

“Hah, I can” said Anesu, triumphantly. “How about side flips? Can you do a side flip?”

“No, I can’t do them either.”

“Hah, I can. They’re easy.”

Such were my feelings of inadequacy, I think that Anesu could enjoy a very successful career on You Tube.

If you have enjoyed this blog, you will love my new book ‘Zimbabwe On The Road Less Travelled’ now available in Europe, Australia and New Zealand, Canada and the US, but not yet in South Africa and Zimbabwe because the boat they arrived on in Durban on the 18th of November, hasn’t been offloaded yet, most probably because of COVID, although I’m thinking Third World inefficiencies and officiousness might also have played a part in the delay. Book your copy now because they are selling faster than reasonably priced designer crocodile skin handbags. And please note the book will not be available on Amazon for now as there are some concerns about print quality.

Until my next blog, enjoy and stay safe by avoiding crocodiles whilst launching, beaching and in shallow waters-

Eric Chicken Arms and Legs de Jong.

N.B. This blog does not reflect the views of the Old Legs or the charities we support, or Quentin de Kock, Lewis Hamilton or Alex Hale’s dog, Kevin.

Photos below – the HMS Inedible, the HMS I Have More Meat On Me Than Eric in dry dock, amusing Hungry Crocodile socks that will keep you awake at night, Skeleton Coast or bust and best ever Christmas present this Christmas.

How to deal with the stress of suppositories and other pains in the arse.

First up, Happy Birthday America. Next up, my apologies. Because I’m still off my bike pending permission from my eye doctors to resume training before we start the Silver Back Tour in just under two weeks, I’ve had lots of time on my hands to fill this blog with more than the normal quota of crap.  

If ever I relaunch my music career, I’ve decided I’m either going to be in a rock band called Frank and the Suppositories, or Frank and the Sore Bottoms. The band names have been inspired not by my doctor, but because planning for a long bike Tour can lead to stress, which in turn can lead to the hard-to-spell ailment of the bottom that has marred my previous Tours, which leads to the use of suppositories. My band names were also inspired by the type of music we’re likely to play, sans any musical abilities whatsoever.

To avoid the resultant sore bottom, I’ve launched a 14-day course of prophylactic suppositories. But I find myself caught up in an unfortunate Catch-22. Google reliably informs me that my ailment of the bottom is often brought on by stress which is brought on itself by the thought of inserting the remedial suppositories in your bottom. Bullet shaped my arse, more like big bloody torpedo shaped, guaranteed to bring tears to your eyes, especially if they slip mid-procedure and you ending up trying to insert them sideways. But better to suffer now on comfortable porcelain with running water on tap than above a long drop in the back of the Zambian beyond.

We’ve also been stressing about the perennial baggage wars. Baggage wars rage when you have riders who, because they were born in the forties, insist on packing 120 gallons of kit instead of 120 litres; when you just know Vicky Bowen will scour Africa for driftwood pieces that used to be baobabs in their previous lives to add to her Natural Science and Artifacts collections; when team members with hair insist on travelling with brushes, combs and even hair dryers, leaving me to further stress about where I’m going to pack my eye drops and ointments, and extra padding for my bottom, and also my English-Swahili phrase book. Having learnt Swahili on my way to the top of Mt Kilimanjaro, I was mightily relieved to learn they also speak it in Uganda.

Baggage wars rage even more when you travel with a whole bunch of kit; including a water bowser complete with 600 litres of potable water, not gallons; and his and her hot showers, complete with privacy cubicles; and the ‘BosKak 2000’, also complete with privacy cubicle, unless the wind gets up, leaving you horribly exposed; and the ‘BosKak 1959’ which is like the ‘Boskak 2000’ but without the luxury of armrests. And we need trailer space enough for 10 riders plus 2 spare bikes, fridge freezer space enough for frozen meals for 30 days for 16 appetites that make locusts look bulimic, and battery power to keep them working. We need room for spares enough to fix broken bikes and busted trailers, mechanics and engineers to use the tools, and Allan Wilson boys to supervise. I’m even packing a tool to remove stones from the hooves of horses before we eat them. Chewing on stones can cause all manner of dental problems, another common cause of stress.   

And then given all of the above, and you start stressing about where the hell are we going to pack all this stuff and how are we going to pull the trailers? Enter headline sponsors Autoworld and their hugely generous loan of 3 splendid Isuzu D-Maxes and we now have space to burn, so much so that I’m now also able to pack a Speedo for when we swim with cichlids (bright coloured and hard-to-spell species of fish found in Lakes Tanganyika, Victoria, Malawi, and Edward, and not to be confused with coelacanths, which are also hard-to-spell but now extinct) and also a jersey in case it gets cold. And on the subject of cold, don’t you just love how this blog flows, our fridge freezers will be powered up by the Goal Zero Yeti 1400 Lithium portable power station a.k.a. the Gokwe Power Station that we used on last year’s Lockdown Tour and on loan from the Solution Centre for this year’s Tour, the Goal Zero Yeti 3000 Lithium portable power station a.k.a. the Fukushima Power Station before it blew up.

Which brings us on to the naming wars in which we stress about what to call our splendid kit.  Because I grew up enjoying Roy Rogers, I want to call one of the D-Maxes Silver, but because Alastair grew up reading the classics, he wants to name it Busyphilis, after Alexander the Great’s noble and venereal steed. And all along you thought Prince Edward boys only learnt about how much you need to sell Lunchbars and Crunchies for to make exorbitant profits.

I’ve also been stressing how to pronounce the name of my new Tour de France hero Tadej Pogacar, who took over from Primoz Roglic, who took over from Geraint Thomas, who took over from Chris Froome, currently lying 166 in the General Classification, behind Mark Cavendish. I worry that Chris is leaving it late to make his move to grab back the Yellow Jersey.

To avoid my legs walking out on me on my way to Uganda, I’ve been watching the Tour de France whilst suffering on my stationary bike, Root Canal. It makes the cyclist’s pain feel more real, sort of like watching the Marathon Man from the comfort of your dentist’s chair.  

In terms of live sport on TV, the Third Wave lockdown is way better than the First Wave lockdown. Dan and I have enjoyed watching the UEFA Euro 2020 Finals, albeit a year late. I shouted loud for Holland, but clearly not loud enough, alas, while Dan is an ardent England supporter, only because David Beckham married a Spice Girl, is rich and lives in Florida. Because Dan only shouts for England come the business end of big tournaments, he doesn’t get to shout for them often. One of his greatest regrets is that he wasn’t alive in 1966 when they won the World Cup. Dan is bitterly disappointed that the selectors have overlooked Beckham again, but is hugely relieved that new captain Harry Kane is good looking, as compared to Wayne Rooney who was selected instead of Beckham when last Dan shouted for England. After their 4-0 thrashing of Ukraine, Dan is predicting an England v Uruguay final.

Because Brazil didn’t make it to the UEFA Euro 2020, Jen is boycotting the tournament. She is also boycotting the Copa America because they live in a stupid time zone.

 I’ve also enjoyed international rugby, albeit with rusty teams. British Lions laboured to a 28- 9 win over Japan, ditto the Springboks in their 40-9 win over Georgia, ditto the All Blacks in their 102-0 win over Tonga.

I also enjoyed the inaugural finals of the ICC World Test Championship which pitted New Zealand against India against English weather slightly less. English weather won, New Zealand came second and India a lucky third.  

Oddly, one of the things I’m not stressing about is Covid. Like the Irishman who wore two condoms to be sure, to be sure, on top of being fully vaccinated, I’m back on Ivermectin, and I’ve just ordered 100 of coolest face masks ever, see below, and I’m about to take social distancing to ridiculous lengths in northern Zambia, where people have to drive hundreds of kilometres to hug it up, but not with me.

In the interests of improved aerodynamics, I’ve decided to forgo stressing about my hair, and instead of my usual bangs plus a mullet, asked my hair stylist to give me a short back and bugger all instead, with a very pronounced centre parting. I love my hair stylist and so look forward to my bi-annual haircut.

Thanks to Rowena Melrose at the Yarn Barn and Mac Fallon, Hope Holland, Geraldine Melrose and Wendy Windel, I am also able to worry less about how the old guys at the Salvation Army Braeside are coping with a bitterly cold winter. This year and despite the Third Wave lockdown, the Yarn Barn team were able to hand over 46 wonderfully warm blankets, lovingly handmade, square by square. I had to draft in extra Old Legs team members to help carry the blankets off.

But even more heart-warming than the blankets was the response I got from the old gents at the Salvation Army when I dropped the blankets off the next day.

The one old guy made me cry. I watched him spend the best part of half an hour going through the huge pile of blankets, one by one, looking for the blanket he wanted. At first, I thought he was being over-fussy. But then he told me he was looking for a blanket made out of squares made of his late wife’s favourite colours. And he was so happy when he found his blanket.

Another old guy also made me cry on the way home. I hadn’t been in the car ten minutes when I received a photo forwarded by a friend who’d had it forwarded to him by a pensioner who couldn’t wait to share the good news that he had a new blanket in pride of place on his bed. You know that good news that travels fast is the best news.  

Too funny. Every year when one of the old guys who used to be a doctor in a previous life hears that I’m back riding to somewhere ridiculously far away on my bicycle, he tells me that I that really need to go and see a doctor.  Not so funny is the realization that the Salvation Army Braeside is one of those places where the phrase ‘There but for the grace of God go I’ could have been coined. I am so happy we chose to give the blankets to the Salvation Army this year.

Thank you to those of you who’ve been asking about my eye. Bar a few oil pressure problems, it is fine. The retina has been stuck back on and is working again, sort of. After not enjoying all black, peripheral vision has never looked so good. So I have been cleared to resume my training on Wednesday in plenty of time for our departure the following Wednesday.

We are riding 3000 kilometres to Uganda to helping the old guys at the Salvation Army and others. Please help us help them and others by following the donate prompts below and on www.oldlegstour.co.zw. Also follow us on Facebook and share our adventure, but beware, we ride slow like pain dries.

In closing and back by popular demand, this week’s Swahili 101

Kuwa na yoyote ndogo mishumaa? – Have you any smaller suppositories?

Ni ni baridi. Ingekuwa wewe kama banketi yangu? -It is cold. Would you like my blanket?   

Roy Rogers ni njia baridi, Homer huvuta. – Roy Rogers is way cool, Homer sucks.

Until my next blog which should come to you from Guruve, don’t stress, enjoy and pedal if you can – Eric Chicken Legs de Jong

Pictures below- our very splendid Isuzus, the coolest face masks ever, trying out the Boskak 2000, my hair stylist hard at work, and blankets to warm the heart.

With just three weeks until we ride the Silverback Tour, we’ve had to change the team roster yet again. We’ve lost a Semper to make room for another Watermeyer. Laurie and Fiona tied the knot in Marondera last week. We are hugely thrilled for them and will be joining the newlyweds on their 4-week camping honeymoon to Uganda. Please be invited to come throw confetti on them when we ride out from Harare Auto World next to the Chispite Circle on July 15th at 08.00 a.m. Laurie and Fi will ride the first 123 km leg to Guruve with ‘Just Married’ signs and tin cans tied to the back of their bicycles.

