When in doubt, do both

One way to clear your mind is to go cycle round a 12 km lap for 24 hours (or parts there-of).

But it wasn't necessary to cycle for 24 hours. My mind was made up within the first 20 minutes of the first lap when I rode with Ride-2-Rhodes-rider and prospective Freedom Challenger Ben de Lange - who couldn't understand at all why i'd want to give up mountain biking to study. 'When in doubt, do both', he suggested before finding a gap in the first-lap singletrack-congestion and speeding off.

It was a crazy week-and-a-bit since then: I had to schedule and write the GMAT exam, use what spare time I could find to study for it, then compile CVs and motivations and complete piles of application forms and speed-courier them to Stellenbosch in time for the cut-off date ... all while still pretending to be productive at work - and balancing it with follow-me film evenings and Xmas hubrides and AR club year end parties and Dark&Dirty rides and organising Xtreme dinners :)

"It gives us great pleasure to inform you that it has been recommended to the MBA selection panel that you be admitted to the MBA programme of the University of Stellenbosch Business School."

Short notes:

• The 24 hours night-laps were absolutely stunning. No wind, no rain, no midday heat, very few people, just you and singletrack and the night. Graham passing me after a bit of getting-lost on rietvlei's more technical tracks (their team still won despite the hour-long lap); Johan Malan passing me with a huge grin and a wave (he managed 23 laps and second in his category, wow). Hubbers Dangle and Dobby cheering me on every time i went out for another lap. And cycling legend Tinker Juarez passing me every so often :)
• The Xmas hubride started on the other side of the Spruit. So I met up with Nancy Drew and Agteros for a pre-hubride to meet the other hubbers at the bottom of the Spruit at 7. I'm not a getter-upper ... but the Spruit was magical at 5:20 in the morning. All washed clean from the thunderstorms the previous night, and the singletrack green and twisty and fun. Haven't been to the other side of William Nicol for a while. Need to do that more often!
• This week's D&D is on Wednesday night, not Thursday. Possibly a 55. There's only 2 weeks a year when traffic between joburg and pretoria calms down. The weatherman predicted cloudy with a chance of cupcakes.