It looks like rain, dear

It was the annual Dark & Dirty Xmas Ride. Decorate your bike, your helmet and yourself in Xmas attire and take the singletrack to Lawley Street to admire Pretoria's lights.

I braved the 2-hour-traffic to Pretoria to go empty my mailbox in Groenkloof. (I originally kept the mailbox as an excuse to go ride D&D - and it worked!)

I happened to have the bike on the car - still muddy from the 24 hrs.
Haven't been at a D&D ride for a very long time - was surprised (and relieved) to see so many familiar faces.

Dark rumbling clouds warned of wet weather to come. It was ignored, and QT made up songs as we rode.




Old familiar singletrack - I forgot what a joy it was!

End of the World, but the bridge looked totally different and crossing the road was scarier than i remember. Then Gauntlet, but perfectly good singletrack had to make way for Gautrain-excavations :(

Up King of the Hill to the old D&D centre, and then learning the Jinglebellride-song's words as we ride on tar up & down some hills.


singletrack, singletrack, riding in the night
oh, what fun it is to fly on singletrack at night

we riding singletrack
on our bikes at night
we're on our way to lawley street
where all the cars go 'beep beep beep'

*all together now*
singletrack, singletrack, riding in the night ...


On to Lawley Street, Pretoria's fairytale-Xmas-light-street - complete with horses pulling a pumpkin-cart - and some reindeers :)




Lighting-flashes, camera-flashes, xmas-lights, bicycle-lights.

When the rumblings became too loud to ignore, we headed back past the old D&D centre again - where the Hardies revealed their Xmas prezzie to us all: drive-through ice cream at macDonalds (where of course we all had to scream for ice cream)




The cloud rumblings became louder and the flashes more frequent, and bets were placed on whether we'll beat the storm to the Moo Mall.

We missed a turn-off and took a grass-route into the airforcebasewall-singletrack. Almost at the cemetry there were loud noises of surprise from Hardy. Legs on the singletrack. Don't know who skrikked the most - hardy or the body attached to the legs. Then the balancing act through the narrow-alley under the bridge and racing the rain on tar all the way to the Moo mall.

We reached the mall as the first drops fell. Still dry. The heavens opened. By the time all the bikes were on cars - about 4 minutes later - everybody was drenched.

Hot chocolate and all-day-Thursday-specials at the Spur. And some prezzie-exchanges.

Another uneventful D&D ride.

Here's to lots more for 2010.