Never let it be said that the Old Legs is not a competitive event. Al used Laurie and Fi’s nuptials to stake his claim to the prestigious OLT Dick of the Day award. As the wedding’s official witness, Al was given clear and concise instructions to report to the Marondera Court wearing his jacket, his tie, with his I.D. Because Al focused hard, he was able to remember 2 out of  3, and remembered to forget his I.D. But all’s well that ends well. Laurie and Fi pressganged a member of the pubic to step in as witness. Consequently, Al will ride out of Harare proudly wearing the Dick of the Day necklace and pink tutu. And my money is on Al still wearing them when we reach the Impenetrable Forest on August 15. But I will play no part in that, because Al and I have a strong alliance. He gives me his black jelly babies on Tour, and I won’t vote for him come Dick of the Day voting.   

Our international contingent start arriving in the next 2 weeks, Billy Prentice from the United States, CarolJoy from Germany, Russ Dawson from North Macedonia (above Greece, population 2.077 million) and Gary de Jong from Bulawayo. But in anticipation of traffic congestion around KweKwe, Ryan Moss will man the Gary’s cameras as far as Kanyemba. Mark Wilson is also due back from Egypt where’s been training on beaches, and on a barge on the Nile. I expect Mark to have the best tan on Tour.

I’ve been stranded off the bike for the last two weeks under eye surgeon’s orders but have kept busy trying to get organized.

Reluctantly, I’ve practiced packing and unpacking my kit bag, looking for stuff that isn’t in it, like my still missing DSTV remote. Reluctant is a word most often used to describe my interaction with my kit bag. It might be yellow on the outside, but on the inside the thing is black like Putin. On every Tour, half my kit goes missing, flogged off by my kitbag for beer money, or worse. And by the end of Tour, my kitbag is full to overflowing with kit belonging to all the poor buggers it’s mugged along the way. If my kitbag was human, he’d be in prison, covered in tattoos, lifting weights.

In a pathetic attempt to delay the inevitable chaos, I’ve bought a sixpack of pack pods, little mini bags with zippers, to fit inside my kit bag but have no doubt they’ll also end up subversive.

With only 3 rest days planned in 3000 kilometres, I’m also resolved to doing laundry and accordingly, have allocated only 1 pack pod for underwear and socks. I’ve allocated the other pack pods to ride shorts, ride shirts, pyjamas, 1 for my Indiana Jones kit to wear when looking at the gorillas, and 1 for my smart going out clothes, just in case we find somewhere to go out to between Harare and the Impenetrable Forest. Because I am restricted to just 120 litres, I’ve had to jettison my hair care products. Alas. 

To go on Tour, you need a million recharge cables, for my phone, for my Garmin, for my watch, for the earphones, for my speaker, for my battery packs. As I type, I realize a million could be a slight exaggeration. Because I worry that Adam has been hanging out with kitbag, I’ve labelled all my cables with tags that read ‘Eric’s not Adam’s’. 

I’ve also been busy trying to open my new tin of Zam-Buk lip balm. My lips take most flak on Tour and end up looking like they’ve been stuck in a microwave on high. You’d think the very clever people at Bayer would have worked out by now they would sell more Zam-Buk if people could open the bloody tins in the first place.   

In closing, please wish me luck with the outcome of my eye surgery today. This will be the fifth time that I’ve been able to cut and paste this sentence from previous blogs. I am becoming adept at cutting and pasting.

Alas. My retina fell off again on Saturday, after being stuck on again just two weeks ago, leaving me completely in the dark on my left side. Fell off again sounds more in keeping with the general theme of this blog than re-detached. And I am sure that re-reattached isn’t a proper word. I fully expect a Christmas Card from the eye-hospital this year and frequent flyer discounts.

 I was so super bummed when the retina fell off. I’d just had a check-up and the eye surgeon was well pleased with progress and had given me the thumbs up to get back on bike. Then wham, all the lights went out, entirely without provocation I might add. Kerry Whelburg, I promise with hand on heart that I never cheated on my bike curfew.

The surgeon was also bummed. And scheduled an emergency op yesterday to laser the retina back in place, and fill me back up with oil again, bugger my carbon footprint. This time around, he said he’ll leave the oil in place for a year. The bandages come off at lunchtime today, fingers crossed my clumsy bastard retina still works.

I’ve been in a panic stressing about what happens if it doesn’t, and what happens if ever I have an accident with my good eye, God forbid. But then I got a letter from a friend’s eleven-year-old granddaughter telling me to hang tough and to not sweat it, because she’s got my back. Tough is easy when you have friends like that rooting for you. She also promised me that I could eat her grandfather’s black jelly babies on Tour, and also his red, yellow, orange and green ones. Very generously, I said he could keep the brown jelly babies, and also his grey ones. 

Zimbabwe remains a dark place for pensioners. Please help us turn on lights for them. With your help the Old Legs Medical Fund helped pay for three operations last week, with knee replacements pending. Please help us turn on more lights by supporting us on our ride to Uganda and following us on www.oldlegstour.co.zw  And please follow the donate prompts.

Until my next blog, stay safe, enjoy, and pedal if you can. And also eat all your carrots. – Eric Chicken Legs de Jong.

Photos below -The tailor hard at work on my ‘Eric’s, not Adam’s’ tags, the last of dinners in the bag, eye contact  in Bwindi Impenetrable Forest, and Mark training in Egypt,

All about lava lamps, Boris headaches, bad songs and even worse boyfriends.

Four weeks to go until we ride to Uganda, and I’ve been busy sorting out my Spotify playlists. Mountain bike purists frown upon me, but music playing loud in my head helps me get up hills. It also helps me drown out Adam when he starts singing his ridiculous song about an old lady who swallowed a fly, cat, dog, sheep, cow, horse, etcetera. But I digress, back to my Spotify playlists.

Cailyn, aged 7, offered to help with music selection. My taste in music has grown younger so I was happy to take her advice on board. She told me I needed to download ‘Your boyfriend is an arsehole.’ Jenny was driving at the time and almost drove into the ditch. An interrogation later and I’m happy to tell you that the song is older sister Jocelyn’s choice, not Cailyn. And I’m also happy to report that Cailyn has no idea what an arsehole is. She thinks it’s a job, like being a plumber, or a policeman. I listened to the song, and I now worry that Jocelyn’s taste in music is worse than the subject of the song’s taste in boyfriends. I am also glad that I’m not bringing up children in this internet age.

I have time to ponce about with Spotify playlists only because I had an eye op last week to remove the oil from inside my left eye following a retina re-attachment. I came away from the operation with one of those lava lamps sloshing about inside my eye. And before the lava lamp, I had a black and white test pattern, like the ones we’d watch on the TV as kids, while waiting for Captain Pugwash or Batman to come on.

Eye ops are horrible. This was my fourth one. Even though I’m now experienced, I still felt vulnerable, mostly because they make you wear those ridiculous back-to-front operating gowns where your bum hangs out the back for all to see. I think they make you wear the gowns to stop you from running away after they demand that you sign the disclaimer form that specifically says it is not eye surgeon’s fault if you end up blind, should the procedure not go according to plan. Sort of like Ryanair demanding a signed disclaimer on take-off absolving the airline of any blame should you end up being tortured in a Belarus prison on a flight from Greece to Lithuania.

The operation itself wasn’t too bad and I slept through the whole thing. But the great reveal the next day sucked. It was a complete waste of a drum roll. Because I am a glass-half-full person, I was fully expecting my sight back in technicolour, but when the bandages came off, I got nothing, just an eye full of black and white TV test pattern. And worse, because your vision is binocular, the test pattern intruded into my good eye. I could see bugger all. I panicked and told the surgeon there was something wrong. Instead of telling me it wasn’t his fault, he explained that the op had gone well. What I was seeing was the gas they’d filled my eyeball with after removing the oil, to stop it from collapsing. The gas would dissipate over the next few days, and hopefully I’ll be able to see again. He told me I had to come back for a check-up in a week. Can I ride my bike, I asked? He told me no exertion. What about my stationary bike? Not even on my stationary bike. Not for a week at least. 

Rather than mope around at home, bumping into furniture and spilling stuff, Jenny, Cailyn and I went to Juliasdale to bump into and spill stuff there, and to enjoy fresh air, frost bite and forever views, although I was excused from the forever views.

I rather fear I was crappy company all weekend. The test pattern remained in place all day Friday, all day Saturday, but then started dropping on Sunday, ever so slowly. It was so weird. Above the black line which intruded into my good eye, I could see the tops of trees, hills, etcetera, but below the line, nothing, just the test pattern. But it was all good. Even just the topmost smidgeon of the Juliasdale views are spectacular. And the line dropped steadily throughout Sunday morning. By the time we were back in Harare, my test pattern was at half-mast.  And when I woke up on Monday, the test pattern was gone, replaced by a black bubble at the bottom of the eye, like one of those very cool, very retro lava lamps, that slosh about and erupt bubbles, especially when you shake your head a bit. It is quite therapeutic to look at, like a fish tank. But if you shake your head a lot, like when you try ride your bike around the farm say, the lava lamp eruptions in the eye become violent, verging on cataclysmic, making steering your bicycle difficult.

Because my eyeballs bulge slightly when I exert myself, I have followed advice and have avoided all forms of exercise religiously, all week, lest my eyeball burst. My fear of burst eyeballs is very real and tracks back to having to dissect some unfortunate sheep’s eyeball in class. That sheep’s eyeball was pivotal to me not pursuing a career as a surgeon, plus an inability to get to grips with O Level Biology.

As I type this on Thursday morning, my lava lamp has been reduced to golf ball size, and is very fluid, more wobbly than jelly, prone to breaking up into lots of little bubbles whenever I shake my head. But every day, the lava lamp gets smaller, and I look forward to having peripheral vision again. Compared to 20 20 vision, peripheral vision sucks. You get to see shape and movement but zero detail. But it is two hundred percent better than staring out at a black and white television test pattern all day. 

I am seeing the eye doctor at lunchtime today, and hope he gives me the thumbs up to start training again, even if only on my stationary bike. I’ve been off the bike for two weeks and have suffered from extreme F.O.M.O. while Adam, Marco, Jaimie and the others have been racking up big mileage.

But being stuck off the bike, has also been good. I’ve been reminded of exactly how much I love riding my bike. The timings of that reminder couldn’t be better, seeing as I am about to sit on the bloody thing for 3000 kilometres over the next 30 days, thinking only about the hills ahead, stressing about the state of my bottom, instead of Covid pandemics and the possible resumption of Cold Wars.

This Covid thing continues to hurt my head, ditto the state of the world. Covid is wreaking havoc with our Tour preparations. Zambia had South Africa and Germany on their red lists, meaning residents of those countries would have to quarantine on entry, which meant both Ryan and CarolJoy have had to pull out, leaving us short one rider and one support team member. 

Straight away, I reached out to Russel Dawson, son of best friends Eric and Fiona. Russel is three years into an epic Around the World Tour and is currently in Macedonia, just above Greece with a population of 2.077 million. I asked Russ if he wanted to join us. He asked if he could think about it for all of thirty seconds, before replying, Hell yes! Russel arrives June 29th.

Zambia have since removed Germany updated their red list and fingers crossed, CarolJoy is able to reconsider her withdrawal. I love riding with CarolJoy. Even after 2 Blue Crosses and the Kilimanjaro Tour, she still laughs at my jokes.

Covid continues to also give other people headaches, especially Boris Johnson, but not as much as Domonic Cummins.

Following on from the clarity of his ‘on again, off again’ position on Portugal as a holiday destination, Boris’s latest review on UK lockdown restrictions are as clear as the lava lamp inside my head. Apparently, from June 21, the 30-person cap on weddings will be scrapped, but wedding guests will be told to sit on tables of six persons max, but restrictions on singing, and a ban on dancing, except for the first dance, remain. I’m thinking maybe Boris wants to avoid listening to ‘Your boyfriend is an arsehole’ at all costs. Or maybe he has a friend who sings badly like Adam. But apparently people attending deathbed ceremonies in the UK are less prone to infection, and up to thirty people can attend, plus the dead guy.

To add to the Covid confusion and to avoid discriminating against Indians and Kentish men, i.e. men who come from Kent, the WHO has declared that the India variant is now the Delta variant, and the Kent variant is now the Alpha variant, while Beta and Gamma are being held in reserve, just in case other variants pop up.

And in geopolitical news, ‘Zimbabwe on the Road Less Travelled’, possibly the best ever coffee table book soon to be published, although I could be biased, was almost derailed this week by over-sensitive government censors in China, where the book was going to be printed, who took exception to my inadvertent references in the manuscript as to the origins of Covid 19, to Chinese pangolin poaching, to cheap shit ‘Made in China’ Christmas presents guaranteed to not make it the New Year, etcetera, etcetera, etcetera. True story. And you thought it was just a coffee table book about old guys pedalling their bikes through elephants and tsetse flies.

But rather than bow to Chinese censors, we have found another printer in another country, and the book remains on schedule for distribution in September. And just when Xi thought it couldn’t get worse, bummer dude, going forward, I’m also boycotting Chinese restaurants, in favour of Thai.

You can also stand up for free speech by ordering your copy now.

Continuing on with geopolitics, it was High Noon in Geneva when Joe Biden faced off against Vladimir Putin. Joe looked nervous, even with his aviator sunglasses on, whereas Putin looked bored, like the guy who couldn’t give a shit. With Putin around, the world badly needs a hero. Bummer that Joe is 78.

On the subject of heroes, don’t you love how this thing flows, I’ve managed to get my head around watching Chris Froome ride the Tour de France as a domestique, and not as Team Leader. Alas. But thankfully I have other heroes to fall back on.

Meet Dave Scott and Tucker Green.

Dave Scott aged 81 is about to tackle the Zambezi River, from Kazangula, to Chinde, Mozambique in an 18-foot aluminium boat with a 60 hp motor. Dave says he’s leaving the upper reaches of the Zambezi for his next adventure. Dave is embarking on his adventure which he has named the Zambezi Endeavour to raise money and awareness for Zimbabwe’s pensioners, but also to prove that age is just a number, not a closing door. Please follow and support Dave on Facebook @ Zambezi Endeavour.

My other hero is Tucker Green, aged just seven. Riding under the Old Legs Downunder banner, Tucker is raising money and awareness for Zim pensioners by pedalling 1000 kilometres before his 8th birthday in August. Despite an early puncture, Tucker smashed his personal best last weekend with a monster 103 kilometres around Queensland’s beautiful Wyreema, Cambooya, Greenmount and Mai Mai Creek. Please support Tucker on https://gofund.me/c048b176.

In closing, our hugest congratulations go out to Lynda Crafter who has just been awarded an O.B.E. in recognition for her and her team’s exceptional and sustained contribution to supporting pensioners in need in Zimbabwe. The Old Legs Tour is very proud of Lynda and her team, and of the contributions that we have been able to make to the work that they do. I have promised Lynda that with immediate effect, I will extend my pinky prominently when drinking tea with her. 

In closing, please raise a glass to my best shamwari for more than 40 years, Ben Mundangefufu. R.I.P. my friend.

Until my next blog, stay safe, enjoy and eat lots of carrots – Eric Chicken Legs de Jong. Photos below- a happy camper before the great unveil, Cailyn surviving frost bite and bad song choices, Tucker Green celebrating after smashing his first 100-kilometre ride, and a photo from the coffee table book the Chinese

Sunny blue skies and stunning golf courses were prominent in my last blog. To counter any impressions that things in Zimbabwe aren’t as bad as I make out, this blog is all about scary stuff, like logistics, chimps and gorillas, and pain and polarization.

The 15th of July is hurtling towards us like a freight train back in the day when Zimbabwe had freight trains that could hurtle. Cecil John Rhodes wasn’t the only person who had so little time and so much still to do. In just 5 weeks we pedal our bikes 3020 km from Harare to Uganda’s Impenetrable Forrest to look at the gorillas. Scary stuff. Especially given the fact I have been off my bike for two weeks, because of tooth ache and other commitments.

Our route is now cast in stone. It is epic. The riders will exit Zimbabwe on speedboats across the Zambezi at Kanyemba while the support crew take the scenic route via Chirundu and Lusaka. Which should be exciting as I have known some members of the support team to get lost in Pick and Pay Borrowdale, but no names mentioned, lest Jenny punches me. Fingers crossed we will all meet up again in the Luangwa South National Park. If we don’t, we’ll have learn how to peel squirrels so we can survive off roadkill on our way to Uganda.

We will be privileged to ride through the Luangwa, arguably Africa’s premier wildlife area, under the watchful eye of Rob Clifford who has been tasked with making sure riders are not eaten or stood upon by the Big Five.

In Tanzania, we’ll route via Lake Tanganyika so we can snorkel with cichlids- brightly coloured, hard- to-spell fish and hang with Jane Goodall’s chimps, apart from Billy Prentice, who is petrified of chimps, but not gorillas interestingly.

We’ll then route past Burundi and Rwanda, across to Lake Victoria in search of Shoebill storks, and then into Uganda and the gorillas, their new Covid lockdown permitting. Currently, Uganda remains open to tourists provided they test negative on entry.  

But even more scary than 30,000 meters of climb in 30 days and Billy’s chimps are the logistics involved in getting a group of 10 riders and 6 support crew up through Africa intact. But before I get into the nitty gritty of those logistics, herewith a teaser to the pain part of the blog, for the people out there like me who can only read books which have people dying in the first chapter. Although I also read Pratchett books with dragons, and dwarves.

A lifetime ago, before Jenny found out I am unable to spell DIY, she asked me to build her a bird feeder for the garden. Fortunately, I attended Allan Wilson Technical High School, so I was able to tell her no problem. In keeping with our rustic garden at the time, I decided I would fashion her a splendid bird feeder made entirely from branches hewn from a masasa tree. Because the feeder would attract masses of birds, including possibly whole flocks of larger birds like guinea fowl, I decided I’d make it extra stout, and instead of poncing about with woodscrews, went with six-inch nails instead. Construction went swimmingly well. I measured once, cut twice like I was taught to at school, and quickly hammered the main support pole to my left index finger, instead of the bird feeder tray. Six-inch nails through index fingers are the reason why wood screws were invented in the first place.

Alerted by my death screams, Jenny rushed out to the garden, and laughed, and laughed, and laughed. When eventually she finished laughing, she offered to remove the pole from my finger, but without the use of anaesthetics. After more screaming from me, we set off for casualties, Jenny driving, and me with my support pole still firmly affixed to my finger. Predictably, there was a long queue out the hospital door, watched over by a hard-arsed, cold-hearted nurse who insisted my wound wasn’t life threatening and didn’t warrant me jumping the queue. Luckily, I had a stout support pole attached to my finger that I could lean upon if I grew weak from blood loss, as I surely would.

I took my place at the back of the queue and turned up the volume on my whimpering and wailing whenever I felt the nurse watching. Jenny came across and told me to shut up because I was embarrassing her. I told her my finger was bloody sore, with the emphasis on bloody. She told me the guy standing in the queue behind me wasn’t crying like a baby, and he had an axe stuck in his head. I turned around and true story, the man had an axe embedded in the back of his skull, a proper one, like lumberjacks use. And he wasn’t crying. I asked him, didn’t his head hurt? He told me it hurt a lot. I stopped whimpering and followed Jenny out into the carpark where she ripped the nail and the pole out of my finger, and we went home, via another hospital, for a tetanus jab. The birds in our garden remain hungry to this day. 

Back to the logistics. To get us to Uganda in style, our headline sponsors Autoworld Zimbabwe and Isuzu are loaning us three brand-new D-Max double cabs, with all the bells and whistles, and with all the grunt needed for the roads less travelled. Because Al and Laurie Watermeyer have been responsible in plotting the route, we will have more than one swollen river to contend with, complete with crocodiles, which could explain why the roads are less travelled in the first place. I am sure the Watermeyer brothers get their feet wet just going to the supermarket. 

We didn’t do too good at crossing swollen rivers on last year’s Lockdown Tour. Suffice to say, Jenny is less than thrilled at the prospect of crocodile infested ones, and would rather re-route around them, even if it means an extra thousand kilometres. You get a different perspective on distance when you’re in an Isuzu D-Max and not on a bicycle.

I think Isuzu are also rather anxious about our previous track record, so they organized a training session for the Old Legs team with the 4×4 Club at Donnybrook Racecourse. Accomplished rally car driver Phil Archenoul a.k.a. Archie took us around the track at speed, putting his D-Max through its paces. Man, it was fun, like Luna Park for grownups. I learned a lot but was rather aggrieved that Archie was allowed to drive with all four wheels off the ground, and power skid through corners, without being sworn at once. On the way home, Jenny assured me that I will never get the opportunity to put my newly acquired driving skills to the test, not if I want to live.

It is unlikely we’ll get to ramp our Isuzus on our way to Uganda, not with all the food we’ll be carrying. Cyclists like armies, march on their stomachs. On big days, each cyclist will burn more than 4000 calories. We make locusts look bulimic.  We eat breakfast twice, lunch, and then dinner. Because there aren’t many shopping malls in the middle of nowhere, Jenny, Linda and Chef Morris have been busy in the kitchen cooking up a storm so that we can leave Harare with frozen meals enough for 16 people for 30 days already prepared.

In between meals, we also snack a lot. As in 500 packets of Wine Gums, 500 Beacon Strawberry-flavoured Fizzers, 500 Bar Ones, 200 rolls Super C Candy Fruits, 500 packets of Berry Fruit Chews. I expect my sugar high to last through to November. In case my dentist reads this, we also eat savoury snacks:  500 packets of peanuts and raisins, 500 packets of mini-Cheddar Cheese biscuits, and the best biltong in the world as supplied by Billy’s Meats. And also 10 packets of rice cakes, flavoured if possible, for Laurie, because he is gluten intolerant.

In anticipation of the sugar intake ahead, my tooth ache started within a day of the snack delivery. Because my fear of dentists is greater than my fear of pain, although I do think the two could be related, I was happy to label the pain as imaginary, and ignore it all the way to Uganda if possible.

Even though I axed jelly babies from my training diet, my imaginary sore tooth was quickly aggravated by the vibrations when riding my bike. It was like riding with a tuning fork in my mouth. But such is my fear of dentists, and because there aren’t lumps, bumps and vibrations on stationary bikes, I trained on my stationary bike instead, ironically nicknamed Root Canal, hoping and praying the imaginary toothache would go away and stay away until after Uganda. When I was a teenager, I used to hope and pray that my Monday morning crop of pimples would clear before the Friday night disco, but it didn’t work then either.

My imaginary toothache persisted, manifesting as a real one when I use the right side of my mouth to chew. I did two weeks on my stationary bike trying to avoid the dentist, made bearable only by watching the Giro d’Italia and the Criterium du Dauphine. Bummer, I was hoping for a fairy tale ending for Chris Froome, but it was also nice to see that Egan Bernal is the real deal.

It is a pity you can’t get to Uganda on a stationary bike. But you also can’t get through my allotted share of Wine Gums, plus the Wine Gums, Bar Ones, etcetera that Adam still owes me from the Kilimanjaro Tour, using only the left side of your mouth either. So, I bit the bullet pardon the pun and with extreme reluctance, made a booking with my dentist.

Apparently, a previous root canal treatment years earlier had been botched, was now infected and needing to be reworked, but only after removing the old crown.

Alas, I spent two hours in the dentist chair over two days in bad pain, like he was hammering a six-inch nail through my index finger. I did not cover myself with glory. The only reason I didn’t scream was because my mouth was full of dentist, although I remain convinced that he went in through the top of my head, because the drill he used was too big to fit in my mouth.

In between torture sessions, while the dentist was outside for a smoke break to calm his nerves, I caught up on messages on my phone. Wham. In a Deja-vu moment, the first message I looked at transported me straight back to whimpering in the casualty queue in front of the guy with the axe stuck in his head. The text message was from the pensioner with the year-old broken arm from my last blog. You’ll remember a surgeon kindly offered to do the op for free at the time of the accident, but the pensioner couldn’t afford the $2000 worth of ancillary costs, like the hospital fees, the anaesthetist, etcetera, so didn’t have the op, and got on with life with a broken arm. Fast forward to his text message that I read in the dentist chair. Even though he was typing with an arm still broken, the pensioner’s message was heavily laden with happy smiley emojis. The pensioner was thanking me for his operation now scheduled for the end of June. He also sent me a photo of his latest X-rays. I’ve attached them to the bottom of this blog. Have a look at them. They are a shocker. When the dentist came back into the room, I told him to rip the six-inch nail from my finger, but only after another pint of Novocaine. I hope the pensioners X-rays shock you and move you to donate to our cause. 

My other excuse for two weeks off the bike is because Gary and I have been flat out busy polishing the final draft of our soon to be released coffee table book, ‘Zimbabwe on the Road Less Travelled.’ The photos are stunning, and some of the blogs are laugh out loud, even if I say so myself. The final manuscript went to the printers this week. The book will NOT be available on Amazon so book your copy now. 

On to the polarizing part of the blog, and I’m talking ride shirts, not Donald Trump. Because our route is so scary, I asked Gary to design a ride jersey with suitable shock value, and he came up with the Angry Gorilla, also pictured below. The Angry Gorilla is epic, and I cannot wait to wear him, especially up steep hills. I shared his design immediately with the rest of team on the chatgroup and it was a disaster, like asking a room half full of Barry Manilow fans to like Five Finger Death Punch. Not since Hillary Clinton came second to Donald, have I seen a group of people split down the middle so violently. More than half our team, hate, hate, hate the Angry Gorilla. Very quickly, Gary came up with a more gentle Benign Gorilla design. Which got the Angry Gorilla fans worrying that their ape wasn’t going to make it off Gary’s computer screen and onto the ride jersey.

Because we are democrats, we’ve found middle ground and will print both jerseys. Please help us put the Angry Gorilla debate to rest. Both jerseys are available for sale in South Africa, at a cost of R850 plus postage, of which R300 will go to the pensioners. Have a look at both jerseys below and please place your order for your Angry Gorilla jersey now with Old Legs C.J. Bradshaw on cjbrad@croc.co.za. He’s also taking orders for the Benign Gorilla as well.

I often wish I wasn’t a democrat. I think decisions are easier for dictators, because the real world is a crappy place in which Blacks Lives matter, but only in the First World when taken by white policemen. Clearly North Korean Lives matter diddly squat. Watching Hollywood movies while wearing blue jeans and popstar hairstyles will get you the death sentence in Kim Jong-un’s North Korea, but so far, not a single football team anywhere has taken the knee. In the real world Boris Johnson gets into trouble for decorating his flat, but the guy in Belarus can scramble MiG jets to intercept a Ryanair flight overhead with an annoying blogger on board who pissed him off no problem. And for the record, power to bloggers. And F.Y.I., Zimbabwe has sold minerals yet to be mined, for a fleet of busses made in Belarus, and Belarus busses are crap.

I can’t wait to escape the real world as we pedal up through Africa, away from the news and from television, even though I’ll miss the end of the Tour de France, and the Lions vs The Springboks. For the record and because I’m two thirds of the way through watching The Crown on Netflix, I’m shouting for the Lions. But don’t expect to miss the 2020 Olympics, because I’m guessing they’ll only happen in 2022.

The Old Legs remain determined to ride up through Africa, come hell or Coronavirus. Jaime Selby is riding back-to-back 100 kilometres every day this week, for the first time ever. Thank you to Rob Wallace of Tri Something and Life Cycle for taking time out to help Jaime with her training. Just 6 weeks ago, 50 kilometres was her personal best. And just 8 weeks before that, Jaimie had to purpose buy a bike to ride the Tour. As did Billy Prentice in Los Angeles. Billy booked his air ticket this week and arrives on July 11th, with 15 top of the range, refurbished hearing aids for 15 pensioners at Fairways who currently can’t hear a thing. When we signed up to ride the Silverback Tour, Adam asked for a commitment from all of us to raise $10,000 in donations for our charities. As part of that commitment, Billy applied to be part of an outreach program aimed bettering the lives of people in need and was awarded a $2500 grant to secure the hearing aids. When he arrives, Billy will set up a clinic at Fairways and conduct basic hearing tests for the intendent recipients. 

In closing, big salute to Pete Brodie, John Thompson, Rich Yates, Richard Nash, Charlie Lenegan, Michael Paul, Paul Cutler, Mark Johnson and Alan Crundall a.k.a. the Old Legs Down Under for all the hard yards on the bikes and to Cate, Julia, Warwick and Vic for the harder yards supporting them.  Congratulations on your rides, and big thanks for the money raised. Already it is making a difference on the ground.

Also thank you to Hillary Hague for donating her Zimbabwe pension to Bulawayo Help Network, ditto Althea and Pierro Pozzo. Big thanks to Gavin Chadwick, Joyce Marriott, for donations received.

The Old Legs team in Zim including Marco Richards, Ken Fisher, Carl Wilson and Ken Connolly in KweKwe have been out and about delivering food hampers and the warmest blankets, 50 of them, all donated by the Van der Merwe family in Kariba. Thank you for your kindness and God bless.

We were also able to deliver dog blankets, dog food, and goodie parcels for the dog lady, donated by Sherryn Thompson in Johannesburg and the Blue Cross committee in Mutare. Left to do is to build her a ramp for her wheelchair, and some major repair work to her walls. I am happy that the Old Legs have been able to make such a difference. And knowing hat there are others out there will help us up the hills on our way to Uganda.

Apologies for a blog longer than our forthcoming Tour. And please wish me luck for my eye op today. I am having a 5000-kilometre oil change.

Until my next blog, stay sane and safe and pedal if you can – Eric Chicken Legs de Jong.

Photos below – The Isuzu D-Max on the road less travelled, an X-ray of a year-old busted arm, the Angry Gorilla Shirt and the Benign Gorilla Shirt, Order your best ever coffee table book now, some very appreciative pensioners and Hearing Aids for Africa.

20 May 2021 – Fully vaccinated but not against lost balls and health tonics.

This last weekend got me to thinking about switching sporting codes, from riding bikes back to golf. The Old Legs hosted their first golf day fundraiser, hugely well organized by Ken Fisher and Aoife Connolly. Old Legs team members weren’t allowed to play because we were all given jobs to do by Aoife. I volunteered manfully to run the gin tent, but that was forbidden, more by Jenny than Aoife. Instead, Adam and I were made ambassadors on bikes for the day, and rode around the field interacting with the punters, while they had fun playing golf. Which is different to how I remember the game.

A lifetime ago I worked for a chain of hotels as marketing manager. My boss at the time suggested I take up golf. The poor man said it should be good for business. Being career oriented, I invested heavily in a set of $50 second-hand clubs and threw myself into the deep end of my first competition: The Air Zimbabwe Open, one of the country’s premier amateur events at the time. I arrived at the Police Golf Club wearing purpose-bought long- socks and brand-new Tommy tackies, that white they hurt your eyes, only to find the rest of the field assembled in long pants and shoes with spikes. Maybe they all had chicken legs that needed hiding.

My golf career almost never got off the ground when my four-ball partner failed to arrive, no doubt because of traumatic premonitions, but was saved when the Club Captain, a Retired Assistant-Commissioner complete with double-barrel name, stepped in with just minutes to spare with an offer to partner me.

Alas. Even though we were both ex-policemen, practically blood-brother comrades I told him, our relationship got off to a rocky start, especially after it took me four shots to get back to the first tee box, after my tee shot ended up in the car park behind us, after a cruel deflection off a Massey Ferguson tractor passing on a neighbouring fairway. By the time I made it onto the first fairway for just five, he’d gone all purple in the face. He stayed purple for the next eighteen holes.

The other members of our four-ball abandoned us after five holes, and pushed on ahead, because they said they didn’t want to drive home in the dark. We were further delayed on the seventh, when my caddy had to send a runner to the clubhouse to fetch another bag of balls, after I’d run out. Clock-watching, the Assistant Commissioner lent me one of his splendid and very expensive brand-new balls, but we had to wait anyway, because I lost that one promptly as well.

By the time we eventually reached the back-nine, the Assistant Commissioner swore at me openly for the first time after missing his dead cert putt for par on the eleventh, just after I waved the four-ball stuck behind us through, secure in the knowledge that there was no way anyone could hit golf balls that far, or that straight, especially in fading light. Standing on the green, dodging balls thudding down around his head, the Assistant Commissioner sounded like he’d hit his thumb repeatedly with a hammer.

We were last men out in the field and got in after dark. I thought my caddie was going to hit me after I tipped him a coke, but luckily, he was too exhausted, after visiting rough he never knew existed. I added up the Assistant Commissioner’s scorecard, he added up mine. Not surprisingly I was able to finish my sums first. I checked the Leader Board. According to my reckoning, my playing partner had won by two strokes. I congratulated him on his victory. First prize was two First Class tickets to Athens, Greece. This was back when Air Zimbabwe had planes that could fly further than Bulawayo. You have never seen a man transform from purple to happy so quickly. For a while I worried that he would kiss me. He told me to order celebratory drinks at the bar on him, while he phoned his wife to tell her to pack their bags, because he was taking her to the Greek Islands, and they were flying first-class. Alas, while he was on the phone, and before they could uncork the champagne, they disqualified the Assistant Commissioner for cheating. Alas for him, my arithmetic is worse than my golf. I’d added his scorecard up wrong. And he’d signed it. He went back to being purple in the face with veins throbbing, and I went back into the rough to hide.

Unfortunately, my game went downhill from there, and less than a year later, I hung up what remained of my clubs. I’d lost my three-wood in a water hazard because not all wood floats and threw others away in temper tantrums.

But fast-forward thirty years, and it turns out golf is way more fun than I remember, and I might come out of retirement. The equipment has evolved hugely. When I played, the business end of my one wood driver was miniscule, that tiny there was no way you were going to hit the ball with it, no matter how hard you squinted. But one woods these days have got these massive bulbous clubs on the end, the size of your lounge suite, all sweet spot and nothing else, and there is no way you’re going to miss the ball, unless your name is Tim Major.

And as for the water points, bike ride organizers could learn a thing or two from their golfing counterparts about putting the fun back into rehydrating. On a 50-km bike ride, we’ll be lucky to get one water point, offering up water or Coke if it is a big budget event, or Pepsi, if it isn’t. Different story on the golf course. On the second tee box sponsored by Suzuki Marine, very kind and helpful ladies offered golfers and cyclists a choice between Jagermeisters, an herbal health tonic with a kick, or Amarulas, also an herbal health tonic and also with a kick. Jagermeisters also served to settle nerves, and allowed players to enjoy the hole, even guzzlers, like Tim Major. I partook of health tonics, even though I wasn’t playing golf, because I’m on a health kick ahead of the Uganda Tour.

And then just when the feel-good from hole two was wearing off, lo and behold, there was a gin tent on the fifth, manned by the Old Legs team, apart from me. Apparently after four long holes of golf apparently there is nothing quite as refreshing as a cold Gin and Tonic, served up with all the accoutrements (a.k.a. the frills, for those who attended Prince Edward) although the second and third Gin and Tonics were also quite refreshing.

And so it went, for eighteen holes, I think. I have to use the words I think, because the other area where the two sports, golf and bike riding, are closely aligned is in terms of one’s ability to get lost. In a round of eighteen holes, somehow, I was able to end up at the second tee four times, and the fifth three times. I am prepared to blame my Garmin.

Unbeknownst to many, the eighteenth fairway at the Brooke is actually a vicious uphill. I huffed and puffed up it loudly, leaving people wondering how the hell I am going to make it all the way to Uganda in just 8 weeks. Fortunately, I am able to blame my lack of breath on my grandchildren. To celebrate receiving my second COVID vaccination, they gave me their flu. Google reliably informs me that my body contains 10 litres blood, 40 litres of water and in my case 67 litres of snot, making me bigger on the inside than I am on the outside. God bless grandchildren, apart from when their faces get snot-encrusted, allowing them to get stuck to you for long enough to infect, even though you have a big bike ride coming up.

On the subject of my second and final Covid vaccination, hats off to the Zim government for rolling the vaccination program out seemingly seamlessly to all ages, apart from the multitude of anti-vaxxers out there who don’t want, and who clearly haven’t watched the horrors playing out in India. That Delhi, a capital city of 20 million people, has had to chop down all the trees in all the city parks to fuel the temporary funeral pyres is scary stuff, straight out of a medieval plague. I’m properly relieved to have had both vaccinations. I hope they are the first step back to some semblance of normalcy, a normalcy that doesn’t include drinking down a weekly dose of cattle worm muti.

Moving on slightly, I’m looking for a buyer for 472 millilitres of an almost brand-new, only-used-on -Sunday bottle of Ivermectin 1% I/V, good for worms in your cattle, apparently also good for worms in horses, donkeys, goats, sheep and possibly guinea pigs as well but don’t quote me. Alternatively, I could be in the market to buy worm infested cattle, horses, donkeys, sheep and goats, suitably discounted because of their worms of course, but not guineapigs, because guineapigs are born pregnant.

Covid vaccinations are part of the mad-rush, last-minute preparations for the Old Legs Silverback Tour which starts July 15, now just 8 weeks away. One of the rules of the Tour is that everyone in the team has to be fully vaccinated, hopefully making our passage up through Africa less problematic. But because we will still have to produce negative PCR tests less than 72-hours old at each border, we’re having to research the availability of Covid testing facilities in the back of beyond in Zambia and Tanzania, based on an average speed of 20 k.p.h. Scary logistics, especially for me still trying to work out how I am going to ride 30 days with 7 pairs of padded riding shorts and just 3 rest days without having to resort to doing laundry. Laurie heard of my dilemma, most because I was whingeing loudly, and he has stepped in to save me. Laurie is welding 4 cages on to the back of our water trailer, each of which will hold a plastic bucket with a screw lid. Too easy. At the start of each, we stick our dirty kit in the bucket, complete with a teaspoon of detergent, plus a teaspoon of disinfectant per pair of ride shorts, fill the bucket with water, and a day later spent bumping on the roads less travelled, our kit will be spotless clean, smelling like lemons. Best invention ever.

To get our heads ready for 27 days of riding 111 kilometres with hills daily, Fiona organized a Zoom meeting for us last night with adventurer David Grier. For those who don’t know him, David wrote the book on mental toughness. He remains the only man to have run the 4200 km Great Wall of China, not once, but twice, averaging 60 km per day, apart from his rest days where he only runs 20 km. David paddled from Africa to Madagascar in a canoe, 500 km in 12 days, and then to burn off excess energy, he ran 2700 km from top to bottom in 67 days. He has run South Africa’s 3300 km coastline, 4008 km across India, 1800 km across Cuba. The man is exhausting. And he still hasn’t tumbled to the fact that bicycles were invented by a man on foot in a hurry to get from Point A to Point B.

I could have listened to David talk about his adventures all night. He made two stand-out comments that I have filed away for future reference on the road to Uganda. David doesn’t run his marathons on his feet, he runs them in his head. If he develops aches and twinges in say his ankle, incredibly, he is able to cordon his ankle off in his mind, sort of like putting on a mental bandage. That’s not to say he ignores the pains. He was quick to tell us that he listens carefully to his body. He is a big fan of icepacks and anti-inflammatories, but if the pains persist or worsen, he’ll either rest up, or ease off.

But the thing that gets him up and out of bed in the morning, the thing that pushes him step after step after step, for 4800 kilometres, is the fact that he runs to help others less fortunate. David runs to raise money and awareness for Operation Smile, through the Cipla Miles for Smiles initiative, which is all about facilitating corrective surgery for children born with cleft lip palates. David has raised millions and helped thousands. That he has been able to also enjoy the best ever adventures along the way is a bonus. Which isn’t too far off from our Old Legs mantra of Have Fun, Do Good, Do Epic. David also inspired me to add Katie Melau’s Nine Million Bicycles in Beijing to my Spotify playlist before going to bed.

In closing, I’d like to thank and acknowledge everyone involved in the Old Legs Golf Day. All monies raised will go to the Old Legs Medical Emergency Fund, to help people like Herman, who had his left leg amputated in my last blog. Instead of worrying about the pain, or worrying about getting around with just one leg, Herman was too busy stressing about how he was going to pay for his US$ 420 surgery. It doesn’t sound like a lot of money, unless you’re a Zim pensioner on a non-existent monthly pension worth just $12.  I am happy to be able to report back that Herman’s operation has been paid for. And on the subject of my last blog, don’t you just love how these things flow, I’m also happy to report that the old guy who has spent the last year with his upper arm broken in two places has an appointment with the orthopaedic surgeon on May 28^th. And also huge thanks to Brian Wilson and the team at Steel Warehouse for fixing Thelma, the dog lady’s roof. God bless.

But I digress. Back to thanking those who made our Golf Day possible – all the players who supported the event, and all the hole sponsors including SKF Bearing, Autoworld, the Surrey Group, Suzuki Marine, the Fisher family, KW Blasting, Pete van Deventer from DSTV, Pin Point Tracking, Shades Ahead, the Wilcox family at Food Lovers Greendale, Robbie Eastwood at Creadlyne, Tanganda, and others too numerous mention. Thank you to Mark Pozzo for helping put the day together, and for conducting the charity auction that raised a bunch of money. Thank you to Patrick Mavros for donating the luxury silver handcrafted jewellery for the auction, thank you to Adam and Linda for donating a week on the luxury Somabhula, the best houseboat on Kariba, thank you to Pete and Vicky Bowen for donating a holiday cottage in Nyanga, ditto Al Watermeyer. And finally, a thank you to Tim Major from Suzuki Marine for not winning the Suzuki 250 hp motor hole-in-one prize on the second.

Until my next blog, enjoy, stay safe and help others if you can – Eric Chicken Legs de Jong.

Photos attached – Eric and Adam looking for the tee box on the 2^nd, enjoying health tonics on the 2^nd, Linda manning the gin tent on the 5^th, the Silverback Tour Start Finish banner

Of happy endings, not so happy endings and toilet holes.

First up and in response to a million requests, an update on the lady in the wheelchair who lost her husband in my last blog. For the sake of sensitivities, I will call her Thelma. (I had a kindergarten teacher called Thelma who was a loving, caring woman who didn’t shout when I coloured outside the lines.) Thelma is an apt name for a lady who looks after twenty dogs, five cats and a duck called Donald. N.B. The use of the word pensioner in my blogs is a misnomer in that it implies the payment of a pension, whereas most Zim pensioners receive not a cent. Thank God for the charities that we support.

Perennial do-gooders Steel Warehouse were the first to come to Thelma’s aid with an offer to repair gaping holes in her roof, another person said they would fashion a wheelchair ramp that will allow Thelma access to outside, and yet another has offered to repair Thelma’s fence, to keep dogs in and out. And the Blue Cross are dropping off a job lot of dog biscuits and dog blankets this week, ahead of an early cold snap.   

I am happy to report that Thelma’s friends have rallied to her and visit often, taking her out for coffee. Ditto the counsellors from Pensioners Aid who are keeping a very close eye on Thelma. They told us that Wezborn, Thelma’s dreadlocked dog-carer, cooks for her in the evening, sits up with her watching TV, often until midnight, and then sleeps outside the front door, so that she feels safe at night. Wezborn told Pensioners Aid that he considers Thelma family, and he will do anything for her. I am visiting Thelma this week to drop off the Blue Cross donations plus a second load of chicken meat from the abattoir and will tell Wezborn thank you and well done.

Thelma’s story is what passes for a happy ending in the context of Zimbabwe’s pensioners, and we will do our best to make sure that continues going forward. But for every happy ending in Zimbabwe, there are other not-so-happy stories playing out.

I met another pensioner this week who broke his upper arm in two last places in March last year but can’t afford the $2500 corrective surgery. And so, he goes on about his life, uncomplaining and doing his best to ignore the pain, with the hand of his broken arm tucked away in the pocket of his jeans, so it doesn’t get too in the way while he tries to earn a living. He can’t put his arm in a sling as that would aggravate the break.

And then there is Herman. He was staying at the Salvation Army when I first met him, just before the first Old Legs Tour to Cape Town. Herman lost everything when his bank collapsed in the 2008 hyperinflation. He is proud man and living off charity rankles. He asked me if I could find him funding to start an agricultural project so he could earn enough to live off. I tried but failed. Would you believe funding for old white ex-farmers in Zimbabwe is hard to find? Undeterred, Herman came up with a Plan B. He invented a solar-powered aeroplane and asked if I could find him investors for that instead. Despite the fact that Herman attended Allan Wilson, I was unable to land any investors for his solar powered plane project. Alas.  On to Herman’s Plan C. Could I find him a job instead? Maybe when you are 72, working for someone would be easier than starting up a new business. I lined him up with an interview, but alas, it didn’t work out, even though he got all dressed up smart for the occasion and looked the part.

Since then, Herman has kept in touch every couple of months, to check on the job market prospects, and I have continued as the world’s worst employment agent. Herman turned 75 a month ago. When he phoned to check in on possible vacancies, I finally summoned up the courage to tell Herman that at his age, maybe he was chasing pipe dreams, maybe it was time for him to park his ambitions. A week later, he sent me a cock-a-hoop text message telling me he had landed a job starting 3 May as supervisor for a company doing walling, paving and driveways, and possibly road construction. He signed off his text with the phrase “Yabba, Dabba, Doo!” I told him well done for never, ever giving up. But on Thursday last week, Herman sent me another text tell me his job isn’t going to happen. He has suffered blood circulation problems, and arrangements are being made to amputate his left leg below the knee. He worries about how he will pay for the operation.

People like Herman and the man with the one-year-old broken arm are why the Old Legs Tour ride to somewhere ridiculously far away every year. This year we are riding the Silverback Tour, 3000 km from Harare to Uganda, starting in just 10 weeks.

To see where we are at in terms of preparedness, Adam Selby and Laurie Watermeyer dragged us out on a two-day 170 km training ride, which they dubbed the True Colours ride. We were 8 in the riding group with only Billy Prentice and CarolJoy Church absent, and a full support crew of 6, including Ant Mellon and Judy Richards, in 3 back up vehicles.

Rather than die on a bicycle under a bus on the main Harare to Nyamapanda Road, we drove to our staging point just outside Murehwa, 90 km east of Harare, and almost died under a bus anyway, after a white Honda Fit slammed on brakes in the middle of a high-level bridge, causing the thirty-ton truck behind him to take emergency evasive action, which unfortunately involved swerving in front of an oncoming bus, who was also forced into taking evasive action, which involved almost going over the edge of the bridge, swerving again, this time directly in front of Laurie’s car, swerving yet again before correcting, and eventually emerging unscathed. Move over, Lewis Hamilton. The standard of driving on Zimbabwe’s knackered roads is shocking beyond belief, apart from the drivers of the truck and the bus.

We all still had the shakes from the near crash when we got on our bikes just after 8. Our night stop was an obscure spot on a riverbed just past the middle of nowhere, somewhere in between Murehwa, Mutoko, Headlands and Nyanga.

Riding to nowhere in particular with best friends, under blue skies and on empty roads, with forever views and no cellphone signal, and with all day to get there, with Arno Carsten’s ‘Another Universe’ loud in your headphones, it just doesn’t get much better than that. I think Arno could well have been riding his bike through Murehwa when he wrote the lyrics.

‘Nobody needs to know where we’re off to
We’re invisible alive
We’re the whispers in the scream
We’re not living in the west
And we’re not coming from the east
From the galaxy of blues to a universe we choose
No more crying and just maybe somebody to hold…
Let’s play the metal music slow

Leave the car on the highway and go’

I do love Spotify. Unfortunately, so does Jenny. Even more unfortunately, I share my Spotify account with Jenny, and she has learnt how to ambush my playlists. There is nothing worse than grinding up steep hill and the Chilli Peppers make way for Nancy Sinatra, or worse still, some puerile Abba song about some bloody shepherd boy called Angelo. Because of Angelo, I now hate mutton and lamb.

Because my cellphone weather app had reliably informed that we would enjoy a high of just 23, and a low of 13 in Murehwa, I mindfully packed my winter woollies, including my beanie and my minus ten sleeping bag. Clearly, my cellphone weather app has never been to Murehwa before. We started our ride at 1386 metres above sea level, but within the hour, we’d dropped down to ilala palms, baobabs and mopane forest. It was like bumping into old friends unexpectedly. It was also bloody hot, as in low-to-mid thirties.

Like most Zimbabweans, the people in Murehwa were hugely friendly, especially when they found out we were a bunch of crazy old white guys riding 3000 km from Harare to Uganda. Stars of the show were Al Watermeyer and Marco Richards, both 1949 models, with people clamouring to be in selfies with them. It was like riding with the Kardashians.

I was able to help Alastair when his back wheel punctured by capturing his repair and pumping techniques on video, so that he has something he can refer to should he puncture again in the future. And judging by how red he went in the face whilst pumping, Alastair needs to improve on his pumping technique. I told him her should have used the foot-pump in the support car, instead of his hand-pump, because it was more efficient.  We were going to take a swear jar on Tour but think we will have to upgrade to a swear bucket.

We arrived at our campsite in the middle of nowhere on the banks of the Malazi river and just 4 kilometres from the Nyangombe river with an hour to sunset.  So, we had to hustle to set up camp. But first up, we had to track the headman down to request his permission to camp. Marco is fluent in Shona and handled negotiations successfully. The headman was a pleasant chap who rolled his eyes when he found we were riding to Uganda, clearly thinking we’d been out in the midday sun too long.  

Once we’d received the nod to camp, we busied ourselves with our allocated duties. A team of lumberjacks with axes and machetes set about chopping out the undergrowth of spiky, horrible bamboo underfoot, that grew thick along the riverbank. It was hot, hard work, but they were able to chop out all the bamboo, apart from some few bushes hiding away under where Jamie and Aoife would later be place their inflatable matrasses. At two in the morning, Jaimie and Aoife woke up to include inflatable matrass puncture repair kits on their Tour packing lists.

Apart from the dearth of inflatable mattress puncture repair kits, ours is a very organized campsite, thanks to Adam, Linda, Jenny and Laurie, with tables and chairs, hot showers and disco lighting, and even charging stations for cell phones and cameras. Oh, and it also has two toilets.

Marco and I are in charge of digging toilets. Marco was in charge of erecting the privacy tents on top of the two toilet holes I dug in the sandy riverbank below camp.

Inspired by the fact that Al is often full of shit, I made sure my first hole was a splendid, extra-large affair, unfortunately, slightly larger than the Boskak 2000 toilet seat that was supposed to perch on top of it. But I thought it splendid nonetheless, and good to go. My comrades thought differently however and wanted the toilet seat on top of the hole, not in the hole. In instead of on top of, bloody semantics I thought, after seven hours in the bloody saddle, but I commenced excavating another two holes uncomplainingly, even though the first hole was splendid, albeit slightly oversized. And let it be known that holes two and three were both splendid feats of engineering, deep and square, befitting an Allan Wilson boy, although the hole three also caved in a bit on it’s third outing, making the further use thereof rather hair raising, apparently. I say apparently because I was unable to enjoy the fruits of my labour. My bottom obviously belonged to a pampered person in a previous life and would rather hold out for the chance of porcelain sometime in the distant future, than crap in the woods. Just as well I am not a bear.  

Going forward and in pursuit of improved efficiencies, for the Tour I’ve decided to do away with digging toilet holes after long days in the saddle and will instead, dispense Imodium daily all the way up to Uganda. I am sure the porcelain there is splendid.

I fell asleep under a full moon to the sounds of cattle lowing, a fiery-necked nightjar shouting ‘Good Lord, Deliver Us’, slow punctured matrasses, and no Great Danes barking in my head, and enjoyed my best night sleep ever.

We broke camp quicker than expected and were on the road by seven o’clock. But the day’s slog back up to our highveld start point was long, hard and hot, as in very hot, with even the baobabs wilting. I especially struggled in the heat, because I didn’t take enough liquids or electrolytes on board and was able to amuse at both the breakfast and lunch stops by cramping viciously. Even my cramps got cramps. Adam is especially unable to spell empathy.

Thankfully, I was riding next to Laurie Watermeyer when we crossed back over the Malazi River. If you are a Watermeyer, you are expressly forbidden to cross rivers on bicycles without getting off to wallow in the shallows like a hippo. Whilst I enjoyed lurking next to Laurie in crystal clear, refreshing waters, I worried about the intermittent warmth of the water. I also worried the warm waters coincided with a transient look of bliss on Laurie’s face, but he assured me he was just remembering something happy from his childhood. But I remain suspicious and have decided I will wallow up stream on our way to Uganda.

I was off my bike for a week recovering, but rode 90 kilometres with The Herd on Saturday, including 82-year-old George Fletcher. If I am half as fit as George when I am that age, I will be happy. Riding bikes around Harare is very social and you are expected to exchange greetings with pedestrians and cyclists passing by. Oscar was able to bring me up on the latest Shona street greeting. You shout Borlato with as much verve and nonchalance as you can muster, then the people shout back at you, Borlato, Borlato, with broad smiles and clearly delighted.  I have no idea what Borlato means, but Oscar assures me it is cool like a verbal fist-bump and enhances street cred. 

We have just ten weeks to go until we start pedalling. Unfortunately, it looks like we will have to axe Rwanda from our route. The squabble ongoing between the two countries doesn’t look like it will end anytime soon, which is pity because I was really looking forward to a thousand downhills. I think the problem is Kagame likes Wine, but Museveni hates him. Maybe he’s a beer drinker.

After further Covid delays, the Old Legs Tour Down Under finally got under way, on both the east and west coasts of Australia. In Perth, Peter Brodie, Michael Paul and Paul Cutler set forth on the iconic Munda Biddi Trail on Saturday, while Mark Johnson and Alan Crundall, locked out by Covid, embarked on their own thousand-kilometre Queensland Tour. Please support them as they pedal to raise money and awareness for Zimbabwe’s pensioners, including hopefully Herman and the pensioners with the one-year-old broken arm. And please follow us to Uganda on Facebook or www.oldlegstour.co.zw. Follow the donate prompts and help us help those less fortunate.  

Until my next blog, survive and enjoy if possible

Eric Chicken Legs de Jong.   

Pictures below – Thelma’s roof awaiting repair, our convoy of support vehicles in Murehwa, fans taking selfies with Marco Kardashian, forever views, a splendid toilet hole and some cows, a girl with a pumpkin on her head, Marco Kardashian reclining, wallowing in warm water downstream of Laurie.

­Happy Birthday Zimbabwe, although not so much for some.

Zimbabwe enjoyed her 41st birthday on Sunday, although the use of the word enjoyed is debatable.

The closest I got to festivities was when three MiG jets streaked overhead at ten in the morning. I was standing in the garden of one of our pensioners at the time. Our pensioner had three hours earlier. I was there to comfort his wife and to phone undertakers and the like. She needed help as she is an invalid and bed bound.

The couple were amongst a group of pensioners adopted by the Old Legs Tour during last year’s lockdown. Carl Wilson looked after them week in, week out for most of the year. It speaks volumes that Carl remained on their speed dial. He was the first person the wife phoned when her husband collapsed. Carl was out of town and asked me if I would go help. The couple live on the other side of the railway line, in a rondavel that is little more than a hut, and Jenny and I struggled to find the place. Jenny came with me because she is better at giving moral support than I am.

When we eventually got there, the husband was still lying on the floor where he’d fallen. His wife was lying in the bed next to him, in tears and inconsolable, beating herself up because she hadn’t been able to get the ambulance to come, and with no idea as to how she was going to get by without her husband in the future. I wanted to give her a hug, and to cover him with a blanket, but couldn’t, because there were twenty dogs on the bed with her, ranging in size from big to small. Some had wagging tails, happy to see me, but some, not so much. The two dogs closest to me fell into the big and the not so happy categories, especially every time I came too close to him, or her. So, I gave hugging a miss.

Instead, I asked the wife if I could phone a friend or a family member, so that someone could be there for her. But she told me they didn’t have any family left, and they didn’t have friends either. People shunned them she said, because they had too many dogs, and because they were poor and lived in a not so nice house.

Her husband had been a volunteer at rescue animal shelters for his whole life. He brought his work home with him, literally, in the form of 25 dogs, 5 cats and a duck called Donald. No longer able to work because of age and poor health, he and his wife lived for their animals. They survived on charity, but spent all day, every day looking after their animals, scrounging scrap meat from every butchery and abattoir in town, not just for their own pack of rescue dogs, but also for the burgeoning feral pack roaming the street.

Because she is wheelchair bound and unable to drive, the wife worried how she would be able to collect the scrap meat to feed the dogs going forward. She also worried about how she was going to pay for her husband’s funeral. But mostly she worried about how she would get by on her own, without her husband there to look after her.

I was in the middle of trying to console her, from a safe distance because of the dogs, telling her that everything was going to work out just fine, even though I didn’t have a clue how, when I was interrupted by a dreadful wheezing sound. The sound wasn’t coming from her. And it wasn’t coming from me. So, it could only be coming from the husband.  Shit. He had to still be alive. I didn’t know what to do. I couldn’t commence CPR like in the movies, because there was big red dog called Rufus right in my face, one of the ‘not so happy to see me’ dogs. But it turned out the wheezing was coming from one of dachshunds, partially obscured behind a pillow and suffering an asthma attack.

I had to flee the hut, so I could laugh, because it is always better to laugh than cry.  But standing in the busted wreck of a garden, next to a busted wreck of a pickup truck, next to Donald the duck and dog waste lying everywhere, all I wanted to do was cry for the old guy and his wife. 

I couldn’t but compare him lying on the floor inside with nothing, to Prince Phillip being buried the day before on television with all the pomp and ceremony in the world. I especially wanted to cry when the MiG jets bust the sound barrier overhead the little hut with huge, big holes in the roof. Happy birthday Zimbabwe. Our hospitals haven’t got money for ambulances for little old ladies to summon when their husbands suffer heart attacks on Sunday mornings. We haven’t got money for the social safety nets needed to stop people like our old guy from falling through the ever-widening cracks. But we have all the money needed for a big budget military, with fighter jets and tanks, even though we’ve got no wars to fights, other than with ourselves. Alas. And thank God for the charities that look after the pensioners that government doesn’t.

To live in Zimbabwe, with tragedies like our old guy playing out every day and on almost every street corner, you have to find ways to not go nuts. Laughter is good muti. And thankfully, even with all the tragedy, laughter is never too far away in Zimbabwe.

Zimbabweans put a lot of effort into naming their children. You meet people the whole time called Blessing or More Blessing, Lovemore or Lovejoy, Beauty or Happiness. But every now and then you bump into someone who was obviously named on a bad hair day. I was helped recently in a shop in Borrowdale by a young man called Nervous. I laughed and suggested to him that his mom had named him during labour. He didn’t laugh. Which made me feel bad. To make amends, I told him he was lucky. I told him I was Polish and that my birthname translated into English as Small Penis. (I have no idea how or why stuff like that ends up in my head, but it just does.) Nervous laughed. And I laughed with him. It was good muti, badly needed in Zim. But I didn’t laugh so much when I returned four weeks later and Nervous greeted me by name in front of a shop full of lady customers.  “Hallo Mr Small Penis, how are you?” I did not know where to hide. But they all laughed. Good muti for them.

 Riding bikes is also good medicine for the Zim blues. But there wasn’t too much laughing on this weekend’s training ride, apart from when I used my nose to break my fall whilst riding next to Alastair. Up until then, I had no idea that bloody noses were funny.

Laurie Watermeyer has taken on the responsibility of plotting training rides that will get us ready for our 3000 kilometer Silverback Tour which starts in Harare on July 15 and ends in Uganda’s Impenetrable Forest on August 15, with lots of uphill in between.

This week Laurie plotted a track on the roads less travelled around Arcturus. Laurie chose a route that would test our skills riding up impossibly steep hills, over lumpy bumpy single-track, and through impenetrable forests.

Because I am skinny with zero fat, I don’t mind impossibly steep hills. Alastair on the other hand has enough meat on him to cast a shadow and grumbles up hills, affording me the opportunity to laugh at him, good muti for bloodied noses.

I hate lumpy bumpy single-track, especially now that I only have one headlamp working. I can see the big rocks clearly, but hit them anyway, because I have problems with depth perception. Nothing much has changed from when both eyes were working, but problems with depth perception sounds better than just plain bloody clumsy on a bike.

But worse than riding single track, is riding on no tracks at all. Laurie’s route took us through an impenetrable forest of elephant grass, kilometre after kilometer of the stuff, way taller than our heads, thick to the point where you couldn’t see the sky above, or your front wheel in front, let alone the path we were supposed to be riding along. Laurie said we were definitely riding on a road that he last drove in 1984. Alastair said he thinks he saw silverback gorillas. So clearly the ability to hallucinate runs in the family.

Very cool. On one of the few sections where there actually was a road, a young lady called Wadzanai stopped to ask Alastair if he was part of the Old Legs. He allowed that he was. She said she follows us on Facebook and asked if she could take a selfie with him. Wadzanai is one of those very cool Shona names mentioned earlier. It means ‘To Come Together’. 

We rode 63 kilometres that day with just 843 metres of climb in 5 hours 30 minutes. I averaged a paltry 11 kilometres per hour. At that rate, we’ll be lucky to arrive in Uganda before Christmas. Clearly, we need more practice. So, Laurie has planned another training ride this weekend which he has called the True Colours Ride- 2 big rides, back-to-back, with plenty of climb, and out in the middle of nowhere a.k.a. Murehwa so we can also practice bush camping skills. Adam has allocated us the same camp duties that we’ll have on Tour. I am in charge of blogging and digging toilet holes. I think Adam is subtly suggesting there is a correlation between the two.

There will be a full contingent of riders and support, including Mark Wilson back from tick-bite-fever, and Marco Richards back from Kenya. The only team members missing are Ryan Moss in South Africa, Gary de Jong away on a hunting safari on the support side, and from the peloton, Billy Prentice in California, and CarolJoy Church in Germany.

Shame, CJ is stuck in lockdown and struggling to get training rides in. Shame, Billy isn’t stuck in lockdown and is getting his training rides in, including a monster with 1500 metres of climb in just 66 kilometres, all on dirt, that he has done twice in the last week. I am sure Billy wishes he was also stuck in German lockdown. Come July, he will either be very fit, or very knackered.

The other thing that prevents me from jumping off my nearest low building, thankfully I suffer vertigo, is being able to help others less fortunate. Taking a leaf out of our old guy with his 20 rescue dogs, I went back to visit his wife on the Monday to take her a big bag of shopping, and an even bigger bag of dog food. And yes, I was trying to get on the right side of the pack.

Without her dead husband lying in the room, I was able to sit and chat at length with her, although the big red dog called Rufus kept a close eye on me throughout. And I’m talking close, as in just inches. She is determined to carry on living in their rondavel looking after their 20 dogs, 5 cats and a duck called Donald. And I am determined to help her. To which end, I visited a chicken abattoir yesterday and collected 170 kilograms of donated chicken scraps for the dogs, and will repeat the exercise in a fortnight, and every fortnight thereafter.

As mentioned above, their rondavel roof has huge holes in it. And with winter kicking in early, I worry she will freeze. So please, if there is anyone out there with one of those big transport tarpaulins that we can use to affect temporary repairs, please shout.

I’d like to wish God speed to Peter Brodie and friends as they ride the Old Legs Tour Down Under, 1005 km along the iconic Munda Biddi mountain bike trail from Perth to Albany, followed by another 1000 kilometres back home again to Perth. May the road rise up to meet you, but not in the form of a big bloody hill, and may the wind be always at your back and the sunshine warm upon your face, but not too hot. Oh, and also cold beers at the end of your ride. Old Legs Australia are riding to raise money and awareness for Zimbabwe’s pensioners. Please help them help others by donating.  Follow them on Facebook and on www.oldlegsaustralia.com but be warned, they ride slow like paint dries.

In closing, our old guy will be cremated 10.00 a.m. Zim time on April 23rd. Please pray for him, and his wife.

Until my next blog, survive, enjoy and help someone, or something, less fortunate.

Eric ‘Chicken Legs’ de Jong

I had a favourite uncle who lived in Finland. He taught me how to quaff 40 percent vodka, which might have had something to do with his popularity stakes within the family. He told me that Finnish people love quaffing vodka. I was just twenty at the time and not yet familiar with the term quaffing. He told me quaffing is like drinking, but just with more noise and more laughter. After much quaffing of Finnish vodka, your laughter turns nervous, because you worry your nose has slipped off your face, on account of the numbing. I think the numbing is integral to being able to survive temperatures of minus 40. Small wonder the United Nations rated Finland as the happiest country in the world, again, for the umpteenth time.

The U.N. placed Zimbabwe 148th on the same list. Before you start thinking 148th isn’t too bad, there are only 149 countries on that list, with only Afghanistan placing lower than us. Apparently, even the Sudanese and the Yemenis are happier than us. Bummer.  I had no idea I was second most miserable in the whole world.

The U.N. dropped the miserable bomb on me in Dubai. Jenny and I were in Dubai to celebrate her birthday. After more than a year of lockdown in Zimbabwe, we were looking to get away on a plane somewhere, anywhere, so that we could do normal for a week. Normal and Dubai are not normally found in the same sentence, but it is about the only fly-in destination without Covid quarantine restrictions. The UAE have vaccinated seventy percent of the population against Covid and are in a hurry to get their hotels and shopping malls full of tourists again. 

For her birthday, to stop her from feeling miserable, I decided to pull out all the stops and spoil Jenny with a mosquito net and waterproof boots to wear on our gorilla safari in Uganda in July. We caught a taxicab to Decathlon Outdoor Store. Our driver was from Afghanistan. The fact that he came from the most miserable country on Earth escaped him, especially when he found out we were Zimbabweans. He was too busy grinning and gloating because Afghanistan had beaten Zimbabwe in a cricket Test in Abu Dhabi the day before. He eventually allowed that the United Nations had the truth of it and that Afghanistan was a miserable place. “But I’m not in Afghanistan and we beat you by six wickets.”  He went back to grinning.

“But we beat you in the first Test.”

“But we will smash you in the T20’s.”  And they did. Three-nil. Alas.

Dubai placed a respectable 25th in the World Happiness Report. With eighteen lane highways and no potholes, streetlamps that light up at night, shiny shopping malls and clean streets, and the world’s tallest buildings and decent wages, people from Dubai should be over-the-moon happy, but you don’t see or hear them laughing or smiling much. Either they have the best ever poker-faces, or they don’t know how lucky they are to have what they have.

People from the Third World are quicker to laugh and smile, even though many have nothing. I overheard a young man next to me on the Dubai Metro talking Shona on his cellphone and introduced myself. He was that happy to meet me, I thought he was going to hug me. His name was Tapelo, and he works in Dubai as a waiter, because he can’t find work in Zimbabwe. He asked me if I would phone his mom when I got back to Harare, to tell her that he was okay, and brushing his teeth regularly. Tapelo’s mom is a dentist. I phoned Nellie when we got home, and she was that grateful that I’d taken time out to report back on her precious son that she offered Jenny and I a free dental check-up.

After a week of window shopping hard in every mall in Dubai, enjoying fresh seafood at the fish market and rehydrating with Guinness and silly hats on St Patricks Day, our batteries were re-charged, and we were good to go home. 

We transited via Nairobi. After the sterile efficiency of Dubai airport, Jomo Kenyatta Airport hugged us back into the Third World.

Out of Nairobi, we were booked on flight 704 to Harare and Lusaka. The television screen in the Departures Terminal told us we would board at either Gate 21 on the upper concourse, or Gate 24 on the lower concourse. Panicked, we asked a ground hostess which Gate we should head to. She suggested we wait at Gate 24 because it was closer, but if the flight departed from Gate 21 upstairs, no problem, she was sure someone would come and look for us.

We had an hour to kill so we went to the Food Court. Smiling waiters from three competing Fast-Food outlets queued up to present us their menus. I went with a burger from the burger joint, Jenny went with sandwich from a health food joint, and the waiter from the pizza joint was left dejected, looking like I’d just killed his puppy. He was that sad I almost ordered a pizza to follow my burger, but instead promised him I’d shop with him next time. Damage was repaired instantly, and he was all smiles again. There was a public hand basin for your convenience in the food court, complete with a typed notice on the wall above the basin asking patrons to please not spit into it. I thought the sign to be quite charming and deserving of a photo. 

I read a local newspaper while we waited at Gates 21 and 24 and read with interest that the recruitment strategy for the Kenyan Police Force was centred on hiring students who had achieved C Minus grades or worse.  Police spokesman Charles Owino said “We have a challenge when they employed policemen with Grade C Plus and all they want to do is chase promotion. It is important we get officers who have C Plain, C Minus and D Plus.” Welcome to Africa.

The Robert Gabriel Mugabe International Airport is less warm and welcoming, and I’m not just talking about the name. Walking through the deserted, darkened concourse is spooky, it’s like walking through a mausoleum. It is darkened because of power cuts, and deserted not because of Covid, but because we are the 149th on the Happiest Countries list and who wants to go there for a holiday. And for some reason, they are currently busy 24/7 expanding the terminal, most probably because China needs the turnover.

The drive through Harare City Centre picks up where the airport left off with five lanes of traffic squeezed into two lanes of road and traffic lights that don’t work, ditto the Stop signs, No Stopping signs, and Give Way signs, especially if you drive a minibus taxi. It is a free-for-all with No Rules and by the time you get home, your nerves are frazzled, you are thinking the United Nations have a point, and you need to get away again.

We arrived home to no electricity. It happens that often, normally we don’t even notice, unless you have been in Dubai for a week. Ho hum. Thank God for dogs, cats, generators and grandchildren.  

Jenny and I were home for a week before we fled again, this time on an Old Legs training ride to the peace and quiet of the Mavuradonha Wilderness, six-hundred square kilometres of pristine, raw, virgin bush complete with giraffe, zebra, wildebeest, sable, kudu plus the odd elephant, lion and hyena, just 150 km north of Harare at the start of the Zambezi Escarpment.

To avoid the worst of the traffic out of Harare, Al, Laurie, Fiona, Jenny and I drove to Mazoe, leaving us 130 kilometres ride, with over 1,000 metres of stiff climbing. We were joined by Albie Cerutti, Ant Mellon and Helen ‘Patch’ Patchett.

Al Watermeyer returned the day before the training ride after a month in South Africa. He declared himself woefully underdone in terms of training, apologized for the woeful under-performance he was about to deliver, and then promptly commenced his sprint for the finish line 130 kilometres away. I tried to chase him down to remind him to take it easy because he was underdone but couldn’t catch him. I was also going to ask him to wee in a little bottle. Obviously anxious to avoid the urine test, Al was going that fast, he overshot our sixty-kilometre breakfast stop by five kilometres. I chased him in vain for six hours and now know Al Watermeyer to not only be a Liar, Liar, Pants on Fire, but also a racing snake to boot.

I think the United Nations World Food Program is also a Liar, Liar, Pants on Fire. They declared an ongoing food emergency in Zimbabwe, in the middle of our best ever bumper maize season, prompting Japan to deliver another 20,000 metric tonnes of maize, in the same week the Local Grain Millers Association urged government to suspend mealie meal imports on account of cheap imported mealie-meal flooding the market, crowding out the more expensive local product. The Grain Millers Association further expressed their reluctance to upfront the 500 billion dollars needed by government to buy in the bumper crop coming. I have lost track of how many worst ever famine alerts the World Food Program have put out for Zimbabwe over the last 10 years. I think they cut and paste them so they can continue to justify fat cat salaries, big fancy cars and hardship allowances. 

We rode past that bumper maize crop for the best part of six hours, giant maize almost twice as tall as Al, almost as tall as the giant Raffia palms that we also rode past. Competition amongst the maize breeders is fierce and roadside crops are all proudly labelled, but not the Raffias. For me, the prize for the best maize on show went to K2 for their PGS 65, just edging out NTS, Seed Co and Pannar.

We stayed at the Kopje Tops Camp in the Mavuradonha Wilderness. Kopje Tops was next level good with attentive staff, a small resident herd of Zebra who took a close interest in racing snake Al, forcing him to pedal fast again, and well-appointed rooms with giant, baths you could swim in and easily the most comfortable beds I have ever slept in.

The next morning, we rode to the Bat Cave and Elephant Gorge, escorted by Nesbit the game guide who kept a watchful eye out for elephants, buffaloes and lions. The Mavuradonha is tough bush, very gnarly with steep dongas and ravines, and we were able to cram 900 metres of climb into just 27 kilometres of ride, good training for the Uganda ride to come. The Bat Cave was epic, home to a million Egyptian Fruit Bats, literally, all of whom came barrelling out when we disturbed their slumbers with a torch. Nesbit’s head count of a million bats is accurate. Apparently, you count the number of wings and then divide by two, but only after allowing for bats without wings.

Because I am a clumsy bastard, I was also able to test the tensile strength of my ribs and, after cracking yet another rib, can confirm that my tensile strength continues pathetic. Because cracked ribs are a pin in the arse, I am going to look for a riding helmet that comes complete with full chest protection. 

Slogging out of dongas in granny gear and thirty-degree heat makes for hard work, so our swim in Elephant Gorge was particularly welcome, ditto our spectacular sundowner drinks looking out over unspoiled Africa.

The Mavuradonha Wilderness is such good muti and just 160 km from Harare. Places like the Mavuradonha are why we live in this country. To prove that point, Jenny and I drove back to Harare on the Monday only to refresh our stocks of clean socks, underwear and fresh lemons for the gin and tonics, before heading back on the Thursday for an Easter weekend spent laughing and enjoying with best friends from Doma. I am sure God adds onto your life, any time spent there.

We pedal out of Harare in the general direction of the Bwindi Impenetrable Forest, Uganda in just fourteen weeks. Jenny and I had our first Covid vaccination last week. We had the Chinese Sinopharm jabs and so far, so good without any compulsion to trade my iPhone in for a Huawei. We are hoping that our vaccination certificates assist with our passage through Zambia, Tanzania and Rwanda and into Uganda. If there is anyone out there reading this with local knowledge on Covid protocols at the various border posts, please contact me.

To launch both our Medical Emergency Fund and the Silverback Tour, the Old Legs Trust will be hosting our inaugural Golf Day at Borrowdale Brooke on the 14th of May. I am very excited and have started practicing my golf swing in earnest in front of the mirror. Please join us if you can. It will be epic, and for a wonderful cause. 

In closing, I’d like to re-introduce you to Adam Selby who is will be the Ride Captain on the Silverback Tour. Adam is a 1958 model, but his legs are far much younger. He is the quintessential racing snake. His favourite colour is yellow but that doesn’t stop him from also pinching my green jelly babies, or my red ones, or my orange ones, etcetera, etcetera. Adam is hugely proud that his daughter Jaime will be riding next to him in the peloton. I worry that Jaime has inherited Adam’s snake genes and expect both of them to reach Uganda before me.

Please follow us on www.oldlegstour.co.zw and help us help others. But be warned, we ride slower than paint dries.

Until my next blog, survive, stay safe and enjoy

Eric Chicken Legs de Jong

Pictures below – Jenny doing it tough in the Dubai fish market, re-hydrating with Guinness, Jomo Kenyatta Airport, and pics from our best ever training ride to the Mavuradona Wilderness